When I was thinking about how to create an atmosphere cohesive with our pastor’s current sermon series entitled “Living Spiritually Free,” (based on the book of Galatians) I remembered this beautiful vision of Hildegard von Bingen*:

“Listen: there was once a king sitting on his throne. Around him stood great and wonderfully beautiful columns ornamented with ivory, bearing the banners of the king with great honour. Then it pleased the king to raise a small feather from the ground and he commanded it to fly. The feather flew, not because of anything in itself but because the air bore it along. Thus am I, “A feather on the breath of God.”

I love that thought, that image: carried along the breath of God…all of us.

Moved by the Spirit and dancing with the Trinity and with each other.

Freely chosen. Separate but not alone. Active and purposeful yet resting and trusting the current, the breeze, the flow.

Each feather uniquely, intentionally, and wonderfully made-and on its own journey.

(So, I ended up using feathers, fishing line, color changing lights and a wind fan- it was a fun process! Especially when some of the youngest children came in while I was working- they were so curious and asked and said lots of cool stuff. I love their enthusiasm and insight! And they all chose a feather of their own to take with them.)

Blessings,

Saskia

Decor, Design & Photography: Saskia Kidd @ora et decora 2016

*Hildegard of Bingen, O.S.B. (German: Hildegard von Bingen; Latin: Hildegardis Bingensis; 1098 – 17 September 1179), also known as Saint Hildegard and Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, visionary, and polymath. She is considered to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.

Hildegard was elected magistra by her fellow nuns in 1136; she founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165. One of her works as a composer, the Ordo Virtutum, is an early example of liturgical drama and arguably the oldest surviving morality play. She wrote theological, botanical, and medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs, and poems, while supervising miniature illuminations in the Rupertsberg manuscript of her first work, Scivias. She is also noted for the invention of a constructed language known as Lingua Ignota. 

(source: Wikipedia)