Report from Day 1 of Vacation Bible School

I am spending every evening this week at my church.  I'm the Arts and Crafts Director at our Vacation Bible School.

Last night was our first night, and it went well.  The theme of our VBS is "Weird Animals," and last night we made animals out of paper tubes and Styrofoam cups that I rescued from a café that was going to throw them away.  We had a variety of pipe cleaners and crayons and colored paper.  I was happily surprised with the variety of animals we made.

At first I thought I had made a terrible mistake.  The first group of kids did not dive right in, the way the later groups did.

Some of the children looked a bit baffled.  One said, "I don't know what to make."  I said, "You can make anything you want."  He watched the others for a minute or two, and then he got to work.

In a later group, one child said, "I need a sword."  I said, "Well, you'll have to make one then."

One child decided to work in 2 dimensions.  She drew a picture.  That was fine with me.

Most of the animals would be earthbound, if they existed in real life: we had very few animals with wings or fins.  That's fine.

Every year, I resolve to do more to tie the art in with the lessons.  Last night was no different from any other year.  It was all I could do to keep everyone relatively on task, all I could do to keep utter chaos at bay.  There was no talk of God or how God loves all of us weird animals or anything else.

Maybe I'll do better tonight.  We're making puppets out of paper bags and masks out of paper plates.

2011 Advent Art Project #1: The Tropical Advent Wreath

I know that the Advent wreath tradition is to have evergreen/pine boughs--so I decided to play with the theme.  Each week, I may add additional tropical elements.  Although if later weeks are like this week, I may run into trouble.  My palm trees are not nearly as much in need of cutting back at this time of year as they are in the summer.

Here's the view from the top.  I kind of like the mix of palms, which I associate with Holy Week, with the Advent elements.  I was thinking strictly in terms of tropical greenery.  It wasn't until I was cutting that I said to myself, "I remember doing this prior to Easter for Palm Sunday."

It is the start of Advent, where we turn our eyes to the manger--and to the end of the story, in so many ways.  Ah, Advent, with its apocalyptic texts, its watching and waiting.  Light the first candle and contemplate!

To Fill a Cross

Each year, during our Create in Me retreat at Lutheridge, we do a community art project.  This year's theme was "broken, but beautiful."  For our community art project, we brought our broken things to add to a cross that my spouse had built.  The sides are made of wood, with plexiglass attached.



We dropped our broken pieces in from the top.

A close up, as the cross fills.

Much of the cross was made up of broken pottery objects (and wine bottles and dishes).  We have many potters who come to the retreat, and they welcomed the chance to put their less-perfect pieces to a different use.  And many of us had fun with a sledgehammer as we made the pieces small enough to drop in.

Each year, I try a variety of arts and crafts, and this year, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed shattering objects and dropping them in.  I loved seeing how they assembled themselves and reassembled themselves.  I probably should have worn gloves--I got lots of tiny cuts.

Here are two different work-in-progress shots. 

You can see how we filled in the sides, the crossbeam, if you will.

The cross will live at the labyrinth.  The labyrinth itself began in brokenness.  Once upon a time, long ago when people still played tennis, it was a tennis court, and off to the side, you can still see the mechanism that tightened the net.  Then it was abandoned and the weeds filled in.  About 10 years ago, someone (many someones?) transformed the tennis court into a labyrinth.  Some day, I'll write a poem.



I love the symbolism of this cross.  God can take any amount of brokenness and redeem it.  God takes all our broken pieces and assembles a new creation.  What amazing Good News!

Collage Experiment: Soul Cards, Inspiration Cards

My spouse and I spent the week-end playing with collage. He's working on a large piece with lots of under-the-sea images from his SCUBA magazines. I wanted to play on a smaller canvas with the glitter cards that we picked up at an after-Christmas sale. I also have several old Lutheran green hymnbooks (the LBW), which I retrieved from the garbage and held onto for just this very purpose. You may have to expand the photo to see the parts of the hymnbook that I use.

When I found this image of Archbishop Oscar Romero, a hero of mine, I knew I wanted to do an updated Saint card.



I've always loved Compline, and so I wanted to create a Compline card, something soothing to stare at before sleep.

"Oh, Come, Oh, Come, Emmanuel" is my favorite Advent hymn, my favorite Christmas season song. I liked mixing in some female images of God with the Advent theme.

I created additional cards, posted here at my creativity blog. I had great fun creating these, and I'll probably do more. What will I do with them? I like the idea of using them for inspiration, both in how I live my life, and in my writing process. Stay tuned!