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The Play of Structure and Freedom

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Pastor’s Column

December 2024

Advent comes early and short this year, a function of the calendar - just after Thanksgiving, and only 3½ weeks from Christmas. Our church calendar has a full line-up of worship services and events. We still have our four Sundays, and our Longest Night service (Dec. 18). Our music ministry has a full line-up of concerts, starting with the all-Tucson ELCA concert Dec. 1 (at Our Saviour’s), and then the Southern Arizona New Discourses and Neoteric Chamber Choir on Dec. 14. It’s fun to be host to arts in different styles, and be a place of music and creativity. Many ways to glorify God in this season.

Sunday services have a theme: “Words for the Beginning” from sanctifiedart.org. As much as I like coming up with worship ideas, they make some amazing things way beyond my skill level – paintings, poetry, liturgies, children’s curriculums and more. You know I rarely do the Advent verses from the lectionary anymore, as they feel so tone deaf to the season. John the Baptist calling Pharisees a “brood of vipers” and crying about judgment and fire, then Jesus talking about wars and rumors of wars and the beginning of the end….just doesn’t have a whole lot of hope and grace. I know there’s a time and place for all of scripture, and, yes, I know the lectionary comes from a time before December was a month of pre-Christmas everywhere. But this is our world.

So I try to make Advent its own thing, with its own emphasis and meanings. This year we get a collection of quilt patterns, one for the season, which will go on the podium, and one for each Sunday, which will go up front on a stand. Each pattern goes with the theme for the day. The quilt squares play off the idea of new beginnings, how the pieces of who we are, where we come from, what we deal with, sometimes fall apart, but God takes them and makes new beginnings, new starts.

To me, quilt squares perfectly express the back and forth interplay of creativity and structure.

It’s often taught that the two are opposites, that rules and limits stifle and oppress, and that the fullest life is lived with the least restraints. Well, some times. Of course rules can be stifling, and so restrictive that no space is left for anything new. On the other hand, when given no limits, we often don’t know where to start. If I told an art class to paint a family on the lakeshore under a tree, I’d get all sorts of interpretations, but every artist would have to figure out how to make beauty out of that particular scene (Monet made a version; it’s a classic). But if I simply said, “make anything and see you Monday” I would probably get very little. I’m sure someone would try to be clever and hand me an empty canvass and tell me the lack of paint represents the emptiness of his soul being deconstructed of the normative influences of bourgeois society. One might even tape a banana to it and call it something. But I would be suspicious they were having too much fun over the weekend, and the philosophy-babble is just covering up laziness. Limits force you to problem solve, to imagine possibilities, to think of things you haven’t. No-limits creativity doesn’t push you, and you end up with, well, a banana taped to the wall.

I picture so much overlap between good art and engineering. The city comes to the architect and says, “there’s a river this wide, and two roads to connect, and they’re not straight across, and the ground is soft, and you have to put a ship X feet high underneath it, and it can’t all break apart if one section cracks. Go”. That will take a lot of creativity to solve, undoubtedly a good deal of artistic imagination too, so the selection committee likes it.

Structure and limits force creativity. But without variation and creativity, structure becomes stale.

So it comes back around to quilt squares. I imagine it was a challenge to the original artists: how do you express this Bible reading in a quilt, using only straight lines? How do you do it with only a small palette of colors? How do you convey blue, the liturgical color of Advent, with lively colors of hope and opportunity? Now you have to get creative.

This is what it’s all about: not just being able to paint, not being “artsy craftsy” necessarily, but being willing to problem solve and imagine new possibilities within the limits life has given you, using the spiritual gifts God has given you. Worship should be like that: a structure, an architecture, that remains largely the same, but which can be redecorated, repurposed, reimagined from time to time. The predictability of the order gives the security from which to explore and imagine the possibilities of a living God with words of new beginnings.

Peace,

Pastor Lars

Preschool Rainbow Art in the Church

This month at the Lord of Grace Preschool, one class has been making crafts showing the rainbow, the sign of God’s promise to us and covenant forever.

If you visit the sanctuary here you’ll see the back wall covered, from time to time, with art by our preschool kids. We like to show off their work as a church, and support the kids as a whole church.

Once a year, in the spring we do a preschool art show in the fellowship hall, as well. Encouraging creativity and imagination is part of our philosophy as a school.

