Heaven of the Heart: Creating a Space for Sacred Imagination

Chimney Rock, Abiquiu, New Mexico Image © Ghost Ranch

FROM OUR STUDIO:

We invite you to join us at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico for our workshop titled Heaven Of The Heart: Creating A Space For Sacred Imagination. Our workshop will run from 25 June thru 1 July, 2012. For more information and to register click on this link. Ghost Ranch. The course description is included below. Hope to see you!

Heaven of the Heart: Creating Space for Sacred Imagination. What connects our spirituality, creativity and living out our vocation? How might an intentional engagement with our creativity and our spirituality increase our ability to live as people of faith? In this workshop you will push back the boundaries of familiar distractions and enter a Sabbath time in which to explore the intersection between creativity and spirituality. Using hands-on exercises, personal reflection and imagination see how your creativity can form sacred community.

Chiaroscuro

May this season of Divine mystery, 
engage all of our senses anew. 
Inspire us to seek peace within 
and with each other. 

And may our creative fires burn bright, 
to help illumine our way. +Amen

Gratitude and Thanksgiving

© Genesis + Art Studio

FROM OUR STUDIO:

Effortlessly,
Love flows from God
Into man and woman.
Like a bird who rivers the air
Without moving her wings.
Thus we move in this world
One in body and soul,
Though outwardly separate in form.
As the Source strikes the note,
Humanity sings –
The Holy Spirit is our harpist,
And all strings
Which are touched in Love
Must sound.


– MECHTHILD of MAGDEBURG
  13th CENTURY MYSTIC

Waves of inspiration

Photo © Heidi Hoffman Photography

FROM OUR TRAVELS:

Walking the beach along the Oregon coast. Continuing the Sabbath and allowing it all to incubate deep within. It was good to spend time with daughter Heidi. She is an inspiration on so many levels.

A time for Sabbath

AlexEli Vineyard. Image © Heidi Hoffman Photography

FROM OUR JOURNAL PAGES:

I’m still on the vineyard. After two weeks of being back in Kansas City, my mind and heart are still on the vineyard. Our intension was to help Phil, Heidi and Phil’s mom Anita with the fall harvest at AlexEli. But something else happened in the midst of working. The life of the vineyard showed us a fruitful rhythm of growth and harvest, of life ending and beginning. It also became a Sabbath time. A time of מְנוּחָה menuchah, of tranquility, peace, serenity and the deepest possible sense of fertile, healing stillness. The physical labor of harvesting, pressing and storing the juice that will change to wine mysteriously engaged our spirituality. Through our senses we seemed to become involved in the experience of creation, with the process of grapes turning to wine and it surprised us with unexpected grace. We participated in a potent moment where creation renewed itself, witnessing both the inevitable recession of what is complete and the sacred forces of healing that promises love and life.

Sabbath is meant to change the rhythm of our lives and strengthen our human connections with the Divine. Sabbath creates a sacred time, leads us towards a mindfulness and a destination of experiencing simplicity. I think it is also about time—about slowing down the pace at which we choose to live, and about how quality is as important as quantity. We can’t always live in Sabbath time, which is why it occurs just one day in seven, but our retreat into a different time and space changes the rest of our time and space for the other six days and in our case, two weeks and counting. I have found a similar shifting of time and space occurs during the process of art making. In the mystery of creating, I have a sense of connection to the divine, in the physical making of art and a feeling of rest and spiritual renewal as a gift of the creative harvest.

I have experienced something powerful about intentionally setting apart a time to withdraw from quotidian life and do something that slows my rhythm, restores my creativity and refreshes me in a new beginning . What I most look forward to in a Sabbath experience is stillness. It can be the stillness the psalmist refers to, “be still and know…” and offers a restoring of our soul. I also feel that Sabbath is an incubator for creativity and wisdom.

Time and chemistry will be the guiding forces as the harvest turns to wine. Waiting is not easy for me, but in the process I know that it prepares a place for grace to be born. “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”

In the vineyard feast of All Saints

Watercolor sketch at AlexEli © Genesis+Art Studio

FROM OUR SKETCHBOOKS:

We returned today from an inspiring trip to AlexEli Vineyard & Winery in Oregon. On our flight home we were reflecting on the ancient wisdom stories around the process of growing, harvesting and turning grapes into wine.

