Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, "Surely God is in this place – and I did not know it! How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven."
~Genesis 28:16-17

I have been privileged to spend the last three days in the presence of artist and author Jan Richardson whose work has been an inspiration to me for many years. Her use of poetry and collage to express her spiritual journey, her faith, has often helped me find words to express my own deep longings, my most difficult questions, and my most heartfelt prayers. I always find it a great gift to pick up a book and read someone's words that so adequately express something I have struggled over. Jan's words have done that for me.

Yesterday I spent the morning with others as Jan led us through scripture, prayer, and reflection that moved toward creating our own collages. While I had looked forward to the morning for some time, I also knew I harbored a sense of apprehension. As someone who does not think of themselves as a 'visual' artist, I carried into the morning memories of every 'bad' art project I had ever created, from elementary school to adulthood. I mentioned this to one of the participants, a known artist, as we shared coffee before the workshop began. She simply smiled at me. I was not sure what to make of it.

We listened as Jan wove the story of Jacob taking a rock for his pillow and dreaming of the ladder going from earth into heaven. Angels coming up and down….I've always been intrigued by that coming and going from heaven piece of the story. As Jacob awakes, he looks around him and says "Surely God was in this place and I did not know it." Another favorite part of this story. How many times do I, do we all, miss the presence of Holy right in the places where we are? And then, in response, Jacob pours oil on the rock, marking it as a holy place, a sacred moment in the midst of the ordinary, fractured life he lived. 

Soon it was time to move to the tables where beautiful papers, magazines, glue sticks and scissors were placed in preparation for the collages we were to make. I chose earthy colors of greens and browns, some flecked with shining gold. As I tore the pieces of paper making their edges ragged and round and cut others for precision of straight edges, I began to move the pieces around a small 3 x 5 index card until the pieces seemed to fit. I saw something there, something that had meaning for me in bringing together the tiny pieces into something larger than themselves. As I filled myself with confidence, I lifted the glue stick to make permanent what had been impermanent. My collage took shape. And I liked it. 

Now I am not saying what I created was great art. It wasn't. But it was my art and it brought me pleasure to have made it. It also mirrored my experience of the story of Jacob who took what was ragged and ordinary, a stone, and saw something more in it. As he used this cold, hard object for his dreaming pillow, he came to know the presence of God in even the torn and broken pieces of his life. In his waking, as in my pasting, there was the experience of something larger than our individual lives. Taking the pieces and putting them together……angels going up and down, scraps of paper, pieces of dreams, glue that sticks, oil that pours…..I touched the Spirit and the Spirit touched me. I left the morning more of who I am than when I arrived. I'd like to think the same thing happened to Jacob during his slumber party in the wilderness.

What are the pieces that are flying around your life these days? Where are the wilderness places that might bring dreams? How might you touch your inner artist to bring the separate individual shards together into something greater, something more? Perhaps today is a good day to sit down with an index card, some colored paper and a glue stick and see what might materialize right before your very eyes. It just might be a holy moment.