The Mind Blowing Implications of God in the Flesh.

I was pondering a while back on the term “spiritual experience”.
You may have heard it said (or said it yourself) that you need or enjoy a “spiritual experience”. It is often the phrase you will hear used when comparing different faiths or practices. Phrases like “The worship was a great spiritual experience” or “I get my spiritual experience from so and so” or “Your religion is good for you but I think all spiritual experiences are valid”.
So I began to think about the term “spiritual experience”. What is a “spiritual experience” anyway? Is a “spiritual experience” all that religion amounts to?

A spiritual experience is pretty much that; an experience with the spiritual realm, and, while that can be awesome, it doesn’t often amount to much, and it most certainly isn’t much of an end goal. Regarding the question of all religions being equal spiritual experiences, I looked at how Christianity distinguished itself from other faiths and beliefs.

The answer came pretty quickly and obviously and touches on the very essence of what makes Christianity the scandalous revolution that it is.
God the spirit became God the flesh.

God became a PHYSICAL EXPERIENCE, not just a spiritual one. This was the scandal that drove the pharisees into a frenzy. It was also the earth-shattering good news that drove Jesus followers to their knees in repentance. That the God who created everything, every atom, every angel, every star, every person  (yeah, EVERYTHING), the God who was so holy and perfect and powerful that people would drop dead or explode if they even looked at him, would become a man, (flesh, blood, bone and all). And why? WHY YOU ASK? FOR THE LOVE OF THEM!!!! BECAUSE HE LOVES HIS CREATION SO MUCH!!!!

(Take a second to catch your breath, it gets better…….. Ok. Continue)

This is why we endure suffering. This is why we endure death. For Christ has promised us a new body and eternal life. We owe him everything and everything we own, even our lives, belong to Him.
God broke the barriers between the mortal and the immortal; the flesh and the spirit.
This is the very lifeblood of Christmas, Good Friday and Easter; of the Eucharist, the martyrs and every defining facet of Christianity.
That God became man.

It's Boba Fett. AND HE'S RIDING A T-REX!!!

Well here it is! I’ve been working on this one a while. My initial goal for this piece was trying to make the most awesome painting I could think of.

So naturally I thought of Boba Fett….

…Wielding a flaming sword…

….carrying the Ten Commandments….

….Riding a T-Rex….

…With a flux capacitor….

…who is dual-wielding uzi’s….

I think the symbolism is pretty self explanatory.

I was exploring the connection between beauty and art. Is there a connection? Is beauty truly subjective? Is art truly subjective?

These days we are taught that all forms of expression are art and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. On the surface, both these things are true and yet the more I explore the design field, the more I fun into the universal factors of attraction and appeal.

There are always exceptions to every rule so, exceptions aside, it is a fact that you can hold two pictures side by side of the same subject, and one will look better than the other. That is to say that if you showed them to 100 people, 90% would pick one over the other. The fact is, as much as personal preference is a factor, there are certain rules about design, colour, layout, contrast (to name a few) that dictate appealing design.

There is such a thing as a bad design.

So how does this apply to art? Art (to my understanding) is expression. Whether it’s playing an instrument, dancing, painting or architecture, it is the method of getting a feeling or though out of you, in a tangible manner. I feel safe in saying that all forms of expression, can be art.

However, (and this is the hard bit) art in itself, does not make it good art.

There is an element of art that seems to be missing in the field in the name of being “creative” or “original” and that is beauty. Now before you start raging about me wanting all art to be flowers and rainbows, I want to clarify by saying that the subject matter does not have to be beautiful. Yet it should be the aspiration of the artist to make that which is ugly, into something beautiful.

A photograph of a war-torn city, when captured by a master photographer, draws the viewer in to scene. The light and colour and angle and focus all come together to become something breathtaking. Here is the interesting thing, the beautiful photograph can actually convey deeper tragedy and sorrow than a poor one.

The good artist can show beauty in the simplest things and the darkest times. Art should not cause despair but inspire perseverance. Art should break us free of the mediocre and show us that there are adventures and joys all around us every day.

I could go on further but perhaps I will save that for a future post.

About the artwork

This was a piece I did as an experiment in fabrics. I wanted to see how many textures and folds I could work with in one picture. I did this one without using any references so it was a challenge. I learned a lot though and will try more in the future. The actual girl in the portrait I named Princess Bevodel after a character I’m writing. I wanted to try something different from the blonde, blue-eyed stereotypical princess and went for dark hair instead.

