For the Rev. Anne Wolf, creativity is a very spiritual attribute. Being artistic is part of her incarnation. �Aesthetic stuff just gets my strings humming,� she says.

True, she sometimes feels a bit guilty about spending time playing with photographs and bits of colored paper to create greeting cards or scrapbook albums. But creating something with joy -- �Doesn�t it honor God?� she asks.

An Episcopal priest, Wolf is spending more time honoring God in this way after leaving a regional ministry in Tennessee last summer. She had spent time at other churches before that -- the cathedral in Hartford, Conn.; a parish in St. Louis; a mission church that she guided to parish status in Tennessee.

But she felt as though her creative side was �languishing.� In July, she took �a leap of faith� and launched a new sort of ministry. Wolfcraft Arts specializes in customized handmade greeting and photo cards as well as Anglican prayer beads.

Wolf�s interest in �paper crafts� grew out of her enthusiasm for making scrapbooks. An avid photographer, she enjoys marrying photos with words in her scrapbook albums. �I love working with color and paper and composition.�

An artistic family

Her skill with page design came naturally; her father�s family published newspapers in urban Cincinnati. �There is a gift for that,� she says. �I was lucky enough to get it.� A maternal grandfather, meanwhile, was a photographer. And her parents handcrafted Christmas cards every year.

With her greeting cards, Wolf hopes to fill a void. Religious cards on the market tend to have limited appeal and address only limited occasions in the spiritual life, she says. Cards with Bible verses might not appeal to non-Christians who nonetheless consider themselves spiritual.
�I�m seeking to bridge a gap, creatively and spiritually,� Wolf says. �I�ve got some plain old fun stuff, too.�

�I collect quotes, and I�ve got a book of favorites that are going to be used on cards,� she explains. Her inventory includes cards with quotations such as �Fill this day with joy�; �Never regret. If it�s good, it�s wonderful. If it�s bad, it�s experience�; and �Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.�

She�s experimenting with colors to create different moods. She�ll also customize cards. So if you see a quote you like on a green card, she says, �and it was for your best friend who hates green, tell me, and I�ll put it on a different background.� Her goal is customer service: listening to what people want and then responding. �A piece of what motivated me to do that,� she says, �is because I see so little of that in the world.�

She plans one line of cards helpful to those experiencing the particular challenges of military life. Raised a Quaker, she has been learning about military life -- and how meaningful receiving cards is to those serving -- from her boyfriend, who spent 16 years in the Army, and his son, now in the Army.

�I get ideas all the time, so it�s a little overwhelming. All the stuff is labor-intensive,� she says. �I do sewing and quilting, too. Who knows if that�ll get worked in somehow.� Wolf also knits prayer shawls. �You pray as you knit,� she says. �I�m Benedictine in that way. Doing is very much a form of prayer.� That includes the work she�s doing with Wolfcraft.

�Most of my prayer is nonverbal,� she says. �In the way that work is prayer, life is also prayer, and thought is prayer. I trust the Spirit to be praying for me. I think this is prayerful work.�
�One person can�t do everything, but one person can do one thing,� she concludes. �I�m trying to do what I can do and do it with joy.�

To learn more, visit http://stores.wolfcraftarts.com/StoreFront.bok.