On the Vocation of Motherhood & Artmaking

Phaedra Taylor, "The Book of Games: Oranges & Lemons" (2018)

I've been wanting to pull together a retreat like this since the spring of 1996. At the time I was attending an Anglican church in Vancouver, British Columbia.

While drinking a coffee in the fellowship hall, a young woman approached me and introduced herself. She said she'd heard I was interested in the arts. A first-year student at Regent College, I had recently offered to help lead the musical worship at the evening liturgy, which was being aimed at folks on the margins of faith and the church.

She told me she was a modern dancer. She told me that she'd recently given birth to her first child and that was she struggling with postpartum depression. Her body had become foreign to her. It was not the body that she recognized from all her years of training and performing as a dancer. She wondered if I had any good news to tell her.

I didn't. I felt utterly helpless. At 24 years old, I had nothing to offer her except sympathy and words of encouragement, as useless as those felt at the time.

Eventually we became friends, shared a small group with other artists, and partnered on liturgical art projects here and there. She bore a second child and experienced an even worse bout of depression. She couldn't figure out where God was in the middle of it all.

I'll never forget that exchange, twenty-three years ago now. It haunted me throughout my years as a pastor in Austin, Texas. It informed every conversation I had with mom-artists in our congregation at Hope Chapel. And it niggled away at my subconscious brain. One day, somehow, I thought to myself, I wanted to do something to help that young mother and other mothers like her.

After dreaming about such a retreat with my artist-wife, Phaedra, the mother of our children, and with Steven Purcell, the director at the Laity Lodge, it's finally happening: on July 25-28, 2019. Here's how we have described the retreat, "On the Vocation of Motherhood & Artmaking":

"This retreat is an invitation to explore the opportunities and challenges that are involved in the twin calling to motherhood and artmaking. It is open to mothers in all stations and circumstances of life, whether at the beginning of motherhood or in the fullest years of grandmothering, and to artists of all media, disciplines and contexts."

It'll include contributions from Jan Peterson (Eugene's wife), Andi Ashworth, Sandra McCracken and my wife Phaedra; possibly others too.

If you're an artist and a mother at any stage in the life and calling of a mother, we welcome you to join us this summer. You'll probably want to sign up soon because places will fill it up fast. We're excited to see what God will do in such a gathering of remarkable mom-artists.

Phaedra Taylor, "With Gladness & Singleness of Heart" (Watercolor, Pencil, Paint Pen | 6 x 20 | 2009)