the unlikely orange

Happy Resurrection Day!  He is risen! the grave, while still full of darkness, is, in the end, completely empty! life wins! love wins!

"peter" mixed media collage (found papers, vintage papers, acrylic paint, markers, glue) on stretched canvas march 2013 gregory a. milinovich today is maundy thursday, and so i thought i would share with you my final lenten collage for this year.  tonight as we remember Jesus' last supper with his disciples, and the way he demonstrated that humility and service were the calling card of his kingdom, we will think of Peter, and his misguided attempts to try and realize that kingdom.  he was zealous, that's for sure.  there was no question about his passion.  but he didn't quite get it.  he wanted Jesus to claim power and victory, rather than humiliation and death.  but Jesus knew the road he had to travel.  and he also knew the road peter had to travel: a road marked by charcoal fires, rooster crows, and unbearable shame.  it took traveling that road, i think, and seeing that the resurrection not only meant that Jesus was alive but tha...

 this weekend we had the opportunity to go with my parents to the whitaker science center in harrisburg.  we had a blast checking out all the exhibits, and, most of all, enjoying the incredible imax movie "flight of the butterflies" about the monarch migration and how it was discovered where they congregate in mexico each year.  it was a great day of learning and discovering, and the pictures show some of the joy of that discovery:  we had a great day, so thank you, memaw and pappy!  and seriously, if you get the chance to see "flight of the butterflies" in imax 3d, i HIGHLY recommend it.  i've seen it twice now, and it is, for me, a spiritual experience to see the wonder of God's creation in such vivid detail and beauty.  it is astonishing. 

just in case you've forgotten my profound love of that fashion underdog, the sweatervest, here is a picture of the one i wore yesterday, complete with half-windsored orange tie, oddly enough.  i know you were all dying to see it.  just like you are all so anxious to know what i've been reading and listening to.  well, who am i to make you beg?  this is what i've been reading.  it's called "divergent" by veronica roth.  it is the story of a dystopian world broken in which society has been organized into factions, based on dominant parts of each individual's personality.  i very much enjoyed it, both from the psychological/sociological viewpoint of imagining a world in which we are organized in such a way, and from the characters of the story, their agency and relationships.  it was a very easy read, and entertaining.  there are apparently two more to complete a trilogy, so i'll get right to those.  i'm sure it won't be long til t...

"mary magdalene" mixed media collage (found papers, vintage papers, marker, gesso, acrylic paint, fingernail polish, masking tape, glue) on stretched canvas gregory a. milinovich march 2013

dear march, i hope you are well, although it appears as if you might be a bit upset about something. i know it's none of my business, but i feel the need to say it anyway: whatever spring did to you last year (turning you from a lion to a lamb and all that) is water under the bridge at this point. it really is time to forgive her and be the bigger person (month? season?). i see that you've gone and thrown a bit of a fit overnight, and made your feelings obvious, but you must also think of spring's feelings. she is so excited about seeing us all again (and we her, come to think of it), and she doesn't really mean you any harm or ill will. none of us do. it's only that we would all like to see other months. please understand that it's not you. we can all still be friends, at least I hope so. so here's hoping that you can find it in your heart to forgive her, and to mellow out a bit. It is time to move on. seriously. move it. out of here. i'm done with ...

well, i did it.  i donned my hat, pulled up my st. patrick's day socks, pinned on my number 13 (wow, i registered early!), and lined up in the snowstorm for the starting gun.  it fired, and i was off.  i had my playlist ready and rolling, and i was running.  it felt like the first half of the race was slightly uphill, punctuated by a bit of a steep uphill section, before it came back down and levelled out.  it snowed beautifully the whole time, which, while cold, was a heckuva lot better than an ice cold drenching rain.  i felt pretty good most of the way, until quite close to the end, when i was fairly sure i was dying, so i stopped to walk for about 3 steps before i said to myself, "what are you doing, you idiot?  you don't want to do this!"  so i started running again, turned a corner, and there was someone telling me that i was nearly finished.  so i kicked it up a notch (as much as an old...

today i will be crossing something off the old bucket list, running in my first ever 5k.  i'll let you know how it goes.  but since it is saturday song time, i thought i'd offer you one of the songs from my 5k playlist.  this one is by tobymac.  the video is "people in motion," whatever that is.  hopefully, i'll still be in motion this afternoon.  ;)

