Over the last few weeks I’ve been part of a ‘lockdown’ project from the Facebook Group ‘Create!‘, part of Northampton District Methodist Church.
The project aims to raise awareness of the Christian conviction that nobody should be ‘locked down’ because of who they are.
The Methodist Church is “committed to sharing, with all, the refuge and shelter God offers to each one of us” – Psalm 46.
The birds can perch in its shade.
People were asked to send in their drawings, paintings or creations of birds.
As might have been expected, these came in reflecting a vibrant mix of characters and colours…
Birds created by members and friends of the ‘Create!’ Facebook Group December 2020Illustration from the Book of Daniel Beatus von Liebana
Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.”
This is a ‘lockdown’ project from the Facebook Group ‘Create!‘, part of Northampton District Methodist Church. You can more read about this project here: “…when planted, it grows”
The project aims to raise awareness of the Christian conviction that nobody should be ‘locked down’ because of who they are.
The Methodist Church is “committed to sharing, with all, the refuge and shelter God offers to each one of us” – Psalm 46.
But below shows the final creation and where you can download artwork or order printed merchandise.
‘The birds can perch in its shade’ – Facebook Group Create! Northampton District Methodist Church
The composite image of the birds in the tree, are available to buy printed as folded A5 greetings cards and A6 postcards (while stocks last).
If you’d like to buy A5 greetings cards or A6 postcards contact Jill at Create! HERE -or myself, HERE.
The project is also available as a package of FREE to usepress-ready artwork*, that can be downloaded from here, Artwork*: The birds can perch in its shade.
*Please credit us if downloading and using or sharing this resource. And, please do let us know if you use it in any form. It’s good to talk.
*Credit: ‘The birds can perch in its shade’ – Facebook Group Create! Northampton District Methodist Church.
Mix into the above: 2 eggs
6 ozs SR flour
1 tsp baking powder
4 tablespoons milk
rind of one lemon – (need lemon juice later)
Line small loaf tin* with drop of oil then greaseproof paper
Bake ’bout 45mins at about 180 degC
While cake’s still hot, make a syrup of lemon juice and 3 tablespoons of icing or caster sugar (or any sugar to be honest – dark brown is also great).
Pour over cake while hot and still in tin.
Take out of tin after 10-15mins.
(Can be topped with melted chocolate!!)
Yuuuuummmm!
*For the cake picturedI doubled the recipe, used a big round tin and cooked it for about an hour (cover with foil if it starts to burn)
Ordinary people, in an ordinary place… an extraordinary story…
A few years back, I helped produce a project that portrayed people from a local village, relating them to characters in ‘The Christmas Story’.
‘Ordinary’ people in their ‘ordinary’ place – we are perhaps all part of an ‘extraordinary’ story.
Recently, Jill Marsh the District Mission Enabler for Northampton Methodist District commented on the project and suggested we might help produce similar for others. It’s a simple idea that could perhaps resonate in YOUR community…
A local church chose nine nativity characters and nine corresponding pictures of people from their village life. You can see the original project here: Ordinary People. The project was printed as posters and displayed in a local shop window for shoppers and passers by to see.
You could do similar in your community!
If you like the idea, I’d be happy to artwork and supply graphic poster images for you*. I can arrange cost-effective printing and delivery of A2 posters for you to display, and/or supply your images for online social/media use. *For a small donation to cover my time.
Using your images of the people around your community, it perhaps could help people think about what the nativity story means today.
All you’d need to supply is nine quality images with captions, (it’s important to obtain consent for them to be used), and supply any local / logo and details etc.
Images used previously were:
‘Guiding Star’ – Guiding eg. a crossing patrol person
‘Choir of Angels’ – Singing eg. playgroup school class
‘Shepherds’ – Working eg. work men/women
‘Mary’ – Expecting eg. mother to be
‘Magi’ – Bringing eg. visitors
‘Bethlehem’ – Waiting eg. village sign population
‘Census Officials’ – Organising eg. parish council officers
Perhaps we might recognise or even realise a place we can all share. Where we can find shelter, sanctuary, shade, harbour, rest and relief. From the throat and heart to the stretching vascular meristems… it can become a life supporting structure. A place we can share stories, support, nutrition and relief, as well as a place to design, create, educate and grow…
If heaven is like this, we can perhaps sneak a glimpse of it. It’s not just a wonderful world, it’s a mighty world… the world around us can have great strength and value. If we think of the resources around us, perhaps they are in-deed mightier than we can comprehend.
