I just went through all my blog posts to date and discovered that my first posts were a year ago.  Below is what I wrote then, and above is the new graphic which exprsses my current expression of what I believe now.  I am even more convinced today that God is Beauty, and that when we connect with God through Beauty, God’s Love and Truth Reveal themselves.  Kathy (KP/KCB)

I attended a spiritual retreat as part of a Shalem Institute program in DC in 2000. My final project for the program was “Beauty As A Spiritual Path”. I had just begun using the drawing program on my computer and I added simple drawings to a number of readings and reflections I had collected. New insights and new drawings accumulated over the years, and when I retired as a pastor in 2004, I was even more convinced of the importance of the phrase “God is Beauty.” In the super-rational and super-technical culture of ours, paying attention to beauty or its absence, is a life changing and life healing dynamic in our human design and therefore to our relationships and our planet.  These words tie my life together, they keep me in studio mode, and give what I think and write a direction.

Sometimes we think of healing as an absolute. It is dramatic and permanant.  I believe in this kind of healing.  Miracles of this kind exist.  However at this stage in my physical body’s life, and with two or three chronic conditions, I am exploring another kind of healing, another kind of miracle, smaller perhaps but just as much a gift from God.  Exile, the work above, is about feeling surrounded by things I used to do and wanting to continue to do them, but being limited.  There is still life in me.  How do I get beyond the stiff presence my body presents?  I am learning how.  Every learning is a gift. Every learning is a miracle that allows me out of exile. 

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The work above is a graphic composition completed summer of 2011, and part of a series.

Frederich Neitzsche was right when he connected inner chaos with giving birth to a dancing star.  Truth is of God whoever bears it to us.  From my inner chaos this gift to you today.

Kathy (KCB)

The purple house of Lent illuminates the idea that our sense of who we are as Christians is both like and unlike our neighbors.  During Lent we pay special attention to living the life Christ laid out for us by focusing on our life within this dedicated time.

The last Sunday of Lent remembers the parade of the people across the palm branches they have laid down for Jesus, which becomes the parade of people to witness his death on the cross.  The cross on the hill comes closer to us who live in the odd Purple House of Lent as the end of Jesus earthly life moves into the events of Holy Week. 

This graphic and the other five in this series belong to the artist.  Contact her for useage.

In this story from John (the 11th Chapter) Lazarus leaves his grave clothes behind.  Meanwhile others believe he best stay in the tomb. Jesus knows it is a real challenge to let someone come back to life.

These images were projected during the Advent Season 2011 in Asbury United Methodist Church in Harrisonburg Virginia.  They are the property of the artist.  Seek permission if you want to use them.

John is a wonderful story teller.  In the 5th chapter he tells of a man born blind who causes quite a problem in his neighborhood.  Sometimes we don’t want to see what is happening right in front of us.  Living in the house of Lent calls us to see God’s new activity in our lives, or maybe to see what we have been ignoring.

These images are based on the scriptures for the Sundays of Lent and were projected as part of worship during the 2011 Lenten Season at Asbury United Methodist Church in Harrisonburg Virginia. They are the work of the artist.  Seek her permission if you desire to use them.

The reading for the third Sunday of Lent is about the meeting of Jesus with the Samaritan Woman at the well where she has gone to get water.  In John 4:7 Jesus asks her for a drink of water.  This is a beautiful and rich story about asking and offering, giving and receiving, questioning and courage.

As always this series of graphics is the property of the artist.  They were projected as part of worship at Asbury United Methodist Church in Harrisonburg, Virginia during Lent 2011.  Contact the artist for permission to use.

Jesus challenged Nicodemus (John 3:4) to be born again.  He later included the part about being born of water and Spirit.  Here the water becomes a stream that flows from the cross and the Spirit is symbolized by a dove descending from God. Lent gives us a chance to be born anew in the pattern of Jesus and the plan of God that is alive in us as we acknowledge and connect with it.

To be a Christian during Lent is to live in a purple house, purple being the color for the Lenten season.  It is a house not like the neighbors who do no think of their lives in terms of what Jesus taught and lived out on his way to the cross.  And maybe we don’t either most of the time.  But as we Christians approach Easter, there is that cross on the hill above the purple house.

The heart is the center of our lives, pumping blood to all parts of our body: enabling our muscles, enlivening our minds, and giving material weight and power to our souls. The heart is a symbol of courage, energy, and compassion.
Not a trifle, not a trivial extension of ourselves.  It is a deep beauty we have within and share in many forms.