Combining Art and Worship opens our hearts, our souls, and our minds to new ways of visualizing and understanding a living faith. This is what we attempted to do last Advent with the theme “Citizens of the Cosmos.”
A group of people met regularly, sometimes three and four times a week as deadlines drew near, to bring one visual form to the Advent theme at St. Laurence.
On one very literal level, we have created the cosmos. In papier mâché we molded and painted and glittered and polished our own fanciful view of the solar system.
| Model of the cosmos used at St. Laurence, Coquitlam, in Advent. (Ann Turner photo) |
And before you ask, earth is not a separate part of the installation. Rather, we (earth) are actually within this installation. Art in this format is not for exhibit but for involvement.
We are within the solar system. We are the citizens of the cosmos. So amongst these colourful planets and dancing stars, amongst these twirling universes and sparkling meteorites, we discover our own place as we discover our own reflection. And we challenge ourselves to explore what it means to be citizens of the cosmos.
What does it mean to be held within the cradle of this armature? What does it mean to be held within God’s hand, yet in constant motion? What does it mean to both reflect and absorb the Light? And how do we prepare?
How do we prepare for a cosmic Christ, greater than this entire system? How do we prepare when we understand that we are a million times smaller than the smallest piece of this grand cosmos?
These are just a few of the questions that we wrestled with as we created this visual. Spend some time with this installation and perhaps you will discover your own questions, your own delights, and what it means for you to be a citizen of the cosmos!