This is a short meditation I preached in a chapel service led by the Arts Caucus on the first day back after spring break. Our theme was "Step out of the Box," and we incorporated a ton of different media, including song, photo, dance, and poetry, and we read a synopsis of the book of Esther.
Hello, and welcome back. I hope some of you have had a chance to relax over this break. It is so important, now and then, to take the time to relax and be a more whole person. I know that for some of us, though, this was a time to get things done that we don’t have time for during regular classes. We work more to make some extra money, we spend time in the library doing research, and I know that many of us in the Arts Caucus took some time for the art we love so much. But now, we come back to school, to classes, and it’s time to shift gears. Time to pick up the fabric and yarn that’s already scattered across my floor. I’ll clean the paintbrushes off my desk to make room for a stack of books.
That’s a really sad thing to think about. As much as I love my work here (and I do), and even enjoy most of my countless hours of reading, I am also an artist. Gluing bits of paper together into a collage fills me with a kind of energy that few other things do. The color and the texture, and the figuring out the best glue for the surface I’m working on, that speaks to a whole different side of my heart than does Biblical study. Putting that side of me away again may seem necessary, if I want to get all my work done, but I am putting myself into another box that’s just not big enough. The “student” box is all well and good, but it’s got way too many corners to fit my flowing, rounded artist self in there too.
