Patch and writing by April Stace Vega, a friend of mine for over half our lives

fingerprints

this is a wild grown garden of fingerprints…. i was thinking hmmm, what are the main points of my life, and this may be a very difficult question because i thought about it a little bit and the answer seemed easy: music, harp, conversation, christianity, all kinds of equalities (boiling down to one enormous equality), etc, etc.  I thought about it a little farther and was struck by the emptiness of my life with only those little manifestations keeping up space.  Then I thought even farrrther and then i though, ok, i think i have come to some magma in my life.  i am thinking that this giant world is nothing and everything but a giant collection of our fingerprints… walking down the road by my house i am thinking, hmm, this road was once the focal point of someones existence (the people planning it, paving it)  look at those apartment complexes… someone perhaps once took great pride in that architecture.  and that bumperstickered car that just drove by, a person in that car took great care to choose just the right stickers that express who she is.  and now the messages on those stickers are with me, and anyone else sitting behind her car in any traffic jam, anywhere….  All of a sudden the world seems like a giant, interactive, sacred-space art museum.

and then i start thinking about my fingerprints.  (by the way, this garden is entirely my fingerprints).  i think about how every little thing i do or say imprints everyone around me, no matter how insignificantly, it is a little piece of beautiful (or ugly, in some instances) graffiti that i have spray painted on.  and then i am thinking, if there is one thing in my life that i can feel is a focal point, i would say it is creation, creativity, etc. making things.  and im thinking about how when ive finished something really good, whether it be a piece of music or writing or quilt patch or a really meaningful church service… if its of the “really really good” variety, it feels like the product is in every aspect my very real fingerprint, my personal rosetta stone.  so if there is a focal point of my life, it is making fingerprints.  And not only that:  I feel like my mission in life is to create beauty.  So, fingerprints of beauty.  People need beauty, i think.  all different kinds of beauty.  and for some people it is harder to see the beauty in the apartment complexes and bumper stickered cars so it is my job (and others, of course!) to make the beauty obvious.  And more than that:  I think beauty is a manifestation of God.  so i really think that in the process of creating (when it is of the “really really good” variety), it is not only an authentic fingerprint but it is also in some way a realization of God.  God is somehow made real through creating.  so I feel like, im not just here to make beauty up front and personal for people.  i’m here to clear other things away so that the Creator can be made real through human creations. 

not to say i always succeed.  in fact i usually fail at this.  but i can tell that this is some “magma” in my life because in the few cases i have succeeded i feel like im really really here.  and you know, it may not be that the “really really good” creations are my fingerprints at all.  it may be that i only create the “really really good” stuff when i am transparent enough to let God’s fingerprints soak through and stain.