Recaps
Wrestling with the creative act
Bloom Demos
Songs written within our community
Writings
Unpacking the songs we sing
11.10.25
Museums, Liturgy, and Openness to Mystery
Recently at the Denver Art Museum, Danielle and I spent some time with a painting by one of our favorite painters, Jean-Baptist-Camille Corot. There was something different about engaging with this painting in a museum, rather than seeing it as the default screen on the television in our living room. Coming into contact with the actual paint on canvas, in a space where the sole purpose is to pause…reflect…question…engage…revealed things that we hadn’t noticed before, impacting us in new ways. It’s amazing how context and intention can fundamentally transform our experience of something that we’re (seemingly) familiar with.
Museums, Liturgy, and Openness to Mystery
Recently at the Denver Art Museum, Danielle and I spent some time with a painting by one of our favorite painters, Jean-Baptist-Camille Corot. There was something different about engaging with this painting in a museum, rather than seeing it as the default screen on the television in our living room. Coming into contact with the actual paint on canvas, in a space where the sole purpose is to pause…reflect…question…engage…revealed things that we hadn’t noticed before, impacting us in new ways. It’s amazing how context and intention can fundamentally transform our experience of something that we’re (seemingly) familiar with.
Attending church can take on a similar experience.
Similar to museums, church services also provide a distinct space where we are invited to pause, reflect, question, and open our eyes to mystery; to notice the Spirit at work in our lives and our world. Just as a work of art invites us into mystery with power to destabilize our worldview (when we are open to being moved), liturgy and sacrament also invite us into the radically destabilizing mystery of Christ.
In our fast paced world, I can often find myself moving through the motions of whatever duty of the day I find myself in. Even in churches and museums, it’s easy to get caught up looking towards what’s ahead, or clinging to an experience of the past. Much of our world seems to be living in the future holding on to the past. However, art and liturgy can be beautiful rebellions against these temptations when we allow ourselves to pause and engage. With patience and curiosity, when we open ourselves to being moved, they invite us to witness the already-present Divine.
May we make space in our lives to practice stillness and openness in an effort to be present. May we attune our ears to hear the Spirit calling us into mystery and grace in our lives and communities. May we experience the rhythms of church practice not as familiar and rote, but continuously beckoning us into experiencing the Divine in new ways. May the Eucharist reveal the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection to us afresh each time it passes our lips. And may we have grace for ourselves every time we rush past the already-present Divine mystery, seeking it in the past or future.
-Derek
-Derek
8.12.25
Several people have asked where they could find a copy of the poem that a member of our community, Cailey Thiessen, wrote and shared in response to the lectionary scriptures during our gathering this past Sunday.
Here it is:
Several people have asked where they could find a copy of the poem that a member of our community, Cailey Thiessen, wrote and shared in response to the lectionary scriptures during our gathering this past Sunday.
Here it is:
A Poem for Seven Generations
My children are starving.
I hear their cries in my sleep
and my stomach clenches along with theirs.
They huddle in tents, begging for shelter and safety.
My children are afraid to go to school,
afraid to walk in the open
and feel their family torn apart,
afraid to wake up in an unfamiliar world,
afraid to wake up in a cage.
My children are as many as the stars
above Kayenta, Arizona on that cloudless night.
My children have laid on a camp bench
and told me they know how to hunger,
they know how to wait for food, for hours or days.
I have braided my children’s hair
as they tell me they have no home
and I have held them as they weep
with bloodied knees and elbows.
Faith to me is somewhat akin to hope.
A dream that I cannot yet see
and yet I hold tight to a world where all my children
run down on Sunday morning in a cloud
of laughter and shouts,
where they take the bread and the juice
and their bellies are full and their hands are held.
In faith I look into my niece’s eyes,
only two weeks old and she is barely learning to see.
For her I write of a world that is ready.
A world where we know our neighbors
and our table stretches across the city,
a world where healing takes priority over profit,
and home cannot be stripped away.
It is in faith that we sit with St. Stephen
and in faith we march, and in faith we call
and write letters and raise our voices again and again.
In faith we step into food pantries
and we wrap gifts for those who cannot.
It is in faith that we gather and in faith we sing, and yes,
it is in faith too that we cry and ache.
Heaven might look something like this,
all of us gathered in celebration, a mix of cultures
that all speak of God, a table overflowing,
scarcity mindset replaced with abundance and an open door,
open arms, our children held and loved,
bright lights against the night sky.
It is in faith that I write and I dream, that I do not give in
but fight against the hatred and the self-centered
insistence on being right. I do not want to be right.
I want my children and their children to be loved,
to be seen, to be safe. I want the kingdom of God
to make itself shown in pockets of faith
and to spread like wildfire until all our needs are met.
What more can I ask for?
Kingdom come, on earth as in heaven,
My children, I give this to you.
My children are starving.
I hear their cries in my sleep
and my stomach clenches along with theirs.
They huddle in tents, begging for shelter and safety.
My children are afraid to go to school,
afraid to walk in the open
and feel their family torn apart,
afraid to wake up in an unfamiliar world,
afraid to wake up in a cage.
My children are as many as the stars
above Kayenta, Arizona on that cloudless night.
My children have laid on a camp bench
and told me they know how to hunger,
they know how to wait for food, for hours or days.
I have braided my children’s hair
as they tell me they have no home
and I have held them as they weep
with bloodied knees and elbows.
Faith to me is somewhat akin to hope.
A dream that I cannot yet see
and yet I hold tight to a world where all my children
run down on Sunday morning in a cloud
of laughter and shouts,
where they take the bread and the juice
and their bellies are full and their hands are held.
In faith I look into my niece’s eyes,
only two weeks old and she is barely learning to see.
For her I write of a world that is ready.
A world where we know our neighbors
and our table stretches across the city,
a world where healing takes priority over profit,
and home cannot be stripped away.
It is in faith that we sit with St. Stephen
and in faith we march, and in faith we call
and write letters and raise our voices again and again.
In faith we step into food pantries
and we wrap gifts for those who cannot.
It is in faith that we gather and in faith we sing, and yes,
it is in faith too that we cry and ache.
Heaven might look something like this,
all of us gathered in celebration, a mix of cultures
that all speak of God, a table overflowing,
scarcity mindset replaced with abundance and an open door,
open arms, our children held and loved,
bright lights against the night sky.
It is in faith that I write and I dream, that I do not give in
but fight against the hatred and the self-centered
insistence on being right. I do not want to be right.
I want my children and their children to be loved,
to be seen, to be safe. I want the kingdom of God
to make itself shown in pockets of faith
and to spread like wildfire until all our needs are met.
What more can I ask for?
Kingdom come, on earth as in heaven,
My children, I give this to you.