One of the reasons we wanted to start the day at The Momentary was to see Edra Soto’s installation. On her walks around her Chicago neighborhood, Edra noticed a plethora of empty liquor bottles scattered literally with abandon. She began to gather the bottles, clean them, and create art with them.

She was leading a class in the afternoon for families at Crystal Bridges, and I wanted to experience her art before participating.

The day before, my friend and I had gathered in one of Crystal Bridges’ studios and painted with water color pencils. We were invited to draw a self portrait to post in their gallery.

I learned in college that children discover when they are about ten years old that their art doesn’t look like what they are seeing, and unless encouraged, most stop creating art. Adults often tell me that they aren’t artistic; they aren’t creative. This is the fruit, I believe, of the story we make up in our head when we are still children.

If we are created in the image of God our creator then, to me, it seems we are born to be artists. We are born to create. For too many of us adults, creating is as risky as dancing.

At Crystal Bridges, all who gather have frequent invitations to create. There is an art room always open, and each day offers some special opportunity for guests.

We couldn’t have had a warmer welcome as we entered the studio on Sunday afternoon to create. We were greeted at the door, and then Edra herself came to us treating us as valued guests and gave us instructions for our artwork project.

The museum had repurposed bottles from the museum restaurant, and we were given crafting clay to shape and then attach to the bottle to make our own sculpture.

I watched as Edra warmly spoke to each person that entered. She encouraged and celebrated all of our participation. The room was filled with every flavor of person.

A man with Down’s syndrome shouted a guttural hello each time the door opened. A dark complexioned baby in a stroller echolaliaed each of the man’s welcoming sounds. A group of people who appeared to be of very limited financial means and perhaps intellect came in and began to create.

There was the father who stayed on his cell phone the entire time. Grandparents with grandchildren. A few parents who watched as their children sculpted. People who created one sculpture together.

All were welcome.

As we finished, Edra carefully took each of our sculptures and photographed them as if they were precious art. I suspect to her they were.

The mission of Crystal Bridges with its always free admission, plopped in the midst of small town Ozarks, is to make art available to everyone. No exceptions.

This is God’s people gathered. It was church for me on the first Sunday afternoon in Lent.

Worship for the first Sunday in Lent was on Saturday evening at Trinity Episcopal, Bentonville. That allowed Sunday to be a day to worship with eyes open to the day.

We started the day at a new branch of Crystal Bridges, The Momentary, created from a repurposed Kraft cheese factory. In this expansive space, the State of the Art 2020 exhibit continued.

Viewing art is a type of prayer for me. The art in this exhibit had come forth from the depths of the artists’ spirits. Nearly all pieces were created in the past three years in response to the events each artist experienced in the new normal of our country. Walking from piece to piece, standing silently with each, was a Great Litany.

When my best friend was beginning to heal from her car accident, we watched a PBS documentary about a team from Crystal Bridges Museum who travelled the US discovering less than famous artists. Curious, we did a little research and found that an exhibit of 61 of the artists would be at my favorite museum in the world, Crystal Bridges in Bentonville, Arkansas. During Lent! As part of my friend’s healing hopefulness, we planned a trip to see the exhibit seven months later.

So here we are. In Bentonville, Arkansas. For the first weekend in Lent.

Seriously injured by a drunk driver who hit her car and then fled the scene, my friend went from being couch bound to wheel chair to walker. As she was finally well enough to travel, she had to learn to navigate an airport via being wheeled by strangers.

Seven months later, my friend is able to walk independently to her airport gate and yesterday hit a milestone of nearly 9,000 steps. Museums will do that!

She is never pain free and is learning how to live in a new body.

It is how we are all invited to do Lent.

Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start. (Nido Qubei)

And so we begin again. Perhaps with uncertainty. Fear. Suffering. Pain.

Perhaps with hope. Faith. Joy.

Most likely with a soup containing some of each.

Perhaps that’s why parish soup suppers are a mainstay of Lent.

You stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that all might come within the reach of your saving embrace.

So clothe us in your Spirit that we reaching forth our hands in love may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you, for the honor of your name. AMEN

This is one of my favorite prayers in the Book of Common Prayer. The image of the cross as Jesus reaching forth his hands in love, and our response to that reach as reaching out in love, is the center of my understanding of the cross as a symbol of my faith.

The cross is Love reaching out.

Love reaching out in the midst of suffering and when surrounded by anger and hate.

Love reaching out in the midst of hunger and thirst.

Love reaching out in the midst of fear and loneliness.

Love reaching out in the midst of meals shared.

Love reaching out in the midst of friends and strangers and enemies.

Last evening I went to an art exhibition at the Harwood Museum in Taos of Dean Pulver’s work. Dean is the husband of my dear friend Abby Salsbury whose pottery fills my home. Dean’s art medium is primarily wood with a little metal thrown in on occasion.

When I visited Dean’s studio last Epiphany, he was creating work that was part of the exhibit at the Harwood. There was one piece in process that placed me in a deep pause. To me it looked like a cross.

As Dean and I talked, he told me that building a cross had not been his intent. This led to a thought-filled conversation about the layers of personal meanings of the cross. I told him how I felt so often what I hear people say about the cross feels more like a useful personal weapon than the endless and forgiving and healing love of God.

The curved arms of Dean’s art with its ever moving shadows, depending on the cast of the light, spoke to me of God’s multidimensional love. It is beautiful.

The finished art was on exhibit at the Harwood. Once again I was paused. My heart and eyes filling with emotion of its power.

Dean had named the piece Reach.

The light once again played with the structure casting multidimensional shadows expanding the range of the cross.

Each arm is a curve, openly pulling us to its center. It feels like a safe and open enclosure I could nestle in and be held and rest. It’s not soft but it looks comfortable–in the root meaning of the word, comfort, that means with strength. I could sink into its heart.

I looked back on Dean’s Instagram account. It records his process for creating the art we saw completed at the Harwood. I was paused yet again when I saw the special joinery he had to create to connect the two arms of this piece.

Cross upon cross. Cross within cross.

Reaching out in love.

Note: Cross at the top of the blog from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Kilgore, Texas.