Our pastor began by reading the passage in Galatians 5 about the fruits of the spirit. She read it in both the New International Version and The Message. As she read, we were to meditate on what spiritual gift is needed, either individually or communally.
She had spread out pictures in two batches: one set was pictures of fruit:
The other set had a variety of images that might correspond to the spiritual gifts, like kindness and peacefulness:
The word I chose was kindness; here are the images I chose:
We were to put the two pictures together on the black sheet of paper in some sort of new image. And then the surprise: we had stickers that peeled off in small fragments.
At first, I felt irritated by not being able to create the image I first visualized. I created a way to attach the larger image to the table as a pop up image. After that, I just looked at colors and pasted them in a way that pleased me.
The process made me wonder what image I'd have ended up with if I had done that originally. Here's what someone else created:
And here's something more abstract:
And what does the process have to do with cultivating kindness? Perhaps the irritation is key--how quickly I moved to irritation, even though I was trying to think about kindness. It's so hard to be kind to irritating people or objects. It's hard to maintain a kind attitude when I'm feeling irritated.
It's an interesting exercise. I would think that this activity is one that can be done even by people who might declare themselves not creative.
And it's the kind of thing that might work well with other passages too--let me stay alert for the possibilities.
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