Artandicon's Blog

  • THOUGHTS ON ACEDIA

       I’m in this mode or mood today. I have a form of malaise, the kind that comes after pouring out all you have until you are drained. Now my listless is my form of recovery. I have hit the wall and I’m not going on. Did I mention that my community has received 25…

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  • More Power: Thoughts on the Spiritually of A Found Object Icon

    I should never begin working with power tools without caffeine. Having said this, I’m glad to report that I still have all the fingers on each hand and no body parts remain glued to a flat surface, unlike Tim “The Tool Man” Allen. My only error was to put my battery pack backwards into the…

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  • Pantocrator icon: Progress Report

    Progress: the 13th hour on the Pantocrator Icon. Acrylic on gold primed canvas. 18″ x 24″. Good things come to those who persevere. Painting an icon is one of the ancient spiritual disciplines. The artist isn’t just copying by rote or filling in a design, as in a paint by numbers craft piece. Instead, the…

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  • Are we the Good Shepherd or Are We the Lost Sheep?

    Recently a male acquaintance of mine had the temerity to suggest that perhaps I might need one of those buttons that calls for help to a distant monitoring site. I had told him I’d been sick and he knew I lived alone. I was feeling much better by then and retorted, “As long as I…

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  • A WORK IN PROGRESS: Grieving Enabled Through the Creative Process

    Just the other day, one of our younger clergy brothers died from a massive heart attack in the wee early morning hours, or late at night during his sleep, depending on your point of view. His contemporaries were in a state of shock, as well they might be, for if death could take a strapping…

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  • The Shining River

    “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves…

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  • Generation to Generation: Learning to be Free

    “The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” ~~ John 8:35-36  With all the Paula Deen jambalaya on the airwaves lately about her treatment of African-Americans and her misplaced desire to have a…

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  • SURVIVAL SKILLS

    “in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, until the destroying storms pass by.” ~~ Psalm 57:1 Drop me behind enemy lines with my machete and I’ll make my own way out. I was born for challenges: I am a first child. My parents had to learn on me and I always had…

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  • The Journey Never Ends

    “A highway shall be there and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God’s people; no traveller, not even fools, shall go astray.”~~ Isaiah 35:8 All good things come to an end, but the ending is just the beginning of something new. This week a…

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  • Why Do The Righteous Suffer?

    “When I looked for good, then evil came unto me;   and when I waited for light, there came darkness.” ~~ Job 30:26 Easter morning may not be bright and sunny; at least the Weathermen aren’t predicting that this weekend. However, for Christians today, we can celebrate because we know the rest of the story. That…

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