Seeing God - Karen Swenholt
Have you ever had a moment in your life where you heard the Gospel presented in such a rich, personal and powerful way – that it took your breath away, that it was forever a moment etched in your soul?
I remember the first time was when I was 11 and away at a Christian summer camp. It was a life-changing week that forever changed the course of my life!
Eight and a half years ago, I was sitting in a place found only through the Lord’s leading and prodding (He was preparing me for the hardest season of my life). As I sat there, this precious woman who was leading and mentoring me, stood up to share the Gospel. To this day, I couldn’t begin to tell you what Karen said, but the intimate way she shared her love for Jesus pierced my soul. It was as if her words were laced with fire – they had a way of consuming any other thoughts in the room.
Karen and I shared less than a year of life together, but it was a mountain moving year!
Recently, I asked Karen to record herself sharing the Gospel, so I could in turn share it. I know, if the Lord leads her, I will have that to share with you one day. But, in the meantime, she did share some powerful words with me – which will give you a glimpse into the depth of her heart!
“For a moment or two, the darkness of disenchantment, cynicism, doubt, draw back at least a little, and all the usual worldly witcheries lose something of their power to charm. Maybe we cannot manage to believe with all our hearts. But as long as the moments last, we can believe that this is of all things the thing most worth believing. And that may not be as far as it sounds from what belief is. For as long as the moment lasts, that hallowed, gracious time.”
–Frederick Buechner
Karen shared her beautiful thoughts in how Buechner’s words spoke to her.
After believing God dead since I was twelve, I still remember my almost camera-shutter first glimpse that Jesus could be a Divine being who lived on Earth to bridge me to God. It lasted such a small time. Then years later, the shutter slammed open I hope – for eternity. You do meet Him somehow. And meeting Him, you love Him. If you had never seen night, if the sky were brass – just a wall of blue, you would find it hard to believe in the depth of the universe told by the stars. The moment of maybe comes before the gift of certainty. Sometimes still, I get a glimpse of my former brass blue sky. But I can no longer believe the emptiness of its limits. I have seen the stars.
–Karen Swenholt
It is my honor and pleasure to have shared with you the heart of my precious friend, Karen Swenholt. When I began my blog a few months ago, I made a list of people I wanted to solicit to share here in this sacred space – because the words they have to share are THAT powerful! For to know Karen, is to know tenderness , gentleness and compassion, alongside fierceness, passion and boldness – the kind that can only come from someone who has walked alongside God through fires and struggle – and come up with a greater understanding of who she is and who HE is!
Karen Swenholt is a sculptor. In an article in Image Journal titled “Lost and Found: Karen Swenholt Unmakes Identity Politics”, author Mark Sprinkle offers further observations on her art and ideas.
It is not a stretch to suggest that the representational connection between identity and compassion may even be nakedness: emotional and spiritual in life, and explicitly physical as rendered in clay. In our age of mediated self-revelation, Swenholt’s sculpture gives a physical analog to our common experience: we find it difficult to connect with others via carefully crafted, manicured surfaces, while we respond readily to un-prettified, confessional honesty… Like the changing, aging human body, compassion is dynamic and evolving, not a static, one-time transaction. Through her lumpy, bumpy nudes Swenholt seems to argue that the crux of understanding our identity and having compassion for others is a willingness to continually lay ourselves bare, before each other and before God, in our rough, unpolished states.
It was in the space of vulnerable authenticity that I came to know Karen. And this is how I see her art!
Karen is a gifted sculptor and poetic writer. If you have some time, I hope you will stop by… Her gift of “seeing” and creating has the ability to breathe new compassion, tenderness and understanding as you look at others. Her art has a way to communicate, without words, at a level of depth few perceive, and even fewer have the words to articulate.
What she saw in court brought her hard-won but still fragile sense of security, purpose, and identity as an artist face to face with her growing suspicion that all forms of identity-seeking outside our core identity as creatures made and loved by God are inevitably thin, twisted, and brittle. And it nurtured an ongoing artistic and spiritual dialogue around the central questions of identity: Who am I? And, more importantly, who do I trust to give me an answer: family, the law, the marketplace, myself, or God?
-Mark Sprinkle, “Lost and Found: Karen Swenholt Unmakes Identity Politics”, Image Journal
Visit Karen through her Facebook page or website.
Click below to hear her sharing a message of hope in the midst of this season. It is beautiful and will only take a few minutes of your time. Below that is Karen’s favorite worship song.
Scripture quotations marked TPT are from The Passion Translation®.
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Used by permission. All rights reserved. ThePassionTranslation.com.
