The Advent Art Project
This Advent, A Rocha is delighted to share with the Eco Church community, 'A Space for Waiting' — a beautiful collection of Aotearoa Advent artworks by Rach Doragh. Advent is a season of anticipation and reflection, inviting us to pause and prepare our hearts for the coming of Christ at Christmas. This beautiful series of images offer space to reflect on the gifts of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love in our own lives and communities. To help you engage with the art, we’ve put together a short guide with reflections, actions, and ideas for how you might use this collection creatively in your church this Advent season.
A Space for Waiting
Rachel Doragh
Digital art printed onto 5 panels
The birth of Jesus is a wonderful moment of light and life coming into the world. But it wasn’t a crash of lightning from another ‘divine’ realm. His coming was slow and fragile. Throughout the scriptures we read that the people are waiting for a messiah to save them. Waiting through pain, through loss, waiting through confusion, and through emptiness and death. All this while not knowing what will come, not seeing what is going on below the surface. It is in this soil, this world made by God, this creative space, that new life was growing. It is this whenua (earth) which was a space for the people of God to belong that was also the whenua (placenta) for the new life that comes though Jesus.
In this Advent space of waiting it can be hard to hold onto the hope, peace, joy and love offered to us. We long for the resolution of the story. But linger for a while in the space. Wait. Breathe. Wait. We live in a space of waiting where the way things are now is not the way we hope it could be. What we experience of hope, peace, joy and love in this space can feel as vulnerable as small new shoots of growth pushing their way to the surface, so easily carelessly trampled.
As we join together in this Advent journey, we are invited to join in this new creative space. Growing in our context the seed of fullness of life in Christ, the life our creator God is working to bring to fruition. This world, with all its pain and confusion and death, is the very place, the rich soil, that our creator God chooses to grow this new life. Tender shoots of hope, peace, joy and love.
Here is a short guide with reflections, actions, and ideas for how you might use this collection creatively in your church this Advent season.