Transformation #BibleJournaling

Today’s Bible art-journaling project is another Rebekah Jones Challenge (OBAJC Week 13). The focus verse is a favourite of mine. It’s a challenge to illustrate but even more to live:

“And do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12:2.

For her art project Rebekah traced a vintage line-drawing of the brain onto the Bible page, then used the stencil of a splash to superimpose neon colour splashes (with acrylic paint) onto half of that brain drawing. The words “Be Transformed” completed the stunning image.

To do my Romans 12:2 project, I gave some thought to how I might use the brain image but show transformation in a different way than colour splashes.

A butterfly came to mind. (Cliché? Yes, I know, but butterflies are so much fun to draw and colour.) Instead of drawing a realistic chrysalis from which my butterfly is emerging, I tried to make it resemble a brain. I used pencil crayons to colour my drawing.

Later I recalled a poem I wrote over ten years ago, on the topic of transformation. Written from the viewpoint of a caterpillar in the process of being changed into a butterfly, it seemed like a good companion to my butterfly sketch.

I drew and coloured (also using pencil crayons) a chrysalis image I found online onto the opposite Bible page, wrote the poem on tracing paper and attached it to the Bible with washi tape as a tip-out.

TRANSFORMATION

Shut away inside this silken crypt
I long for undulation on the pavements
wriggling up trunks and along branches
munching leaf to leaf.

Those carefree sunny days
have given way to terror
as motionless, deaf and blind
I feel Your acid-enzyme melt my heart
liquefy all that is earth-bound.

So I abandon any hope of preservation
as, redefined and reinvented
in this dark and secret vault
I’m given a new heart, antenna, legs – and wings?

Entombed–for what?
It’s surely death.
Could it also be
a new and unimagined life?

© 2006 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)

Thinking about our transformation, that renewing of the mind, I wonder, is it ever done? Until we die physically it seems we must keep dying many little mind-deaths to the sinful thoughts and attitudes that so naturally emerge. We need to keep having our minds renewed and transformed, even though it sometimes feels like death.