Blue shadows fall on barren fields where once we roamed heart-to-heart. Now clouds hinge on sinister skies. Grass, tattered earth, flaps like threadbare laundry. Cold and exposed, I drift alone. A weathered fence guides me, hand-over-hand. Nothing tied down, everything shifts in ochre waves. How can I feel trapped in a place so vast? Bare…Read more Longing for Home
spiritual journey
Painting A Prayer for Haiti (& a poem)
How my heart cringes on this mountain carcass – mounded bones stripped bare. Flayed flanks decay into ceaseless city striving. Betrayed and battered, you sprawl exposed, miserable, dull with hunger. But I sense something here, yearning at the fringes. Something broods at the frayed edges of this wasteland. Something determined, stubborn, more powerful and pervasive…Read more Painting A Prayer for Haiti (& a poem)
Why I Paint
I could feel the withering of a parched spirit. Aching to reach into the abstract, into the transcendent. To stretch with all my might and drink of the invisible. As of Sunday afternoon, it was my longest break from painting in more than a year. During the previous few weeks, the tactile world around me…Read more Why I Paint
Scars That Tell of the Good Life
With the kind of radiance that hints at secret knowledge of something very deep and very good, Noyo eagerly describes the privilege he feels in serving his native country, Haiti, as a Young Life staff-worker. “Just because something is easy,” he explains, “doesn’t mean it is the best. If you do something easy, it doesn’t…Read more Scars That Tell of the Good Life
Wherever I am on this Planet
Through all the glitter, tedium, and crush of this life... I’ve seen it in rural Vietnam in the shining eyes of parents who care for eight orphaned boys… ...in the joyful upturned faces of the persecuted church of Nepal, who gather without fear… ...in those who awoke in the desperate poverty of Mathare Valley, the second largest…Read more Wherever I am on this Planet
Port au Prince Haiti at a Glance
Port au Prince is the hustling, bustling, overflowing city-that-never-stops capital of Haiti. It is said that the streets are the living room of Port au Prince. From the brightly colored, stacked structures on the hillsides of the upscale Petionville suburb to the densely-packed, narrow crumbling streets of the City Soleil slum, it is an endless…Read more Port au Prince Haiti at a Glance
A Rooftop Crack in Haiti
On Monday, dawn crept over me on a rooftop in Haiti. Just below, massive trucks lumbered over narrow rocky streets, lugging water to and from a water purification facility. Roosters crowed and dogs barked. People walked, sang, laughed, and chattered in every nook and cranny in the streets, balconies and rooftops all around. Palm fronds…Read more A Rooftop Crack in Haiti
Painting a Prayer
I’ll be honest. Prayer is often difficult for me, at least as prayer is traditionally defined – sitting or kneeling and talking to God. A couple main reasons: I am a person of few spoken words, and it’s hard for me to sit still. When I was in my early 20’s, I passed through turbulent waters.…Read more Painting a Prayer
Hope
A bird sings in deep December; its persistent serenade coaxes morning into dark. What memories of summer nectar fill its trilling head? What longing for lilting spring breeze floods its swelling chest? Here, where heavy, settling layers weight our hearts in sleep, a singular bird refuses to notice, to succumb. It rises before dawn and…Read more Hope
Painting My Gratitude
Early in the morning, before the sun, I rise in a shadowed sleepy house. Shaking dreams from the edges of my mind, I cradle the Book. Eager, expectant, this my most treasured hour. I listen to steady slow breathing, rising from rooms all around. Overcome, my heart swells and overflows. It seeps and fills every…Read more Painting My Gratitude
Colleen Briggs Images & Writing 