Beauty from Ashes

One of our more interesting stops on the Oregon Coast was at a place called Art 101 and Washed Ashore . This Gallery caught our eye because of the very large and colorful American Eagle displayed on the side of the road as drove by , the scuplture was over 14 feet high , and when we pulled in to look at it we were surprised to see it mounted in well worn automobile tires. Turns out that the Entire sculture was made from trash collected on the Nearby Beaches .
More than 70 percent of the planet is covered by ocean, and for every square mile of ocean there are an estimated 46,000 bits of plastic. That’s a lot of flotsam and jetsam, and according to the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California, it’s responsible for the injuries to 10 percent of the sea creatures the center treats. Seals, birds, sea turtles, dolphins and other ocean-going mammals eat plastic items floating by, such as disposable lighters or toothbrushes, or get tangled in abandoned nets or fishing line.
Oregon artist Angela Haseltine Pozzi makes colourful sea creatures out of beach trash to make a serious point about the growing problem of plastic in the ocean.
Her Art work is amazing from extremely large and complex statues to smaller take home kind of artifacts ...She employ's several people who wash , drill and cut the plastic that is collected fo ruse in art projects .
IN addition to this ...many schools in the area which is near Bandon Oregon . participate with Field trips where the children collect the trash off the beach . Angela then teaches the teachers and the students how to make art work of the trash .
The idea of an Artist using the discarded bits and pieces of our daily lives to create amazing works of art , and to encourage others to do as well ...seemed vaguely familiar to me .
Beauty from Ashes ...I wonder where i had heard that before . While I prowled around taking photos of the piles of maritime ropes and floats , household plastics and odds and ends ..Lori went inside the gift sho where she found out more information abut the gallery and secured permission for me to photograph. While speaking to the woman who was watching the gallery for the day , Lori was able to tell her abut our verse of the day Project , emphasizing that it was indeed an attempt to give people some Good News from the Good News of the Gospel . The lady is now on our Email list .
As I continued photographing the raw material and some of the finished projects as well ..I was deeply impressed ...how wonderful to see a piece of Trash as an Art object , to transform , something thrown away ..into something that was beautiful and inspiring .
We left ...and headed into Bandon ..a small town on the Oregon Coast , it was almost empty , it is more of a tourist town , and the tourists come in Summer . but the stores were opened and better yet so were the resturants ...we dinned on Fish and Chips , and I went one way to photograph the abandoned wooden piers that had caught my eye and Lori went into some of the Gift shops ...All the time I was thinking of the art Museum we had left ..earlier in the day.
It wasn't a large leap for me to begin to think about God and His redemption of fallen man ...to think on the changed lives and mended Hearts that His Love and grace has been responsible for ...Someone once asked me Ho I knew God existed ..my answer because of what I knew of the person was simply I Know He exists the same way I know you believe Dark Holes exist ...He gave me a puzzled look and I added as an Astronomer you know Dark Holes Exist not because you can see them ..but because of the affect they have on the stars around them ... I know God exists because of the affect he has on His Children ..the effect He has had on my life .
The Oceans are filled with the discarded and tossed away debris of a careless people ...more items litter the Beach that come from the land than from the sea ..but invariably most everything finds its way to the sea.
Here on the land the streets are filled with discarded and dismissed human beings , we find them in the workplace , in the taverns , in the rest homes . And while it would be inappropriate in a way to consider these peole as objects of art , they are an object of the heart .
This is God working through His people ..He takes us on field trips helps us to pick up the broken and tossed aside ... In Gods economy nothing goes to waste ....God is the master recycler .
I used to talk a lot about what I called the bucket theory of life ..basically it means that you can either take something from the bucket of another person , or you can add to the bucket of another person ...here i am talking about buckets of blessings ....
In this metephor I would say we are either trash collectors or Litterers ....this works for me both figurativly and Literally. We can choose to pick up after ourselves for sure and yes even pick up after others ..even if it seems unfair , after all its not our mess . And we can either leave behind us broken hearted people , or we cn hela up the broken hearted , we can either bring Good news ..or we can bring slander and gossip ...God Brings Beauty out of ashes . in the midst of our most stunning and horrifying failures He brings hope . Good does not just automatically happen at bad times. It requires human good will, human intentionality, and human effort. But Good rushes forth out of Gods Love and Grace through His people .
What is happening in our world with Litter and disregard for the Planet God has given us to be stewards of is shameful ....and even more so what is happening in our world with our objectifying people . ignoring people in need , instead of treating them as the individuals Jesus would have treated them as is sinful .
I have two points here ...perhaps poorly made ...one don't litter ..don't litter with your careless tossing away of garbage , and don't litter with your careless spirit ...Leave places and people better off than when you arrived . And Thank you LOrd for the powerful message of reconciliation , of your grace and redemption ...Thank you for binding up the broken hearted , for bringing the good news through us who you have called ot be your ministers of reconciliation and not condemnation ...