Manifestation.

Only the abstract artist can attempt to show us light in itself, free from any material context. This is pure silence, the experience removed from the concrete and celebrated as a transforming peace. Epiphany is a Greek word meaning manifestation, a revelation of glory. We are not meant to understand Natkin's picture, any more than we are meant to intellectualize during our silences. We enter into silence to let the holiness of mystery take possession of us. We do this not in the absence of thought, but beneath thought. Natkin shows us infinite shades of color, a constantly receding radiance. The longer that we gaze at it, the more we "see": not in understandable images but in pure experience of chromatic brightness. This undifferentiated experience is integral to silence.

By SISTER WENDY BECKETT of Norfolk, England, well-known for her BBC and PBS television art series and her popular art books. Reprinted with permission from: Sister Wendy's Book of Meditations (DK Publishing, 1998; 888-342-5357). Painting: Epiphany, 1990, Robert Natkin, Private collection.