Glints of Gold and Green

Yesterday, I captured this shot as I walked up the hill to the chapel at Lutheridge:

On the one hand, it looks like a summer morning--there are still lots of green leaves on the tree, and the hints of gold on the trees aren't changed leaves (not yet), but the sun shining through.

But the signs of seasonal change are there--the road has lots more leaves on it.  The shift is underway.

God's movement in the world is often like this picture.  In some way, it looks like nothing different from any other point in time, especially from one day to the next.  But those who are alert will notice that something is shifting.

Narrow Gates, Wide Paths, and the Holy Trinity

When I first started this sketch, I thought I was illustrating this verse from the Gospel of Matthew:   “Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the road is easy[a] that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it.  For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it." (Matthew 7: 13-14 NRSVUE).

I don't have a copy of the early days of the sketch, the black line drawing that looked more like paths winding their way across the page.

As I started to add color, I started to see three figures, and as I added more color, the one on the left, the one in yellows and reds, started to seem female.  My mind went, as it always does, to ideas about the Holy Trinity.  And so, I decided to explore that.  

In the end, the figure on the left in yellows and reds became the Holy Spirit, and the one on the right, in greens, became the Creator.  The middle figure ended up being an amalgamation of colors and shapes that I often use for the Virgin Mary, along with images I've used, and the culture has used, for Christ.  There are three crosses, done in fine-line black pen, in the bottom circle, along with a star, also done in pen, in the space between the two circles. The darker ovals in the top circle were supposed to represent the empty tomb.

I'm pleased with how it turned out--but I continue to be intrigued by how I thought I was drawing something totally different only to end up sketching Trinitarian images again.

Walking Humbly

 My sister got me this Michael Podesta print for a graduation gift:

I love this Bible verse, and I loved it before it became so popular.  I first heard it at a worship service at a gathering of Lutheran college students, back in the days when we called campus ministry Lutheran Student Movement (LSM).  My college boyfriend loved it along with me, and we used it as one of our wedding verses.

I put the print on our fireplace mantel, where it sits beside the TV, the extra lightbulbs, and the fresh batteries.  It seems like some sort of visual poem.  Or maybe it just speaks to a lack of storage solutions.

The longer view also presents a visual poem, or maybe just a visual record.  I am struck by the Podesta print on the middle shelf, the print that I got as a graduation present--graduation from undergraduate school, back in 1987.  The quote is by Emerson:  "Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

I haven't been in full trail blazing mode since then, but I have been on less-traveled paths, and I feel mostly fortunate.

Icons and the Natural World

On Thursday, at our last morning prayer service, we had stations.  We could stare at an icon.  We had a board and post it notes where we could leave prayers.  We could stop at an anointing station to be anointed with oil.  It was a quieter, more contemplative service, and I found it very moving.

I found myself drawn to part of the altar that wasn't intended to be a station.  I loved this pumpkin.  

It was interesting to stare at it after staring at a more traditional icon:

It made me wonder about a contemplative exercise that has participants stare at a traditional icon and then an evocative item from the natural world.  They could write or sketch what comes to them, and then we could have interesting conversations about it.

Let me tuck this away for future reference (and perhaps I will try it in one of my writing classes next week or the next).

Salvation in a Female Form

Yesterday I had a mostly free day, so I headed to downtown DC to enjoy a few Smithsonian museums (for a more comprehensive look at the day, read this post on my creativity blog).  Even before I knew what it was, this assemblage/sculpture caught my eye:

But up close, I was even more intrigued:  statues of the Virgin Mary!  The author did plaster casts of each one and then painted them; here's a close-up:

I thought about the visions of womanhood that have captured our imagination.  So often they are the woman who did the thing that was rare in women, like Phyllis Wheatley, writing poetry when so many women did not.

We think of the Virgin Mary as being a vessel of salvation, but we have more dynamic possibilities.  Here is a quilted picture of Harriet Tubman.  Don't let the lush fabric fool you into forgetting how fearless she was.

