Easters!

If your friends don’t laugh like this, what even is the point?

Easters!

I was recently at the National Gallery in D.C. I did not know what to expect, I didn't do research beforehand. I just showed up with my school on our trip.

I was exploring the impressionists when suddenly I came face to face with Van Gogh's self portrait. Tears filled my eyes. I have been fascinated with his work for 20 years. To "look him in the eyes" like that was very unexpected. For me though, it was the texture and the brush strokes. I could see him making those brush strokes.

It was a treasured moment of beauty.

Post-Easter!

The world is a broken place, beholden to death. But death is broken too.

Post-Holy Week: Good Friday

Reimagining radical, supernatural grace as the ultimate form of vengeance.

Post-Holy Week: Maundy Thursday

I have been making this comic since Advent, but it has been a little more loose in the schedule since Lent. I thought it would be fun to share the mission statement I wrote in November when I was getting ready to start the Ordinary Time project.

This is a comic designed to:

1. Stimulate my mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing through contemplation, meditation, gratitude, worship, and the act of creating.

2. Be a love letter to my family + friends, a community of people who love me and are worthy of receiving love from me. A community of people who need me to be healthy, whole, and present.

3. Provide a public outlet where I continue to work out my theology, philosophy, and humanist ideals as I continue to be a husband, father, teacher, and pastor out in the world.

4. THIS COMIC IS MY PUNK ROCK GARAGE BAND. #%$@ PROFIT. THIS IS A WORK OF LOVE.

*To do this really well and receive the joy from it, I need to let go of the idea of an audience and make fearless, honest work. However, it must be public because an ideology you cannot say out loud is useless.

Post-Holy Week: Palm Sunday

I drew a good chunk of this surrounded by some students at a coffee table in the hotel lobby for a school trip to Washington D.C. Normally, making these is a solitary effort. It was fun to be in conversation with folks while inking.

If I had the ability, ideally I would work on these things at the local coffee shop or the bar that I really love. Something about drawing my own version of Orthodox iconography and assessing my societal values in light of a gospel that liberates while sitting in our local punk rock bar seems like a kind of monasticism I could get behind. 

Better Lent Than Never! (4)

"I must've lived a thousand times
But every day begins the same
'Cause there's a small town in my mind
How can I leave without hurting everyone that made me?
How can I leave without hurting everyone that made me?

Oh, baby, baby, it's all about the moon
I wish you wouldn't have broken my camera
'Cause we're gonna get real old real soon
Today we're younger than we ever gonna be
Today we're younger than we ever gonna be
Woo!
Today we're younger than we ever gonna be

Stop, stop, what's the hurry?
Come on, baby, don't you worry, worry
Everybody not so nice, nice
Everybody not so nice, nice"

I love this song by Regina Spektor. I am not entirely sure what she means, but I’m sure what it means to me. I think those are my favorite songs. 

Better Lent Than Never! (2)

Some days you believe this, and some days you just keep saying it hoping you will believe it again.

Better Lent Than Never!

I started this Ordinary Time project, and it was going SO GOOD. And I am PUMPED with the art so far. 

Then Lent began, and the well ran dry. 

BUT WE'RE BACK.

Also, most of these were drawn, I just held back from posting until I could catch up. My work schedule has been very intense the last few months, which has made family life a bit hectic. I just didn't have it in me to keep up with internet stuff.

As always, I am blown away that people even read these things. You are wonderful people. 

Peace + love,

-joshua.

Ash Wednesday (Year A)

Remember my brothers + sisters, that you are dust and to dust you shall return.