In perhaps my most intense collaboration, I met personally with 9 members of “Communitas Christi,” a small Catholic Charismatic Community who at that time worshipped in an art classroom next to the gymnasium of a Catholic school in San Anselmo, CA. The participants each gave me input on symbols they thought representative of their group, and there was a great range, from Native American to Asian, to Franciscan to a praying figure from the catacombs of Rome….
After listening (and listing) 45 minutes with no repeats, I turned with a bit of desperation to draw SOMETHING on the easel behind me, and the WRONGNESS of what I drew brought out the RIGHTNESS from the group. I quickly flipped the paper, and suddenly they were guiding me on arrangement and content, and to everyone’s satisfaction, we caught on paper a format for the images across three 8 foot tall panels that would total 13 feet long. My friend Virginia Stella, a spiritually based artist who had brought me to the group, sent me a last few visual details by mail.
I drew for a week, and on a Saturday morning, 26 Communitas Christi members aged 6 through 93 started cutting on the three panels, finished the cutting of the dark blue paper by noon, started taping cellophane and tissue paper behind the openings, and could not stop! Though the workshop was intended to finish at two, they wanted to finish, and at 6 PM we installed the panels, completely colored, for Mass the next morning. I HAD to be there. I stayed over with Virginia.
The next morning, the group was stunned as they walked in. They whispered and looked. As the worship opened, much was said and prayed about the process and outcome. Finally the priest stood to admit that, not knowing, he had come prepared to preach on “People as stained glass windows for God!” This was a first Synchronicity and was received by the group as significant.
However, there was a second Synchronicity that touched me even more deeply. In the upper right hand corner I had included some tall pointy green trees that I considered to be Poplars, the source of the “Balm of Gilead” healing ointment in the Old Testament. I included them because I had observed a healing quality about the group and that they had interest in healing prayer.
As the service began that Sunday morning, everyone was pretty much settled in when there was a rattling at the door and a group of young adults arrived who were clearly well known to the congregation. Members of Communitas Christi who had empty seats next to them rose and gathered individuals and took them to welcoming seats, their arms about each other, with loving enthusiasm. The group was from a home for “differently abled” adults with various mental conditions (developmentally delayed, some Downs Syndrome), and they joined in the singing with raucous voices full of joy! The name of their group home was “THE CEDARS of LEBANON”. They were thrilled to see I had included cedars of Lebanon in the papercut, just for them!!!! (Nobody had mentioned this group to me in the earlier process.)
I consider this to be God at work.
Later, members of Communitas Christi asked my permission to make a card with the papercut, to be sent to supporters of their congregation and the 15 or so priests who rotated in to serve them. They sent me a copy, which is in my Portfolio. My friend Virginia wrote me later “One of the priests wrote back and said he could see this was TRUE FOLK ART, from the rich colors, the multiple symbols, the group participation to complete it. –I was honored! Communitas Christi still keeps these cuttings, rolled, in a closet and brings them out for special occasions and anniversaries. The Scotch Brand tape we used to tape the cellophone and tissue paper on back is still holding it together, though they admit they have to retape seams now and then…
Alice Helen Masek, Prayerful Papercutting
