Inside the Spin-Mosaic Studio

Immediately, a slice of mystery was solved. Not all of the mystery, but some of the mystery.

For a second, I thought I may have been the only one who saw it: the flapping of it's wings over the water stopped. It was falling. It was falling onto the gray box.

Everyone else was looking at the boat. My eyes saw what was falling from the air. Was I the only one? No.

The oversized mystery-of-a-mixed-breed-dog tethered to the leash that dangled from my wrist saw it, too. Evidently, she possessed a big enough morsel of Bird-Dog in her blood for her slouch-of-a-sitting posture to perk into an unblinking soldier's salute.

If that bird fell: she was going to retrieve it. Nothing would stop her; not even the human that held her end-of-the-leash loop.

The tendons of my wrist tightened at the thought of being dragged across the dewy morning grass, through the clumpy shoreline sand and being plunged into the gently lapping waves...in front of the eyes of all who had come to watch this peaceful lakeside church service preached from the deck of a pontoon adorned in red, white, blue with gray boxes perched at north, south, east and west.

Noone came to see this kind of a baptism this morning. That would be the wrong thing to do in front of a group of people.

Come to think of it, though, Iv'e had a life pattern of doing the "wrong thing in the midst of people doing the right thing"...

Attached to the leash-loop, my wrist felt heavy in anticipation of the inevitable drag...as heavy as the Captain's from the fairy tale where children fly into a starry night sky with only the sprinkle of fairy dust to enable the moonlight journey. The captain's wrist had been "taken" and replaced by a curved hunk of iron. It must have been heavy. I didn't like that part of the story. 

Thoughts of heavy-wrist flashbacks took me back to my 2nd-grade teacher the day she told us to wait.

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She did not stand in front of the chalkboard at the spindly podium and begin a lesson as usual. She put her hand on the back of her empty chair as if comforting an invisible mourner ,and dragged it to the center of the room. There she sat.

She was not old, but, she was not young. She wore no bracelets that I could see, but often carried herself as though her wrists were heavy. Today, her wrists were extra heavy and her hands were extra slow, like she had a piece of heavy curved iron attached at the wrist, like Captain....

She told us to wait and listen. The intercom would soon be bringing an announcement. She said no more.

The little gray box over the classroom door spit to life with an eardrum-splitting screech. My teacher turned her head to face the gray box.

We all turned our heads, too, because...she did. Yet, the intercom had no face; no eyes to look into as it spoke.

There were 24 students in my class that year. 24 eyes looked at the gray box. I remember that number because my mom needed to know so she could make the right amount of cupcakes to bring in for my birthday. She sent in 26: one extra for my young-old teacher with heavy wrists, and another in case one got smushed or dropped. My mom was always thinking ahead.

I had a good mom, and I was a good girl. But, this day was the first time I consciously remember feeling the guilt of doing the wrong thing in front of a group of people...with my eyes. Iv'e been doing the wrong thing or looking the wrong way in groups of people ever since.

When all are looking in one direction; I tend to look somewhere else.

Maybe it's an Artist-thing. At some point between then and now, I shed the guilt. Watching the bird circle the pontoon-preaching pastor last Sunday morning was another of my shameless moments.

23 students and 1 teacher stared at the spitting, screeching gray box. My chin tilted down just enough for my big brown eyes to see my teacher's face without drawing attention my way. My head was turned in the right direction. My eyes, as usual, strayed.

Something was about to happen. A view of my teacher's face seemed to be where the most revealing view was to be gained. Why should I stare at a gray box?

She did not disappoint. As the gray box spoke 3 sentences into the air, her cheeks turned pink and her chin quivered.

It was near the end of the day. After the gray box again clicked into lifeless silence, the announcement was not cushioned with perspective or frosted with adult words by my teacher. All 24 (+1 potential accident) of us were left to interpret on our own as we each quietly gathered backpacks and lined up for the busses. 

My hands felt heavy, too.

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I purchased tickets early to get the best seats in the theatre. This was no ordinary theatre--no ordinary play. Professional actors and actresses would soon fly from an organized tangle of overhead ropes navigated by a master rope-captain manning his ship from the back of a round theatre timed in accordance with the rhythms of music played live by a symphony under the stage.

The rope-captain came straight from the lights of Broadway to assist with this performance. I would not miss it for the world. Not the performance--but, the rope-dance. You should have seen the disappointed on my kid's faces to find I had reserved 4 seats in the back row.

I told them to trust me: to watch when my head turned; to watch where my eyes watched. 

I'm not sure what happened on the stage that evening. This storyline had been memorized since yesteryear when I was a girl watching the face of my teacher: children flying into the night sky, fairy dust, a wicked captain wielding a heavy hook from his wrist, a troupe of boys who never wanted to grow up. My eyes (or my children's) didn't need to watch the performance to know what happened next.

