“How will I be guided by love? . . . If we can sit in our deepest wisdom—what we are born knowing, love is our birthright. If we can see each other through the eyes of a mother, through the eyes of a child, then we begin to return to a way of being human together. . . . We can practice the world we want in the space between us. We can let joy in. . . . ever-rising joy . . . We gotta be willing to rebirth ourselves as we are rebirthing the world around us.” —excerpts from Valarie Kaur’s Good Morning America interview.
Welcome to Day 26 of the Wonders of Worship (WOW) series. Today we ponder Lent.
I took two approaches to this image and I chose to go with the second. In the first, I painted a monarch caterpillar. No offense to you, monarchs. After all, you didn’t self-declare your name. Still, it wasn’t sitting right with me, so I went with a Luna Moth caterpillar climbing a Lenten Rose.
Hungering for love,
watch the caterpillar climb.
Ever-rising joy
Ways to Engage:
- Practice Visio Divina (receive, reflect, respond, rest) with the painting.
- Any stories about or memories of caterpillars come to mind? I’m grateful that the people who previously lived in my home planted Lenten Roses. When I look at them, it feels like they’re offering a Namaste.
- Download the B&W image. Color it on your own or with a friend. Color in silence or while listening to the interview linked above. Let it inspire further contemplation/conversation.
- You do you. Trust your intuition and engage in the way your heart desires.
Update on the WOW Tree of Life painting: The first image shows the image being projected. If you’re able to zoom in on the second, you can see the sketch in pencil.
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 