Friday Five: Artsy Crafty

From the RevGals:

"During Lent here at Suburban Presbyterian Church, we are exploring the creative and liturgical arts, with classes and speakers dealing with storytelling, iconography, dance, visual art, writing, and so on. The theme is "A Beautiful Thing," inspired by the story of the woman anointing Jesus and his declaration that "She has done a beautiful thing for me." (Mark 14, NIV)

We are working on the notion that everything we do can be considered a beautiful thing--a creative offering to God--whether it's gardening or scrapbooking or accounting or sorting clothes at the clothes closet or child-rearing. And so:

1. Would you call yourself "creative"? Why or why not?

I would because I like to create. One of my favorite things about being a pastor is that there are so many opportunities to be co-creative with God. What other job is there where one can choose fonts for a newsletter or make banners or put words together or arrange music and images and get to count that as paid time? AND ministry, to boot?

2. Share a creative or artistic pursuit you currently do that you'd like to develop further.

I really like to play with photos digitally. Here's a couple of my recent experiments with one-color "pops":

And I really do like to do print media things -- newsletter, flyers, etc. And I like using my musical abilities to direct our church choir. Right now we're working on a lessons and carols type thing for Easter Sunday. I'm really pretty excited about it. As a trained musician, I always hated singing in church choir, but directing it -- that's actually fun.

3. Share a creative or artistic pursuit you have never done but would like to try.

I've been wanting to do some artwork with the collage media -- basically using a whole lotta Mod Podge to create something. I have a couple of images in my mind that I'd like to get out at some point. There just never seems to be time.

4. Complete this sentence: "I am in awe of people who can _____________."

Play piano well. I'm downright jealous. After 8 years of piano lessons, I should be one of them, but I think I practiced for about 35 combined minutes during that time. Oh, if only I could tell 9-year old April that she'd regret getting creative about how to shirk her practice time!

5. Share about a person who has encouraged your creativity, who has "called you to your best self."

I am blessed to come from a family who understood the need to be creative. My mother required that my sister's teachers would let her have time to draw instead of asking her to put her paper and pencil away. Around our home, we always had lots of music, lots of crayons and markers and pencils and REAL watercolors, space to dance, etc. And we had art and music and dance lessons when we wanted them, which I'm sure was a difficult financial burden. So , I guess I'll always be grateful for my family's commitments to creativity, but especially the efforts of Mom.