Living in the city has taken us away from the familiar feeling of having hands in the dirt, to be more closely connected to the labor of tending the garden. The earth, the elements that nature brings and the constant nurturing and tending to the vines all lead to this moment of the harvest. We have new appreciation for Phil and daughter Heidi for the hard work and passion that goes into the ongoing process of growing and tending a vineyard.

We offered ourselves as able bodies and hands to help in the process of the fall harvest. Hours mostly swept by in what seemed minutes, not unlike the creative process, transforming the fruit into the juice that will become wine.

We took a break from the work and headed with our sketchbooks down to the lake. This new rhythm of the earth offered an opportunity for the quiet solitude of nature. The more closely I studied the landscape, the sounds and the smells around me, the more beautiful it all became. I realized that haven’t been good at taking the time to observe the things that give life. It was a thin place for reflection and inspiration and we felt the spirit working through the land, wildlife, friends and family in this quiet place.

The thin place of heaven meeting earth inspired and made us look more closely at the saints in our lives.

Refraction

Refraction © 2011 Genesis+Art Studio

FROM OUR JOURNAL PAGES:

chuck + peg: The meaning of refraction is “the fact or phenomenon of light, radio waves, etc., being deflected in passing obliquely through the interface between one medium and another or through a medium of varying density.” I find not only the meaning as it relates to physics interesting but also when I think of the meaning in terms of the spiritual. We were first created by God’s divine intention which created our soul. The deflection or changing of direction occurs when our interior life is touched by the light of the Holy Spirit and when we turn into that light we have the ability to transform what seems to be hopeless situations.

Works of art are the fruit of human creativity

The progression of our group painting and dialogue. Photos courtesy of Sandie Anderson

FROM OUR TRAVELS:


Reflections from the Art as an Act of Reconciliation workshop

by Sandie Anderson, Bethlehem Lutheran Church 

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA. We met Chuck and Peg at church Friday afternoon and got set up. We decided that since we had a managable group we would have their Keynote presentation and then give everyone a chance to paint on the World Canvas Project. Their presentation went great. I have a new understanding and appreciation about what they do in Northern Ireland and elsewhere and see how this could be really meaningful in the Holy Land. Then it was time to paint. We were to write a prayer on our square and then paint. We could do more than one square. I thought “Fat chance. Lucky if I get one done!” I looked at that square for a long time trying to figure out what sort of prayer I wanted to send out to the world, or at least to the people of Northern Ireland where this was eventually headed. World peace? Hope that their hearts would heal and be full of God’s love? Hope that mine would? Health and peace in our collective souls? Healing for my friends with cancer? I tentatively painted one square. It looked ok. So I painted two more. Driving home I felt relieved and optimistic. Those prayers were already winging their way throughout the world even though I knew the canvas was still drying in the basement at church.

Saturday morning – This was better as I knew Chuck and Peg and the rest of the participants and scarier because we were starting with a big blank sheet. It looked so pristine just lying there. We opened with devotions and a prayer. Then we had some discussion about shapes and color that helped ease the tension. Then we went to the paper to paint. There were 17 of us. Paint quietly until the bell rings. Pass your paint two to the left and move one to the right. Paint again. I was standing next to my friend Darold who is a really good artist. The bell rang and I could hardly pick up the brush. Darold was busy being artistic. I made some symbols on the paper – yikes! The bell rang and we screwed up the directions and finally moved one step to the right. Now I was painting on Darold’s images. There is no way this is going to work and it will be awful. I hate this color. The bell rang…. and rang….. and rang. Soon there was hardly anyplace to paint so we had to paint on top of other colors. Someone across the table was spattering paint. It was getting worse. Every section I painted on had too much going on and was not connected to anything. The bell rang, and it was finally over. Whew. It didn’t look as bad as I thought when it was drying on the table. I was happy I was done and hadn’t made any terrible errors.

Sunday morning – Our painting was hanging in the gallery. It looks terrific. There are themes and wonderful colors. I love it and I helped make it. WOW! World canvas with the 5th and 6th graders – It was very well received. I went there between services and had some kids and one grandfather ask me if they could paint so we set them up. They definitely had more courage than me!

Monday – Looking at it before yoga and a woman asked me if it was for sale.  Go figure! Some of the images we painted and the prayers I wrote come into my mind often – proof that they are at work. Would I do it again? YES. Do I want to go to the Holy Land with these people and watch what happens there? Absolutely. Is this project done working on me? I don’t think so, stay tuned.