As people, we are a vibrant mix of characters and cultures, colours, voices, insights and dreams. Some live in the north some in the south, some will sing together and some will never meet, eye to eye. We all sing different notes in different styles but are perhaps part of the same throng, capable of marvellous murmuration, rejuvenating ritual and intimate ingenuity.
The energy that can bind us is bigger and mightier than we can comprehend. Perhaps it should be valued, shared and celebrated.
The Parable of the Mustard Seed
Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it?31 It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth.32 Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.” Mark 4:30-32
From the delicately delightful Priscilla Ahn‘s “free as any child would wanna be”
From the deep resonance of Paul Robeson when he sang Joyce Kilmer‘s words, perhaps “only God can make a tree…”
So that was an interesting half-term break. We were instructed to self-isolate. “The NHS informed us, it is now your legal duty to self-isolate”. We all did so. I could share the details of this, but it’s exhausting and it would not be helpful. So…
Back to life, back to reality… however do you want me…
A month or so ago I went through an exercise to visualise some reasons for my being… What we came up with at that moment was something like this:
“I get up in the morning… to discover and experience commonality and connections so that I can interact with people and the wider world, to help us all feel different…” #workinprogress
As you may know I tend to share stuff I see. I very often find the vibrancy and intensity of the world around me so strong I have to stop and acknowledge it. What a wonderful world…
So after a few weeks of going without, here’s to more of the simple stuff around us!
Below is a random compilation of captures from my Instagram this year – minus the inevitable shots of pets, food & drink of course.
Enjoy…
If you need any imagery or artwork for print – give me a shout.
“Section Breaks, Section Breaks my kingdom for a Section Break…” (or a page break at least)
Perhaps the most underused formatting option in the realm of Microsoft Word*!
In my experience the Layout, Break, Page or Section Break is one of the simplest formatting options that people either don’t know about, or lazily underuse. I reminded a colleague recently and they exclaimed “Wow! It stops everything moving around!”
Two docs, one portrait, and another landscape… One doc is colour and the other needs to print on the back in mono.
Combining Documents…
Instead of keying return return return… to reach the end of a page, you can simply jump to the next page with a section break!
For one, this can solve the problem of ‘everything moving’ when you change an earlier paragraph.
Secondly, in the ‘new section/page’ you can then change your page orientation, margins etc… So we can insert a landscape page after the portrait page.
If you format your articles/chapters etc with Next Page Section Breaks it can all stay organised.
Another underused tip: If you click Show/Hide (Ctrl+Shift+8) you can see your hidden formatting symbols – which can be useful!
So we can add a landscape page (in a new section) after the portrait page.
‘Select All’ (Ctrl A), then copy (Crtl C) the content of our landscape document and paste (Crtl V) the content into the new one.
Colour and Mono in one document!
Often a black & white looking graphic is actually ‘a dark mix’ of colours, and should ideally be converting to proper grayscale!
Hidden colour £0.10p. Grayscale 1p
Hidden colour £0.10p. Grayscale 1p
Converting dirty images to greyscale will save you money – your printer will then charge it as mono and not as a colour page – these costs mount up when you’re printing a whole year group!
In Word, simply double or right click on an image that looks black and white and convert it to true grayscale.
Format Picture – Picture Colour – Grayscale.
(While you are at it you could compress all the pictures in your document and probably half the file size!… Double click and image and compress, selecting ‘all images’…)
*Formatting your documents is a good habit to get into. If you only use one new thing in your next Word doc, make it section breaks… it stops everything moving around!
Many of us have recently been forced to re-evaluate things. The pandemic has forced many to stop, pause, quarantine… find our home. Recently my wife, kids and I were forced to literally ‘go home’ – after one day on the other side of the country on holiday, we returned to the ‘shire and spent the rest of our holy-day at home. Self isolating for 14 days. (hence this crazy post)
A window in Whiteparish – before isolation.
‘if one could only suspend disbelief forever’.
Once again we break routines and re-evaluate things we take for granted, and find ourselves disbelieving the things we believe in. A few years ago, after seeing a play at Leicester’s Curve, I wrote ‘if one could only suspend disbelief forever’. We usually do this daily, we believe the stories that swirl around us. It’s when the competing stories begin to confuse our assumptions that things might start to wobble… but what are these beliefs, the everyday things we trust in?
