✎ July 24th · St. Louis
I’m sitting in the shade on Art Hill in Forest Park, looking out at the fountains. It’s 96 degrees today, but it feels like a hundred. That thick, Missouri river-valley heat that pushes on your skin the moment you step outside. We’re in the middle of a heatwave, and I needed to get out of the house to move my body. I’ve done a lot this week—Always Here is live, and in less than an hour, The Torchbearer’s Voice podcast will be released into the world.
I had more work to do, tedious details. Nothing urgent. I felt called to take a break. To slow down. I put music in my ears and started pacing the halls of the St. Louis Art Museum. I’ve found a lot of comfort and mental relief here for nearly 30 years now.
I found myself in front of a painting I’ve looked at dozens of times before—The Narrows from Staten Island by Jasper Francis Cropsey. There used to be a black leather couch in front of it. I’ve sat in that very spot on the second floor, journaling, listening to podcasts or audiobooks. But the couch was gone now, so I stood, closer this time than before. And something opened.
I felt a part of my spirit connect with the spirit of the work, maybe Jasper himself.
This isn’t the first time it’s happened to me here. Once, in the armor section, I stared into a coat of arms and suddenly felt the presence of the human who once wore it. I saw the day before they were called to war—playing with their children, living an ordinary life. The parts we never see depicted. The soft, little-big moments before the hard and brutal ones.
But today, it was this landscape from Staten Island, painted shortly after the Civil War, before industrialization reshaped everything. I started to lean in—not just visually, but emotionally. Cropsey didn’t paint this masterpiece in a day. He returned again and again. And I wondered what he brought with him to the top of that hill each time.
What ache?
What grief?
What longing?
What heartbreak or hope?
What paradoxical weather patterns he was fighting inside himself?
I felt his humanity—not just his craft. His need for art as a safe place to retreat to. A sanctuary from his own ruminating thoughts. A sacred practice to soothe the hurricane of being alive.
And I cried.
Not because the painting was beautiful (though it is). But because I felt the soul of it. I saw its heart.
And that doesn’t happen every day.
We don’t often stop like that. Not long enough to feel the full presence behind the brushstroke and the textures on the canvas.
We skim. We judge the surface. We do the same thing to people.
But every single thing—every painting, every person, every scene—contains such depth when we pause long enough to really feel. Ever since Lindsay left, I get so overwhelmed by the beauty of it all now when I let it leak in.
After about ten minutes of feeling hyper present to the energy surrounding Jasper’s work, I turned and began to walk away. I laughed a little too. As I walked away with tear-filled eyes, I thought about my own brain. My own unique code and neurodivergent wiring. I wondered what percentage of people cry in front of a painting because they felt its soul. Because it reflected something back to them that words never could.
Maybe fewer than I used to think.
But I’m learning that’s okay.
I’m learning that this capacity to feel deeply, to sense the unseen, the part I stuffed away for most of my life, is not a flaw. It’s a frequency. And there are others like me. Others like us. Learning how to tune it, shape it, walk with it.
This was just a painting.
But today, it became a portal.
From my fire to yours.
