Ordered Chaos

            I walked into the studio, greeted by the scents of paint and glue. Busy Bees is a colorful playground for the creative artist, and it makes me smile every time. They offer a variety of crafting options, and this time I tried something new: mosaic.

I chose a square piece of wood as the background for my creation and went to work picking out tiny chunks of tile to glue on to the wood into a pattern. After the tile pieces were glued on, I would be sent home with grout (the color of my choosing) to fill in the spaces between the tiles to finish the piece.

The assortment of colors and shapes overwhelmed me at first. It calmed me to start with a loose pattern. I glued little square mirrors in alternating sequence around the edges. Silver. Gold. Silver. Gold. My heartbeat slowed as I got into the rhythm of creating. Faced with a wall full of bins in every color of tile pieces, the design started to form in my mind. I cut a tiny square into two uneven triangles of green. Funny how going from a square to a triangle changed things. I was inspired to cut some more. Next, I cut off the corner of an odd blue piece of tile and it formed a pentagon. When I halved the clover-shaped pieces, they became figure eights.

Changing the shapes gave me a sense of control. While I allowed some pieces to remain whole, I caused others to be broken. All the colorful pieces, broken and whole, show up more clearly when surrounded by the black grout of emotion’s dark depths. 

            

             I call it “Ordered Chaos.”

            A single clear stone belongs in the middle. I may not understand the stone fully, but I recognize its characteristics. For me, the clear stone is like a steaming cup of coffee first thing in the morning. It’s the smell of the bookstore where my writers’ group meets. Sharing hugs with my daughter and long-distance phone conversations with my son. It’s when I send the words “I love you, babes” in a text to my husband. Bible and prayer time. Sharing time with friends. Each of these represent wholeness yet are pieces of the whole of me.

            What does your center stone represent?