Yesterday, a friend of mine, Kristen Olson Vincent, nominated me for the ArtChain going around on Facebook. For five days, you are supposed to post an image of your work and nominate someone else to do the same. My first thought was that I would post rosaries and prayer beads I have made because that is how Kristen and I met. That would be an incentive to get me back down at my beading table everyday, and/or get some of the rosaries I have already made posted for sale on Etsy. (In these next five days I hope I will do that too.)
However, it got me thinking about things like: What is art? What is the point? Am I an artist? When did I decide I wanted to be an artist? Am I still an artist even though I have taken a new job as a nursing assent in the dementia unit of a local nursing home? What about the issue of the other blogs I have started including: Praying with Our Senses and aroma prayer? Do I want to combine them into this blog? They do have a common theme, which is prayer. What is prayer?… Many questions are swirling around in my head, and I still do not have the answers.
One thing that is standing out to me is this quote I found on Pinterest some time ago that I put in my creative prayer art journal this morning. (I am never sure what to call that journal.) I had to do a google search to find the author of the quote. You can change some of the words and come up with the meaning from my point of view. For instance: “I make art to show God I am listening.” “I pray to show God I am listening.” “I make art to show my heart I am listening.” One word seems to stay the same in these revisions–“listening.”
So, instead of asking myself what I am going to post for the Facebook ArtChain each day, I am going to listen without questioning to my soul, my heart, and God. It will be interesting to see what evolves.
This is what I posted today (before I did my creative prayer art journal page). It just stood out to me. There was a beautiful, sparkling white, new blanket of snow on the ground this morning. I know if I had a larger zoom lens, I could have seen even more of the detail in each flake, but this is what my lens was able to find. Can you listen with your eyes?
