Ascending and Descending

(NB. Click on the image to see the full-scale image)

"Ascending and Descending"
M.C. Escher, 1960, lithograph.

He said of this illustration:

"We imagine we are climbing: every step is about 20cm high, terribly exhausting and where does it get us? Nowhere; we donlt get one step further or higher. Descending, rolling downhill deliciously, doesn't work for us either."

For me, in so many ways, this image represents the contemporary church, altho it would never see itself this way. So any are working so hard to walk the walk, yet it is getting them nowhere. Only one os looking on wondering WTF...? And yet there is just one who is looking outwards into the community surrounding their own closed community, sunk deep in depression, lost in the hopelessness of being unable to make any difference...