To learn more, check out our preschool page, email us, or call 520-744-7400

Lord of Grace Preschool, Marana, Arizona

7250 N. Cortaro Rd (corner of Ina and Cortaro)

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New Sanctuary Mural

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The capital campaign for the church is almost over. Over $290,000 was raised, and this bought the church a whole list of much-needed repairs and upgrades. This includes:

  • exterior paint

  • mural on the outside wall of the fellowship hall by the playground

  • replace roof underlayment

  • new air conditioners for the narthex/nursery and sanctuary

  • livestreaming equipment

  • floor tiles for classrooms, fellowship hall

  • repaint the fellowship hall

  • new keyboard for the band

  • and the sanctuary…..

This last piece came in last, and included a whole list of things:

  • new carpet

  • repainting walls

  • new lights - sconses, stage lights, lights for the stone wall

  • build-out of the altar area into a stage-like platform

  • pews shortened and made moveable

  • mural on the back wall

  • replace the audio system (coming this spring)

I feel the need to list it all because it’s so impressive what we’ve been able to do with the generosity of the congregation. While the church is, and always will be, the people, and the building is just a tool we use, it’s important to keep the building in good shape and not kick the can down the road on repairs. Things never get cheaper. It’s also important to think about how your building communicates your mission, your values.

With a big mural outside, and now one in the sanctuary, we convey art, creativity, life, color. We tell people that faith is dynamic and exciting, and invite people in to explore and experience.

So this last piece, the sanctuary mural, came out of the planning process for the whole room. As you may remember, last year a team was gathered to come up with proposals for refreshing and upgrading the worship space. We looked at values, mood, function. We asked questions about what kind of things we would need in the future, so we could leave the next generation in the best place. We came up with ideas like: family, community, creativity, Jesus, welcome. We wanted it to be warm and flexible, to do creative worship and have options for different uses - hence the pews that can be moved. Everything was decided to accomplish our goals and convey our values, not to fit any particular personal preferences of the team members.

In this process the idea came up putting some sort of art on the big back wall. It just sat there empty, with nothing but livestreaming cameras and a big row of organ speakers. Initially, the plan was for a strip of Bible stories along the bottom of that wall, just above the bulkhead and the doors - much like cathedrals have a strip of carvings on the railing of the balcony. But then someone asked simply, “why not the whole wall?” Made sense.

We contacted local Tucson artist Michael Schultz to do the mural. He’s a veteran graffiti artist, and was a leader in Open Space Church before it closed after Covid. Having done church murals in Las Vegas and South Tucson, he was well-skilled for a job this size.

The vision was to do something modern, non-literal, and also tell some of the story of the Bible. This has three parts:

On the left: Jesus healing the woman who touches his cloak.

Middle: all the people coming together at the resurrection

Right: the women appearing at the empty tomb

Artist Michael Schultz with the finished mural

My own preference is always to keep church art a little abstract, a little modern, so we don’t start to take the image too literally and start thinking this is “how it actually looked”. We don’t know what it “really looked like” and can only make a best historical guess. But the truth of the scriptures is about more than the events, it’s about the experience people had of Jesus, and still do. It’s about how the Spirit shows you meanings in it, and the power that comes from that. So I wanted something that would both tell a story, and at the same time draw you in and get you thinking and imagining.

The splash of color is intentional, both to give it life and to contrast with the brown-blue theme of the building. It’s a highlight on your way out of worship.

In case you’re wondering, it was done with Kobra low pressure and Molotow spray paint, along with some Molotow art markers.

Pastor Lars

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Vase-Making for Lent

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This lent we’re following a theme of “wilderness” throughout our mid-week services, and our sermons. In preparation, we put together all these vases (based on an idea from sanctifiedart.org) to place in front of the sanctuary for the Lenten season.

To build them we had a lunch after the second service, and then had a little liturgy where we would read a poem, based on the idea for each part of the vases, complete that part, and read again and so on.

All ages were there, kids through seniors, and we made some really cool additions to our sanctuary. A big thanks to the liturgical arts team for all the work of hunting down all the supplies, especially finding all those big vases at thrift stores.

Preschool Art Show 2017

Another great art show by our preschool kids.

First, the kids sang in the worship service.

Then, after worship we moved to the fellowship hall for a nacho bar fundraiser and so see all their artwork on display.