Our Dear Christine

On Tuesday, January 5, we suddenly lost our friend, Christine Lawrence Finney. Christine participated in Speaking Down Barriers events and Spoken Word Spartanburg events for nearly two years, offering herself to new relationships, new ways of creating, and development of new artistic partnerships. We shared our lives with Christine and she shared hers with us.

Christine exuded joy, peace, and love.

We felt this while she served on the Speaking Down Barriers inaugural Board of Directors. We felt this when she wrote and shared at Writing Circles, hosted by Spoken Word Spartanburg. We felt this when we saw her amazing art next to her husband's (Trey Finney) art during their Double Vision exhibit.

Words will never express what Christine means to us. Because she existed, we will use her energy towards the highest good. She lives on through us, her family, and every amazing piece of art at our disposal. She is here.

Christine, we thank you for all that you are and will continue to be. We love you.


View Christine's powerful art

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.”
~ Maya Angelou

Rest in Power, Christine