Playing (and praying) with clay.

Last night the Loyola House community had a seminar entitled "Art and Spirituality," focused on ways in which we can integrate use of our creative abilities into our prayer lives. To provide a practical demonstration, the presenter brought clay and asked each of us to transform a glob of it into an objet d'art somehow expressive of our spiritual state. As with the psalms written during last weekend's workshop, the results reminded me of what a talented group I've been thrown in with. Clay isn't exactly my best mode of expression, so the piece of art work I produced was comparatively crude. What I ended up making was a small tile piece not unlike one I was required to produce in junior high, the chief difference being that this one has an appropriately Jesuit 'IHS' on it while the one I did in eighth grade featured a three-dimensional representation of Godzilla. Seeing all the sculptures displayed on a table in our dining room, I wondered whether we might temporarily open the place up as the "Loyola Gallery" and sell off our handiwork to raise money for the Jesuit Seminary Association. Considering that we probably wouldn't make much money doing so, however, I suspect we're better off keeping the sculptures and preserving them as knicknacks and desk ornaments. AMDG.