Welcomed into the Skainos community

Construction of the Skainos Project will be completed in the Spring of 2012

FROM OUR TRAVELS:


Prayers for Skainos and the East Belfast Mission
by Sara Cook 
Director of Family and Community, East Belfast Mission

EAST BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND. Inner East Belfast is a place defined, in many ways, by the legacy of its past.  It is the home of the shipyards that built the Titanic and was the birthplace of more than its share of famous people such as musician, Van Morrison, and Christian apologist, C.S. Lewis.  Sadly, it is also a place deeply scarred by Northern Ireland’s Troubles and by the economic blight that followed in the wake of the conflict. Its proud past sits alongside its current ranking as one of the most socially deprived areas in Northern Ireland.

East Belfast Mission (EBM) is a Methodist church and social service organization right at the heart of Inner East Belfast with a mission to transform and renew the local community.  When we think about how to move beyond East Belfast’s past and build toward a new future, among the tools that come to mind in achieving potential change are the creative arts.  And, while scores of famous musicians and writers come from East Belfast, the local community that is most impacted by economic blight have very little access to or interaction with the creative and performing arts.

It is into this environment that Chuck and Peg brought their World Canvas and other creative projects during their recent trip to Northern Ireland.  During the course of two weeks, Peg and Chuck brought the World canvas to members of the congregation at EBM, local members of the community who regularly participate in EBM’s community-based work, local children and young people, and the staff of EBM.  In each case, people were encouraged to express their prayers and hopes, not only for the world, but also for the future of their own community.

Because many people from the local community in East Belfast have not had the opportunity to be exposed to art-making or creative processes, we weren’t exactly sure how people would respond to the workshops.  However, not only were people delighted with the World Canvas sessions, they embraced a conversation about how to bring more creative work into the local community.

Based on the warm reception to the World Canvas, EBM hopes to continue to work with Chuck and Peg and the local community to create a special local canvas that will allow the wider community to share their hopes, wishes, and prayers for the future of East Belfast. Big thanks to Peg and Chuck for their awakening of the artistic spirit in East Belfast this summer! 


To find out more go to: Skainos Project

Art as an act of reconciliation

World Canvas Project  Photo © Helm Photography

FROM OUR STUDIO:

What stories need telling now?

Telling our story and making art is the essence of being human and how we tell our stories shapes our lives. Join us for a time of art making, storytelling, spiritual exploration and community as we give shape to our stories through image and imagination. By pushing back the boundaries of the familiar and guided into areas of the unknown, we experience that which we did not know was in us – surprised by God. Being artistic is not a pre–requisite for this workshop, all we ask is a willingness to be open to the Holy Spirit.

Join us for our weekend workshop promoting peace and reconciliation, hosted by Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Minneapolis. The focus is on “creating pathways
to God through scripture and art.” It is open to people of all artistic abilities.

Friday evening, September 23, 7:00-8:30 pm
Presentation on Art as an act of reconciliation.
Free and open to the public, registration required.

Saturday, September 24, 9:30 am-Noon
Hands on workshop on Painting as Prayer. Free and open to the public, registration required, space limited.
To register go to: Bethlehem Lutheran Church

Get Inspired

Weaving at the Van Life Center, Turkey

FROM OUR STUDIO:

Thursday 6 October, 2011 The New Jerusalem Series
A reception and Art Exhibit featuring our work will be part of the Lutheran Mideast Development Musical Gala. Plymouth Congregational Church, Guild Hall 1900 Nicollet Avenue . Minneapolis 55403 7:00pm

Tickets are $45. For more information contact Erica Oswald at 651.457.6541 lutheran-mideast.org

Genesis+Art will be exhibiting their New Jerusalem Series at the Plymouth Congregational Church, Minneapolis and will be part of a fund raising concert. Join us for an evening of music and art to benefit Lutheran Mideast Development. LMD is inseparable from the history of the modern Middle East. Through famine, epidemic, earthquake and war, LMD has stood fast with the Kurdish, Persian, Arab, Turkish, Armenian, Assyrian and Jewish people, who together weave the human tapestry of this troubled region. Through it all, LMD strives to bring peace and wholeness to the communities it serves. LMD has a special emphasis on the Kurds, a nation of more than 20 million people living across the frontiers of the Middle East.

