Red Room Where the Writers Are

"God Does it For Me ...He uses my Hands""

"The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. (John 14:10).

The book cover is the beautiful artwork painted by my beloved father that hung in the church reception room in Saint Martin of Tours Church in Philadelphia. It was displayed alongside of the huge murals that were painted on every wall of the room. His paintings lined the room where ceremonies were preformed, and one of the sacred ceremonies was for Christenings. These rooms were sometimes called the Baptismal Room. And to think that his own 17 children watched these paintings come to life in a small dim basement seemed like the true life baptismal ceremony of all of us children listening to the message from our dad, that seems to me now' not much difference than the way the children and the people in the portrait were listening to Jesus, and by the Grace of God that we may find our way to live this message.

When you walked into the Church Reception room the portraits emanated the message of Holiness. The paintings resembled Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. Besides the honor of having my father's painting featured on the cover, there were so many hidden messages in these works. I didn't fully appreciate the deeper meaning portrayed in these images until much later in life.

These Holy Scriptures were brought to life in the basement of our small home. I was a very young girl watching with my brothers and sisters. We were a family with seventeen children. We all crowded around him watching over his shoulders with amazement as the paintings came to life before our very eyes. The room was filled with the scent of paint oils and thinner. It was so strong you could smell it through the entire house. He made a makeshift light that was positioned perfectly to improve the lighting. The basement didn't have much natural light, just a very small cellar window. We watched him dip his brush in the oils on the hand held palette. To our young eyes it looked like little globs of beautiful colors. He dabbed the brush in them so delicately blending to the perfect shade. We stood there so quietly that you could only hear his breathing as he skillfully applied the colors onto the canvas that was half of the size of the room. Suddenly these beautiful colors magically came to life as portraits of faces with eyes that seemed so real as though they were looking back at us. I remembered feeling my heart beating faster as they actually came to life before our very eyes. "Wow Daddy, how did you do that?" we would ask him in astonishment. He replied, "I Don't Do Anything GOD does it for me He uses my hands," Interestingly, my father had never taken an art class in his entire life.