A yearly distraction in my day job is working on the creation of a t-shirt for an admission on-campus yield event. With the help of a local designer, we've exceeded expectations every time. Yet, there is often a 'creativity crisis' -- usually in the home stretch -- that causes me to question the wisdom of my playing a role in this project in the future. I just don't have the stomach for seeing something that is 'the ultimate' (OK..I know, it's just a t-shirt...), over-analyzed and picked at, watered down, fearing that it will end up with no personality, cleverness, appeal or attitude. I'm with AnnE of Green Gables —lack of imagination is intolerable.
On a whole-life scale, my passion for beauty in its perfect form is similarly intense, consuming, and dismayingly painful at times. It's something I cannot be casual about; and it's often fraught with disbelief at the preferences of others that have a different, lesser beauty-passionate view. I've certainly lived long enough to see where my own obsessions with beauty have led to imperfection and disappointment, time after time after time after time. (But, she says with an evil twinkle, if I were Martha Stewart and had gnomes to do my bidding...I would always succeed in setting the world straight!!!). Yet I desperately care.
Those who know me are undoubtedly tired of me rehashing this. But I'm still in pain over the loss of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform our historic church's corner into a magical English garden, with beauty dripping at every turn, hidden corners whispering adventures to children, lush foliage hovering over rich mats of groundcover (no grass! no concrete!) — all tucked within and enfolded by our elegant wrought iron fence with two gates to welcome visitors. It didn't help that the process started with the undeserved death of a giant deodara cedar that had graced and flattered the corner for more than a half a century. I must add that some in the congregation were hoping I would chain myself to the tree to prevent the ax from falling, perhaps following a bra-burning ritual.
Those who know me are undoubtedly tired of me rehashing this. But I'm still in pain over the loss of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform our historic church's corner into a magical English garden, with beauty dripping at every turn, hidden corners whispering adventures to children, lush foliage hovering over rich mats of groundcover (no grass! no concrete!) — all tucked within and enfolded by our elegant wrought iron fence with two gates to welcome visitors. It didn't help that the process started with the undeserved death of a giant deodara cedar that had graced and flattered the corner for more than a half a century. I must add that some in the congregation were hoping I would chain myself to the tree to prevent the ax from falling, perhaps following a bra-burning ritual.
The journey from there was marked by meetings, divergent opinions, some quasi-designing, a grace-filled intervention that yielded a dream plan from a landscape professional, and a twist at the end that left us with a 'corner concept', rather than the garden my (and others') heart passionately yearned for. We're a downtown church. Rather than lifting passers-by out of the ordinary into the extraordinary, we have become 'one of them'. Maybe that's Gospel, Good News where truly belongs. But my heart aches.
So it's looking like the tshirt this year will be slightly closer to a corner than a garden. Next year — not my problem...
