Hello, bloggers!
Back on March 15 of this year, I did a blog post about the wonderful time I had painting a late 17th Century church in a town near Weimar, Germany.
In case you missed the post the first time around, here is a direct link to it in our Blog archives:
http://mattlamb.org/blog/post/More-about-painting-the-church-near-Weimar.aspx
Recently, in Ireland, Rose and I had dinner with four dear friends from Weimar, and we talked about what a great experience had been painting the church with the aid of the entire community.
About 40 people from the town helped paint the church, and very few of them were artists. They were engineers and bank presidents, housewives, renowned surgeons, children, older people: a cross section of the whole community. It was amazing seeing everyone come forward and physically work to get this church to where it is now.
Now it’s going to become a community center that has religious ceremonies in the tradition of the Lutheran Church on appointed days. But on other days it’s going to have other services under the watchful attention of the villagers and the city people, and it will take into consideration all the needs of the community.
For me, it was very meaningful to go there as a stranger but to leave as part of their family, and to see how they have now taken this new baby and are deciding how it’s going to grow, how they’re going to nourish it, how it’s going to become a strong pillar of their whole life—not only for this generation, but for many generations to come. The young people have really taken to the church and have a strong bond with this building and what it stands for.
When we worked on the church, I gave a talk about what Martin Luther would have thought. Here is this ancient building that’s going to be painted in the style of somebody named Lamb, in this wild tornado of color and form, direction, figures, and spirituality. I thought that Luther, being such a person to embrace change, would have been there with the first brush and the last brush, egging people on, pushing, pulling, laughing, singing—and that’s exactly what happened with everyone. They took it as their own. They have great sense of pride. It is their project now.
As our friends told us when they were visiting us in Ireland, when we all went into this project, they had no idea how I was going to work. They had a vision that I would go into this church as a sole painter, lock the door, and probably come out 3 or 4 months later. Instead, this whirlwind came in, looking for ladders and scaffolds and tall men and short people to paint above and below the ladders... I very much felt like a composer, but the townspeople were the musical instruments, and we worked together as a great orchestra.
They carried that on after I left by painting the outside of the church, the ceiling, the pews. The whole organization has been formalized, and this is a process where it’s not just one man coming in and doing something; it’s a whole community coming together: different religious demonimations, different ages, different backgrounds, all with the common goal of the spirit. The spirit of the village changed the whole aspect of the building, so that it has become a beacon of who and what they are. I think it’s a latter-day miracle that they allowed this crazy Irish American to come in and do what I did. It took great courage and hope, and I believe that together, we all made a huge difference, not only in this century but in centuries to come.
Now people are starting to come to the church, experience the whole thing, and comment on it. It’s like a new baby being born, and everyone’s coming to bill and coo. I’m grateful to have been a part of it, and I want to thank our friends who visited us for giving us such a fabulous update.
Matt