The concert will feature violinist Jennifer Curtis; Brahms, Sonata No. 1 for violin and piano in G major, Op. 78. George Enescu, Airs in Romanian Folk style and original compositions and improvisations. Duo Pianos with Matthew Hand and Vince Phillips; Works for two pianos including Symphonic Dance No. 1, Op. 45 by Sergei Rachmaninoff and the Grieg/Mozart Sonata for two pianos. 

Three Gates

Three Gates © 2011 Genesis+Art Studio

FROM OUR JOURNAL PAGES:


Chuck + Peg: Orange is one of the healing colors and is also thought that it stimulates enthusiasm and creativity. Orange means vitality with endurance. Orange spiritually effects our creativity, harmony, passion, freedom and intuition. Three gates reside on each side of the New Jerusalem and speak to the virtues of faith, hope and love. We’re not sure that we set out on this path when we began painting, but considering it’s meanings and symbols, coming out of a world and culture of uncertain gray, it gives us hope for the future.

Nephesh

© Chuck Hoffman / Genesis + Art Studio

FROM OUR JOURNAL PAGES:


We named our studio Genesis + Art for a number of reasons one of which is the creation story found in the Tanakh. The mysterious creation story connected with our imaginations. I don’t believe that the seven days of Genesis were seven twenty four hour days or even seven isolated periods of time, no matter how long, but rather seven pulses of illumination and darkness, of creation and rest, of knowing and unknowing, of expansion and contraction, all of which continue into the present. In our own creative process, we are reminded of its new beginning in the divine creation. 

Prayer is relaxing into the mystery of being loved by God.

© Chuck Hoffman / Genesis + Art Studio

FROM OUR JOURNAL PAGES:


I’m not sure where I first read or heard the thought that prayer is relaxing into the mystery of being loved by God, but the essence of its meaning for me has remained. It gave me a different way to think and feel about prayer. I had always thought prayer was something you recited or petitions for needs, all of which certainly are forms of prayer. But this reflection on prayer seems to ask me just to be present. In this place I come to know that God loves me, even with a veil of uncertain mystery. Relaxing into the presence of the divine creates a space for relationship that God desires from me.

Orienting ourselves in the world

© Chuck Hoffman / Genesis + Art Studio

FROM OUR JOURNAL PAGES:

The visible is how we orient ourselves in the world. It remains our principle source of information about the world. Art reminds us of what is absent. What we don’t see anymore. Art is not only a mnemonic device used to remember events in our time here. Art addresses a larger memory. A memory less topical, art reminds us not only of what we don’t know but what we recognize as familiar.

Chicago inspiration

© Chuck Hoffman / Genesis + Art Studio

FROM OUR JOURNAL PAGES:

We took a trip to Chicago recently and was inspired by the creativity that can be found in this Midwestern city. The architecture danced together in harmony between monolithic, historical and contemporary statements. The art museums, restaurants and their cuisine, theatre, old hotels and people inspired, fed, excited and added ingredients to our creative soup for which we are grateful.

A quote from Frederick Buechner

FROM OUR JOURNAL PAGES:

I came across Buechner's quote in my journal from long ago and still find his words rich with meaning for me. "I believe that what Genesis suggests is that this original self, with the print of God's thumb still upon it, is the most essential part of who we are and is buried deep in all of us as a source of wisdom and strength and healing which we can draw upon or, with our terrible freedom, not draw upon as we choose. I think that among other things all real art comes from that deepest self - painting, writing music, dance, all of it that in some way nourishes the spirit. " — Frederick Buechner

The art of story telling

FROM OUR JOURNAL PAGES:


The power of storytelling has always captured my imagination through image and word. Stories make claims on our hearts and minds by making order out of the chaos of life. It gives structure to our human experience and places a narrative in time. We tell stories in order to make meaning of life and what we perceive to be happening in the moment, a single thread in the bigger narrative of life. Stories that reveal something of ourselves and our world rather than conceal connect us with others and help build communities that are authentic, full of meaning and truth. I came across this ancient book that tells a story with images and symbols and wonder what wisdom it might hold. Something of a daily journal or information, something important enough to give it this shape and form and somehow an ancient story finding its way through time into the modern digital age.

A new home for our New Jerusalem Series

© Chuck Hoffman / Genesis + Art Studio

FROM OUR STUDIO:


Three paintings from our New Jerusalem Series have become part of the permanent collection at Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Minneapolis. We couldn't find a better home for our work. Bethlehem has a long history of outreach and missions, both in Minneapolis / Saint Paul and abroad and was a part of the congregation's ministry from its earliest days. 


