During this, our seventh year, festival organizers requestedtwomurals because they wanted to expand the mural painting event. I planned the larger mural for our usual location at 4th and Lincoln. (Although this venue really really for sure is going away soon!?)
The second mural venue is the east exterior wall of Burk’s Tavern, on the western-most block of downtown Loveland on 4th. It’s a smaller wall and has a fixed mural size. My plan for this space is to feature a pithy love quote along with a portrait of the person who said it. This year’s quote comes from pop culture. More on that in a minute.
If you’ve been following this succession of murals since we first started in 2017, then you know that each year I have selected a well-known, iconic fine art painting. The chosen painting then has the dubious honor of getting parodied with a Valentine’s Day theme. I will admit that I am beginning to run out of universally recognizable paintings to parody. I do have a couple more in the queue.
I am not going to do Washington Crossing the Delaware. So don’t suggest it.
We had great weather this year and a record turnout! This year’s fine art parody mural is based on Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s painting, entitled, The Scream. Our Loveland version imagines the weird central character as being in love and holding a valentine. I’ve entitled our version, The Squeal.
THE SQUEAL – Painted by Local Residents with Thanks to Edvard Munch, 1873.
The second mural, on Burks’ Tavern wall, will presumably stay up all year. For this mural, I thought it fitting to borrow a quote from everybody’s favorite quotable cult classic – the swashbuckling love story adventure, The Princess Bride.
“Death Cannot Stop True Love. All it Can Do is Delay it for a While” – Westley
Combined, the two murals gave festival-goers a total of 524, nine inch square tiles, to paint over the two day, downtown festival.
This project was designed to bring something fun and free to Loveland’s Sweetheart Festival. Something creative and collaborative. Something that celebrates individuals in community. In a world where nasty forces seem to be working tirelessly to invent new ways to divide us, I think it is crucial that we continue to get to know our neighbors in person. Let’s build more bridges in 2023!
A special shout out to all the volunteers who helped me make this happen: Karen, Joel, Linda, the Mihalys, Cherie, and Mollie! Thanks to the Trail Life boys for demo-ing, and to the guys who volunteered to prep Burk’s Tavern wall to receive the new mural!
Some favorite tiles. Visit downtown Loveland and explore these murals!
The 2022 mural is based on Johannes Vermeer’s 1665 painting, “Girl with a Pearl Earring.”
On Valentine’s Day weekend in downtown Loveland, Colorado, some 300 local citizens helped create a new community mural. In what has become an annual tradition, each person painted a 9-inch square tile, (usually) following simple guidelines. Anyone able to hold a paintbrush was able to join in, regardless of age or artistic skill.
I have designed the mural-making process to be virtually foolproof. It’s better than paint-by-number because participants are able to creatively express themselves on their tiles. I love to see how people jump in – some restrained, some exuberant; some with a specific vision, some just playing with paint. This is now our sixth community-building-Sweetheart-Festival mural, and I love to see the hundreds of declarations of love that have gone up over the past few years.
This is my intention for this project: community building! I like to hope that in some small way this project is a counter force to the many polarizing forces in our world today.
I conceived the idea for these collaborative murals after the 2016 presidential election. It seemed to me at the time that our world had become dangerously polarized and tribal. At least in my small corner of the world I wanted to do something that would bring the hundreds of local Valentine festival-goers together for something free, fun, creative, and collaborative. As I’ve driven down 4th Street and seen smiling pedestrians enjoying the finished mural throughout each year, I feel that we’ve hit the bull’s-eye.
Some of my favorite individual tiles!…
Unfortunately, six years later, things do not seem much improved on the culture war front. Art can only take us so far. Politicians don’t bring us together. When a presidential administration is aligned with one side or the other it only heightens the division. This past year confirmed that big tech can’t be trusted to be the arbiter of the truth. Nor can any one news source. There is misinformation about misinformation. Fact checkers need to be fact checked.
Trust in institutions seems to be in short supply, and understandably so.
In a climate where people conflate opinion and fact, and where common ground is difficult to find, common ground can only be part of the solution. We may not be able to find much of that. We must re-learn to live together peacefully in respectful disagreement. In my opinion, that can only happen if we talk to each other; if we get to know each other with the aim of understanding one another.
If you’ve had enough of hysterical polarization, would like to become part of the solution, but aren’t sure where to begin, I have a friendly suggestion. Join this group: BraverAngels.org. Or at least check out one of their “Skills Trainings” e-courses. You can join BA for $1 dollar a month. I’ve been a member for well over a year now and hope to see it grow! You can also easily search out some past BA events on Youtube to get a feel for what a BA event looks like.
