A Creative Sunday: Transfiguring Trash to Prepare for Ash Wednesday

As we drove to church with our car full of trash and an easel, my spouse said, "None of this is coming home with us, right?"  I said, "Right."

Once I had the three dresser drawers and the trash laid out, I worried that we might not have enough raw materials to create shadow boxes:

I needn't have worried.   This group of people are up to any task.

One group layered their drawer with pages from old hymnals:

I started with some old candles and the branches from the banana tree that Hurricane Irma destroyed.

When I started ripping an old map, people's eyes lit up.  The locations are places where I've lived, places that feel lost to me now:

One group took a wrapped box and went in a different direction--cool!  The box was wrapped for part of a Christmas display at my school, and then I used it in my Baptism of Jesus altarscape (it was covered in fabric, but it provided height).  And here it is, transfigured again:

I was impressed with what we were able to create in just 45 minutes:

Here is how the box covered with hymnal pages ended up:

And here's how we will use them in the chancel:

I'm calling this a success:  hurricane trash transfigured into works of art.  In some ways, it's the opposite of the Ash Wednesday message--except that eventually, these works of art go to the trash bin where they were headed in the first place.