Hello & Goodbye

On this fine sunny morning the breakfast table was whispering the good news that another litter of piglets had been born during the early hours of Vigils (0530), not that I was up at this time, but the monks were for prayer and it would seem that a one of the guest was also up at that time too.

Today is my last full day here at Quarr Abbey, so, while the piglets were making a stage entrance on the left I was exiting to the right. My time at Quarr has been a time of great blessing and a time of taking a step into the unknown by having some of my art work printed into cards and watching in amazement as people looked and bought them as soon as they were on display. With some of them being put into the post to family members by the my fellow guests who bought them. At the time of writing this I have sold a quarter of the one-hundred-and-twenty cards printed and recouped almost half of the monies paid to get them done in the first place. A door has clearly opened, not so much my me, but by God. I have started to take some tentative steps through this door, by getting the card printed, but clearly there is more to this journey as I prepare to leave Quarr Abbey.

As many of you know, I have been interested in Colourful Prayer for many years, where colour replaces words, when words are not enough to express how one feels when praying to God. In July 2008, the Ministers of the West Midlands Synod of the United Reformed Church went to Corrymeela. There I meet another artist who was born in Belfast, but her parent left the troubled city and moved to Vancouver in Canada, when she was three years old. She made her name by creating the Irish Linen Handkerchief Memorial. The Memorial is a list of almost 4,000 of those who died in ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, from 1966 to 2009 in a chronological Names List, embroidered on Irish Linen handkerchiefs. The Memorial was publicly unveiled in Northern Ireland at a Corrymeela, A Centre for Peace and Reconciliation, Ballycastle, on the first Private Day of Reflection, 2007, on the sectarian violence and again in July 2008.

She asked if I would produce a Colourful Prayer that would complement the Linen Memorial. It took me most of the evening and the following day to design and then work with a local printers to make the necessary enlargement of a 3.5 inch square poster designed on a Palm Top and turn this image into an A2 (43cmX24cm) poster. That was my first publication of a Colourful Prayer. This little first step was very tentative, but over the last six years Colourful Prayer has become ColourWeaving Prayer, because that is what it is these days.

This sabbatical has been a time of great blessing, of stepping out in faith art-wise and over the last couple of years learning to take a photograph each day and posting it on the internet through www.blipfoto.com has meant that during this time out from full time ministry I have been able to talk and be inspired to follow God’s leading to share two passions that really makes my spirituality sing.