A view of Loveland’s annual Sweetheart Festival, taken from our tile-painting tent. This year the festival was held at “the Foundry,” Loveland’s newest downtown public plaza.
Loveland, Colorado’s newest community mural, located on 4th Street at Lincoln. Made up of 336 individual tiles.
One of my favorite hand-print tiles.
When Donald Trump was elected to the presidency in 2016 I heard numerous accounts of people weeping, going into depression, and cutting ties with friends and family who had voted for Trump. It was during this climate that I conceived of the idea of putting on a giant community art event that would involve hundreds of people coming together to create a unified statement.
Five monumental murals later we have a new president and the nation appears to me to be more divided than ever. Furthermore, any attempts at building community are made more challenging as we can’t see each other’s faces or be in close physical proximity to one another. Both people and events are now frequently cancelled.
In past years all the mural painting has been done over a 3 day period in the midst of Loveland’s annual Valentine’s Day street festival. It’s been fun, but often chaotic and cold!
This depiction of hops was painted by the Brew master at Grimm Brothers Brewhouse.
This year, though the street festival was cancelled, the city still wanted to celebrate the Valentine season by going forward with a new community mural. For subject matter in past years I had parodied a famous painting. For this year’s design the city requested that I base the mural on the US Postal Service’s new Forever Stamp.
The painting of this mural took place over a 3 week period inside the warmer and quieter Beet Center, the Loveland Museum-Gallery’s expanded space. In order to comply with state restrictions around COVID, we had people sign up for 20-minute increments and limit the number of people per room. While I missed the energy of the street festival, I have to admit I enjoyed the slower pace. I was also able to enjoy extended conversations with several people.
But about this business of unifying the nation…
I’m happy to announce that everyone who participated in painting this year’s mural is now at peace with their neighbor, and has become committed to treating their political opponents with love and respect.
One of my favorites by a local artist friend…
Just kidding!
If only it were that easy. During an interview this year I was asked, “How have you seen art bring people together since the start of the pandemic? I replied:
Honestly, it’s been difficult bringing people together for any reason since the pandemic season started. I initially wondered if the pandemic might unite the country, but unfortunately it became politicized and has divided our nation even further. I think it’s important for human beings to continue to create, but the arts can only do so much. I think the only thing that will truly bring people together is if we as individuals do the hard work of getting to know our neighbor again, and seeking to understand those who view things differently than we do. I regularly engage in respectful dialogue with people “on the other side,” and it has been very healing. Politicians can’t fix this.
If that sounds like a buzzkill of an answer to you, I would plead to differ. I think it empowers the individual to care constructively, as opposed to hoping and waiting for politicians to get it right. We may not be like-minded in our opinions, but we can choose to be like-minded in approaching each other with understanding and respect as fellow human beings who bear the image of God.
In future posts I’ll share some of my adventures in reaching out to “the other side.” Until then, I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts as to what you believe has caused the polarization in our culture. Please share your thoughts in the comments below!
I made this one!
Do you need a gift idea for a child in your life? My newest book, The Friendly City, is designed to be a fun tool to help kids navigate a culture that has slipped its moorings. Order your copy HERE.
“In time, the factory stopped making the funny, creative New Burbian cars because they were too easy to break and too expensive to fix…”
If you’re wondering if anything good came out of the year 2020, here’s something, (though admittedly it’s not a global event) :
I FINALLY finished my next kids’ book!
Back when I was parenting, my favorite storybooks were engaging for my kids, but also enjoyable for me to read as well. (Because I had to read them repeatedly!) Hopefully, The Friendly City will be that kind of storybook book for you and your little people. It’s a fun story and also visually captivating.
The Friendly City tells the story of New Burbia, a town that is home to the best and most polite drivers in the world. The New Burbians drive imaginative and fanciful cars that make everyone smile. One day a new mayor who has some well-meaning ideas is elected. Chaos ensues when he implements his new plan to remove all the road signs and traffic lights. (He reasons that the restrictive road signs are unnecessary since New Burbia is home to the best drivers in the world.) Subsequently the city becomes not-so-friendly as the formerly agreed upon rules of the road are disregarded.
In time a small community forms whose members commit to remembering and observing the old rules of the road, and to bringing kindness back to the city. Together they find joy in welcoming others, and helping to make the city a friendlier place again.
I think this is a great story for our current troubled and divided cultural climate.
The story stands alone as an engaging story for kids even with no explanation. But since you’re all adults, I thought it might be fun to share from the Note to Parentsfrom the Author, at the back of the book:
…The Friendly City illustrates the workings of two spheres of life: that of civics and the Church.