I have written before how as a student of Art and Performance, we were taught to deconstruct. To help discover the links between the ‘object’, the ‘subject’, and its ‘meanings’. But deconstruction still leaves us with the deconstructed building blocks, the stories, the images, and assumptions.
JPR 1995
JPR Visual Art 1995
We are not these things!
I have always held on to the concept of I AM. Images, which breed assumptions, which create motives. We are these things, but today I had a sudden self-epiphany… In the meta-modern world yes, we are made up of these things, but at heart, at root, at our core, we are not these things!
In a novel recently, I read a passage describing individuals living before our culture took hold…
“It was the huge elemental forces – the open sky, one day azure blue, the next grey, lowering and savage, the ridges that swept endlessly to the horizon like a sea, the whistling breezes and the great silences – it was these things which both frightened him and comforted him as well…”
Sarum, Edward Rutherfurd
To truly deconstruct, perhaps we need to clear the ‘stuff’ off the table, wipe the slate clean and then re-embrace things. Isolation has caused many to go without the things we hold (or that seemed) important.
At our core (or heart) we are so much more than our IAM.
It’s easily said, but not so easily done. However, it can be easily done, and it’s not so easy to say!
While ‘doing’ some Yoga with Adriene today I realised that I AM ‘here’. All I AM is here. The fact that ‘we are here’ is a big deal! Isn’t it!?
Adriene’s yoga has many levels, but for me at the moment, it’s about an awareness of breath, posture, stance, etc – ‘personal presence’ before ego and assumptions cloud the mind. It requires constant attention to ‘notice’. In her Youtube series ‘Home’ ’30 days of yoga’, Adrienne Mishler has a clever casual personal way of repeating words and phrases around the essential principles involved in yoga asanas.
For example, today the simple Anjali Mudra (or prayer hands). It’s a posture of composure, of returning to one’s core/heart. As you bring your hands together at your center line, you can help activate a recognition of re-balance. It leads to a lot more than that, but it’s a good start.
Anjali Mudra
Many of our personal wobbles relate to physical, mental, emotional imbalance, dis-ease, di-stress, instability …
If we can deconstruct and free ourselves from the power of our culture’s images we might notice our presence, seek to rebalance ourselves, and accept the powerful simplicity of life’s energies… then compassionately rebuild.
Personally the theorising and deconstruction only goes so far, the real life changer is to stop, ‘show up’, and breathe…
Slow down… Breathe… Trust… Balance…
Take time for yourself… embrace the moment…
Breathe in through the nose – inhale gratitude, compassion…
Breathe in through the nose – inhale gratitude, compassion…
Exhale out through the mouth… gratitude, compassion…
Stretch, press, draw in the energy…
Head over heart…
Adriene says “Take good care of yourself so you can take good care of others”… Thanks Adriene.
Marcel Proust wrote “Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
Here’s to knowing ourselves better, so we might take care of others, and garden a few souls if we get the chance.
Do you have info for students to revise or remember?
About 900 words will fit nicely onto this notelet at 10pt typesize. About 750 words at 12pt. This prints 4 up on A3 paper, or you can print it smaller to 4 up A4.
Tuck ‘em in your pocket! Effective economical novel print.
It’s just a thing I put together in lockdown, feel free to download, adapt and share.
Notelets printed – 4 on an A3 sheet,
You can print this on an A3 or A4 paper you’ll achieve four notelets per print.
Yes, this sort of thing should be done using Indesign, Illustrator, or Publisher etc. but the majority of home/office users don’t have this software. So here’s a template in Microsoft Word.
Ick!… Word not nice.
But Yea!… anyone can use it!
The template is set at A3 and includes two pages. Start on page one and the text boxes flow through to the end. The last text box is not linked and becomes the cover of your notelet.
Simply paste your text in, edit and adapt it. Then copy and paste the content in the another three rows.
Happy daze.
Once printed, at A3 or A4 double-sided , simply guillotine the stack into four.
I guess you could just print the first page – ~450 words.
Students can fold their notelet themselves!
Notelets printed 4 on an A3 sheet.
If you print on A4 paper, you may want to increase the type size 2 points – but you’ll then get mini-notelets.
Smaller Notelets printed 4 on an A4 sheet.
When you start playing with MS Word then you really must be in some form of lockdown mode! 🙂
Jules P Richards 