This art meditation came the day after a leadership in worship training event and as I was preparing to officiate a funeral.

At first I was frustrated in trying to find the right image and colors, I found I was being too forceful in my desire to make something happen, but eventually I was able to just let it make itself – by adding the writing around the edges – and then something beautiful happened: I realized that’s how the Holy Spirit works. I am merely a conduit, and hen I have the pleasure of seeing the Spirit work in me, that’s great, but ultimately, transformation is in the hands of God.

• I cannot force
• the Spirit to move
• the flowering image blossoms and rises up
• God can and will do something beautiful with it
• the Spirit to move
• now that’s amazing grace
• God can and will do something beautiful with it
• just let God happen
• now that’s amazing grace
• the flowering image blossoms and rises up
• just let God happen
• I cannot force

 

 

This art meditation was something of a self portrait. Soft, adrift, careful, non-assuming.

• Adrift on the ocean
• I both love and hate this creature
• It asks nothing of me
• It doesn’t even notice I’m here
• I both love and hate this creature
• Safer when surrounded by boundaries
• It doesn’t even notice I’m here
• I am indeed a prophet
• Safer when surrounded by boundaries
• It asks nothing of me
• I am indeed a prophet
• Adrift on the ocean

 

 

Background: The day before I did this meditation, I was in a car wreck on my way to work. I was turning left on a green arrow and someone in a giant SUV ran the red light of the oncoming traffic and T-boned me in the intersection. My small car was totaled and I was shaken up but not hurt. I texted my supervisor to say I would be late to work that day. In the parking lot, I met a higher-up exec who took one look at me and told me to go home and rest. I texted my supervisor about going home and she told me to turn in a time-off request form. I was pretty mad about both of these incidents.

This meditation uses only two pictures, and the ones that jumped out at me were the frog immediately, because I felt exactly how that frog looks; and after much wishy-washy-ness, the snake, mainly because it wouldn’t go away from my thoughts.

Although I had chosen my feelings about the car wreck as the focus of my meditation, while I was doing it, it became apparent that these two events were tied together emotionally. In each of them, I was the frog. I had lined up my pictures and colors in straight lines. I was following the rules, whether it is traffic laws or notifying my supervisor of my whereabouts for the day; and in both cases I felt that I had gotten struck by the snake. I noticed the snake has no teeth, but it still hurt – and it looks like the snake is laughing about it. There is no remorse in the snake.

I also noticed that the lower left corner of the frog picture points to the snake’s head and I thought about getting revenge on the perpetrators. But then I remembered that in any altercation between a frog and a snake, it’s going to go badly for the frog. Nothing I could do would change that snake; it could only hurt me further, or swallow me up until I am gone and the snake remains. I saw the ugliness of petty responses to real needs, and I saw that I am both beautiful and fragile; I need to be thoughtful and protect myself when I have control over that – physically and emotionally. Sometimes things happen over which I have no control, but rather than become bitter or lash out, I felt that God was telling me to let go of the desire to get even or hold a grudge. I don’t want to become the snake.