CIVICS America’s founders envisioned a “self-governing” society. In order for such a society to work, we citizens must be people of character and, at least to some extent, be united by a common morality that transcends our subjective feelings. John Adams, America’s second president, famously stated,
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Benjamin Franklin described the path that government will inevitably take when social and sexual mores break down,
“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
The removal of the street signs is a metaphor for the rejection of previously agreed upon societal mores. Adams and Franklin make a brief appearance in The Friendly City as this is happening.
THE CHURCH The Caring Drivers Group represents the Church in this story. As such, it does not seek to create a utopia in a broken society, as so many secular “isms” attempt to do. Rather, it seeks to create a life-enhancing, restorative sub-culture that is focused on loving relationship. The focus on love over rule-keeping is meant to be reminiscent of Paul’s pronouncement, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:10).
So there you have a preview of The Friendly City. You can order your copy, along with my other books, from my online bookstore HERE at BigPicturePublishing.
I frantically tried to get this all put together in time for folks to receive orders by Christmas, and I’m pretty sure I succeeded. I’ve got a crate of books due to arrive in a few days. If you place your order now, there’s a high likelihood you’ll have it before Christmas. (Until I run out!)
One more thing: I started an Instagram account so that you can preview all my storybooks, page by page. So far I’ve got my Christmas book, The True Story of Christmas, ready to view. Others will follow in the new year. You can follow me on Instagram and preview The True Story of Christmas HERE.
THANK YOU for your support, and may you and your family have a joyous Christmas season!
There can be no such thing as an evangelical Christian who is intentionally racist. This is true in the same way that there are no Muslim pig farmers, or Mormon brewpubs. Or vegan cannibals. Or feminist sex traffickers. You get the idea.
These things are not merely unlikely – they negate the very definition of the concept.
I recently read an opinion piece by a professor, Anthea Butler, suggesting that liberals should stop puzzling over why evangelical voters are (supposedly) so pro-Trump despite Trump’s flagrantly unchristian behavior. Her answer to this puzzle is simple:
We’re racists.
Professor Butler has a history of making ridiculous and extreme claims, but nonetheless, NBC news saw fit to give her false assertion a hearing. It’s a serious accusation, so just in case anyone is inclined to believe her, I’d like to explain why her assertion can’t be true.
It must be the case that Butler, and others riding the racist-labeling bandwagon, simply don’t know what an evangelical follower of Jesus is. Hopefully the following will be helpful.
Well Understood, Not Secret, Not Mysterious By definition, evangelicals, white or otherwise, are followers of Jesus who consider the Bible to be authoritative. Look up “evangelical” in a dictionary if you doubt this. At the risk of sounding snarky, this means that they seek to follow what Jesus and His apostles taught in the Bible. If they don’t, then they are not evangelicals. They are something else.
But does the Jesus of the Bible have anything to say about race and racial superiority?
Yes. Tons, actually.
It so happens that Jesus’s greatest commandment and His “great commission” utterly rule out intentional racism. In fact, the defining statements of Jesus and His apostles, and their descriptions of where human history is heading, simply do not allow followers of Jesus to be racists. A racist may attend church, but to the extent that he or she harbors beliefs of racial superiority, he or she is not following Jesus. He or she is following someone else.
The clearly stated aims of Jesus presuppose racial inclusivity and equality. Here are a few indisputable examples:
The Greatest Commandment: “…Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And [Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matt 22:36-40).
The Great Commission: “And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt 28:18-20).
Jesus’s Final Prayer for His Followers, Past and Present: “I do not ask for these [1st c. disciples] only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me… I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (John 17:20-23).
Paul Affirming that Social & Biological Distinctions are Obliterated in Jesus: “…for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:26-28).
Paul’s Statement of God’s Ultimate Plan for Human History: “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph 1:7-10).
John’s Revelation of the Future Age to Come: “…After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’… For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Rev 7:9-17).
For the evangelical follower of Jesus, unequivocal biblical statements like these must settle the issue.
Angel, Evangel, Evangelical, Evangelism Notice the Great Commission verse about making disciples of all the nations. This undertaking of making voluntary disciples is called “evangelism.” The word “evangelist” literally means “bringer of good news,” (from eu- “good” + angelos “messenger”).
Notice how the word “evangelism” is part of the word “Evangelical”? That’s because Evangelicals are supposed to be evangelizing – spreading the good news of how Jesus has invited all of humankind to be restored to relational unity with God.
Furthermore, biblical evangelism is not about making brown people Western and white. Jesus specifically commanded that His followers spread His invitation to people of different ethnicities. Here’s a statement the resurrected Jesus made before His ascension:
“…and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
Notice the progression: his disciples congregated in Jerusalem. The news then spread to the whole region of Jewish Judea. Then to the Samaritans, who were historically looked down upon as “half-Jewish.” Then to all the nations of the earth, including every “race.” There is simply no getting around the fact that God wants to include all people groups in His kingdom.
