For the season of Easter, which is the fifty days from Easter Sunday until Pentecost, our faith community has been sharing rock art with our neighbors. We wrote words on stones and placed them in our front yard in an old metal barrel hoop with a sign saying take what you need. We replenished the supply a few times and have shared more than 120 messages of hope, love, and peace with our community. This week I found something in the hoop that we did not put there. It was a beautiful piece of art. On the attached note it said that this was a found piece of wood that the artist had painted and returned to the world for someone to find and enjoy. It’s thrilling that the little space we created to share love with our neighbors became a place for them to share as well.
I think this is one of the true marks of a successful faith community, that we are part of a larger series of interactions and that we are helping make space for more beauty and love to be poured out into the world. There is something so freeing about engaging with those you don’t even know in a common love of life and the community. The trust revealed in these ways of risking are all part of creating the desired future that God calls us to. A world where people freely give and where love rules. A world where art matters and we can truly provide the things that each other need like clarity, joy, and wonder (to name just a few other words we painted on our rocks).
The image we received perfectly captures what it means to live this way. It’s a heart with wings and the words fly the coop across it. When we set our hearts free to fly we find so many riches. That really sums up the work of the Sellwood Faith Community, to encourage each person to let their heart fly free, knowing that in that risk they will find God’s present love. Creating space for love to happen and life to flourish is what we are about. Thank you for sharing this journey and your own love and beauty with us.
May your heart have wings to soar this day.
-Eilidh
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