An ailing Charlotte the Spider confides in her friend, Wilbur the Pig: “These autumn days will shorten and grow cold. The leaves will shake loose from the trees and fall. Christmas will come, then the snows of winter. You will live to enjoy the beauty of the frozen world, for you mean a great deal to Zuckerman and he will not harm you, ever. Winter will pass, the days will lengthen, the ice will melt in the pasture pond. The song sparrow will return and sing, the frogs will awake, the warm wind will blow again. All these sights and sounds and smells will be yours to enjoy, Wilbur—this lovely world, these precious days…” —E. B. White, from Charlotte’s Web
Welcome to Day 28 of the Wonders of Worship (WOW) series. Today we ponder the Holy, Holy, Holy.
Holy, lovely world
Holy, ineffable gift
Holy, precious days
Ways to Engage:
- Practice Visio Divina (receive, reflect, respond, rest) with the painting.
- Create a 5-7-5 haiku of Holy, Holy, Holy.
- Download the B&W image. Color it on your own or with a friend. Color in silence or while listening to music that gives you goosebumps. Let it inspire further contemplation/conversation.
- You do you. Trust your intuition and engage in the way your heart desires.
Tree of Life painting update: It is important to me to use earth-friendly paint for this project. Many thanks to the folks at Natural Earth Paint for their commitment to safe, natural, and professional quality oil paint! Let the painting commence!
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 