I've been having quite a wonderful November, in terms of creativity. I have been taking an online journaling class, which started Nov. 4, and I've also been writing a poem a day. I didn't plan to make a sketch a day, but I've been doing that too. The processes have been feeding each other in interesting ways.
As I've already written about, in this blog post, I made a sketch during a brief rest stop on my long drive Saturday:
I thought about the story of Jonah and the whale as I was sketching. I continued to think about it as I continued my week's travels.
You may remember that Jonah is a reluctant prophet in the short Biblical book of the same name. God wants Jonah to go to Nineveh, and Jonah doesn't want to. So he heads out in a different direction, on a ship. There's a storm, and Jonah feels that if the sailors toss him overboard, the storm will subside. The sailors do this, and Jonah is swallowed by a giant fish and spends 3 days in the stomach of the giant fish. He agrees to go to Nineveh, the fish vomits him up, and Nineveh proves to be receptive to his/God's message. There's a surprise twist at the end: Jonah gets in a snit of a mood because he's successful.
I spent time thinking about my image and the story. Is my heart a reluctant prophet? I've been intrigued with the idea of my heart as a prophet who grows tired of delivering messages from God and flees, only to find time for contemplation in the innards of a giant fish. I would likely never have had that poem idea without this image, which I hope to return to at some point.
Yesterday, I finally had time to write the poem down. As with the story of Jonah, it went in interesting ways. It's a poem I likely wouldn't have had without the sketch. And I wouldn't have had either, probably, without the daily discipline that I've adopted for November.
but bestows favor on the humble
1 year ago
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