A place for LGBTQ spirituality and the arts. Home of the gay Jesus and queer saints. Uniting body, mind and spirit. Open to all. Renamed Q Spirit blog and moved to Qspirit.net in 2017.
Jesus in Love is a project of lesbian Christian author Kittredge Cherry. It’s my gift to the world. If you want to send money to help me with Jesus in Love, please give now by clicking the “GoFundMe” button below or visiting my GoFundMe page.
Another way to provide financial support is by buying an ad / subscription to Kittredge Cherry Update for $25 a month. More info here or at the end of this post.
Jesus in Love supports lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and queer spirituality and the arts. It promotes artistic and religious freedom and teaches love for all people, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or religious faith.
Kittredge Cherry started Jesus in Love in 2005, and it has grown to include a popular blog, website, videos, e-newsletter and image archive.
Jesus in Love is not an IRS 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, so your gifts to Kittredge Cherry for Jesus in Love are not tax deductible.
Kittredge Cherry Update, a monthly e-newsletter, features my timely reflections on LGBT spirituality and art, plus a report on my latest activities.
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Artist Trudie Barreras will make a beautiful pastel drawing of your pet, based on photos that you send. Contact Kitt for more info.
Thank you! We will contact you with details about how to submit your photos. The pastel drawings are done in a size suitable for framing in 8 x 10 format. She does one pet per page -- this allows her to get a good likeness in the space available.
We are making this special offer now for the Feast of St. Francis, the patron saint of animals. Many animal blessing events are happening this weekend all over the world. UPDATE: The pet portrait offer has been extended. Pet portraits make wonderful Christmas gifts. Order by Dec. 1 for delivery by Christmas.
Trudie does personalized pet portraits as “donation incentives” for LGBT-friendly churches, animal rescue groups and other charities. She is a member of First Metropolitan Community Church of Atlanta.
I am grateful to Trudie for drawing my own beloved cats and dogs. A couple of them are pictured here. They didn’t even have to sit still for their portraits! Trudie drew these lifelike sketches from photographs. She does an excellent job of capturing their individual personalities.
Animals are important in the lives of many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people and our allies. We hope that these pet portraits will help people to celebrate and remember the creatures who bring so much love into the world. Click here for our animal blessing prayer.
Jerry Yoshitomi teaches artists to be entrepreneurs at the Arroyo Artists Collective
A common complaint from artists is that progressive spiritual art attracts big crowds, but doesn’t sell well.
Painting the queer Christ is considered the biggest financial sacrifice of all.
I challenged the popular wisdom and found inspiring new solutions by attending an “Entrepreneurial Artists” workshop by arts consultant Jerry Yoshitomi last week.
Yoshitomi believes that all art adds value to society, so he teaches people like me how to make their artistic visions real by increasing income and audience.
He got the whole group of 30 people to brainstorm about how to transform this very blog into a powerhouse that supports progressive spiritual art globally by building on the successes of my website JesusInLove.org, my book Art That Dares and the National Festival of Progressive Spiritual Art.
I told the group my dream of sponsoring a big progressive spiritual art contest with a prestigious judge and winners displayed online, in a book, and in a U.S. gallery tour—and they can up with practical steps to make it happen.
“You’ve got the vision and you’re doing the work.Money is the easy part,” Yoshitomi said at one point.
It was a personal breakthrough for me.
“Make it easy for people to give you money,” Yoshitomi advised.
He recommended using chipin.com.On that note, I set up a chipin.com account (see below) to collect funds for a huge mailing that we are doing to 800 art and religion professors who expressed interest in gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues.AndroGyne Press designed the flier and is sharing the costs, but my portion is $450.Please use the chipin.com button below to help with a donation.
The workshop was sponsored by the Arroyo Arts Collective, an amazing arts group that happens to be based in my part of Los Angeles.A group of strangers became a mini-community at the workshop as we took turns brainstorming about each other’s art projects.We generated enormous enthusiasm as we encouraged each other in all our diversity-- a flamenco dance teacher, a woman who does cigar art, a painter of family portraits, a man who wants to do animated films, and of course me, the lesbian Christian author.
Before the workshop I was planning and dreaming (and sometimes worrying) about how get the resources to go to the next level with Jesus in Love.I believe that re-envisioning the sacred is one of the most important tasks of our time.I had faith that God’s abundance was out there with more than enough funds to meet the need, but I couldn’t imagine how to access it.
The key is to get your audience to think about and express the value that your art adds to their lives.Let me say here and now that the Entrepreneurial Artists workshop gave me motivation and practical steps to make my artistic dreams come true.Some attendees grumbled that Yoshitomi’s approach minimized the purpose of art by packaging it like detergent to sell to a specific demographic.Perhaps this proves his point that audiences are not uniform, but are comprised of subsets of people with differing needs.
Yoshitomi is lead consultant on information and network strategies for LINC (Leveraging Investments in Creativity), a national initiative to improve the lives of artists.In the workshop he taught marketing theory with examples from museums and corporations.But his greatest gift was creating a sense of community and vision that empowered us to see that the resources we need are already within our grasp.
I’ll be presenting more specific ways to join the vision of promoting spiritual progressive art in the future.
