Beauty All Around

I live in the Austin area, and I love this town. As a college student, I spent many a weekend evening down on 6th street, and when someone first posted a picture of all the bars and clubs boarded up, my heart sank, even as I understood it's for all our own good.

I wasn't the only one who felt that way. And some people did something about it.

The creative community came together, bringing the need for beauty together with the talent of artists. They created a "Hope Gallery" with murals encouraging Austinites to have courage, have hope, know that we are neighbors, and will overcome.

While doctors and nurses are hard at work, it is artists of all types who are tending to our hearts and spirits. Galleries have -- virtually -- thrown open their doors, musicians are having free concerts online, actors are presenting plays or short pieces. Soak up the art. Feed your soul. (And if you see a tip jar out, toss a few bucks in. This industry has ground to a halt.)

Art Museums
Concerts
Classical Music Livestreams
Broadway Musicals

Comments

Me and My Collar

You may run into me on a Friday, in my neighborhood, so it's time I let you know what you might see. When I was doing my required unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), my supervisor suggested that any of us who came from traditions where a clerical collar was an option, take one "collar week," to see how we were treated, as opposed to wearing regular professional clothes. After a couple of days, I joked to the Catholic priest, "How do you manage the power?" In regular clothes, I would walk into a patient's room, and it would take about 5 or so minutes of introductions and pleasantries before we could really get down to talking about their feelings, their fears, the deep stuff. With most people, as soon as that clerical collar walked in the room, with me attached, they began pouring out all the heavy stuff they were carrying. I was riding the bus back and forth every day, and though not quite so dramatic, the collar effect was alive there, to...

Could You Send Her for the Ammunition?

Let me preface by saying I know that not all people are comfortable with military/war metaphors, so feel free to either find a metaphor that works for you, or skip this altogether. My dad, however, was a Korean war veteran who went to military college (that's what Texas A&M was in those days), originally stationed in artillery before being changed at the last minute to be a teacher in the corps of engineers. So some battle metaphors worked for him in explaining the world around him. His highest compliment about a person's character was an affirmative answer to "but could you send them for the ammunition?" The metaphor is this: you are in battle, and it's not looking good. You've got a partner with you, and y'all are running out of ammunition. If you send this person back to get more ammunition, will they return? Or will they promise to return, but then run the opposite direction, sacrificing you in the process? He and I would talk about this,...

"I Don't Know Who I Am Now" or The Importance of Not Assuming for a While

The next 5 months are probably going to be kinda weird. Uncertainty and anxiety flying all over the place. Duck! And then after that ... it's also going to be kinda weird, but a different kind of weird, as we move into the After Times, and figure out what exactly they're going to be like, and what exactly WE are going to be like. It is in times like these, that I like to turn to art to help make sense of it all. I refer, of course, to the art known as the television series Doctor Who. I mean, if we know things are going to be weird, we probably should look at some art that deals with the weird, right? Now's the time to examine Hieronymous Bosch and Marc Chagall. And Doctor Who, that time-traveling, face-shifting hero. Part of the Doctor Who story (and why it's been able to keep going so long) is that rather than die, the Doctor regenerates, retaining who they are, but with a different face, body, and to a certain extent, a different personality. Immediately afte...

Boots and Blessings

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