In 1923 Bethlehem's first commissioned missionaries, Pastor Irv and Nora Jacobson, were sent out from the congregation as missionaries to China. Several generations of their descendants are long-time members of Bethlehem. Bethlehem continues to reach out from south Minneapolis and its two daughter congregations to other parts of the city, state and this country to the southern tip of Argentina and to the other side of the world in central Africa, India and Palestine. The ministry of Bethlehem Lutheran congregation began in a rented second-floor hall on Franklin Avenue in the heart of the city's Norwegian-American community on January 1, 1894.


We are grateful for the congregation of Bethlehem Lutheran to be supportive of our work by making it a part of their home.

New Jerusalem Series travels to Dayton Avenue Presbyterian Church

FROM OUR STUDIO:


Dayton Avenue Presbyterian Church
Saint Paul, Minnesota


Three of our New Jerusalem Series paintings are part of the exhibition titled In Search of Enough, sponsored by A Minnesota Without Poverty. Artists throughout the Minneapolis / Saint Paul area have interpreted the concept of Enough – What is enough? Expressed through the arts, this traveling exhibition is meant to draw attention to poverty and the statewide movement to end poverty in Minnesota by 2020.

A day of contemplation and art at Saint John's Abbey

© Chuck Hoffman / Genesis + Art Studio

FROM OUR TRAVELS:


I spent a contemplative day with word, art, meal and friends while exploring Saint John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. I tend to think that art and theology are cousins of the same spirit and are drawing back to each other. I also wonder if bringing them together on Holy ground can offer us insights to creativity and our Creator. Sister Joan Chittister, OSB takes this further to compare the artist and monk as one. Monasticism, in fact, cultivates the artistic spirit. The qualities that are basic to art are the qualities demanded of the monastic: immersion, single–mindedness, beauty, praise and creativity. “It is in silence that the artist hears the call to raise to the heights of human consciousness those qualities no definitions can capture. Ecstasies, pain, fluid truth, pass by so quickly or surround us so constantly that the eyes fail to see and the heart ceases to respond. Only by seeing the unseen within can the artist dredge it out of nothingness so that we can touch it, too. Finally, it is humility that enables an artist to risk rejection and failure, disdain and derogation to bring to the heart of the world what the world too easily, too randomly, too callously overlooks.”[1] The making of art, like monasticism, invites us into the sacred realm of contemplation where we listen in silence and await the divine presence in our lives, where the darkness and emptiness becomes the intersection between the outer and inner worlds, where the darkness is transformed into light, revealing the divine. 

---

[1]   Sister Joan Chittister: The Artist and Monk Are One://www.huffingtonpost.com/sister-joan-chittister-osb/the-artist-and-monk-are-o_b_691331.html

Creativity and human dignity

FROM OUR STUDIO:

A Minnesota Without Poverty

The poor may feel invisible to the rest of the world, so with personal stories and community art making the people of Minnesota are making visible the invisible face of poverty.

With squares of paper and markers Minnesotans with words and symbols are expressing THEIR OWN STORY OF ENOUGH and on the other side of the square THEIR COMMITMENT AND WHAT THEY WILL DO TO ENSURE ENOUGH FOR ALL. The questions come from the bigger question of WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO HAVE ENOUGH? The stories that reflect the face of the poor are stitched together into streamers, connecting folks from around the state to make a unified statement. These streamers are seen in this image

on the railing

in the rotunda of the State Capital as lawmakers gathered for discussion. A Minnesota Without Poverty invites you into a conversation about the meaning and teh reality of that question. To facilitate this conversation there is a six–week interfaith discussion guide, focusing on six crtitical aspects surrounding the theme of Enough, and how our various faith traditions engage each topic:

Enough of the Basics in Life, Enough Creation and Environment, Enough Economy, Enough Equality and Community, Enough Time and Enough for All.

Click on the link to find out more.

As an artist I believe that Creativity through the arts offer us an opportunity for transformation, both personally and as a community.

