Ordinary Time!

Maybe a little TOO ordinary…

Ordinary Time! (Year A)

After much soul searching, I have landed on Ordinary Time as an ongoing work of comics making, meditation, and prayer.

Ordinary Time is a three year project following the Catholic/Episcopal Lectionary calendar throughout Year A, B, and C. During the special weeks of the lectionary, there will be only one strip per week (Advent, Lent, Easter).

During Ordinary Time, there will be three strips per week. Ordinary Time in the church calendar is focused on the living out of the Gospel mystery of incarnation, death, and resurrection focused on during Advent, Lent, and Easter.

I have put a lot of work into this, and I am excited to bring it forward. I have been making comics like this since 2010 from a variety of motivations. I have built only a tiny audience for this work in that time, but I am satisfied in that. The labor itself is beautiful. Rather than attempting to sell something, I feel like I am making these comics for myself, and I am allowing others to see if they want.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

I know this is not the most inspiring art for today. But it feels like we celebrate Dr. King and the Movement without remembering the reason why there needed to be a movement in the first place. Especially as Dr. King has become a national hero.

I feel like it is dangerous to assume we would've followed him.

What strikes me in looking at the images of the Jim Crow response to civil rights is the inexplicable RAGE over basic things like sharing public spaces with a person of different color. I understand all the history, but it still doesn't make sense. The brutality. The seething anger. Only monsters could be capable of such things.

Which leads me to another striking idea: they weren't monsters. They were normal men and women. Grandmothers. School teachers. Pastors. Barbers. Their children were there holding up signs alongside them.

Which is why I am so glad that we have progressed from this, right? Except when I research the signs being held up to uphold Jim Crow, I see many of the same phrases that are being tossed around today regarding equality + public schools + oppression. Sure, there are less n-words, but the messaging is eerily similar.

I think if I wish to teach my students and my children about Dr. King and the prophets of the movement, I have to keep these facts present. Just as the Israelites have to keep stories of worshiping golden calves in the narrative of their deliverance from Egypt, we have to keep our whole history in the narrative of the prophets who called us out of the darkness.

The Baptism of the Lord! (Year A)

Get ready for a lot of esoteric, punk rock, grass roots, folksy comics this year contemplating life the Spirit, social justice, joy, and pacifism (along with cute anecdotes of my kids) this year. 

Epiphany! (Year A)

Worried Shoes

by Daniel Johnston

I took my lucky break and I broke it in two
Put on my worried shoes
My worried shoes
And my shoes took me so many miles and they never wore out
My worried shoes

I made a mistake and I never forgot
I tied knots in the laces of
My worried shoes
And with every step that I'd take I'd remember my mistake
As I marched further and further away

And my shoes took me down a crooked path
Away from all welcome mats
My worried shoes
And then one day I looked around and I found the sun shining down
And I took off my worried shoes

And the feet broke free
I didn't need to wear
Then I knew the difference between worrying and caring
Cause I've got a lot of walking to do
And I don't want to wear
My worried shoes

Christmas! (Year A)

(a little late from Christmas day, but it has been the kind of family madness the holiday always is)

This strip is my 90's sitcom opening credits.

As I was contemplating incarnation, I couldn't help but think how different this Christmas has been from previous years. Dad has been gone for two Christmas days now. Mom is doing well with it, all things considered. Jules + Davy are in the peak fun Christmas years.

I cannot help but think about how in 2014, Ashley + I were in Slovenia planning what our life as missionaries would be like there and all the ways we would serve Jesus and our friends. We were so full of love.

In 2022 NONE of that worked out as we imagined and we find ourselves living in Ocala, FL (of all places) with a 4 + 6 year old. And we didn't even know what it meant to be truly full of love yet.

These changes come so fast it doesn't feel real. That is what I wanted to do with this comic. I took a small picture I drew while in Slovenia back in 2014, and I blew it up.

I was a church planter who was raising support to be a missionary. I used to be "missional". The purpose of my life was to be "useful" to God. The worst thing I could do would be to waste myself. That is the space I was in when I made the original drawing.

Now I think my true purpose is to simply be present.

Ashley, Jules, + Davy are 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.

This loving presence we share with one another is a reflection of God with us.

Merry Christmas!

Advent 4 (Year A)

“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)

Advent 3 (Year A)

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.

Advent 2 (Year A)

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.

Advent 1 (Year A)

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 (Year C)

Advent comics I made last year…

After all the cool, beautiful, wild, wonderful things… it is the moments of quiet reflection that I think have the most meaning in our lives. Those are the moments all the cool things and all the traumatic things are reflected upon to help create lasting meaning and healing.

The Examen 5/6

Fueled by discontent, staring at the planes as they fly overhead, wishing I was on one.

Missing the relationships in front of me as I long for another place. 

Missing the affirmations of God all around me, as I long to experience him elsewhere. 

The Examen 4/6

What are the things that form you? Who are the people? The art, music, conversations, literature? 

What are the contributions you make in your daily life that help form others? 

Which of these things feels like something you should lean into? 

Which of these things feels like something you should walk away from? 

The Examen 3/6

Our yard has two large oak trees at either corner. Our little porch is situated roughly between the two. My favorite contemplative practice is to sit in that space gazing up into the trees, following the twists and turns of the branches as they interweave. Looking at the little patches of light making their way through the bunches of leaves and limbs. Even with the noise of cars driving too fast down our street, golf carts with speakers playing terrible pop country, and loud exhausts... Even with the noise of my own extremely loud children... there is a stillness, silence, and holiness to contemplating the journey of the trees in our yard. 

God is with us.

Yesterday.

Today.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Stop.

Reflect.

The Examen 2/6

God, I believe I am in your presence and you are loving me.

Stop + reflect.

How does this affect your daily mundane activities? 

How does this affect your thoughts about productivity?

How does this affect how you see yourself in this particular moment? 

The Examen 1/6

The Ignatian Examen is meant to break the business of your day with 15 minutes of contemplating God’s presence in the midst of your life and stress and joy. It is not meant to conjure God’s presence, but to remind us of God’s presence. God is here. Now. It is I who am distant. Distracted. It is I who forsake.

Trampoline.

I don't know what to say. I know some choice words I could say, but they wouldn't make things any better.

I just feel overwhelmed with this feeling that if something happened to take me away from my family, or to take my family away from me, these would be the words I would want us to remember.

(I made this because there was nothing else I could do)