“As G. K. Chesterton once wrote, Your religion is not the church you belong to, but the cosmos you live inside of. Once we know that the entire physical world around us, all of creation, is both the hiding place and the revelation place for God, this world becomes home, safe, enchanted, offering grace to any who look deeply. I call that kind of deep and calm seeing ‘contemplation.’”
-Richard Rohr (The Universal Christ)
This Collect prayer reminds me of Stanley Hauerwas’ modest proposal for peace: “Let the Christians of the world agree that they will not kill each other.”
But we are sorely hindered by our sins. We simply lack the imagination for creating a society not driven by competition for resources and power.
I am in love with the Orthodox iconography of John the Baptist. I played around with it last year and felt the need to revisit it this year.
We cast these warm visions of the incarnation at Christmas time and this dude and the Magnificat stand firmly in the way.
This year, I begin a new series of contemplative comics led by the church calendar. In whole it is called "Ordinary Time". During the special times in the church calendar like Advent or Lent, I will produce a simple weekly strip.
During Ordinary Time in the church calendar, I will produce 3 full strips per week. As a former Southern Baptist turned non-denom guy, annually practicing Advent and Lent has led me down a road to a deeper practice of my faith. As an artist, they have led to a deeper level of making art which has become transformed into a spiritual practice of contemplation, reflection, confession, and gratitude. Making these comics this way has transformed my emotional and mental wellbeing.
My goal with Ordinary Time is to further deepen that practice with an eye of possibly helping others to develop it as well. I am doing the heaviest creation during the 34 weeks of Ordinary Time while using the special weeks as respite.
Advent comics I made last year…