Crossing Tea and Beads

Sunday mornings I have been wanting to stay home. I cannot explain this, except to say that it feels somehow illuminated by these words from Luci Shaw...

"If our lives are centered in God's reality, we can risk working out from that center in new directions."

The direction I've specifically felt is this sense of wanting deeper communion with my children, around our faith, in ways that feel artful and concrete. Church, for whatever reason, seems to take us away from each other rather than join us in memorable ways.

So yesterday we stayed home. We sat on the side porch and drank red tea from roses china cups. In a book called Tea: The Drink that Changed the World, we read about how Japanese monks developed tea rituals in the 1400's and how these rituals are still practiced "with grace."

Then Sara and I took turns reading from a tiny book called The Rosary: A Journey to the Beloved. We learned that "rosary" comes from "rosarium," which means "rose garden." We learned that the rosary was made popular in the 1400's.



As soon as I closed the book, Sonia declared, "I want to make a rosary!" Sara agreed, and so the beads were brought out.



Over the next hour, beads were joined to beads. Little hands worked to string together the "decades" of the life of Christ— the joyful, the sorrowful, the glorious, and the luminous. Sonia, who often speaks as she works, suddenly said, "Connecting the cross."



I had just picked up Breath for the Bones and encountered this sentence: "There is another calling for the artist, and that is one of linking earth to heaven, pointing the human to the divine, finding the connections."

And I wondered if that is what I've been longing for in my experience of church: the earth side of spiritual life, whether tea rituals practiced with grace or beads that tell the Grace story— and me and my girls actively connecting the cross... from earth to heaven, and back again.




Red, Gold & Garnet Rosary by Sonia. Anchor and LIfesaver Rosary by Sara.

____

Over at The High Calling, we're "connecting the cross," discussing Luci Shaw's Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination and Spirit: A Reflection on Creativity and Faith. Want to join us?