by Jill Pearson
My Aunt Brenda is one of my favorite people in the world. Though she’s lived in Florida as long as I’ve known her, and I rarely get to see her, she has invested words of encouragement through letters and emails starting when I went to college. She has shared her poetry and art over the decades, blessed me with her hearty laugh, and opened her heart to me this past year as cancer has devastated their family.
Brenda is an assemblage artist, scouring flea markets for interesting finds, and then reinventing them as pieces of art full of symbols and stories.
About five or so years ago, I asked her to create a nativity set for me, and it wasn’t long before a box arrived in the mail containing the most delightful Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and a grazing horse. I studied each of them closely. Mary was made from an old bell. Joseph appeared to be made of a percussion instrument called a guiro. Baby Jesus was a peg with a wooden bead for a head, wrapped in a bit of muslin, and the whimsical horse was made of a little box with spools for legs.
I asked my dad, who is also an artist and woodworker, to build me a stable out of reclaimed barn wood. Each Christmas, when I open the box to see my precious nativity set, I say a prayer of thanks for the hands that crafted this little holy family and their accommodations, and for God who wrote the great story of salvation set in the most humble of beginnings.
Jill Pearson is co-editor of The Stir, wife to Dave, and mom to three young adults who have flown the nest but are easily lured back with an offer of dinner. She owns and operates Riverwood Studio, an art education business, and finds creative ways to serve at Calvary.