Blog - Serendipity Clergy Stoles

Why I STILL make stoles

Posted by Tanja on 6/26/2018 to Our Story

When I started in 2008, work was therapy, not just a job (and it was certainly not a paycheck the first few years), and designing stoles was a way of expressing love for God, not just creating part of a uniform.

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An Interview With the Artist

Posted by Tanja on 5/31/2018 to Our Story

June 30, 2018 will be the 10th anniversary of my first sale of a handmade stole on eBay. When I began making clergy stoles in the spring of 2008, I was dipping my toe in several pools. I knew I wanted and needed to be self-employed, but I was not sure at that point in what direction I would be going. Making stoles was born of a fascination with liturgy, which had been the product of several years of lay-leader training through the PC(USA). The need for self-employment was born of learning to cope with a crisis of disability and disappointment. Ten years ago I never dreamed that these circumstances would develop into a full-time liturgical art ministry. It has become even more than that to me; in a sense, I see my stoles as a way of amplifying my voice in worship as I participate, through liturgical art, in hundreds of congregations all over the world each week.

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God's Overflowing Generosity in Baptism

Posted by Tanja Rouintree on 2/6/2017 to Our Story

Looking back, I realize that I DID die that night. I died to the sin of the adults in my life who had brought me such misery, pain and fear. I died to my own sins, the extent of which I could not even anticipate at that point.

That morning was a resurrection of sorts, as I awoke to a completely new world view, one in which abusive adults did not have the final claim on my life. The God who created the world and sent His Son had the ultimate claim on my life. I understand now that Christ received me that day, and I have been receiving Christ ever since. As on that first day of believing, His mercies are new every morning.

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Let Jesus tell your story...and mine

Posted by Tanja on 1/7/2016 to

The woman who anointed Jesus, the woman caught in adultery, the woman at the well, Mary Magdalene: all of these women are, for me, wrapped up in this image, an imagined moment after a significant encounter with Jesus. It happens to be the woman at Jacob’s well in Samaria, a scene that was easier to capture as an applique design on a stole, but to me it represents a personal identification with all of these women.

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When God Became "Real"

Posted by Tanja on 12/10/2015 to

I don’t really know what happened that day. I think that was in February, and I was baptized in an ice-cold creek in mid-April with my mother and step-father. But at home sin reigned. Physical, verbal and emotional abuse escalated. I did not know it was abuse then. What I knew was that I was the cause of the unhappiness. By personality I am a problem-solver. I have always taken known problems head-on, found the most obvious solution, and carried it through. I was not always successful; I was just a kid.

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How God Made a Ministry Out of Two Disabilities

Posted by Tanja on 11/13/2015 to Our Story

Serendipity Clergy Stoles is the feast that is the result of giving God my five loaves and two fish: a life of physical and emotional pain. This is my beauty from ashes story.

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Why I STILL make stoles

An Interview With the Artist

God's Overflowing Generosity in Baptism

Let Jesus tell your story...and mine

When God Became "Real"

How God Made a Ministry Out of Two Disabilities

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