This is a horrible photo taken by me of an amazing piece of art by Tess Livolsi Amoroso that was entered in the wonder art show. When I first laid my eyes on it, I was completely taken with the image of the person unfolding from the sunflower and blooming. It really spoke to me. When Tess arrived today to retrieve her art, we chatted briefly. She thanked us immensely for doing the art shows and gave me "Sunflower." I was stunned! (Okay, truth be told, I am still giddy excited.)
We have received such an outpouring of thanks from local artists as a result of the art shows. Last week, Annie Moon (another wonder participant) created a work of art as a gift for Symphonic using our vision statement: Love God. Love Others. Prove it. We set out with the desire to serve artists, but in the process, it is me that has been blessed by the response.
Ron just got published in Leadership Magazine (his second appearance there). How awesome! Here's an excerpt, but you need to read
the whole article here.
"An interesting consequence of holding our meetings in a "real world" setting is the way it made us rethink communication. In a typical church space, everything points toward one thing. The architecture of the room and the order of service bring one voice into focus. In our church, 50 percent of the people are facing away from you before you start to speak. They have to get up and move their chairs in order to see. There is no elevated place to stand. It is hard to ignore people who are this close. You really see them.
It changed the character of how we spoke. It was natural to move around because you couldn't see everyone as they sat behind columns or other people. It also seemed normal to speak with people rather than just to them. Questions that would be rhetorical in a traditional church setting were actually answered because the people hearing the question were so close. It seemed silly not to hear their answers. And their answers were interesting!"
Wow! What a long blogging hiatus it's been. I didn't even remember how to sign in to TypePad. I am prone to being a work-a-holic which easily translated to being a blog-a-holic. Hence the need for a blogging break. Balance is something that can elude me, and I have to be intentional about it. Next step: cut back on the number of blogs in my feedreader. How many blogs do you read? Do you have any guidelines regarding how much time to spend blogging?
I have one more admission to make. I just completed my writing workshop, and it was incredibly freeing for me. No expectations. No judgment. For someone in ministry circles, this felt like a gift. My church community is not the type to impose typical pastor's wife stereotypes on me; that is not what I am referring to. Writing fiction allowed me to break free of the worry about how I would be perceived, how my church would be perceived, whether my language would be offensive to people who don't know Christ, etc. Maybe all that worry is just my own neurosis and shouldn't even enter into the blog process. Or maybe that is the fundamental difference between fiction and non-fiction.
