Art and Ministry; Art of Ministry

It was an interesting evening. We had a little art show at Big Old Seminary and two of my icons (Sts. Matthew and Peter) were exhibited; tonight was the "official opening" and a reception. The theme of the show was Psalm 16, and the opening started with a wonderful meditation from one of our OT profs on the Psalm and its relationship to art. Art and Ministry can work together in all sorts of interesting ways.

I invited my friend WG to come to the reception. She's a secular Jew, and I suspect it's the first time she was ever in an Episcopal seminary, but I know she's game for anything.

She's worked for many years in Women's Entrepreneurship Development jobs in government and think tanks and such, and I knew she'd enjoy the art show, but I also wanted to pick her brains on a project I'm on the margins of. It's a women's training and microenterprise project in Africa for an area that has suffered much from war and poverty. A dynamic local (by this I mean African, born in this area of the country) female pastor is doing this as a major project. She's not been able to raise all the funds needed, and although she's very adept at pushing large rocks uphill, she doesn't know lots about small businesses.

So WG and I spent two hours running through her contacts, who might be helpful and how I might get in touch with them. She's emailing me the names and email addresses and phone numbers, and I guess I'll spend some time over the next few weeks seeing if there's something I can do to help this project come to fruition. May not lead anywhere at all, but just as art is sometimes surprising in opening doors to the soul, sometimes the art of ministry is opening surprising doors to the souls (and contact lists) of good people.