Visual Treats on Retreat

The first one: a beautiful design made by Wayne that looks like stained glass on paper, which arrived in the retreat house mail ~ well, I don't know when.  I looked every day, as Wayne had instructed me to do, and then on Sunday night at dinner a Presby pastor on retreat hissed at me, "There's mail for you!" 

I have not succeeded in photographing what I received, and I can't find anything like it on Wayne's sites, so you will have to be satisfied with the knowledge that it is a wonderful thing to receive a gift made by a friend when you are far from home and immersed in silence.

The next two:  My director commented one day that I seemed very much oriented toward the visual, and suggested that I take advantage of the art room and maybe make a collage.  I went down there that night, sure that I wouldn't last more than five minutes due to my painful wasp-swollen arm, but three hours later I had made a complete mess of the place ~ magazine pages all over the room and glue stuck here and there and markers tossed hither and yon ~  and produced a collage in response to the Suffering Servant Songs in Isaiah.  A couple of nights later I made another one as I rummaged back through much of my prayer of the week.  And so ~

The fourth one:  I seem to have purchased card stock in all colors and also glue and extra-thin marking pens, and I seem to have ordered a lot of my Wernersville photos in wallet size.    I have 15-plus  journals in which I've recorded my prayer life in writing  over the past few years, but now I'm thinking art in miniature. Something much more evocative than what I've ever done before.  I don't think my work is going to appear at MOMA or anything, but I do think it might be fun.  And prayerful.

Thank you, Wayne, and Bill SJ!