I'm honored and proud to introduce you to my friend, author Megan Nilsen. If you've been following my blog for any length of time, you know that I am passionate about adoption. Adopting two of my children from Kenya forever changed me and my art. To quote artist Makoto Fujimura, "We often think of great artists, musicians,…Read more “A Beautiful Exchange”
Adoption
Elijah’s Birds
In the wilderness, I build a fire for you. I call you softly by name: come, creep near, warm your hands, shelter in my arms. Like a fearful animal, afraid to trust but desperately cold with nowhere else to turn, you come. We huddle together against howling gusts. But without warning, a wind-whisper triggers memories just…Read more Elijah’s Birds
Rooted in Light
The road from courage and hope, to utter despair, and then finally to exhilaration stretched through wild lands in 2005. With the daughter we longed to adopt buried in a third-world orphanage and silence from the Kenyan lawyer who should be inviting us to come and claim her, I could no longer bear the separation.…Read more Rooted in Light
Prophetic Art
“Art is the language of the soul.” With these words, one of my lifelong friends exhorted me as I wrestled for years with an insatiable need to express myself visually. For decades I tried to suppress this language, feeling it could not urgently or adequately address the evils I witnessed in the world. It felt…Read more Prophetic Art
Just to Touch the Hem
Nairobi, June 2005 She refused to eat. Her forehead felt warm. She cried incessantly. Nothing alleviated her discomfort. As a sojourning foreigner, I lacked even the name of a pediatrician in Kenya, much less contact information. Even if I knew who to call, I couldn’t easily access transport. My one solace – I knew that…Read more Just to Touch the Hem
Abide
I feel a bit like a schizophrenic root system. The contents of my week seem jumbled and chaotic, too many off-shoots to identify a specific direction. I am deep in the soil of life, a tangle of kinked and knotted roots. I have no idea what is emerging above-ground. I remember another time I pressed…Read more Abide
Offering – Pondering the Lives of Mother Teresa Sisters
Kenya, 2001 (somewhere near Nairobi's second largest slum) Blinking in the transition from blazing equatorial sunlight to sacred shadows, we hesitate in the foyer. The sanctuary stretches before us, an ordination service for new Sisters already in progress. Rows of simple benches packed to capacity march along concrete floors. I spot an open space in…Read more Offering – Pondering the Lives of Mother Teresa Sisters
Colleen Briggs Images & Writing 