A Crazy Explosive Sunday and Paintings Too!

It was a weird and wild Sunday.  Short attention span theater in circus town. 

Don't get me wrong.  I like our people.  We have  a great congregation.  But... well it's not easy.  To begin, we have several toddlers.  We want very much to have an inclusive multi-generational  worship service.  This is intentional.  We don't want the kids relegated to some second class jr. church where they watch veggie tales.  (This, in fact, was actually a good thing today.  One of the kids interrupted the sermon to shout out the point to which I was leading... clever kid) 

But having kids in the service presents its own challenges.  They're distracted. They're bouncing all over the place (which is cute during the songs... not so cute during the sermon).  One little guy kept trying to pull himself up with my microphone stand. 

Later during the sermon we had an explosive event.  One of our members uses an oxygen tank. About three quarters of the way through my sermon she needed to change tanks.  This usually isn't a big deal.  But something went weird and the air wasn't flowing through the hose and she couldn't breathe.  I realized that the attention of everyone in the room was on the tank exchange and not on me or the sermon.  So I waited.  It was still stuck and they asked me to help. 

I didn't do much better.  Though I got the air hose fixed up, there was a brief moment when large quantities of air were escaping - hissing violently into the chapel. (That might have been perfect had this been Pentecost Sunday.)

That done, I took her back to her care facility. She was fine.  The tanks were fine.  The church was fine.  Everything is just a little weird. 


To recuperate I spent the afternoon painting.  The results are below.  I don't usually paint pure abstractions, but it was an unusual day.  These are mixed-media on paper (spray paint, acrylic paint, and collage)

(as always, you can click on the images to see them full sized.  thank you.)