Leanne Shawler, Artist

Remember this post about my summer reading? I'm only a quarter of the way through the N.T. Wright book. It's very readable but I'm finding it slow going regardless. I am heading off on retreat to Mt. Calvary Monastery in Santa Barbara, and so I've made the important decision as what to bring. Two books from this pile: Found: A Story of Questions, Grace and Everyday Prayer by Micha Boyett The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon by Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan And then one for fun borrowed from a friend: The Fear Sign: An Albert Campion Mystery by Margery Allingham And we'll see if I have to resort to the monastery's library after that!

And from the epic list of stuff I posted, did all of it get used? Pretty much. I didn't end up using the Twinkling H20 watercolors I packed, but mostly stuck with my Inktense pencils and Prismacolor pencils for coloring. I scribbled a poem (which I'll post on Tuesday) in my composition book. I wrote in my spiritual journal reflecting upon why I wanted to learn the Sh'ma in Hebrew, as well as a special gift moment during communion. I made 5.5 art journal pages, using previously written poetry as a base for most of them. And then I reached a pretty scrapbook page and couldn't figure out what to do with that, while having the urge to do a sort of symbolic self-portrait of myself on retreat but bemoaning the fact that the next sequential page just wasn't going to work for that .... I finished reading "In the Shadow of the Temple" on my final morning. The book really sucked me in and is fascinating, but more on that later. So fascinating that two ni...