| I was lettering a wall menu for a friend who was getting ready to open a
sandwich shop the following week. I had just finished a very handsome "Blueberry
Muffin with Cream Cheese" when everyone - the plumbers, the electrician,
the cabinet maker - stopped for a morning break. Looking for something to read
while I drank my coffee, I picked up someone's pocket Bible.
"For I am persuaded," Paul said in his letter to the Romans, "that
neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities... nor any other created
thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God." I finished my
work on the menu, but something had changed. Why not use the alphabet, I thought,
to share words like Paul's? The German graphic designer Rudolf Koch says "The
scribe is the servant of the text." My experience, my revelation, in the
sandwich shop was that a larger text had beckoned to me.
I share these words of praise from the settings of my beliefs and activities.
The symbolism of the artwork is personal, as well as general; the Scripture is
often a paraphrase or a combination of translations.
Family, work, friendship, the seasons, music, memory. These are the experiences
in which I have seen the line that separates the 'spiritual' from the 'secular'
blur and then completely disappear. These are the experiences in which I have
found God's good gifts and tender mercies sufficient to the needs of everyday
life.
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