Page - 105 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

measure of confidence in time. The process of secularization and the transition to life according to the clock in the earthly realm, as opposed to the calendar in conjunction with eternal time, gave people living in Western cultures new norms and worldviews regarding time: the secular man had been exiled out of Eden for good, tossed into earthly time, and this new freedom imbued him with fear and a fierce appetite for competition, success and glory. We can demonstrate the loss of connection to eternal, mystical time by re- ferring to the painting “Crossing Nature” by Chaya Agur (fig. 2). In an inter- view with the painter, she explains that the title “Crossing Nature” has a double meaning in relation to the painting – it refers to the crucifixion of nature as well as the act of angering nature, or going against its laws. The painting depicts the paradox of the eternal time that Jesus represents as the son of God and the linear time of the ever-changing natural phenomena represented by his hu- man form. She explained that the crucifixion represents Jesus’s transition from a human existence in linear time to an eternal divine existence, as well as the opportunity given to mankind via the crucifixion to free themselves from the burden of linear time. At the same time, the crucifixion also describes what is happening to Jesus’s body, which is a coherent part of nature and subject to its physical laws just like any other creature in the material world. The subject of the crucifixion is very common in pictorial art and there have been countless interpretations and depictions of it by different artists. However, the emphasis always tends to be on Jesus’s suffering and/or on the suffering of those around him. Here, by contrast, the figure of Jesus on the cross is positioned in the midst of beautiful and indifferent nature which carries on unperturbed in the face of the crucifixion. The dove above Jesus’s head is an example of this dualism – on the one hand, it is the Christian symbol of the holy spirit hovering over him, but on the other hand, it is also an animal which uses its environment for its own needs, and as such is busy building a nest for its chicks out of Jesus’s long hair. The figure of Maria on the distant horizon was painted as the grieving mother, based on the model of Michelangelo’s “Pieta”. However, yet again, unlike the customary depictions of Jesus’ mother, she is not by his side. Instead, she is distant and symbolically representative of the two kinds of time – as the eternal mother of God and as a human body painted in the shape of an hourglass whose time is running out. Instead of a halo, her head is crowned by a clock-face. The two kinds of time present in the painting are not separate – eternal time contains linear time, and vice versa. This is the painter’s attempt to illustrate the paradox of time in the human experience. Man as a creature of nature, made from the dust and destined to return to it, and Man as a creature made in the image of God conduct a shared existence within the human frame. In my opin- ion, the painting emphasizes the indifference of nature to the human history and its events within time. The painting contains other elements from the paint- Western Apocalyptic Time and Personal Authentic Time | 105www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 95–116