Sunday morning, more than a decade ago.
Music, fellowship, and reports about what God was doing here and there.
Some things are worth remembering. We learn from looking back—
but we must live forward.
A simple ink sketch of a bird at rest. Sometimes the quiet moments—watching, pausing, waiting—are the deepest teachers. This drawing is part of my exploration of what I call the Quiet Practices—small ways of living from the inside out.
If you’d like to see more of my reflections, I share them here: https://forming20.com/
Against the weight of a storm-dark sky, tender stems lean forward—some bending, some breaking, some still reaching.
They hold their fire at the tips, waiting to bloom, waiting to burn, waiting to belong to light.
Perhaps this is all of us:
stretching through shadows,
searching for the thin, golden line that divides earth from eternity.
This is no landscape you could ever stand in.
No observational drawing, no safe horizon line.
This chalk experiment is a dream unfolding in color: a golden field lit from within, a scarlet seam of fire at its edge, and a storm-heavy sky pressing down with ancient weight.
It feels like a place between worlds—where the conscious and unconscious meet, where memory and imagination blur. Some might see a battlefield, others a meadow after rain, and still others a veil between life and death. That is the beauty: the painting does not tell you what it is; it invites you to confess what you see.
Psychologists say we project ourselves onto images like these. So—what do you notice first? The light? The darkness? The burning red?
Perhaps that is not about the drawing at all, but about you.
I introduced Wrecks awhile back as my anxiety and depression. The flip side to him is my happy, fun loving side. This little guy's job is to keep things positive and build me up. I'd like to introduce my good friend, Buil (Bill).
The tables were covered in white paper. Crayons, pastels, and smooth sticks waited quietly. Then came Lucy’s glittery purse—her 8-year-old hands had filled it with stones to pass along, one by one, to the strangers around the table.
We traced them. Pushed them. Held them.
Then we let the colors lead:
-Red for emotion.
-Yellow for curiosity.
-Blue for memory.
Each color came with music, with story, with space.
At the Museum of Wisconsin Art, we made marks not for meaning but for presence.
Thank you to Ann Marie and MOWA for the invitation and trust. And thank you to the participants—some new friends, some old students—for showing up and making lines that listened before they spoke.
