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Every
Sunday at 9:00 AM there is a quiet gathering here in Cathedral Hall.
We converse, play checkers, rest, and read the morning paper. We
worship and share a meal. Sometimes students from the CSU School
of Nursing come and check blood pressure or provide flu shots. Sometimes
we make art. These brothers and sisters in Christ are primarily homeless
and unemployed, seeking food, shelter and fellowship. And that is
what we hope they find here.
We are all broken, longing for home and community. Sometimes we can
discover a sense of community and home through the healing process of
making art. After all, we are all children of God, and all
children are artists.
Every Sunday when we gather, there is a table of "stuff" – paper,
pencils, pastels, paint. Sometimes we make pictures of each other, or
pictures of our prayers, or sometimes we just make pictures. We
share our images and words and stories – a little at a time. We are
getting to know more about each other, and more about how we are a
community of imaginative, vital individuals made in the image and
likeness of God, the Creator. The art table has become a kind of altar
where we are beginning to offer the gift of our own creativity.
Now we are looking for a space to make a community art studio within the
walls of the cathedral. We are thinking of calling it "Heartspace:
A place to make art in the heart of the city". We don't know where
this is all going, but the process feels holy, and every Sunday morning
is a little experience of the Kingdom, of home, of heaven on earth.
Come and see . . .
Earth Flag: A Community Art Project for Picturing Peace
I believe that while pain is the great equalizer, the process of
creativity is the great icebreaker. It is my experience that making art
together can create community.
I developed the concept for the "earth flag" the week the war began in
Iraq. Feeling powerless, afraid, and sad, I wondered how my
family, my friends, my students, and my community were feeling.
Inspired by the concept of Tibetan prayer flags, I offered them an
invitation to respond to what was happening in their world. We
talked of how each individual is connected to the whole, and how we are
all citizens of the earth. We spoke of the stars and the stripes
and "flying" our beliefs and hopes for the planet.
Here is what we did . . .
Recipe for an Earth Flag
We began with a big circle drawn in pencil in the center of white
muslin.
Participants were invited to sit with these observations and questions:
"We all carry medicine that the earth needs in order to heal, just as we
need the earth. We are individuals living in a global community. What
medicine do you have to offer the earth and all her people? What is
your deepest desire or prayer for yourself, and for the healing of the
earth?"
I invited participants to write their desires and prayers, and the
medicine they were willing to share in pencil anywhere in the space.
Then they were invited to make their mark and bless first the earth
using just their hands to apply green and blue paint to the circle in
the center.
Next they were invited to send their deepest healing hopes and
intentions into the universe, using their hands to apply yellow, orange,
and white paint just outside the center circle reaching out to the
edges. Then the group was invited to apply purple and blue around
the edges, pointing in to the middle, where the darkness meets the
light, where infinite mystery embraces and holds us.
Last, they were invited to write in the wet paint one action they were
going to take to make their hopes become a reality.
Mary Ann Breisch
Liturgical Artist
Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland, Ohio
email:
mabinc@sbcglobal.net
website:
www.maryannbreischinc.com
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