WOW – Hymn of the Day – vonda drees art

“The longest journey you will make in your life is from your head to your heart.” – Sioux Wisdom

“The utterances of the heart–unlike those of the discriminating intellect–always relate to the whole. The heart-strings sing like an Aeolian harp only to the gentle breath of a premonitory mood, which does not drown out the song but listens. What the heart hears are the great things that span our whole lives, the experiences which we do nothing to arrange but which we ourselves suffer.” – Carl Jung

Welcome to Day 19 of the Wonders of Worship (WOW) series. Today we ponder the Hymn of the Day.

I’m aware that, for many of us, seeing a cardinal tickles the memory of a loved one in our hearts. Music has the power to do this, too. I hope this image is a nod toward the sweetness that arises during this subconscious act that surrenders the mind to the heart.

Ways to Engage:

Practice Visio Divina (receive, reflect, respond, rest) with the painting.
Download the B&W image. Color it on your own or with a friend. Color in silence or while listening to the Aeolian harp music linked above. Let it inspire further contemplation/conversation.
You do you. Trust your intuition and engage in the way your heart desires.

As promised and rough-as-can-be, here is my humble beginning of a plan for the Tree of Life painting:

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: