Beyond the Ruins: Education Oil on Door Panel 32x80”
Beyond the Ruins: Education Oil on Door Panel 32x80”
Beyond The Ruins: Education
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
The seven spheres of influence are so interconnected, that to see education reach its potential in Haiti, economic stability, family dynamics, and political policy need to shelter its fragile nature. Yet a good education is perhaps the single greatest asset a Haitian youth can gain to equip them to play their part in the work of restoration. Our global and digital world provides unprecedented opportunity for a young, well educated Haitian who rightly understands where they stand in place and time. There is an untapped paradise, a hidden Eden, at their doorstep.
Here I am working in my (small) studio at home during the first summer of the project in 2010. I was so thrilled to find myself the following three summers at my new place of employment, Trinity-Pawling School, in NY (Below). I now had the luxury to spread out with all 12 door panels simultaneously!
I painted “Education” before I had come across the concept of the seven spheres, and perhaps it was symbolic of the strategic importance education holds for sustainable change in Haiti. The “Seven Spheres” or “Seven Mountains” of influence spring from a miraculous meeting in 1975 between Bill Bright (Founder of Campus Crusade) and Loren Cunningham (Founder of Youth With A Mission). Both men brought the same list of seven things to a meeting, having each independently received a revelation of from the Lord that lasting social change must address Education, Government, Religion, Business, Family, Media, & Arts and Entertainment. They were stunned to realize the other had excitedly brought the exact same list of seven, and this blueprint of empowering agents of change in each sphere became a pivotal strategy for their international ministries.
May the children of Haiti come to know who they really are and what they were born to become!