Leanne Shawler, Artist

Frequently during my 31 days of blogging, I mentioned EfM or Education for Ministry. Although the school year is well underway, I thought I would write about it. It's a four year course for lay people. The course has recently (finally!) undergone some revision, including new texts, but I think the basic outline is the same: One year Old Testament One year New Testament One year church history, theology and tradition (up to American Revolution) One year continuing church history, theology It looks like these last two are the most overhauled, as I checked out the new texts and it looks like they've finally made it to the 21st Century. But that's the worst I can say for my EfM experience.  The best was learning to be part of a new small group, of learning to discern together, and to support each other through our faith crises. And yes, each of us in the group struggled with a part of the Scriptures or theology as our mostly child-formed theology met ...

Here it is, my 500th blog post here on Provoking Beauty. Before I announce the winner, I thought I would share what I think is in store for this blog in the months ahead. more Judaism reflections more exploration of early church and what that means for my worship experience today a series on the Magnificat, one line at a time (anyone want to guest post?  I plan to do 2 "lines" a month) a finished icon (!!!) more on God's blessings and healing the world And the winner is: Lory and my Mum! (as they were the only two that entered!) Maybe next time I should have that piece of art finished so folks might be inclined to enter. The goal is to get the two pieces done this weekend, but first I have to go cook a Thanksgiving feast! Oh and JewishBoston.com has free e-cards to send over Thanksgivukkah! There's a really pretty blue one, but I don't think I have permission to post it here. Go take a look and send one to a friend :)

And we're not done yet. (Did that spoil the ending?) No first both Mary and Jesus needed facelifts: blurry photo, sorry Actually, we've secured a bit of a CD so that the compass doesn't dig a hole into those beautiful faces. We laid the gold leaf onto the halos. Not without mishap. I ended up with several holes where I'd either didn't put the glue on or it lifted somehow. tattered halo Again, I turned to our past workshop teacher, afraid that if I put glue down it might ruin the gold already there ... Meanwhile, while we waited for her to email us on her day off (sorry, Paige). We prepared to lay down the red outline of the halo. It's putting diluted red paint into a ruling pen and then drawing the compass in a partial circle. It's terrifying. Especially when we couldn't get the consistency right and in our practice arcs the paint just glomped out. But Helena finally got it right and away we went. End of Day November 23. ...

... while everybody is jumping on it. It's kind of baffling me. I grew up watching "Doctor Who". I was upset when it was pre-empted by cricket. I grew up with the Doctor of Tom Baker, and was faithful to the program until it was canceled (and/or I emigrated to the United States and couldn't get it any more, but I think it was already canceled by that point). I was so excited when it was resurrected with Christopher Eccleson in the title role. And it was awesome. Up to and including Matt Smith. Got the life scared out of me by "Blink". But somewhere it went wrong. It didn't help that BBC America forgot to mark a bunch of episodes as new so I missed a few David Tennant episodes, but I kept watching. When the Ponds exited, so did I. Not because they were the companions and there are no other but because I was fatigued. Watching Doctor Who stopped being something for fun and began to be a struggle to watch. And I persevered through the writers t...

I was feeling exhausted at work, which at first I thought was because this is the first time I've worked full time in a long time. But the exhaustion didn't go away after a couple of months so I did some reading especially as I was already taking Vitamin D per my doctor's advice. And let me start out here by saying: if you're feeling exhausted, there's a reason for it. The one I'm about to share that was mine, may not be yours. I am sharing my experience and am not a doctor!  I read that one of the things to feel more awake is to protect your Circadian rhythms. We have two neighbors who live behind us who like to keep their exterior lights on all night. It is like a full fluorescent moon every night. So I tried an eye mask to fully rest the eyes and it seems to be working. My exhaustion is pretty much gone with the occasional days of still feeling tired and there's even some energy left at the end of the day. Before I started trying to ...

In a few days my 500th post on this blog will go live. I've noticed that the thing to do is to have a giveaway and do a retrospective. So first the giveaway. It will be a piece of art (no, not an icon!) that I have made. I had this idea (may even have blogged about it) which never came to fruition because that happens with ideas sometimes. So it'll be a 5"x5" canvas piece and will probably look something like this: But more detailed because I haven't say down to paint it yet. So if you would like to win it, just leave a comment, maybe about what your favorite post here has been, but it can also be a comment that says: "ooh! A giveaway!" Please be sure to leave an email I can contact you with, if you don't have a profile with an email address. After 12 midnight on Sunday 24th November, I'll pick the winner! Retrospective This blog started when I migrated from livejournal and wanted to share pictures of whatever I...

I mentioned during the 31 Days of Encountering Judaism about the concept of tikkun olam , or healing the world. There are many ways to do this, and this might become a recurring theme on this blog, but the first way is perhaps not the most obvious. I'd like you to join me in sponsoring a child through World Vision. It's an act that makes the difference for not just a single child, but for her family and her village. It'll transform you, too. It took me a long time to decide to become a child sponsor. I worried about the overhead costs, and how much benefit it would really have. (Rachel Held Evans did too , but promise me you’ll come back and finish reading this post!) But then God slowly worked to change my heart. It was a woman speaker at a conference (I wish I could remember who -- it was in Orange County) who talked about meeting the child whose photo was on her fridge. It was fellow bloggers who wrote about traveling to these places where child sponsorsh...