{Shane Sevo.com} » 2009

Archive for August, 2009

Watching paint dry…

August 25, 2009 2:29 pm

I watch the subtle movement of the surface of the water, and the watermarks made progressively as the piece dries; it stirs my heart to note details of life that we often take for granted. Beauty often resides in the peripheries of our lives. We walk past such humble miracles, such as the babe in the manger in a little village of Bethlehem, all the time. In the frantic pace of life, we need to slow down and simply observe natural forces around us and create out of that experience. What makes us truly human may not be how fast we are able to accomplish a task but what we experience fully, carefully, and quietly in the process.

~Makoto Fujimura, Refractions

$Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture$
Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture
Author: Makoto Fujimura

I have always enjoyed the attention to detail that the arts bring, when you fully enter into your work… you do lose yourself there. I am just now starting to return to a few art forms that require patience, and everything that is slowly cumbersome about analog processes… but still so much more enjoyable and freeing than watching progress bars creep along in my favorite check box laden graphics application.

Categories: Art, Books
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So how was Haiti…

10:43 am


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Upon returning from a short term missions trip, I have been struggling to answer this question with sincerity in regards to the facts of my experience and grace for the implied scope of those who inquire.

How do you feel, how should you feel, what reality does one week of random video-jockey gallivanting bring to my consciousness? At the risk of painting with hyperbole, one does feel that they have just stood in the midst of a nuclear firebombing and emerged unscathed while watching everyone around them perish. And then you remember the people still there, waking up, knowing nothing different, and facing their day like any other responsible member of humanity… working, playing, walking, worshiping, singing, driving and being.


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The first thing that comes to my mind is people on the move; everyone in Haiti has somewhere to go, something to do, and probably more than one business to maintain. “They are not a lazy people.” was the summary one veteran school teacher of more than 20 years in Haiti offered me during an interview. They are industrious without the industry, and unfortunately in the strange circumstance of having left their once prosperous agrarian past for a slightly urbanized life of mere survival. Perhaps this is my first recollection and observation because I entered Haiti with all the baggage and worries of the currently ravaged US economy. This type of conversation usually begins with a comparison of economic indicators and ends with a shaking of the head as one attempts to formulate a favorable stratagem for the fiscal recovery of a foreign land.


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On the ground; the teachers, preachers, doctors, nurses, and volunteers that I met in Haiti were being overrun with the very real consequences of a much different collection of numerical data…

Infant Mortality Rate
Child Mortality Rate
HIV Prevalence Rate

Show me more… »

Categories: Haiti, Travel
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The Loss of the Shadow…

August 6, 2009 8:57 am

I learned that it was not myself but only my shadow that I had lost. I learned that it is better…for a proud man to fall and be humbled than to hold up his head in pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barley be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood.

~George MacDonald, The Loss of the Shadow