“Dear Child of God, you are loved with a love that nothing can shake, a love that loved you long before you were created, a love that will be there long after everything has disappeared. . . . God wants you to be filled with joy and excitement and ever longing to be able to find what is so beautiful in God’s creation…” —Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Welcome to Day 16 of the Wonders of Worship (WOW) series. Today we ponder Christmas.
Salutations! Because I loved Charlotte’s Web, it figures that I would have a fondness for the Legend of the Christmas Spider. There’s just something about celebrating the small, often disfavored, things in life.
As I was researching the Christmas Spider, I found this treasure: Baba Tells Ukrainian Christmas Tree Spider Story. Don’t miss her Part 2: Baba Spider Ukrainian Creation Legend. “We have to remember for each other and for the world. … Be generous and remember old stories and songs.” -Baba
If you look closely at the painting, you may be able to tell that it was an imperfection in the paper that became the spider’s trailing thread.
Ways to Engage:
- Practice Visio Divina (receive, reflect, respond, rest) with the painting.
- Do you have a spider ornament? I do. It’s made of wire and black beads, and it’s stored in a nest of tinsel in a small, homemade craft paper box. My son’s Cub Scout den made them a long, long time ago. Maybe you have ornaments with folklore origins, like a pickle, or ones with other old stories? I’d love to read about them!
- Download the B&W image. Color it on your own or with a friend. Color in silence or while listening to Baba’s stories linked above. 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 