Travis Silva (Forgiven! on Flickr) is a regular contributor to our Flickr group. This image was taken on a recent mission trip to Uganda. Check out Travis’ photostream (which has some really dramatic HDR images) here.
If you photoshare on Flickr, why not join our group?
Have a great weekend!
Here’s a last look at the work of FeaturedArtist: Mary Freeman…
For more information about Mary and her ministry through visual journaling, read my interview with her.
Ben Darby (Ben_D on Flickr) is a regular contributor to the WOP group on Flickr. This image was captured at sunrise on Myrtle Point in the Great Smokey Mountains.
"Hope" by Mary Freeman
I was really encouraged by my chat with FeaturedArtist: Mary Freeman last week. Mary uses her art to poignantly impact the lives of people… And I love to hear stories like that…
Stories about God using people are the absolute best kind… The Bible is FULL of these stories. We need them in the church today to encourage others to do the same and to remind us that the stories didn’t just end in the first century…
After I published the interview, Mary sent me a note that expressed her own surprise at the way that I had summed her up…
“I am reading it and saying, ‘This is not me…’ But then I realize it is. This is what God has been doing… continues to do in my life.”
I think that most people need to hear that what they do has a significant impact… I know I do… When you give from your heart and gifts to serve God, it’s nice to know that the offering is going somewhere…
When you see someone else giving and serving and making an impact, it’s probably a good idea to tell them. The encouragement might come at a critical time in their life… It might inspire them to dig in when they were thinking about giving up. It might confirm to them something that they already knew. It might just help them see their ministry from a different perspective.
I know, without much doubt, that God has called me to encourage and equip artists to use their gifts in ministry… When an artist (in this case, Mary) tells me that they’ve been encouraged, it confirms that calling, inspires me to press on and helps me to recognize what it looks like when I’m walking in my own gifts…
And this is true of everyone who serves… not just artists.
Give encouragement freely… It won’t cost you anything.
Accept praise authentically… It isn’t prideful to recognize the work of God in your own life.
What began as a woman’s own journey of God-discovery has spawned a ministry of reconciliation and healing for women…
Mary Freeman is a well-read, mom-of-three from Georgia, USA… I love people from the South: there is an frank realism and open-hearted truth about them. Mary did not disappoint… She shared with me about her art… About how God used it to heal her heart-wounds… About how she shares that with other women… About moving her youngest child off to college this year… About her own lingering insecurities over calling herself an “artist”…
I came away with over an hour of recorded interview and a sense that art really CAN change people… That artists really DO build the Kingdom of God… And most importantly, that God places great importance on what we do to touch the hearts of people in the way we practice our gifts.
Mary has always kept a journal… But a few year ago, with a desire to dig deeper into her own heart-wounds and invite God into those areas of hurt, she began experimenting with layering images, patterns and text into journal pages that captured words and feelings in a more coherent and impacting way.
As she shared this experience with her friends, the opportunities to share the technique with other women began to open… First, in a retreat setting…
“We were combining visual journaling with the practice of solitude… there were 80 women in the room and no one spoke for over an hour… It was amazing…”
Opportunities to combine journal demonstrations with small-group counseling followed and she is setting up now to begin teaching workshops in the church she attends…
Along the way, Mary started taking the mixed-media techniques that she used in her journals into larger formats…
“The painting has several layers because I would paint something and be totally unhappy with it, (then) cover it and begin again. The finished painting was really a happy accident…”
Undeterred, Mary created the image you see on the right… And more after it…
If you were to visit Mary’s photostream on Flickr, you’d see that her large-format work has evolved to include the top of her worktable.
“That project made me realize just how much fun the bigger (paintings) can be… Standing on a bench and splashing paint everywhere…”
Since being a Christian is at the core of Mary’s identity, she has no problem acknowledging that her gifts come straight from God and that her life (including her creativity and artistic work) has the ultimate goal of deepening her relationship with Jesus… She passes this transforming experience along every chance she gets.
“Being a Christian is someone I am, not something I do.”
Mary speaks a “heart-language” that is very familiar to me… So, I asked her about her favorite author… I smiled as she began to rattle-off a list of who’s who in Christian counseling: Brennan Manning, John Eldredge, Larry Crabb… writers with differing methodologies but the similar theme:
Your heart matters to God and wholeness is possible…
Mary’s creativity and work echo that truth… and the key: God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to His eyes…
If you haven’t checked it out yet, go take a look… Mary also has an inspiring blog that combines her work with story-telling and personal meditations…
