Remembrances
A Remembrance from Paul and Carol Hinderlie (Pepin, WI)
At Holden Village...
We saw a barren barrel-vaulted gym ceiling.
Rich saw an empty canvas, built a scaffold and flooded the vault
with colors beyond imagining.
We heard a sometimes boisterous tenor voice,
exploding so often in laughter.
We heard silly songs ("Carroll the Red Norwegian..."),
outrageous puns ("We'll be right back after this Caemmerer-mercial...").
All our senses were “enriched”.
Taste and See: the table was readied for glorious conversation.
Rich were Rich's gifts to Holden. Rich were his gifts to all of us.
New vision for libraries, and bright windows in doors. Glorious light and color.
The Laughing Jesus - The Body of Christ.
Trusting the Promises, he proclaimed (with Timothy) that God has given us and all creation - ALL — “EVERYTHING and EVERYONE”— so RICHly to Enjoy.
All we can ask or imagine.
We give thanks for Rich.
A Remembrance from Brother Mickey McGrath (Philadelphia, PA)
My love and respect for Rich was sealed on my heart twice over the last thirty years in which I knew him. Both times were life changers for me.
The first was during my very first visit to the Grunewald Guild, the same summer in which my mother was dying back home in Philadelphia. Needless to say I was distracted, homesick, longing to be anywhere but in the mountains on the other side of the country, with total strangers, not one of whom was Catholic- but my mother had insisted I go. How clear to me now that she was doing the work of the Holy Spirit!
Late one morning, I received a call to come home right away, that she had taken a turn for the worst. I vividly recall saying goodbye to Rich when he dropped me off at the airport, wondering what the future held and if I would ever see this new friend again.
Several years later, following my father’s death, I joined Rich’s pilgrimage from Paris to Santiago on what would prove to be the most transforming trip of my life. Because of his vast wisdom and knowledge, which he shared so generously and enthusiastically, I came to see my own art gifts in the light of faith. In other words, with his help, I found my voice.
Rich told our group, on the very first day in Paris, that our pilgrimage would not end at Santiago de Compostela, but rather at home, our ultimate destination. I have seen life as a journey towards home ever since, one filled with wonder and awe, with heartbreak and beauty.
Buddhist say, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” What a fine teacher I was blessed to have in Rich, when this student was more than ready- twice.
A Remembrance from Jason Burrell (Orlando, FL)
A shining light going out creates a sense of darkness, even if other lights remain.
There are not enough people concerned with goodness, faith, philosophy and the manifestation of philosophy: faith and goodness. We are going to miss Richard very much.
You may never meet someone else in your life with the wisdom to know that a scar can be a source of strength. You may never meet someone in the rest of your life with such enthusiasm and insight to the world of ideas and experience, as returns to a previously vanquished stutter.
An idealist willing to work with people in the mud of this world. Who makes a community, and keeps painting, while raising a family and a remarkable marriage, and a relationship with God; and grows the community and the family!? And good relations with neighbors!
To create and push around images and visions of this world is a form of love. Painting is an act of questioning, discovery, devotion, love and hope. Richard practiced these daily. From his strong, frail body he leapt forth into himself, his environment, history and his faith in the purpose of life.
And then he had the audacity and gift to tell us about it! Inspiring and humbling, the paradoxes were and remain boggling.
A tall man, with a wry smile and a spirit like the prow of a ship cutting through the waters of this world. On his own or a higher mission that reminds of something we know but cannot say.
Why are we here? Right now. Even as these specific details and stories make us laugh and cry, and old memories come forth, he is too big to hold and slips by us.
Tears flow.
A Remembrance from Steve Broin (Isla Mujeres, Mexico)
I became lifelong friends with Rich and his wonderful family at Holden Village, where we were part of the life-changing winter community in 1975.
During an afternoon presentation on art history, Rich showed a slide of Picasso’s masterpiece “Guernica”, a stark, black & white condemnation of the horrors of war. I had never seen anything like it before, a painting so ugly and unsettling. This was not art! This was not beautiful! I made a smart-ass comment that it would NEVER hang over my fireplace…
Rich embraced the challenge. I was not to sleep until I understood.
Late into the night, as Rich poured more coffee into my cup and his passion for art into my soul, I discovered the calling of an artist. Before the sun came up, my eyes had opened to a brand new world; the beginning of a journey that continues to this day.
Rich changed my life. He showed me how to dance with my paintbrush, to pray with my pencil, perhaps most importantly, that the work of an artist need not, necessarily, match the sofa.
A Remembrance from Eldon Balko (Valparaiso, IN)
I met Rich in 1975 when we were both young Profs at Valparaiso University. I sit at our dining room table today writing these thoughts and looking at Rich’s painting of the Last Supper under which our children and now grandchildren have gathered for family meals for almost 35 years.
One memory is on my mind today: a conversation I had with Rich years later when visiting him at the Grunewald Guild. The subject was death and the reality of God. Our discussion ended with a comment he made, one I’ll never forget: “I choose to live my life as if there is a god and die to find out there isn’t rather than live my life thinking there isn’t and die to find out there is. If I know how to die, I’ll know how to live.”
