Life at L’Abri has been crazy the past couple of weeks as people have had to abruptly change their plans due to the virus, and I haven’t found much time to write or honestly process anything. Sadly, I’m back in the U.S. However, I have been wanting to dedicate a post to arts week. Edith Schaeffer had a passion for the arts and L’Abri honors her with a week dedicated to art. Something she talks about in her books is finding art in the every day. I appreciated how in addition to holding special lectures and workshops, the workers also spent the week getting more creative with the meals and having us decorate for Arts Week.
Painting
One of the workshops we did was on water color painting. They had a painter, who is a past L’Abri student (I think) and has some of her work in a gallery in Villars, come and teach us about water color and led a workshop. It was beautiful having all the tables in Farel face the widows so we could look at the mountains. There was soft music playing and candles lit. This mixed with the smell of the lavender hand sanitizer and the natural lighting to create a truly peaceful scene. It was wonderful seeing the artist drawn out in everyone and the different ways in which they viewed the scene in front of us. We were told to focus on drawing the different depth and layers in the scene. She talked about how with water color it’s important to not overwork the picture and to gently guide the paint.
The teacher encouraged my friend Morgan and I to do a second painting. I think we both had a lot of fun seeing how much progress we made between the first and the second paintings. Although, I still have some work to do as far as the learning less is more when it comes to water color.
Korean Sushi
One of my favorite parts of L’Abri that I definitely do not talk about enough is the food. The food at L’Abri is so good a so creative. There is a tight budget which makes ingredients somewhat limited. Also, in Switzerland there is not access to all the ingredients one might be used to cooking with, especially since a lot of the people who cook are from other countries. What makes my heart so happy when thinking about food at L’Abri is the attitude around cooking. We have the time and the people to cook, so sometimes we’ll do something that seems tedious just to make the meal better. Small things like making all the plates match or dicing the vegetables super tiny. I love seeing the excitement in a worker’s eye when they think of something they could throw into a dish or a last-minute dessert they could make. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard someone say in the kitchen “I’ve never done this before but I’m going to go for it.” There’s bravery there because you are cooking for a group and the tighter budget means that unless what you make is completely inedible, it’s going to be served.
The amazing thing is that I feel like more times than not the food turns out really well. An example of this is when Amelia decided to make Korean sushi for arts week. Those of us (not me) who had rolled sushi before did not have much experience. We cut up into toothpick size pieces carrots, pickles, cucumbers, peppers, cooked omlete style eggs, and ham. The carrots and peppers were slightly cooked and some spinach was cooked as well. You have a mat called a rollar. You lay out the seaweed wrap, pat on a layer of sticky rice, put each of the other ingredients in, roll it up and then slice it. Fortunetly, we got some extra helping hands from one of the work crews that ended early and it turned out really beautiful. Plus we had a lot of fun.
Everyday Art
We started off arts week by decorating with flowers and branches from Karen’s (one of the workers) yard.
L’Abri’s culture had always embodied everyday art in my opinion. In fact one of my favorite things about L’Abri is that if someone finds out you semi-know how to do something they ask you to either do it or teach them how to do it. I loved walking around the lounge and hearing people singing and playing guitar and the piano. People teaching other people songs they know or reading aloud stories they love. One student taught us an interpretive dance and another did a group swing dancing lesson. I’ll never forget walking into the lounge and seeing a group of students improvising because they were bored and couldn’t watch a movie. I loved the lack of technology and the no technology zones. There’s something to them that allows people to open up and share their talents. Here’s some of the art I made at L’Abri, including a painted carving, that Steve, a worker asked me to paint for him the second he saw me painting.
Morgan and I decided that writing notes for the packed lunch sandwhiches would be a good form of everday art.
Writing Workshop
One of my favorite activities of the week was the writing workshop. The person running it talked about writing and the history of writing for a bit and then had some prompts for us. We each shared our work in our tables and then there was a chance to share with the whole group. I’ll end this post with the writing that I did. The first prompt was come up with a definition of the word nudiusterain.
Nudiusterain – a religion centered around the practicalities of nudism, a nudist cult
The real meaning of the word is the day before yesterday. Now the third prompt had several options and I chose the one that was write a story based off of your definition for nudiusterain. We had about twenty minutes to write something and here’s what I came up with. It is from the perspective of a child.
I was born into a nudiusterain family. We live in a warm land, but not too sunny. My parents don’t own a television, I in fact did not even know what such a thing was until recently. We do on occasion read a fairy tail where people wore things, things like blankets around their frames. One story talked of a mom getting angry at her daughter for getting a stain on her Sunday dress. (I imagine a Sunday dress is like a fancy wearing blanket. Maybe like Grandma Archer’s family quilt that hangs on the wall.) It seems quite silly to me, why do you need a blanket while wading in the river?
I of course on occasion have worn a wearing blanket, but that is only on those rare winters where the sun hides away for a few days. Plus, my mom never gets angry when I wade in the river, she just makes me hose off before entering the house.
There stories of the “clothed” world are quite funny. Don’t tell my mom but my friend Janie showed me a picture of her parents at a beach before they became nudiusterian. You won’t believe it but they where wearing toilet cloths! Only babies ever wear toilet cloths and only indoors, so thy don’t make a mess in the house. Do clothed adults not know how to use the restroom? That seems incredible silly. Oh, oh and her mom had some kind of blanket over her chest. The beach, such a warm place for wearing blankets.
My Life in A Variety of Places 