The Seventh Veil - Part 2

After more prayer walks, and learning more history here, we name the seventh veil blinding the Hungarians to God's approach in their lives: oppression.

For the past several hundred years, the Hungarians have lived under oppression, and though actual oppression has been removed for some years, the mentality of oppression remains. It has revealed itself in various ways as we study the culture and talk with people. It reveals itself in the high gates and walled-off gardens, the fences and guard dogs, the scowling faces. But most of all it reveals itself in the mistrust, and we have a hard time scaling this wall.

But the job at hand is to complete the artwork representing the seven veils, and their spiritual solutions. Chuck is hard at work with the clay, while other artists finish off the series of faces. Soon we are all lost again in ‘the zone’—producing artwork, occasionally commenting on or critiquing one another’s work, watching the clock for the walk home for a meal.

Marcia continues her collage work, and I’m working on some acrylics inspired by Romans 5:5 in the Message: “We can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!”

We are mad at work when Arnold comes in and tells me we are expected to exhibit at a gallery tomorrow afternoon. Yikes! “Pick up the pace, peeps!”

I ask Arnold if we can see the space, and he agrees to take me over after dinner. We agree to be back by 8.

On the way home for dinner, we brainstorm titles and installation ideas, and I take a poll on who is where on the artwork, and what can we finish by tomorrow. And we’ll need artist’s statements, translated. Oy. Here we go again…

But at 8, as we leave the dining hall to return to visit the gallery for the exhibit, we bump into Arnold and his family, about to take a bike ride for the evening. Um… Arnold?! The gallery? Where we’re exhibiting tomorrow?

“Did I say that?” he responds, eyes wide in disbelief.

Miscommunication can be a beautiful thing sometimes…no exhibit, but a new bit of news: a town official wants to come by and congratulate us on the work we’ve done in the town. And a bunch of artists want to meet us. Nothing formal, but could that take the place of a gallery exhibit?

Abso-dang-lutely!

Ya gotta love missions….

We downshift from manic to the pleasure of creating art for the rest of the evening with no more deadlines, except the lovely one of meeting the artists and governmental well-wisher.