Iconography: story telling and praying with paint
In the summer of 2020 I planned a sabbatical. It was to begin with two weeks in Ireland, Scotland, and England. Eight days were supposed to be in a storytellers retreat with Kathleen Norris and Gareth Higgins near Belfast. We were supposed to spend the days hiking and learning about the art of story telling. However, the COVID-19 pandemic shut the world down and the retreat to Ireland was postponed to 2021. As a parish priest I think of myself as a story teller. I tell the stories of faith and retell them in a way that intends to draw connections between the experiences of the divine that people had thousands of years ago, and wrote into texts that became scripture and biblical, and our lives today. I do not hear those ancient stories as literal and factual, rather I hear them as inspirational and informative, guiding me and others into interpreting our experiences of the divine and telling our stories of God's faithfulness in life and creation. The story telling is not without p