Rich knew how to die; he lived a fulfilled life with love and compassion.
The people who make a difference in one’s life are not the ones with the most credentials, the most money, or the most awards. They simply are the ones who cared the most. Richard cared! He knew that relationships and love were, ultimately, the depth and meaning of life.
I will miss him. Pax vobiscum.
A Remembrance from Stephen Larson (Ontario, Canada)
It was the winter of 1994. Richard wrote to me to say he had hit a dry patch and wasn’t feeling very creative, painting had become a challenge.
So I wrote back and invited him to spend Holy Week at the Lutheran Church of Geneva in Switzerland. He could just be there as part of the community and soak up the music, drama, texts, Word and Sacraments.
So he flew over.
Right off the bat he said he couldn’t just sit there, he’d have to contribute something. Before very long we were at an art supply shop purchasing a 4 foot x 11 foot sheet of heavy art paper, some paints and other supplies.
On Good Friday, as our worship began, people entered the church and were surprised to see Richard, standing on a ladder, painting on the paper mounted beneath the organ pipes on the rear wall of the sanctuary. During the course of the liturgy, throughout that long telling of the tale of Christ’s crucifixion, Richard painted and painted. The form was a dark, brooding image of a man hanging behind prison bars. His head was slumped on his chest. A spear came in from the right toward his chest.
As the liturgy concluded, people left the church and Richard was still there painting.
The next night, at the Easter Vigil, people again entered the sanctuary and found Richard again on the ladder. The painting had been utterly transformed in bright, vibrant colors. The prison bars were broken, the lock destroyed and the Risen Christ’s head was upright looking out on the assembly.
For many of us, that Holy Week was one of the most memorable Good Friday and Easter Vigil liturgies we had ever experienced thanks to Richard’s proclamation of the Gospel in art.
A Remembrance from Ruth Sinclair (Mishawaka, IN)
I first met Rich and Liz as a 17 year old art student at Valparaiso University. There, in a small lecture room, Rich opened up a whole new world for me. A world full of art and artists and wonderful stories that I still never get tired of hearing. But Rich did more than tell me about these things. He showed me too.
In Autun he introduced me to the sculpture of Giselbertus, and later the blue glass of Chartres’. We saw ancient sites in Turkey and Rome. We walked through the Damascus gate onto streets that had not changed since biblical times. We strolled the rolling hills and landscapes of England. And we visited a small Romanesque church in Italy that had flying angels above a door, carrying souls to heaven - in baskets.
I have been so fortunate to be a part of the Guild from its first years. It was important to Rich to have a place where artists could work and live and learn from each other. He accomplished this for us.
He led the way, and by his own example he taught me what it is to be an artist and how to keep strong the passion for what I do.
Thank you, Rich!
A Remembrance from Carrie Newcomer (Bloomington, IN)
Carrie: Rich said,
Rich: Art and music, like The Sacred, cannot be contained in any one small container...you can open up the frame Carrie. A painting is not bound by the physical canvas or paint, it transcends the edges of the frame; it reaches into the most secret places of the human heart.
Carrie: And I said, so something as weightless as a song or a prayer can be physically felt, have true substance? And he said:
Rich: Yes, and something as earthbound as fabric and clay and paint can speak our most wordless longings, express our delight and grief. Beauty can connect our hearts to the divine heart. And I said:
Carrie: You think about this stuff all the time. And he said,
Rich: Yeah, that and lunch.
Carrie: And I said: You know when you invited me to teach here, that I had no credentials, nothing beyond what I love - an art that keeps calling me to service. And he said:
Rich: Your art is your credentials, your art will always be your credentials.
Carrie: And I said: But spiritual music, particularly Christian music, only allows us to use 8 theological crayons. I'm a 48 crayon kind of gal. And he said:
Rich: Hallelujah...I like color.
Carrie: And I said: But Richard, I don't fit neatly anywhere. And he said:
Rich: You fit here. Do the best you can, with as much love as you can. Love is always the next great adventure. It will be beautiful and wondrous, bewildering and glorious and strange and sacred and holy and hard. AND it's going to be really, really interesting.
A Remembrance from John Schramm (Leavenworth, WA)
Rich and I were not only friends but had an experience of real creativity in the church. We were both "probers." Let me explain the term. Pastor Jim Siefkes was asked by the Lutheran church to develop a program in "Mission Discovery."
I imagine the church leaders expected him to find new strategies for membership growth. Instead, Jim found and gathered a small group of individuals who were inspired and highly motivated to discover frontiers for the church's involvement. My passion was for peace and justice. Rich obviously brought his passion and insights for the merging of faith and art.
For many years the probers gathered yearly to share our discoveries and work. Some of the discovery areas included environmental stewardship, quantum physics, the globalization of mission, and inclusion of LGBT Lutherans into the full life of the church. We called these discoveries “explorations of the predictably controversial for the church."
Today, I am in Minneapolis at the funeral of the probers’ founder, Jim Siefkes held ironically on the same day as Rich's memorial - which I am sad to miss.
Rich's probe into faith and art was not only a welcome contribution to the probers’ discovery ministries, but a gift to the whole church.