by Pastor Audrey
Last week our exercise in Painting as a Spiritual Practice centered on learning to see what isn’t there. The mind needs to make quite a shift in order to be able to do this, and then one sees differently.
At each of our tables there was a cluster of dried flowers. Rather than drawing each stem and leaf, we were to focus on the spaces between the botanicals, drawing those shapes that have no names. As we drew the nameless shapes and spaces, the form of the stems seemed to emerge all by themselves.
I found it incredibly significant that focusing on the empty spaces, focusing on what isn’t there, didn’t mean that the stems and leaves themselves were ignored. They emerged anyway. But focusing just on that empty space meant learning to see the entire composition in a more complete and holistic way.
Can you see what connections this might have for the life of the church? How can we pay more close attention to those who are missing from among us? What fears might there be that those of us who are already present would be ignored, minimized, or neglected if we focused our attention on others? Can we focus our faith, hope, and love on the full picture of the body of Christ, trusting that God will bring us to a place of wholeness and healing together?