Call & Response

The Call: Shapes & Shadows — Jessica

Ours. This is another one of those calls that I sort of scratch my head over. What was I thinking?

I once read that spiritual poverty means that all we own, the only thing that is truly ours, is our yes or no to God. So “blessed are the poor in spirit” because they know that all they have is a choice. Everything else is gift and grace.

I was watching a wonderful video this morning about an art teacher. One of the exercises that she gave to her students was to take five lines and lay them out in different patterns on the table. I was inspired when I let the dogs out and saw all the twigs and weeds and leaves lying on the patio from our recent storms. Suddenly, they all looked like lines to me. I picked out five and brought them upstairs.

I have also been doing a mentorship program on G+ with Sam Breach. We are on week 7 (of 8) and the lesson this week focuses on “odd one out” — isolating our subject by placing it among different items so that it stands out. After finding and arranging photos for color and size difference, we were to make one with a quality that we came up with.

After I added the light to this set-up, it occurred to me that the shadow was the subject and it was different in substance from the other items. This brilliant insight (okay, not really brilliant but you know what I mean!) only came to me because I allowed myself to play. I choose to spend my time playing this morning rather doing other work that was equally (if not more) important.

This is going long but my main point is “the choice is ours.”