Cosmos-King, Love in all things. Maker of Heaven and Earth. Where can I run from your fingerprint, whisper? Where have you not laid out a labyrinth of love to lead us home, in all places, to your heart? With-you, God with us.
Hello y’all!
Thank you for being here with me today! I don’t have a psalm for you today; it’s a newsletter week! I’ve a couple pieces of good news I want to share with you, as well as a bit of my own story, or: the story of a painting that good-storied me.
First news:
I have a piece in a show this week at AVA, here in Chattanooga! This Friday, June 13th, we will have an opening for the salon-style group show around the theme Yellow.
I started this painting in a season of pretty heavy darkness. I went to the local arts supply store and found the biggest canvas I could. I had no vision for it. I propped it in my bedroom and started laying down yellow, reaching out for the light. Some paintings I can see coming. This one chased me, held me, walked with me. I let it sit there, yellow in my corner, like a nightlight.
Every day I added marks, layering words and prayers and color, thick black strokes, a thousand dots of light. When I didn’t have my own words, I copied the liturgy. Some few chapters of Ephesians, the ones that tell us that underneath the fog, the whole cosmos glows. I scribbled and painted and dripped and scratched and layered and cried. Some days all I had were scribbles.
Layer after layer of light and lament, and I couldn’t get it to sit. I’d stand back at the end of the day and feel it wasn’t quite right. It pitched and tilted. I felt dizzy. I kept painting. For a whole year, I kept painting.
By the time the labyrinth came, it came quickly, and it signaled the end. I laid out the lines and traced between light and dark, dark and light, and I began to cry.
Center my scattered senses on you.
You were always here.1
In every dark day and wrestling, in every night when light broke through, I was right where I needed to be. You were home, right here with me.
I laid clear drips on the edges of the canvas, traced my tears, and they centered me. Gold dripped down the center, and that’s when I realized: this was an invisible crucifix. I didn’t mean to make it. Heaven-tears traced my own through years of darkness, and in my tears I saw the wounds of Christ. What tear falls without Christ knowing it? The painting pitched again, the rippled edges pushed me toward center, and there I was, again, at his chest. Mercy, the kindness of the crucified God, who descends into our darkness and holds us. It was Maker who chased me. I have never been alone.
You held me. All year long. All my life long. I beat against your chest, and you held me still, held me safe, until my breath shuddered like a weary infant, and I surrendered. Slowly you are wooing me, day after day, to repeat this surrender again.
I’ve also some other fun news:
I’m headed back to school! I’ve been accepted into a graduate certificate program for Spiritual Direction at Richmont Graduate University. I’m continuing on this long, wild, winding, healing journey, and I’m looking forward to walking with community into an area that has brought me so much delight and challenge and salve over the last few years. I’m not sure what is ahead, but I’m delighted to listen and walk in. And: I don’t drink coffee, but- if you’d like, would you support me in this new passage? Poetry and pictures and pennies, and I know I’ll have enough to get what I need.
It’s a delight to have you here. Thank you for reading and walking with me, and for tracing the lines looking for the Light.
May God’s invisible presence comfort you, in whatever place you’re walking today.
Shalom,
Audrey
Centering Prayer Song, Mission Chattanooga
The Maker was here all along. Yes, dear sister. Celebrating with you and thankful as always for your words!