the creative altar

In her book The Artist's Rule Christine Valters Painter writes, "Discover the sacred in your artist's tools; they are the vessels of the altar of your own unfolding. Look at this cup of holy water, washing clean the brushes. See the blank page, awaiting your blessing. Gaze on the colors before you, each one a name of God: Safron, Cobalt, Azure, Ruby. Let this be your prayer."

This quote about the way God is present through the creative arts seems particularly significant and beautiful in light of the season of Lent. Yesterday, on Ash Wednesday, we were reminded that we are but ashes and dust. For me, this is a reminder of our creative potential, a reminder of the beautiful story of creation when God's artist hand reached into the soil to shape new life. With God, every small thing has the potential for beauty. Every ordinary object and life is an altar for the sacred, a place where God breathes and moves.

I see lent as a journey back to our creative roots. A reminder that with the raw materials of our lives there is the potential for something boldly and wildly colorful to unfold. On this journey where we attempt to follow Jesus into the metaphorical wilderness, I am reminded that no landscape is too desolate for God's creative work. This includes the dull, every-day routines of my own life. Lent invites me to see my life with new eyes: to look for the Artist God hiding in every color, every interaction, every hum-drum moment. And through my own creative work during the next 40 days-- whether that's writing, painting, praying or just engaging in relationships-- I hope to become more entangled with this Artist God so that my life might become a canvas where something new can emerge. For me the space of Lent is the kind of creative altar that Valters Painter describes: a place where the sacred unfolds as we creatively engage with the Divine.