I’ve always loved how this abstract I painted reminds me of a treasure map.

Because I’ve been having some deep and delicious ponderings lately about PURPOSE, both in midlife (40-60 years) as well as purpose in the Fourth Quarter.

If I were asked to name the ache I hear most often from women my age, it might be this:

“I’m not sure what or who I’m here for anymore.”

Roles shift. We’ve become astonishingly competent at things we’re no longer entirely sure we want to keep doing.

And so we try to manufacture new “purpose.”

But manufactured purpose feels…um…manufactured.

Contrived. Ugggggggh. (As an artist, both copy and contrivance is anathema to me…I HATE it.)

What if, instead of copy or contrivance, we looked at our ACTUAL life (versus “wished for” life) as an opportunity for a cartography-related session of evidence gathering?

Friend -

I need to tell you where I’ve gone.

Not far. Not away from you. Just…elsewhere. I’ve begun writing on Substack and I want to tell you why, because the why matters more than the announcement.

Today my husband signed his name on a stack of papers and handed the next guy the keys to thirty years.

Thirty years of spiritual community, altar calls, salvations, and feasting - both spiritual food and physical food. Thirty years of babies dedicated and saints mourned.

A brand new original is available!

I have just opened a new free mini class, and I would love to invite you in.

It is called:

Learn Lectio Divina: Paint Isaiah 60

This class is for anyone who wants to come close to Scripture in a slower, more creative, more embodied way.

It is for the spiritually curious.
It is for the artistically curious.
It is for the lifelong believer who wants Scripture to feel fresh again.
It is for the reconstructing believer - because “deconstruction” is so 2020.
It is for the person who has always wanted to make art but felt a little shy about beginning.
It is for the person who suspects that beauty may be one of the ways God is getting their attention.

There is a theology floating around out there, well-meaning, earnest, occasionally a little smug, that goes something like this: “Real church is people, not buildings. Real faith doesn’t need four walls and a mortgage. Buildings are a distraction, maybe even a spiritual liability, evidence that a congregation has gone soft on mission and started loving its own comfort a little too much.”

I see people nod along to this, the way you nod along to things that sound humble and therefore must be true. I understand the point, and I know they mean well, but you need to know I have never once nodded my agreement to any of those opening statements.

I hope to explain myself.