A Shelter in the Time of Storm
Willow Avenue Mennonite Church
by Willow Mennonite Admin
3y ago
Reflections from Pastor Whitney: Coloring books are a source of creativity and calm for me.  I hadn’t used my colored pencils and coloring books for awhile, but this past week I got them out. I know many people are experiencing “storm” and loss at varying degrees right now. For many people they have had to cancel long planned events and trips.  Some people are not able to be together with some of their closest family and friends.  Grandparents are having to love grandkids from a distance. Some are battling an unknown sickness.  17,480 (and counting) fami ..read more
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Here by the water
Willow Avenue Mennonite Church
by Willow Mennonite Admin
3y ago
Here by the water Life's troubles are washed away, Fevered brows cooled- Hearts set on fire. Streams flow together Rocks are sanded smooth Rocky places cleansed Water tumbles down Holding life's secrets in its Coursing stream Creating borders, boundaries of safety Turning dry lands into fertile ground. -Delores Friesen (John the Baptist Sunday ..read more
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Walk your way toward an answer
Willow Avenue Mennonite Church
by Willow Mennonite Admin
3y ago
by Pastor Audrey Last week we had our “soft opening” of the new prayer labyrinth on our campus here at Willow Avenue. By soft opening, I just mean that we had our first prayer walk there. You know about the monthly prayer walks, right? On the first Tuesday of the month, you are invited to meet me at the designated labyrinth. Until now, these have been at St. Agnes, Clovis Community Medical Center, the Art of Healing Garden at Woodward Park, and the former site of Holy Family Episcopal Church (1135 E Alluvial Ave, Fresno 93720). The church has closed, but the labyrinth is still there. During t ..read more
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Painting as a Spiritual Practice Session 5: Negative Space
Willow Avenue Mennonite Church
by Willow Mennonite Admin
3y ago
by Pastor Audrey Last week our exercise in Painting as a Spiritual Practice centered on learning to see what isn’t there. The mind needs to make quite a shift in order to be able to do this, and then one sees differently. At each of our tables there was a cluster of dried flowers. Rather than drawing each stem and leaf, we were to focus on the spaces between the botanicals, drawing those shapes that have no names. As we drew the nameless shapes and spaces, the form of the stems seemed to emerge all by themselves. I found it incredibly significant that focusing on the empty spaces, focusing on ..read more
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Painting as a Spiritual Practice Session 4: Form
Willow Avenue Mennonite Church
by Willow Mennonite Admin
3y ago
by Pastor Audrey This cylinder with shadow was painted from memory and is missing its core shadow! In last week’s Painting as a Spiritual Practice session, we looked at light and shadow with the aid of spotlights that we set up with a variety of objects to observe: cones, cylinders, and cubes along with pumpkins and apples for a touch of fall.  The idea was to really spend time observing the play of light and shadow and how the interaction between the two creates form, depth, and dimension.  As one of the co-facilitators of this painting series, I hung back from the observ ..read more
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Painting as a Spiritual Practice Session 3: Value and Shadow
Willow Avenue Mennonite Church
by Willow Mennonite Admin
3y ago
by Pastor Audrey This was an exercise I felt I botched from the beginning. And the more I tried to “fix” it, the worse it got. There is such a thing in watercolor, I’m learning, as over working a piece. I was trying for a particular outcome – but watercolor can have a mind of its own. That’s part of what makes it so wonderful. The colors find each other, making beautiful color blends in such extraordinary and often unexpected ways. It’s hard to paint the same thing twice. The exercise had us working with value and shadow. Deepening value is when the color intensifies; add more water and that ..read more
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Painting as a Spiritual Practice Session 2: Color
Willow Avenue Mennonite Church
by Willow Mennonite Admin
3y ago
by Pastor Audrey One of the most surprising things I have observed as I’ve been learning to paint with watercolor is which color I seem to use the most. I would have expected that I would us the color I like the most, probably green. Instead, the paint wells in my palette show that the color I use the most is yellow. How curious! In session 2 of Painting as a Spiritual Practice last week, the theme was color. After we’d created our own color wheels using only the primary colors of red, yellow, and blue, I led us is a time of meditation and reflection. I invited us to name all 6 colors on our ..read more
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Painting as a Spiritual Practice Session 1: Line
Willow Avenue Mennonite Church
by Willow Mennonite Admin
3y ago
by Pastor Audrey The first exercise in our series on Painting as a Spiritual Practice was to draw a series of lines. Each line had to touch two edges. First a straight line, then another straight line that intersected with the first. Then a wavy line. A spiral – can a spiral be a line? Someone suggested a dotted or dashed line, which just about blew my mind. I decided to incorporate one of these into my piece. You can tell how uncertain I am about this by where I placed it – relegated to the corner. As I continued on, making wavy and curved lines, I found I hated that dashed line, it was just ..read more
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How to deal with shame
Willow Avenue Mennonite Church
by Willow Mennonite Admin
3y ago
by Pastor Audrey Take a pair of pruning shears and lop off its head.  That’s what I finally did in my summer vegetable garden this weekend. It started out well at the beginning of the summer.  I took some lessons learned from last summer’s garden and put them into practice.  I abandoned the useless tomato cages and conscripted Brian to build a set of giant wooden trellises.  I pinched the tomato suckers religiously every day and trained them up the trellis.  Same with the cucumbers – up the trellis they went! Things started off pretty well.  I harvested spinach e ..read more
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Changing seasons
Willow Avenue Mennonite Church
by Willow Mennonite Admin
3y ago
by Pastor Audrey Fall is coming. Thanks be to God.   I know a lot of people LOVE summer.  I’m not one of them.  As a very fair-skinned person, the summer sun just hurts me.  I get stuck in endless cycles of burning and peeling.   But I know it’s just a season and that it will pass.  Fall will come again.  Winter and spring, too.  Then summer once again.  For reasons of temperament or physical natures, we all have different favorite seasons.  Some people love the heat, some love the cold.  ..read more
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