My faith community

One of my classes this term is an online course that is exploring “gospel and global media cultures.” As part of the introduction/orientation task, we asked people to create a lego sculpture of themselves in the midst of their faith community, and then photograph it and embed it in their blog at the site. I suppose I was thinking that the task had two goals: introduction, and a transformation of medium. But like any assignment, lots of other things happen along the way.

Here's my own effort -- and part of what was so fun, was doing it with our youngest son, Nathaniel, who helped me create it (that's him, behind the sculpture in one of the images). He put a few figures in who were evil -- a dementor from an old Harry Potter set, for instance -- and when I asked him why, he said they were seeking repentance. I didn't even know he'd paid enough attention to understand that word, so I was psyched by his response.

The sculpture I created probably needs some explanation? I put a traditional church building in, in part because I'm deeply and firmly part of the Roman Catholic community, and I was trying to signify the institutional church. Then I wanted my family -- "domestic church"! -- so there's the group of us (me, my partner Eric, our two sons Nathaniel and Alex) in a circle in front of the church. We're standing around a 3-fold flower (Trinity, Creation), but one son (Nathaniel) has on sunglasses and a hat, and is turned partly away -- he's the 11 year old who is bored by church, and not sure he believes in God.

Our little domestic church is nearly encircled by a group of people who represent the family faith formation group that's been such an important part of our life these past several years. But even that circle is open on one end, because all of us are open to the world.

And then the final, widest group/circle? is full of different people, as diverse as I could make it using the lego people we had. They're the wider world, and there's a path from the church through our family and faith group, out into the world. An open path!

I used a very simple mechanism (iPhoto's slide show) to create this, so I couldn't figure out how to put credits on it. But it's important to note that the song used is "Will you come and follow me" from the Iona Community "God never sleeps" album.