“STJ 86: Taste and Bee” – Process & Theology

This art piece – STJ 86: Taste and Bee – thinks through Anglican, Sarah Coakley’s, articulation of desire in a Mennonite context. Here are a few slightly edited excerpts of an essay I wrote for professor Jeremy Bergen this year at Grebel Uni.:

“STJ 86: Taste and Bee” by Lisa Obirek, December 2015

5 reduction linocut on stonehenge paper with added media: water soluble oil, paint pens, raw bees wax, nail polish, gold leaf

This piece is called a “print” and fits within the broader artistic medium of “printmaking.” The more specific term for this particular print is called a five-reduction linocut. This means I use a traditional piece of rubbery linoleum which is essentially just heated up linseed oil and I carve designs into the same block of linoleum in five different stages.  I use carving tools that are similar to traditional wood carving tools on a smaller scale. These carving tools have different ends, or “bits,” that make their own distinct cuts into the linoleum.

Becoming a Mennonite and then a workshop at the Mennonite World Conference

This evening I returned home from a week gathering in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania for the Mennonite World Conference. Unlike many attendees of the conference, Anabaptism (the “mother” of “Mennonites) was not something that I inherited from my parents and then stepped into as I became an adult. Rather, it feels like I have been slowly immersed into the Mennonite faith. A number of different experiences, communities and individuals have brought me further into the world of Mennonites: studying Christian theology at a Mennonite institution has indelibly left its mark on me, researching the NGO work of Mennonite organizations (like Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) and Mennonite Economic Development Agency (MEDA)) from those within the organizations and those the organisations partner with, worshiping with a Mennonite congregation, and seeing women and men in their eighties and nineties actively pursuing activist-peace movements. It was this latter point that kind of “sealed the deal” for me in terms of making a commitment to a Mennonite way of life.