Community. Compassion. Creativity.

We are all familiar with the feeling, the sensation that comes with the opportunity to create something, to express ourselves. We all have these triggers that let us know we are alive. These experiences, these moments that let us know we fit somewhere. They let us know we have something to offer to this world. They say "here I am, I am valuable, I have purpose, I belong, yet I am unique." These things are as diverse as there are people in the world: it's a piece of paper waiting to be defined by a poem, it's an empty bowl waiting to be filled with the ingredients of a culinary masterpiece, it's a pile of rust pulled out of a junk yard waiting to be transformed into a classic treasure. It is the mountain to be climbed, the garden to be planted, the country not yet travelled. It is an instrument waiting to be wielded to release the sound of its musician's soul. It is a ramp waiting to launch the rider airborne into a trick never accomplished. It is the website fashioned out of technology and creativity, and a moment waiting to be captured in a frame. It is an education with the opportunity to inform and empower, and a career with the potential to provide and inspire. It is a life just out of the womb ready to live. It is the person we have never met waiting to tell their story, and it is the person we have known our whole life that we have not yet skimmed the depths of the love they have to give. It is the religion to be believed in, the faith to be submitted to… and on, and on, and on...

These things we are so familiar with, yet have not even begun to explore. These things do not stand alone, but stand because someone chose to express themself. It is the cloth that says someone wove, the trail that says someone walked, the statue that says someone carved. It is the game that says someone is playing, the relationship that says someone loved. These moments, these events, these experiences, these creations… each… a canvas. A canvas blank with opportunity, full of declaration, alive with expression.

What if we are each a canvas? What if we are here, and everything we see, exists because something, someone, decided to express themself? What if we, and the lives we are living, are a part of a masterpiece that has in many ways been completed, but is somehow not yet finished? What if all the canvases that make up our lives were a part of one big canvas? What if by painting our own story we are actually being painted into a bigger story? What if all the breaths you have breathed, the words you have spoken, the accomplishments you have achieved, and the mistakes you have made were bigger than you? What if they could actually be made into something more beautiful than your wildest imaginations?

That's Canvas. A community of people who believe that we are all here because God chose to be expressive; we are what God chose to paint on canvas. Because of this belief we are compelled to live our lives in a way that reflects and brings glory to the Master of this grand masterpiece. We believe this is done by existing as part of community, living compassionately, and expressing creatively.