Within 6 feet of us, the behind-the-scenes choreography of the rope-captain in the cockpit of the pulleys was a full-body dance no less mesmerizing than ethnic tribal ceremonies with costumes and fire sticks. The gears did not disappoint. 

Must we always look where the stage-lights lead? Must we always look at the gray boxes of life when the real stories are being told elsewhere?

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True to my artistic-wandering-eye tradition...I sat in a lawn-chair at the water's edge last Sunday while my husband stood just behind my shoulders: one hand in his pocket and one hand holding coffee. For a few seconds here and there, I could feel the hot steam on the back of my neck. The air was brisk on this first September Sunday morning. A blanket draped over my legs. The steam on my neck felt nice.

Many others sat along this shoreline in lawn chairs as well. Many more circled the water's edge in a myriad of colorful boats. All eyes were turned to the voice on the pontoon. Church-on-the-Water. We live in a rural lakes community. This brand of worship is an option.

Sound goes out from the speakers mounted  north, south, east, and west, shoots across the lake, and returns with an audible snap that makes me feel like I am sitting in the vast valley of a southwestern canyon, instead of a quiet lake in the American Midwest.

Maybe it was the echo that attracted the bird to fly overhead just then. Maybe it was the colorful flag. 

While all eyes were elsewhere, I watched the bird. So did my dog.

Suddenly, the microphone chirped a loud crackling screech that caused every ear to twitch and every eye to wince. Dog and bird, too.

My memory twitched to the gray speakers over the door in my 2nd grade classroom...then to the screeching gears as the rope-captain helped Tinkerbell--help Peter Pan--to fly. 

The white bird also jolted with the screech. It's wings stopped flapping in mid-air for 2-seconds. It looked like it had been shot and was about to drop like a duck unfortunate enough to be in a hunter's sightline.

By time the 2nd echo came bouncing back across the lake, the bird righted itself and renewed the rhythm, pace and grace of it's flight.

Clear disappointment flooded the puppy-dog eyes of my oversized mystery-of-a-mixed-breed-dog. I was not disappointed that my vision of being dragged through the sand grasping a leash in front of a crowd of people would not be realized this day.

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Sometimes God speaks through people. Sometimes God speaks through gray boxes. God speaks through a thick black book with fragile pages on my nightstand that has lost it's cover: always. Sometimes God speaks through dogs and birds.

The eyes of the heart more-than-sometimes must familiarize our gaze to turn and look...where other's are not looking. He may be speaking there, too...in the gentle whispers, in the unusual views, "outside the city," right where you are at. Right where your eyes are looking.

As the bird froze and flapped, the reflection of wings in the water also triggered a memory of the first work of art I ever sold in an exhibition (shown below).

Like my dog, who is a mystery-of-a-mixed-breed, but has enough of a morsel of Bird-Dog to perk into 110% readiness, in a flash-download, I saw that this also is Faith.

In the moment my dog forego the 99% of docile, spineless, lethargic and fearful breeds she may have in her bloodline, she gave herself fully to the 1% courageous and confidant Bird-Dog breed in that moment.

Prayer and faith are these moments: Bird-Dog Moments. She viewed herself as a Bird-Dog for 2 seconds, and so she was. This, also, is Faith.

This, also, is Surrender. We give our 1%, God provides the 99% and more.

What would happen if we looked away from where everyone else is looking and viewed ourselves or whatever situation needs prayer with a .01% Bird-Dog kind of faith?

What if we look away from the 99% of doubt, or the 99% of how others view this situation and see...what God is looking at? What if we look at his face instead, like how a little girl with big brown eyes and an extra cupcake looked at her teacher's face instead of a gray box.

Jesus said even the faith of a mustard seed can move mountains. A mustard seed is far less in mass than .01% of a mountain. Jesus knew that.

Like the man from Broadway manning the ropes in the back of a theatre, the actors on stage may fly like the bird over a preaching pontoon, but He controls the ropes. They will not fall.

In the flapping reflection that my wandering eye caught in the rippling waves as the bird fell, I saw the first artwork I ever sold. This also, was a redemption story.

This week, I witnessed my daughter's baptism from 2,000 miles away in a tiny hand-held screen. As Jesus arose from his baptism by John, the Holy Spirit "like a dove" was seen. The reflection of the wings in the water must also have been beautiful.

Once upon a time, my daughter coming to a place of faith with a desire to be baptized was one of my Bird-Dog prayers. During a tough few years when I saw only a beautiful white bird falling from the sky in a moment of confusion, God saw the reflection of her wings dancing on water ripples painted with the leftover colors of the morning sunrise.

As I type this, I realize how light my wrists have become through God's grace.

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"Something that was going through my head yesterday were all the stories in the Bible of people getting baptized exactly where they were--even if it was on the side of the road. They didn't meet God--He met them despite their circumstances. So, yesterday, that is what I did...I got baptized! 

Outside,

In the city,

In a parking lot,

During a worship night,

In the middle of a pandemic.

He met me where I was, and I am so so thankful."

      -- my daughter, Heidi