"mrs. pilate" mixed media collage (acrylic paint, vintage papers, markers, fingernail polish, gesso, found papers) on stretched canvas gregory a. milinovich march 2013 this week for our lenten evening series at church we talked about the little-known figure of mrs, pilate, ie, pilate's wife, who is only  mentioned in one verse in the bible, and no where else in history, it seems.  we only know that she had a troubling dream about Jesus (which seems to indicate that she probably already knew or knew of Jesus in some way), and that she risked some considerable amount by sending a message to her husband telling him about this dream and asking him to stay away from Jesus because, as she put it, he is innocent.  pilate, of course, makes a big deal of washing his hands, as if to pretend he has nothing to do with this, but ultimately, as we've written about before, he has everything to do with this.  he is the only one with the power to sentence death, or to send ...

i finally finished this book that i've had for awhile, "one thousand gifts" by ann voskamp.  it took me awhile to get through, but i finally closed the back cover the other night with a long exhale.  this was not an easy book.  i will say this: it was exquisite.  i mean, its like pure poetry much of the time.  she writes about her simple farm life, her maternal and domestic orbit from day to day, but the way she writes it and tells it makes it feel so cosmic and artful.  in a sense, this extravagantly gorgeous way of writing serves her point well: that every moment is latent with opportunities for giving thanks.  but it is also a bit heavy handed at times, almost beating the reader over the head with beauty.  still, as you can see, i underlined a lot.  i scribbled in the margins, awed at times by her use of words.  most of the time i felt compelled to want to be a part of something as meaningful as she, but there were other time...

  just some recent pics of our boys....   chef quin   iron man cade   chef quin 2   jackson (too cool for costumes?)   batman quin

  this lent, we at Catawissa Avenue UMC have been journeying with peter.  we have acknowledged that it is a broken journey, and, as far as that's concerned, it looks like our journey.  never was the brokenness of pete's journey, than in yesterday's text from matthew 17 about the transfiguration of Jesus.    to be clear, peter was still stinging from the wound of hearing these harsh words from Jesus: "get behind me, satan!"    ouch.    we're going to talk more about that next week (why don't you join us at 319 catawissa avenue, sunbury pa at 10am?), but for now suffice to say that Peter isn't feeling too hot about himself.  remember, its a broken journey.    but the tide turns.  here at the beginning of matthew 17, Jesus invites peter, james and john on a hike, and pete must be so relieved to be back in the inner circle again, even after that whole 'satan' episode.  so they go hiking, and they end ...

"joseph of arimathea" mixed media collage (found papers, vintage papers, gesso, acrylic paint, glue) on stretched canvas march 2013 gregory a. milinovich here is my latest installment in the collage series i'm doing for lent, which is my creative response to our evening series at church, " in search of resurrection ," in which we are looking at different characters and how badly they - and we - need the resurrection of Jesus to be real and true.  last night we talked about joseph of arimathea, whom we often think of as a kind and good man, boldly going to pilate to ask for Jesus' body after the crucifixion, and then taking the body of the Lord and preparing it for burial, and generously placing it in his own tomb.  but we sometimes fail to remember that he was a "prominent member of the council," that is, the sanhedrin, or high court of the Jewish law.  it was a gathering of the who's who of Jerusalem leaders in those days, and Josep...

well, i'm another year older, if that's how you want to look at it.  i guess i often recognize that i'm getting older every day - every minute! - but these milestones don't seem to affect me too much, at least not in the "oh no, i'm getting so old" sense.  i turned 37, for crying out loud.  i'll have plenty of years to lament about getting old.  for now i'm too busy training for my 5k in two weeks.  old schmold.  in any case, i had an awesome weekend.  while i wasn't able to be with my family, i was able to facetime them, and they were almost all there together, so it was almost like being with them.  and then, in addition, we had friends come and visit us - 14 in all! - and spend various parts of the weekend with us.  while i had a do a funeral for a dear man on saturday (my actual birthday), it was actually pretty cool to participate in a well-attended worship service celebrating resurrection on the day marking my own birth into th...

hey hey hey, it's my birthday!  i get to be the fat cat today. 

okay, so i know i'm extremely slow on this one, since 12 million of you already know about this, but i feel compelled to share, nonetheless.  the video below is from a little kid who goes by the moniker "kid president."  his real name is robbie novak, and he suffers from something known as 'brittle bone syndrome' in which his bones break really easily.  rather than sit around and pout about all the brokenness (don't many of us do this, with far LESS to complain about?), he and his brother and law decided to dance anyway, and to make some videos about it.  they've caught on, and kid president has something important to say to you and to me about the idea of living abundantly and fully, and the hope life can have, despite the brokenness.  i encourage you to watch the video below, and, if you do, i dare you to not be inspired.  have a great friday.  peace.