“I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly
before the sun and moon …” Ralph Waldo Emerson
This is my friend Tom from L’Arche Daybreak. Tom is an artist. He paints, sketches, creates mosaics, candles, pottery, acts and dances. Tom is a deeply spiritual and religious man with an incredible sense of the Holy. Tom also lives with Down syndrome.
I lived with Tom at Centre Street, one of the houses of L’Arche Daybreak. I helped Tom with many of his daily routines and one of them was to make sure he was able to get to church each Sunday which he loved. While we sat and listened to music and spoken word…Tom was off on another level…he was captivated by sculptures, windows, flower arrangements, woven banners…now and then returning to answer one of the prayers or sing a melody making up his own litany of words. Being with Tom was to touch the divine. Tom would receive communion…come back to his seat, drop to his knees, bury his hands in his face and once in a while in his own words of thanksgiving reconnect to the artistic beauty around him. Tom also found beauty in simple gatherings among friends, a trip to Joe Burger or to the movies among other ordinary things. But it was what he did with these things that Tom considered sacred.
Often Tom would want to express something he saw or experienced. It might lead him to paint or draw a scene of crosses…or majestic colours…or the divine inspiration of super heroes. Once when we commissioned him to make our communion vessels I was told that the one in charge of the craft studio went for her coffee mug. And in three seconds it was all Tom needed to add a “S” to the chest of the people on the communion plate. I loved it and so did our community as we respected the work of the artist.
We have for far too long left God language to theologians and male theologians at that . We have ignored the divine inspiration of poets, musicians, dancers, weavers, potters and others who can invite us to go deeper and touch the sacred. Tom has taught me in that one year what no other course in seminary could ever teach me…to trust the many ways the Holy tries to engage us in conversation and relationship.
And so as we greet the morning with a stretch and yawn…let us look out the window of today and open ourselves to where the Holy will greet us. And so my pray this day is thus:
O Holy One…
in the beauty of creation, in the laughter of friends,
in a canvass filled with colour, on the string of an instrument,
in the silence of holding a cup of warm coffee or tea and looking out our window again,
May we find you anew and be blessed. Amen!
