5 a.m. with the Saint of Basements

It was amazing. There were only 5 of us, but we were deeply affected. Jessica, CV, Jake, Josh and I. Our topic was community. Our artist was San Keller. We met in the basement. It was so striking to discuss the correlation between our new faith community and his art. The desire to present the connection and invitation without the shoulds predominating. Also the differences between San's work of pulling together people for one time experience vs. creating on-going community. His work around the "warmth of friends" was really thought provoking. His presentation of himself in vulnerability so like the person of Christ.

This will seem lame from an art point of view, but as our impromptu action we offered homemade chocolate chip cookies to strangers in the "3rd place" community known as Starbucks and on the sidewalk. It was very interesting to see how others responded. Some seemed suspicious, others received gratefully. One lovely black woman took a picture of us. The guy, Kiev, who came with San to create documentary on his 48 hrs in Portland, called our work "cookie community." We exchanged addresses with San so that we may "pen-pal" with him and continue in a sort of community together. Jessica (the cookie baker) pledged to mail him one chocolate chip cookie a month, presented in various ways.

We plan to continue to develop further ways to use public art to send messages. One of the things I am motivated to do is invite several people from our church to each connect with an immigrant without legal status and create a bridge of people along the Burnside Bridge here in Portland during the morning commute time. The Burnside Bridge being where many recent immigrants wait for work as day laborers. I want our physical presence, hand-in-hand
there to speak as a united message of connection and support for them as fellow humans who deserve rights in our country.