How Jesus Abolished the Notion of Racial/Ethnic Superiority Perhaps the most stunning development among the first (Jewish) followers of Jesus is the fact that the (Jewish) apostles officially, as a matter of conscious policy, extended the invitation to salvation to non-Jews. This was a completely unexpected development coming from a group of Jewish followers of the Jewish Messiah, and it was not without some controversy. You can read the whole debate in the book of Acts, chapter 15.
Clearly, everyone assumed that non-Jews who wished to become followers of the Jewish Messiah would have to first become Jewish, and follow the Torah of Moses. However, through a series of signs from God, and as a result of seeing the ancient Hebrew scriptures in light of the actions and words of Jesus, the apostles reached their revolutionary agreement: the gentile nations could enter into Jesus’s new covenant and kingdom, as uncircumcised gentiles!
This development was so unexpected that the apostles thereafter referred to it as a “mystery,” meaning that it was unforeseen, and not clearly explained previously in their Jewish Torah and prophetic writings. Here is one example of (Jewish) Paul speaking of this “mystery”:
“When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (Eph 3:4-6).
Pretty clear.
The racially and ethnically inclusive nature of the message of Jesus is not optional. It is not a modern, liberal reading of the scriptures. It was there from the beginning. Any racism in the church of Jesus is a corruption of what Jesus taught. Even the Torah teaches that “all the families of the earth” descended from the same two parents (Gen 3:20; 9:18,19; 10:32). The gospel writer, Luke, affirms this in Acts 17:26.
Of course, one is free not to believe the Bible. My point here is not to prove that the Bible is true. My point is to prove that one cannot truthfully say that the Bible promotes racial superiority of any sort. In fact, the very concept of “race” is man-made, not biblical. There is no white supremacist version of evangelicalism.
History Cuts Both Ways Historically, there certainly have been white church goers who have misused the Bible to justify slavery and racism. Those people have gone the way of the buffalo. Anthea Butler even acknowledges that the Southern Baptist denomination has repeatedly apologized for and repented of past evils. “But” she says, “statements are not enough.” Her proof that Baptists are insincere in their denunciations of past racial sins? They opened their 2019 Annual Convention with a gavel that was owned by the founder of their seminary, and who was also a slaveholder.
I would expect her to be more concerned with groups that were formerly openly racist, but that continue to exploit and decimate the black American population in the present. An example comes to mind:
For some reason white Darwinian “progressives” get a pass for misusing science to justify racism in much the same way that religious people misused the Bible to justify racism. During the early 1900s, there emerged a popular eugenics movement in America and Europe that was concerned with preserving (white) racial purity. It was a terrible and oppressive Orwellian episode of our history. Some 75,000 “unfit” Americans were forcibly sterilized in the name of racial hygiene and human betterment.
Margaret Sanger, founder of what is now Planned Parenthood, was on board with the eugenics movement. It’s difficult to prove whether or not Sanger was an overt racist, but in her autobiography she reports making a favorable impression at a speaking appearance to the wives of the KKK. She also welcomed Klansman and popular white supremacist author, Lothrop Stoddard, as a co-founder and board member of her American Birth Control League, (renamed the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) in 1942).
Stoddard’s most popular book. He also published eugenic articles in Sanger’s magazine, Birth Control Review. A content analysis reveals that the magazine’s overriding concern was not women’s autonomy, but societal improvement.
Today, PPFA enjoys a solid “progressive” reputation as it renounces Sanger’s racist/eugenicist statements, just as evangelical denominations have renounced past racial sins. The difference is that PPFA continues to disproportionately terminate black lives, today.
Black women buy abortions at a rate 5 times that of white women, according the Guttmacher Institute. The reasons are unclear. Regardless, the American black population is significantly smaller than it would otherwise be if not for Sanger and PPFA, America’s largest abortion seller. Bishop Larry Jackson claims, “If we [blacks] had not aborted our children, we would be 30%, not 13%, of the population”.
I can’t prove that widespread black abortion also disintegrates belief in the sanctity of black human life in the black psyche, but I can’t imagine how it would help.
Having said this, I don’t believe that pro-legal-abortion ”progressives” are intentionally racist. But I would arguably be far more justified in leveling that accusation against them than those claiming that evangelicals are racist. Maybe both “progressives” and conservatives should focus on cleaning up their own houses when looking for racists to call out.
None of us lives out our compassion perfectly. All of us – white, black, or brown – harbor prejudice that we must work to overcome. We’ll all be more successful if we work together to overcome it.
