Create From and For Abundance
Create From and For Abundance
Let the horizon be your canvas.
I remember learning about vanishing points in my middle school art class. Vanishing points are those places where artists create depth in their work, measuring proximity and bringing a piece to life through realism. I remember using a ruler to make sure my lines were straight, but the more I made those lines and defined the horizon, the fuller and more natural they became. What was once hard to see and imagine eventually became certain and clear.
That’s exactly what horizons do in real life, too. They provide a point that we can look to and reach out for. And, perhaps, the horizon is where we can “go” to create. Looking to the horizon will help us make space for our poems, photographs, and paintings.
The horizon is an endless and limitless line that stretches beyond what we can see for ourselves, though we know there’s always room for more.
More to read, research, and write.
More to prepare and pray for.
More to grow into and become.
This month, allow yourself space. Look up and let the horizon be your canvas.
Jazmine Lampley
Editor
Reads to ruminate on.
Writers on our blog are bringing forth beautiful words and powerful poems. Here, we’re sharing our most recent features. Share a comment on the blog when words move you.
Out of the Ravine by Kristine Amundrud
A piece on cultivating creativity even in empty seasons.To Seek the Place of Resurrection by Katelyn Dixon
A poem on seeking the holy and looking within.For the Ones Who Have Learned the Hard Way by Ashley Ward
A poem on embracing the space you fill.Resurrection Within by Sarah Freymuth
Prose on the risk of trusting God.
Listen to The Fallow House podcast.
This season, we’ve been delving into conversations centered around the chapters of Let There Be Art by Rachel Marie Kang. In Ep. 14, Mia and Lamar discuss the need for seasons of bareness and seasons of pause. Seasons of silence—that’s what our beautiful community is built upon. Bare doesn’t mean barren, and silence doesn’t mean ceasing. Lamar and Mia remind us that there is power and beauty in silence…a kind we don’t typically focus on.
LISTEN to Ep. 14 · Let There Be Silence
LISTEN to Ep. 15 · Let There Be Fellowship
LISTEN to Ep. 16 · Let There Be Connection
Bareness is part of change…it needs to be let go in order to grow.
—Mia Arrington
International Inklings Day
International Inklings Day is May 11, 2023
Started by
, International Inklings Day celebrates J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and the beginning of their friendship.On May 11th, 1926, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis met for the first time and gathered for English tea with Oxford English faculty at Merton College. This would begin a 40 year friendship...a friendship that would inspire generations to come.
Jamie is a writer, an editor for Penguin Random House, and a friend of The Fallow House. She is passionate about books and story and how they encourage and change people’s lives, and she created International Inklings Day in August 2014 to celebrate the coming together of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.
Jamie has poured her passion for The Inklings into her own words. Below are two articles about the friendship shared between J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.
My happiest hours are spent with three or four old friends and old clothes tramping together and putting up in small pubs – or else sitting up till the small hours in someone’s college rooms talking nonsense, poetry, theology, metaphysics over beer tea and pipes.
—C.S. Lewis
Follow Jamie over at The Inklingsto learn more about International Inklings Day.
The abundance of Indigenous dishes.
The horizon of our future rests on our ancestors’ traditions. Much of who we are, and who we are becoming, comes from where and how our ancestors were. And, food is but one way we can connect our past with the present.
Chef Crystal Wahpepah, owner of Wahpepah’s Kitchen and a member of the Kickapoo tribe, has taken inspiration from her tribe and from various Indigenous tribes to cultivate and curate authentic Native American dishes.
Her work is paradoxically redemptive—with her dishes, she is shedding light on the beauty and abundance of Native foods and dishes that colonization once sought to diminish and wipe out.
In an article on The Guardian entitled, “Chef Crystal Wahpepah on the power of Indigenous cuisine: ‘Native foods are overlooked,’ Maria C. Hunt interviews Crystal Wahpepah on the power of Indigenous cuisine. “It’s been overlooked,” says Crystal Wahpepah, “how beautiful Native foods are and where they come from.”
The most beautiful thing about being a Native American chef is the community and who you get to work with … I wouldn’t do what I do without my community.
—Crystal Wahpepah
Chef Crystal Wahpepah specializes in making Native American dishes, such as bison blueberry meatballs with a turnip slaw and greens dressed in an elderberry vinaigrette, and heirloom blue corn cornbread with ground juniper berries and a maple cream drizzle.
A painting to ponder.
A while back, Melissa Eckdahl, follower and friend of The Fallow House, shared her painting, "Restoring the Soul," with us. We love how her painting coincides with these few verses from her poem, “Who I Am” . . .
My soul begins to create
Reflecting back upon her creator
The joy of color and dots and verse
With each new expression, a drop
Of Living Water begins to bring wholeness
Filling up Who I am
So, Who am I?
Or rather Whose am I?
Only in knowing the Great I AM
am I able to know Who I am
and as I know Who I am
I am able to know The I AM
Her painting, an acrylic on canvas, is bold, vibrant, and abundantly filled with color, texture, and truth. It is beautiful and prompting, and we’re wondering:
What do you see when you look at this painting? How do you feel and what does it speak to you? Comment below and let us know what you think.
Thank you so much for sharing!!