She is good and she is innocent with a shy sense of modesty to her. She is not proud or deceitful yet wise beyond her years. I wanted her to radiate inner beauty and strong character rather than vanity.

People fascinate me. The more I get to know about people the more I am amazed. We can seem so simple yet be so complex. We can be so alike and yet we are all so unique.

I had the opportunity to visit down town Toronto recently and I spent some time just watching the people go about their lives. Each person weaving their own story to intertwine with my own. Each with their joys and sorrows, their histories and legacies. To them, I was just yet another guy with a laptop who, most likely, they will never see again.

It made me wonder how many people I walk past each week without noticing them. How desperate we are to separate ourselves from others; “us” from “them”.

We divide ourselves with a razor edge. By sex, religion, ethnicity, heritage, appearance, income, job, education, geography, language, we seek to draw lines so we won’t have to be associate ourselves with “them”. This is our losing battle, for “we” are “them”.

We cannot escape our humanity. Whether we like it or not, we are in the same boat. We are the broken and hurting. We are the jewel of heaven.

About the Artwork

These pieces are not of any models or individuals (I’ve been trying recently to work without a source in front of me). I wanted to capture that feeling you get when a stranger becomes a real person. A nobody you pass on the street without even seeing them before suddenly has a name and a family and a story. There is a beauty and spark of life you never noticed before in what, moments before, seemed shabby or unlovable, and you wonder how many fascinating lives have walked right by you, unnoticed.

Happy Easter everyone!

I find it strange (and a little sad) that a lot of Christians don’t know how to celebrate Easter any more. If Christmas is an example of a holiday being engulfed in commercialism, Easter is in even worse shape as people barely even celebrate it with gifts!

On one hand, there are not a lot of traditions that people associate with the holiday’s origin. We know we are supposed to eat chocolate and candy (in the shape of eggs, for some reason), and that a rabbit is supposed to fit into the equation somewhere. I mean, yes, we know what the origins of the holiday are, but we don’t know our traditions are celebrating the origins. Things like eggs and chick are supposed to represent new life and resurrection, but few people actually know that.

So what does that mean to us? I believe to truly celebrate something, you have to understand it. You can’t celebrate Rememberance Day properly until you can understand the sacrifice of soldiers lives for you. Maybe you’ve lost a relative in combat, and the day suddenly becomes monumental to you.

The focus of Easter is not Christ’s birth, His life, His teaching nor His miracles. It is the resurrection.

The resurrection! Jesus not only died, but rose again! How awesome is that! Not only did He live. Not only did He heal. Not only did He die but he beat death itself. He proved His word true. He proved His authority and power. He proved that He is in control and He is on our side.

Oh and one last thing. He is alive now.

He is NOT in the tomb. He is NOT buried somewhere. He was NOT stolen from the grave. HE IS ALIVE.

(If you do not agree with the above statement, please refrain from calling yourself a Christian.)

This Easter, let’s get excited about the resurrection. Let us dance and sing about the fact that He is risen. For He is risen indeed.

About the artwork: This is something I did this morning during the service. It’s not flashy and may seem a bit tacky but it’s something I need to remind myself around Easter: He DID die. He did NOT stay long.

Happy Easter everyone!

Once Upon a Time in Rodia poster

This poster features the characters of one of our Star Wars Role Playing Game campaigns.

From top to bottom, Bones (a gran pirate and the recurring villain), Ra Narketh (human show fighter turned adventurer), Lyl Ribwydan (zabrack pirate princess), Twitch (rodian woodsman and big game hunter), Jay Legraz (human mechanic) and Dainyard Trevell (kel-dor rebel demagogue and political troublemaker).

The story takes place on the planet of Rodia in the small town of Toria.

When Lyl’s pirate father is killed in a violent mutiny headed by Bones and his crew of gran thugs, she escapes, dumping their cargo in the process. She lands on the nearby planet of Rodia in an attempt to hide from her pirate pursuers who are hot on her trail, seeking revenge.

When the bloodthirsty gang finally corners Lyl in the Longsword tavern, the circus gladiator Ra Narketh comes to her aid.

Fleeing the scene of the riotous bar fight, the two collide with Jay, the local speeder repairman, and his friend Twitch, a rodian hunter from the nearby wilderness. Seeking refuge in Jay’s shop, our heroes are approached by Dainyard, a rabble rouser seeking recruits to fight for the Rebel Alliance against the evil Galactic Empire.

The motley crew of quirky misfits become a team of aspiring heroes as they prove that even in a small town in a big galaxy, you can still make a difference.