I’m going to use this week’s post to advertise a project I’ve been working on. Part of me wants to apologize, but I think this project is really cool and I really want to share it with as many people as possible. It’s a literary and art journal for my home diocese (the Episcopal Diocese of Central New York) called Wonder in All. Our hope is that the journal can be a place where people of the diocese can share their artwork, specifically artwork that represents their lives as Episcopalians living in this time and this place. The other editors and I have defined “artwork” as broadly as we could in the medium we’re using (online publication): visual art, short fiction, non-fictional theological reflections, and poetry. Submissions are due on May 15th of this year, and we’ll be publishing the journal on June 1st, then again in December.

Like I said, I’m really excited about this. Really, really, really excited. The journal has actually been a dream of mine for a while. I think that poetry, religion, and spirituality are closely linked, and while I love writing professionally about the three, I also love to hear how others approach their spirituality and religion through poetry and other art forms. My job is literally to help and encourage people to reflect on their relationship with God, and with this journal I get to catch a glimpse of that relationship through the artistic work of others.

There’s more, too. Not only do I get to read and see the art of other people, I get to read and see the artwork of others with a similar religion to mine and living in a similar region as I am. How has being an Episcopalian in this time and this place, in other words, affected someone’s art? How has the liturgy affected how they express their relationship with God? How have the mountains, rivers, lakes, and forests of this part of the world changed how they express the deepest parts of their beings? How are we similar, but also how are we different – we who love the same things and live in the same places? I find these kinds of questions simply fascinating, and it’s one of the reasons that I became a priest: to ask questions like these.

I also find these questions, and others like them, interesting as a parent. I remember a number of times in my daughters’ lives when they were struck by beauty. Sometimes it was beauty that struck me, sometimes their reaction to beauty helped me see the same beauty, and sometimes I did not see what they saw. These children, my children, who came from me and my wife and who were raised in our family together, yet who are also different, living consciousnesses, can show me the Beautiful just as I teach them to open their eyes to Beauty at the same time. How magnificent.

These are just some of the things that keep me so humble, and I think of them as a gift from God. I think that I have many things that I can teach others. I have gifts, all of them from God (though some more directly so), and I use them in my work daily. But there is always the risk that one’s gifts can become the point instead of the growth that people feel when God’s gifts are lived freely.

I remember being told by my teacher-mentors that their students have been their greatest teachers, and I think that’s true, but it doesn’t quite get to the heart of it. It’s not like a teacher suddenly becomes the student, but that the teacher’s life in God is deepened in teaching. If, importantly, if that teacher remains humble to the gift, the act of teaching, and to the reason why learning is a wonderful act at all. In learning and teaching, as well as in creating art of all kinds, and even in the simple act of opening space for others to explore their own relationships with God, the eyes of our hearts, minds, and spirits are opened to reality beyond our own vision. We see more – not that we see more things but that we see things more fully. That’s why artists and teachers are suddenly struck by a sudden patience and love, even in the busiest times. The world has suddenly opened up to them, and they see it for what it is, not for what we have demanded it to be.

I pray that artists will make use of the journal. I hope it’s a place where people can learn more about themselves in relation to the world around them, to God, and to other artists. I hope we get so many submissions that we can’t pack it all in one issue! But overall, I hope that God uses the journal to bring others into a deeper relationship with God. Wouldn’t that be amazing?

If you’re interested in this journal, you can find it on cnyepiscopal.org/wonder/.