Art is Heart.

I love to create things. I like to string words together and make them flow, dance... or make empty white spaces turn into all of my big ideas about love-hope-faith.

I recently got the opportunity to speak in alternative chapel about about how I get to engage my faith through my art, how I get to flesh out all of the things that I am learning on a canvas. I talked about this one image of Jesus that I created. He doesn't look like the Jesus with pale skin and neatly trimmed hair (blowing divinely in the wind) ... he has a starving African's nose and a rabbi's beard and his face has peices of both men and women. His robes are made up of all the scriptures about loving your neighbor and being selfless and taking care of the poor, standing against oppression, etc. He is the Jesus I want to serve, the Jesus that makes most people uncomfortable.

I came to create this Jesus during a time I was answering the question Jesus asks his disciples- "who do you say I am?" I had to push against walls and muck through all of the stereotypes... the american ideals and fundamentalist BS to find this Jesus. And it was the most beautiful moment to finish it and be able to know that it represented so many good things. So many beautiful concepts that I want to live out in my own life. And it also represented just how far I have really come in this journey to God and self discovery.

Part of my faith journey/crisis has been to find ways to engage the process in my own unique way. It has been to create tangible representations of the Love that I know and feel.

So what I told the people in chapel is that it is so important to find ways to creatively engage your faith, to embrace the process and find ways to bring the Kingdom to the here and now.

Art is heart. Art is love. God is love. Etc.