Last week I wrote about my identity as a writer, and how this identity snuck up on me.
This week, I’m going to write about something that I’m decidedly not.
I am not an artist. Not at all. I never have been. From my earliest memories, I’ve always felt that my ability to craft images was marginal at best. You know those things where you finish drawing a picture from a coloring book?
It would always be a lopsided, bizarre, nightmarish distortion of that poor frog. As far as I’m concerned, my lack of artistic ability is only dwarfed by my atrocious handwriting.
I’m not an artist. Ok? I’ve never been a doodler, the margins of my papers were always pristine.
I hope that by this point in this post you can understand how deeply antithetical drawing has been to me through the duration of my entire life.
But a few weeks ago, I did something. I was at a concert at a church, and as a way of helping me to stay present with the music I decided to draw a chair that was in the chancel. As vulnerable as it was for me to share my florid, verbose, and turgid writing (obviously I can’t help myself), the idea that I would share something I’ve drawn is even more so. But here it is:
“Chair,” pen on pocket notebook, Fox-Kline, 2024
It’s a chair! It is recognizably a chair! The perspective is wonky and there is ample room for improvement. But I drew a chair! And I didn’t hate doing it!
And then the other day, I was giving a drawing prompt: Write a positive emotion and draw four pictures of an animal that I associate with that emotion. So I wrote “Joy”, and drew a bunch of goats.
“Goat to Joy,” pen on the back of a homework sheet, Fox-Kline, 2024
I think I did pretty alright on this one!
All of this is to say, I’m still not an artist. I don’t see myself that way and I don’t anticipate I will anytime soon. But I did draw somethings and enjoyed myself while doing so.
Last week I asked us to reconsider our identities as are flection of how we have grown and changed, both individually and as a church.
This week, I want us to remember that just because we think we know who we are, that doesn’t mean that we can’t try new things. These new things may not end up etched in our cornerstone, but it might not stink and we might even enjoy it.
Peace,
Jeff Fox-Kline
Twelve Corners Presbyterian Church