What a week. Yesterday was the start of Ramadan, the Chinese New Year and Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras). Today is Ash Wednesday and so Lent begins. Though the Christian preparation and festival annual cycle touches me most deeply of this list, I find that according to Chinese astrology, I was born in the year of this new cycle – the year of the Horse. That makes me confident, agreeable, and responsible, although I also tend to dislike being reined in by others. Apparently I’m fit and intelligent, adoring physical and mental exertion; I’m decisive but also easily swayed and impatient. We’ll all have different opinions as to whether that is true for me. 😊 That we have these cycle points to remind us to review and renew is important. They’re a call to stop. Breathe. Pay Attention. Whatever spiritual tradition we find for our home, the cycle points call us to see others more dearly, to see ourselves more lovingly, to help our communities in whatever way makes sense. They’re a call to be part of something larger than ourselves and that, to me, is only a good thing. In this stopping cycle point of 2026, may you find energy to reflect and renew.
For these multiple views of the same moment, I’ve chosen the image below from Living Water, my Artist in Residence painting for the URC General Assembly 2012. In this section, after hearing report after report, I saw churches in all shapes and sizes, and in odd relationship to each other. A comment in discussion gave the image of the Holy Spirit locked in a cage.
I saw images of churches firmly planted in the midst of the world, so buildings began to rise behind the churches. As I painted the buildings I reflected that it is easy to see corporate buildings as images of evil; yet those buildings are inhabited by vulnerable human beings, some of them as enslaved as the Hebrews of old. So the buildings had to be green, indicating that there was rich ground for transformation.
The Mission Report told some hard stories of the world in which we do mission and the hard realities of so many people’s lives. The bottom right corner of this land of churches in the world became dark with brown and purple boxes which I thought were other sorts of buildings, some visited by saints and spirit filled people. Yet the buildings turned to water and I saw the murky waters in which people feel drowned. As I turned those buildings into murky water, I realised that there needed to be water over the remaining panel, able to indicate that some people and churches can feel all ‘at sea’
I give it to you as an image of truth and hope.
