Hi!
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” -Maya Angelou
Welcome to Day 5 of the Wonders of Worship (WOW) series. Today we ponder the Greeting.
For me, this brings to mind a valuable lesson my husband and I learned as directors at the Grünewald Guild. It is in the first couple minutes of arriving that people assess whether they are welcome and belong.
I’ll let you in on a little secret: the word “Hi” from the Braille alphabet appears vertically on the trunk. Clever, hospitable woodpecker!
Ways to Engage:
- Practice Visio Divina (receive, reflect, respond, rest) with the painting.
- The forest around our Wisconsin cabin is home for many woodpeckers. Confession: When they starting pecking at our log cabin, I find the nearest window to them and start knocking back. At first they take notice and try to carry on. Eventually, I’m the last one knocking. 🙂
- Download the B&W image. Color it on your own or with a friend. Color in silence or while listening to this 14-minute talk including “A Brave and Startling Truth” by Maya Angelou. Let it inspire further contemplation/conversation.
- You do you. Trust your intuition and engage in the way your heart desires.
To download the black and white image for personal use: on a computer, click and drag the image to your desktop; on a phone, press on the picture until it gives you the option to save it to your photos. The image is formatted to fit on an 8.5″x11″ piece of paper, but feel free to print it whatever size you’d like.
Background: I created a series of forty 5″x7″ watercolor paintings inspired by the elements of worship. It was work commissioned by a project with Nourishing Vocation with Children at St. Olaf College, a program funded through Lilly Endowment’s Nurturing Children Through Worship and Prayer Initiative.
As the paintings are shared, you may notice a pattern:
- Music = Songbird
- Prayer = Seed and/or Fruit
- Word = Leaf
- Order of Service = Element of Nature
- Season = Insect with a Flower
One final creative invitation for this project remains for me: to paint a Tree of Life holding all forty elements. I plan to share its progress here.
For this series, I am grateful to have used handmade paper from White Dragon Paper and watercolor paints from Natural Earth Paint.
vonda drees art 