Another Collaboration Across Time, Space...And Even Religion
There are connections that only a mighty God can make.
Once again my friend Mujahid Ur Rehman (@mujahids_photography ) and I have collaborated across space and time and even religions. And it’s beautiful.
Mujahid (who The Preacher and I are privileged to simply call “Muji”) stumbled across my blog a couple of years ago. He is a nature photographer and video artist. He is a storyteller at heart, he has an incredible story himself, and he was drawn to some writing I’d done on the arts and creativity.
Muji’s wife Naseema is a physician, whose father, also a physician, was the personal physician to Nelson Mandela…(but it’s whatever. ;) ) Naseema is amazing in her own right both as a doctor, and as a watercolor artist. Muji managed to recruit his wife to be the featured character in our first collaboration. Here is a link to the back story:
And here is the link to that first video:
“The Three Inescapable Laws of Creativity” - a collaboration by Mujahids Rehman and Sheila Atchley
If you watch the above first collaboration, you will see a beautiful painting by Naseema featuring a bit of dandelion fluff with a sweeping vista. I am now the honored owner of that painting. I have a letter from Naseema taped to the wall of my home studio, where it inspires me daily.
Though we’ve never met, and Mujahid and Naseema live on the other side of the world, though he is Muslim and I am Christian, the following video is the second piece of my writing that Muji felt drawn to bring absolutely alive with his video talent:
I feel very honored. I also know that all this is for a reason. This message of the importance of our gifts and the fact that God wants wholeness for us, is already touching the lives of scores of women, as Muji is already getting messages and feedback about this latest video, our second collaboration.
He did all the hard work, he and Naseema and others. Their creativity together as a married couple is what feels priceless to me! (And by the way, I will also be the proud owner of the “cupcake” painting Naseema was working on in this video. It will also be framed, and hung proudly beneath the “dandelion” painting.)
I would love to ask you once again to pray for my friend and his wife. Again, it is my opinion that these are things only God can do, connections only He can make.
Please watch the video, maybe even “follow” Mujahid on YouTube and Instagram, and give these two videos a thumbs up.
The Thing About Fragrance
When I was a slip of a funny girl in high school, I proudly wore the drug store perfume called “Oleg Cassini”. I wore it when I kissed my first boy, and I wore it until the second boy I dated bought me “Lauren” by Ralph Lauren.
As a middle creative, lately I’ve been making up ways to add gentle, all natural fragrance…
…to my art!
That, and The Preacher just got back home from a series of crusades and pastor’s conferences in Guatemala. Those two ideas - his return home, and fragrance - are connected. I hope to explain that connection.
I picked him up from our local airport night before last. As I drove us home, the sunset all peach and blue and gentle, he began (as he always does) to tell me the stories he has collected in his time away from home.
But this time was different. Oh, the stories were the same, but something in the spiritual atmosphere in that Ford Lariat became heavy and sweet. Wave after wave of the Presence of God washed over me, as I navigated at 70mph down the freeway, other vehicles, including ours, beginning to switch on their headlights to drive back the advancing darkness.
He talked and fell silent for a moment. I could tell that he was trying to contain some very big feelings. The Tennessee river reflected the last of that day’s light as we went over the bridge. Suddenly, so help me, a precious fragrance began to pervade the cab of the truck.
Of the two of us, I was the only one aware of it.
I knew it had zero to do with the art I’d made in the days Tim was gone.
It had everything to do with the fact that he had been with Jesus. Very, very recently.
Now, strictly theologically speaking, I understand that Jesus had never left Tim, nor Tim Jesus. Of course, Immanuel is always “with us”. But there is a distinct difference…a distinct odor…to the spiritual atmosphere of a believer who has been consciously connecting to the Holy Spirit. There is an aroma that only is manufactured in the courts of heaven. There is a spice that remains on the spirit of one who has been walking on mission with the Lord.
I know when someone’s been in the same room with Jesus for longer than their cursory quiet time, and for more intimate reasons than routine. This has happened to me before. When it happens, it is, quite literally, mildly intoxicating.
I smelled it once, when turning the pages of the magazine Eden and Vine. And I promptly fell asleep and had a vision that came to me as a dream.
I’ve smelled it in worship at my church.
This does not happen all the time, or even often. But in the last two years, either my prophetic gift has grown a nose…
…or my secret dream of becoming a spiritual Shulamite Woman is coming to pass, as I roll right on past age 55. Apparently, youth is not a prerequisite for perfume or passion. I long for that secret place, and I also long to manifest that place out into my physical world.
See, the thing about fragrance is that you must re-apply.
Thankfully, I still do not smell of Oleg Cassini or Lauren.
These days, I waft a bit of “Earth and Wood” essential oil, or a spritz of Acqua Di Parma’s Blu Mediterraneo , because: Italy. And because: Blue.
I can’t apply Blu on a Monday, and still be blessing my husband with it on a Friday night. I have to reapply.
And if you ever shake his hand, and he smells like a girl…well, that is because he has been very close to me, very recently.
That’s the thing about fragrance. It reeks of whoever you’ve really, truly been with. Or it reeks of what you consciously and regularly choose to apply.
May we be as those who have been with Jesus - may we be those who have broken the alabaster box of our supposed dignity at the feet of Christ.