“And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus, ‘It is all that is made.’
I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God.
In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it.”
–Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love
“It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.” —from Khalil Gibran’s poem, On Giving, poem recited by Simerjeet Singh in this video from 0:40 – 5:07)
Welcome to Day 24 of the Wonders of Worship (WOW) series. Today we ponder the Offering.
Hazelnut, teach me
Love’s generativity.
What is mine to give?
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 poem 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 