This morning, I got to the last page of my sketchbook, so I flipped back through the pages. I'm always struck by how many of my images look like tongues of flame, even when I think I'm sketching something else, like a descending dove.
As I've been watching pictures from the U.S. west, pictures that look like they come from a different planet in the midst of apocalypse, I've been thinking of our traditional religious images and wondering how they might shift, or whether we might choose different images to emphasize.
I'm writing after a day of flooding rains, which made me think of a different set of traditional images. How do we see baptism in an age where we'll be fighting off the hungry seas that want to wash us away?
This week I started a new sketch not sure of where it would go--I was surprised when a hen emerged from my random swooshes.
But why should I be surprised? Granted, I'm part of a religious tradition that has emphasized descending doves, not nesting hens. But in my quest for more feminine images of God, so rare in the Bible, I have come back to that one over and over.
Times of societal shift often bring an interesting shift in imagery of all kinds. One hundred years from now, what imagery will we emphasize?
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