Emily Carr

Well, these past few weeks I have been having a lot of fun helping my kids with their school projects on famous artists (hence these last two posts about artists!). They have not needed a lot of help actually, so maybe it has been more of an excuse to spend time reading about these great artists. I was reading about Emily Carr this week, a very famous and influential Canadian artist. As it turns out, at one point in her career she would meet, and be very influenced by the Group of Seven, and particularly Lawren Harris. She was most influenced by Harris' approach in which he would transform and interpret nature so as to infuse spiritual expression. Although she had rejected the organized religion of her youth, she nevertheless retained a sense of spirituality and a desire to search for deeper meaning. She established a correspondence with Harris to explore the ideas behind his work. Harris was a Theosophist, and shared with her about that belief system. Eventually however, her searching led her back to Christianity. In one of her journals, she wrote - "I want the big God."
I don't know much about her devotional life, her discipleship, the maturity of her walk with the Lord or her understanding of the faith...but that one observation seemed well worth noting.
My God is the Big God and that is an amazingly simple and yet profound statement that I hope to carry with me this week.