Faithful...

 

Number 7 of 100 of exploring cruciform - I have so many partially complete, waiting for that last little touch of symbology...in this piece I was thinking how the intersecting parts of a trellis form a cross of sorts.  I could "see" dogwoods climbing the wood, and found that one of the meanings of this flower was "faithfulness". 

And have I mentioned that Sweet Teen and I are taking Japanese language lessons?  Sweet Teen's interest in all things Japanese continues to influence me!  Their written language is a combination of Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji.  Even foreign words make their way into the written work.  Kanji is borrowed from the Chinese characters and may sometimes have variations.  Thus, I needed to add the character for faithfulness.  This character also can mean honesty, fidelity, honor, personal integrity, constancy and faith.

Several  years ago I was introduced to the concept that the story of Creation found in Genesis is embedded in the Chinese language - and the study is fascinating!  In the case of the above character, it is developed from combining two pictographs into one ideograph:

 

If we analyze the character , meaning sincere [trustful, etc.], we find that it is formed by the combination of the characters of a man and words, a collocation of ideas which speaks well for the honourable truthfulness of the ancient Chinese.” *

(There are about 600 pictographs, from which the 214 radicals are formed, and about 700 ideographs.)

 * Nelson, Ethel R. (1979-08-01). The Discovery of Genesis (Kindle Locations 553-556). Concordia Publishing House. 

     Kindle Edition.