Creativity transforming both self and community

FROM OUR STUDIO:

A Minnesota Without Poverty In Search of Enough
Presentation and Artistic Call to Action delivered by

Chuck Hoffman, Genesis+Art Studio
The University of Minnesota Statewide Gathering, 9 December 2010
And Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Minneapolis, 14 January 2011

"To begin, I would like to share part of my own story. In 1990 I found my life on a very rough and uncertain road with no roof over my head. If not for the love, kindness and generosity of family … hope and faith … my art … and a charitable offer from an elderly widow to sleep on a couch in her basement … I would have been on the street. Poverty, despair and an erosion of our dignity can touch any of us. If it were not for the help of others I may never have gotten back on my feet. So I am forever grateful to those that reached out to me and find this opportunity tonight to offer something back.

As an artist I believe that Creativity through the arts offer us an opportunity for transformation … both personally and as a community. Art can show us both beauty and can illuminate the darker side of life. When our creativity is awakened within us and shared, it can shine out into the world and in that creative process make something new … transforming both self and the community around us.

The arts have the power to transform our mechanical minds and give us a new language that touches the yearning of our soul. When we hear a series of musical notes or lyrics we can be transported through time or when we stand in front of a work of art, we may find it reaching a place in us where words may not be able to go … a divine place … a place that can lift us up and connect us with creation … perhaps even allowing us to see the divine in the face of another.

Music, drama, the literary and the visual arts have a strong place in the culture of Minnesota … just as they have been part of our gathering here at Bethlehem … it evokes something in us.

It has been my experience that creating can be a healing gesture, as sacred as prayer, as essential to the spirit as food for the body. With that, I am now going to ask you to be part of the creative process. The poor may feel invisible to the rest of the world, so with our stories and art we will help make visible the invisible.

In front of you on the table are squares of paper and markers. What I would like you to do is select a color square and on one side … with words or symbol express YOUR OWN STORY OF ENOUGH and on the other side of the square …YOUR COMMITMENT AND WHAT YOU WILL DO TO ENSURE ENOUGH FOR ALL. This can be done with words or symbols. I ask you that in the act of drawing or writing reflect on a person you know who has suffered under poverty… see their face or feel the emotion … or your own lament over poverty if you have been touched by it personally … reflect on this while you are working. You can create more than one if you like … the more the better.

And if you are comfortable, share your stories of ENOUGH and your commitment with others at your tables.

When we are finished we will collect your squares and they will be stitched together with the stories and art of your sisters and brothers from around the state. Our art will continue to grow and be displayed to make visible the faces of poverty and symbolize our commitment to help transform the lives of our neighbors.

The square, by the way, is an archetypal shape and its form has appeared in the art of all cultures throughout time. The square symbolizes stability, solidity, security and permanence. Working with the square indicates your readiness to build, to implement a plan and to manifest your ideas. In many traditions, the square was an emblem of the perfect city, built for eternity.

So I invite you to take this time to reflect, create and act. Allow your art to proclaim with image and word your intensions.

I would like to close with a quote that I find inspiring as an artist. It’s from the artist Marc Chagall… 'If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.'

Thank you…may our time together and your work be blessed."

For more information go to A Minnesota Without Poverty

Images Courtesy of Rod Maeker

A Minnesota Without Poverty 2010 Statewide Gathering

FROM OUR STUDIO:

Two years ago our studio became associated with an organization called A Minnesota Without Poverty and over that time have met people that are struggling to get by and many people who are passionate about changing these conditions and preserving our human dignity. Hearing the stories and putting a human face to poverty makes me realize the ever-increasing amount of pain that exists right under my white middle class nose. It’s frightening to see that anyone of us can fall into the pit and that the current landscape can include educated and uneducated alike. The task of helping the poor seems overwhelming, especially when you consider the vastness of poverty. An ethical conversation without scripture and without Agapé leaves us in a survival mentality and ethic that attempts to recover prosperity at the expense of the poor. Who will give a voice for the poor? With the growing number of poor how can faith organizations alone bare the burden?

As part of the 2010 Statewide gathering our studio was asked to create a call to action for those joining us from 5 cities live via a video feed at the University of Minnesota. We felt the call to action needed to be artistic in nature, form community around creating together and be an ongoing installation around the state. The theme In Search of Enough had been established by the Director, Nancy Maeker and the development team and would be expressed by visual artists, poets, storytellers, dancers and musicians the evening of the event. The artistic expression needed to work within this theme and involve all participants at the various sites.

