Heart Shrine – 22″ x 32″ x 6″ – brochure box, velvet, silk flower petals, marble, paper tape, caulk, paint, lights. Advent 2011.
Today begins the second week of Advent, which is a time of preparation for Christmas. Now of course there is lots of ‘preparation for Christmas’ going on around us, most of which involves a lot of shopping, along with some decorating and some parties and maybe some baking. It often also involves quite a lot of clamor, busyness, and stress. One thing that many of us find lacking in this season is spaciousness. But spaciousness is exactly what Advent calls us to cultivate or recapture in our lives.
The word translated from Hebrew and Aramaic as “holy” carries a meaning of something set apart, and the English word comes from an Old English root meaning whole or healthy. In my piece of art for Advent, I wanted to explore the idea of making a little holy room inside ourselves; a holy space within, where we clear away some of the clutter (mental? physical? emotional?) and make space for the Divine. And if we can get a little bit of that holy spaciousness at our center, perhaps everything else will start to feel less scattered and more whole.