Word painting (100th post by the way!)

For September's creative worship evening we had a go at 'word-painting', a term coined by John Ruskin to describe the process of spending time looking at something that moves you and writing a detailed description of it. We broke off and found objects around in SofaChurch and the old church attached to it and word painted. After we read them and discussed how God could speak through this creative exercise. Here is what we came up with:

She sat solitary and imposing, stretching forth to some unseen shaft of light. Its silence was deafening but its mood spoke volumes. The silent and attentive witness to the ponderings of man, wise but unspeaking, seeing and not saying. Its soft broad leaves, gently caressing the air, like the hands of a knowing mother, quietly waiting in the background.

Still, calm and settled in a small self contained vacuum. Oxygen and hydrogen mix clear, as prisms of light glimmer and glint through the crystal incisions of the vessel. Angled reflections refract and bend the mind’s eye, some things are seen as others are unseen. Droplets of life’s fluid solution cling firm to the sides, not to be wasted, but to rejoin the clarity of the pool at the base or, to find the ultimate destination and create energy and vitality anew.

Shiny burnished blackened wood. Bearing scars to past performances. Rows of yellowed ebony and ivory silently attentive. Open and receptive, anticipating contact. A respected elder, upright angular and awkwardly posed, promising sound echoing, thunderous rousing, vibrating, filling, consuming, transcending the physical form in worship.

The only light spills from a spotlight outside. The small panes have purple around the edges but the middle has been eroded, the opposite of sanding paint off wood. Three paned are etched with a pattern of flowers geometrically arranged with squares with only the corners drawn like a monochrome Islamic tile. Other panes have similar patterns but they are fainter. The window chills when you look up at it all. It has been here much longer than me. Not many people will see it like this - it stands alone through the nights, unconnected to the the other ones, year on year. It is fragile; glass and thin wood. The replaced panes suggest violent moments. But it is strong enough if someone repairs the damage. Someone must look after it from time to time, painting the wood to prevent it from rotting. It stands tall, quiet, cold. But it is ready to let the light through when the sun rises.