Thinking about Lent

from w
It's extremely hot and humid today - maybe 33 but feels worse. I'm back to the church office this morning as the back is getting stronger. So we were thinking about Lent programs, and I wanted to do some collages using the give-away magazine in the Age today. Not sure if one is of a ladder or a road but the idea is a journey of some kind. Another was accidental, the shapes resembled women totally covered so it could be Weeping women or something about the way women are confined in some societies. The little white bits were left when I trimmed the page from a spiral bound sketch book so I thought they resembled birds. I was listening to the ABC classical music station and Leontyne Price was singing Ave Maria so one picture of a modern girl seemed suitable as a young Mary. I'm going back to childhood I think as I used to cut and paste from the Women's Weekly many years ago!

Why can't I be like a Buddhist?

from w
I realize that most of my picture-making is chaotic, disorderly, overcrowded, busy and too intense. Why can't I be like a Buddhist, make clean, serene, orderly mandalas? On TV a few minutes ago there was a program about Buddhism and I do like those serene calm faces on the statues. So I decided to make a mandala out of paper from a magazine or two. Circles within circles, no chaos, just order...but it didn't happen. I saw this disturbing page about bullying and cut that out, then circles wouldn't stay circles, and I thought that life is not orderly. People reach out to help another but it doesn't always create harmony. The little New Zealand tiki in the middle is, I suppose, something about good luck for the journey.


And now I've really broken up the mandala idea altogether!