adventures at btech

have chairs will travel.

if i never pick up another chair i will be happy. i feel like i spent the whole morning moving chairs.

but, when all was said and done, the spirit moved.

from teh beginning... s,o we have spent one morning a week over the last month hanging out with students at berkeley technical academy in the youth spirit artworks program. they paint chairs as an entrepreneurial project. it is an art class during the day, an after school program, and a summer program.

in solidarity, after a couple of conversations with this group, our small art and liberation class decided to paint chairs, too. we all picked five modern saints and prophets to memorialize on chairs.

today, we went with the intention of displaying the chairs that the students painted, honoring their hard work all year, and doing a small "ritual" to memorialize friends and family who have been lost to violence in the btech community... with food.

the best part of the whole process has been the people. the two women who are on staff with this program are incredible. they are tireless, flexible, compassionate and engaged. the students have accomplished something by getting to school. the janitor mentioned that some of the students would not have eaten today if it wasn't for our free community meal. there are some incredible artists who have developed serious skills in less than a year of art classes. there are relationships of support between the students and faculty, and among the students.

i had a long chat with my new friend ciana. she was hilarious and knows it. she made an excellent metaphor between her life and cereal. unsweetened cereal needs a little bit of sugar to balance it. order in her life needs a little bit of chaos (and vice verse) to be balanced. theology at work.

as music played, much to my delight, students participated in our ritual. they went up and wrote names of people who had died, or their heroes, on leaves and put them on a tree. students sitting around, even if they did not participate in that way, spoke about the issues and shared their stories. i felt privileged to be a part of this community in this moment in this small way.

the challenge now is deeper theological reflection on the meaning of this process, both for us and for the community. i need to do serious thinking about how art is a tool of theology and how i can use it well. this was the practical application, but to complete the circle i need to keep thinking on it. it was not all rainbows and roses, but the spirit was there.