Various Versions of Divina

Yesterday, we did several sessions of lectio divina.  Lectio devina is different than Bible study; the traditional approach is to read a Bible passage several times, often out loud, and to listen to what God might be saying to the listener. Often the second reading will have the listener choose a word or phrase that God is using to speak to the listener, and subsequent readings have the listener focus that word or phrase.

My experiences with lectio divina have been like the one we had in the evening worship service where the passage is a longer passage. In last night's worship service we used the text of Psalm 8, the whole Psalm.

During our afternoon instructional time, we used a much shorter passage, part of Psalm 46: 10, just 8 words:  "Be still, and know that I am God."

Our lectio divina leader told us to listen for three words and to let them minister to us. In a later reading we were to choose one of those three words as the one that was speaking to us.  We had time to meditate on the words, and we had time to share our insights with another member of the group.

We also did visio divina, a practice that is not as well known. Barbara L. Peacock was our special guest and instructional leader yesterday. She's the author of one of the books that the program uses, Soul Care in African American Practice. On the larger screen we saw a projection of the book cover: 

It's a gorgeous cover but it wasn't the first cover. She told us that the first cover had a background of kente cloth, along with the images of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and someone else (Frederick Douglass?) overlayed.  Her adult daughter who is a graphic designer said that the cover was too retro and that the fresh work inside the cover needed a better cover.  And so they came up with one.

The cover shows all kinds of abstract shapes, along with vivid colors, and we were asked to focus on one section of the cover and to see what was revealed.  Those who were willing were encouraged to share what they saw, and I was surprised by how many different images we saw. I saw a little house with a garden just under the left side of the white box that holds the title.  Others saw rivers or thorny branches or nebulas.  Some of us focused on the form of the woman with the uplifted head that his presented in shadow.

One of the things that I appreciated yesterday is that we didn't just talk about spiritual practices that we might use in life and in spiritual direction, but we actually practiced them together. The small group work didn't take up inordinate amounts of time, the way they sometimes can.

I am aware that the practices may not work for everyone, and happily, we will experience a variety of practices. I am about to go walk the labyrinth before it gets too much hotter and then I'll go to a morning worship of centering prayer--all of this before breakfast. I will begin the day nourished in so many ways.

Visio Divina in Seminary Class

One of the cool things about being in a seminary class is that we can actually engage in spiritual practices and not just talk about them.  On Wednesday, in my Spiritual Formation for Ministry class, we did a session of Visio Divina, after reading Henri Nouwen who talked about this practice.

I reached for my sketchbook, but it wasn't going to be that kind of Visio Divina. It's a class conducted via Zoom, so our teacher pulled up this image, "Emmaus," by Emmanuel Garibay:

On Wednesday, we looked at this image, while our teacher led us through the meditation.  "I invite you to . . ."--much of what our teacher offered was preceded by this phrase.  She invited us to focus on different parts of the image.  She invited us to close our eyes.  She invited us to consider where we see God in this image.  She invited us to consider what God was saying to us in this image.

Then we broke into small groups.  My group was me, another woman, and a man who is also in my CD group, so I knew him.  He's a Seventh Day Adventist, so I wasn't surprised to hear him say that he found the image too disturbing to even have it on his screen.  I talked about how it was hard for me to meditate on the image because I wanted to analyze it, especially the background, which reminded me of both depictions of Hell and Pentecost.

We came back together as a group to discuss.  Not surprisingly, we had a wide range of experiences.  Our teacher reminded us that "God will reveal Godself in any image."  She suggested we try it with images out of the news.  Interesting!

I'd like to try this again, only this time with a less unsettling image.  I found it hard to shut up my analytical brain long enough to let God, or anyone else, speak to me through the image that we used on Wednesday night.  But I'm not unhappy to have had the experience--or to have found the work of an artist whom I hadn't heard of before Wednesday night.

If your brain is like mine and wants more insight into both the artist and the art, this essay by Rob Pattendon in Image is a great place to start.