A Minnesota Without Poverty Statewide Gathering to End Poverty by 2020 took place on December 9, 2010 at the University of Minnesota. The evening highlighted Governor Mark Dayton’s perspective along with Rep. Morrie Lanning, Former Senate Majority Leader John Hottinger and Garry Cunningham. The event also featured the first Art Exhibition of In Search of Enough showcasing performance artists, poets and visual artists from around the state.

Following the Eastern Star

FROM OUR JOURNAL PAGES:

“Where is he who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East, and have come to worship him.” – Matthew 2:2

The story of Jesus’ birth continues for me to be one of great mystery and of sacrifice. It’s not a warm and fuzzy story, but one that tests our willingness to see something new. It’s a story of courage, overcoming doubt, sensing, seeing and stepping from the known into the unknown. It was this way for both Mary and Joseph, whatever their true circumstances of the time. But they made due with what they had to create a space for their new son. From a cold and uncertain place they loved and enabled Jesus to grow in the light of God.

Wise men journeyed and risked following a star and by not returning to Herod. They had seen something new and glorious, something that put them on their knees and sent them into the unknown to tell what they had seen.

Christmas does that to me, calling me into the unknown with faith, into the mystery that lies in the questions and not absolutes. Recognizing something new and seeing beyond the tired old images that give us a false sense of security. I venture from the star and risk following the story into the mystery and uncertainty of where it will take me. Leaving behind for others, with image and word what I have seen.

This quote by Sir Francis Drake is the inspiration for Carl Laamanen’s blog.

“Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,

To venture on wider seas

Where storms will show your mastery;

Where losing sight of land,

We shall find the stars.”

Carl writes, “Sometimes we need to lose sight of the land to find the truly remarkable things of this world. I’m embarking on that journey to find the truly moving, the “stars” if you will, of art, whether this art be of the auditory, cinematic or written variety. Of course, there will be wild seas along the way, because most often anything worth finding comes at a price.”

Incipere © 2011 Genesis+Art Studio

The Mystery of God and Art

FROM OUR STUDIO:

November 30th, 2010 § From Loosing Sight of Land

“They are the most wonderful mystery, body and blood.”- Gilead, Marilynne Robinson

I remember the first time I took Communion at the Anglican church that I now attend. It was a revelation to me. It was a grave, joyful matter, and as I swallowed my bread dipped in wine I felt blessed by that bread and wine in a way that I never had before. It was more than just a way to remember, but it was charged with a certain energy because it was being taken seriously as a Sacrament.

Why hadn’t I ever experienced this before? Was it because my previous church was so afraid of appearing Catholic that we didn’t ascribe any significance beyond remembrance to Communion or is it a symptom of a deeper problem in many churches? Sometimes it seems as if there is a fear in the Church of using art or symbols that we don’t understand or can’t control because we don’t know what they will reveal to us. It seems to me that a lot of churches and Christians have carved out a canyon between art and symbolic actions and church and Christianity and then burned the bridge that spans this gap.

We have art and symbols to point us to deeper things. We have church and Christianity to point us to deeper things. It seems to me as if they are on the same team. Art, as mystic poet Kahlil Gibran puts it, is “a step in the known toward the unknown.” Good art can transcend the here and now and touch our emotions in ways that words can’t. Art, like God and his ways, is a mystery and that’s why it can show us God. It reveals things hidden and sometimes hides things already revealed forcing us to look deeper.

Another thing art and symbols do for our faith is to ground it in its sometimes forgotten physicality. As the great Creeds and Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 remind us, the Christian’s greatest hope is the bodily resurrection, therefore making the physical presence of the body very important. The symbol of Communion or making the sign of the cross, by involving our body, reminds us that the Christian faith is a faith that radically affirms our physical nature as being a good creation of God. There is no Gnostic split between spirit and flesh in Christianity. This is constantly reaffirmed when we taste the bread and wine and know that they speak of a deeper reality, of Christ’s body and blood. Our physical senses, by means of a physical symbol, are drawn deeper in a spiritual reality.

Artwork is Bonfires by Chuck Hoffman and Peg-Carlson Hoffman.

THE AUTHOR

Carl Laamanen is currently an undergraduate at Grove City College in PA majoring in Communication Studies and Spanish. He has been cultivating a love of film over the past few years and enjoys finding rays of light into the human condition in film, music and literature. He is hopeful of attending grad school and learning more about the art that inspires him. Eventually, he would enjoy teaching others about the things that show him the glory in this world.