Words
Drawing out
Bringing awareness and form
To the beauty which lies within.
Photos of books made by Alison Fair-Bixler
Author: admin
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Forest Church Teddy Bears
A quick look at the Labyrinth we made for the recent St Johns Dumfries Teddy Bear festival.
As part of the much larger gathering of teddy bears, Quartz contributed some hanging platforms and a labyrinth. The Labyrinth offered time for reflection – and in the centre a colloquoy of Cathbad’s (some more bear-like that others) discussed deep issues.
Here are some pictures of the whole event.
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Support
Alison has been part of quartz before that name was even chosen. She had a cause she feels deeply about, and tells that story here.
Please take a moment to consider supporting her, and the cause she is supporting.
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Alison-Fair
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Teddy Bear Festival
Where, when, do you learn emotional truth?
Toys and childhood play help us become the adults who have the luxury of asking such questions. Teddy bears have their own nostalgic niche. The process of experiencing feelings of attachment, separation and developing skills of emotional resilience can developed whether with a bear or a “my little pony” or simply a blanket.
It might be difficult to put into words the significance of your particular childhood toy, but it is likely that someone else has had a similar experience with their childhood toy. #SensingSpirituality is about recognising this, and then learning the words to communicate it. Or, perhaps, the art, craft, action or music to communicate it.
Quartz is installing a labyrinth to provide time for reflection, after all, bears are found in the woods and that’s where Forest Church is heading.
There will be a Teddy Bear festival in St John’s from the 7th to the 9th of July. More details on the St Johns website and the featured image of this post.
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Quartz Forest Church
2pm outside the Crichton chapel today!
Workshop God with the whole of creation on a beautiful day in the summer.
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A wee advert.
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Pentecost
50 days after Jesus returned from the grave his followers were gathered together, still afraid that the religious and legal types would continue to place “the greater good” of the nation over the value of individual lives.
Then something wonderful happened.
The stories of the acts of the apostles contain many amazing moments. Some of them may stretch our ability to believe. Perhaps, though, one of the most difficult things for us to imagine around two thousand years later is how the ordinary everyday lives of people began to be affected in almost invisible ways.
Building on individual and group experiences where Jesus met with his friends a community began to develop. Like yeast rising in dough making bread easier to eat, or salt bringing out the flavour in food, the presence and awareness of the Holy Spirit is felt throughout the community.
What does this feel like? Can you imagine what it would be like to be part of a massive outpouring of love within a commonwealth of friends. Not driven for a greater good or cultists sacrificing to win the favour of, or bring back the presence of an alien being – but a community of friends who know the mind of their saviour. The god who is with us, and in the coffee and biscuits we share when we meet each other.
This section of text is where the words on the bunting come from.
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Place
There is an importance in places. I sometimes wonder what it is like to grow up in the digitally connected world. It is quite possible that many who are now in their 30’s have never been in a place where it wasn’t possible to pick up a device and phone, or latterly video message, a family member and get an instant response.
Homesickness was a part of the whole experience of going to organised summer camps in my childhood. Camping meant heading into the hills for a weekend, or week, with all that you needed and no contact with home. Scotland is small so even then you were usually only at most a day’s walk from a house or a payphone, but still the experience of being disconnected from home started a process of being at home with yourself and companions (if you travelled with some).
When Jesus passed through death the recorded stories describe him meeting his friends in the rooms where they ate together. They met on the beaches of the sea where they had often eaten fish and he had talked to the crowds. I wonder if Jesus walked in the hills, meeting other people in ways that are not recorded. Did Jesus go home to the places of his formative years, and experience them with new eyes?
These stories are part of our creation/alienation/reconciliation story of good news. Feelings of homesickness are real experiences which require us to develop resilience (in many diverse ways!). Feelings of dissonance between our experience of places and our ideas of what they could be or have been can be like losing a limb, or falling physically ill.
When Jesus calls out for his father on the cross this experience of alienation is set in the foreground of the story of the good news. However, perhaps in stories when Jesus is eating fish with his friends on the beach or walking down a dusty road having a chat, we can glimpse the feeling of home which the aching chaos of absence is pregnant with.
Is this why people go on pilgrimage? We don’t seek out suffering, but by placing ourselves in a position of adventure we can heighten our ability for #SensingSpirituality. In leaving home we can develop skills in making ‘place’. In entering the experience of absence, and encountering doubt we can grow in Faith.
… but as friends of Jesus. Not as servants driven by a need to impress a master whos purpose we cannot guess.
A place to make a “sitting place” on the Crichton estate?
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A Light Touch
Artists help us become aware of the invisible reality we live in. This process can be confusing and leave us questioning things we were certain of, it can also reassure those who experience it – leaving them with the thought “Now I see it, I’m glad I’m not the only one!”
#SensingSpirituality is a project which aims to draw out peoples ability to sense this hidden reality. Skills in #SensingMeaningfulness, or #SensingValues can help us recognise patterns and connections that help provide identity. They can help individuals find something in common with others and communities, even when violence in the physical, “Sensible?” experience of reality is ripping things apart.
Just as we highlight five physical senses, but can be aware of many more, we could talk of five spiritual senses as a path to awareness of all that we can inherit as human beings.
The #SensingSpirituality tag contributes to this by marking moments online. When you are posting a photo, liking, or sharing something why not think about the spiritual (in the general sense) character of your action.
Are you #SensingValues, #SensingMeaningfulness, #SensingChallenge, #SensingMystery, #SensingOtherness, or is it a special moment when all your senses are heightened and in #SensingAwareness you become aware of a subtle change in state sometimes described as being “at one” with your environment.
These moments can also be described as “light bulb” moments. The point of this post though is that all these things are happening all the time. We are just unaware of them. Installations like the Angel cloud in Dumfries or the knit bomb bunnet in Oban can encourage us to “see” the invisible.
Taking a day out a week to rest and restore your relationship with this spiritual heritage is a core part of the Christian and many other tradtions. If you are up for it – you could tag your #SensingSpiritualty moment, and turn your scrolling into art – just like you’d use an emoji.
