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Artist Debra Classen of The Mute Swan finds healing in her spiritual journey
Saturday, November 29, 2008 - Molly Kavanaugh, Plain Dealer Reporter
Debra Classen's spiritual quest began in the midst of incredible grief and boundless joy.

Classen was 21 years old and ready to embark on an art career in San Francisco when her mother was brutally killed. Her mother and sister were visiting, and the three women had just eaten dinner at a restaurant when her mother went to get the car and never returned.

Within a few years, the California native found a new direction. She fell in love with a doctor, was married and moved to his hometown of Cleveland. Motherhood brought Classen more joy.

But the young mother felt a void in her life. She and her two siblings had not belonged to a church or been raised with any religious instruction, and she didn't want the same for her children. The pain of losing her mother was deep, and she questioned how people survived such a tragedy.

Classen set off in search of a faith she could fully embrace. At the age of 31 she found what she was looking for in the liturgy, tradition and art of the Catholic Church.

"I've questioned everything in my life except becoming Catholic. It's the one constant I've had in my life," Classen, sitting at her kitchen table in Bainbridge Township, said on a recent autumn afternoon.

A ministry devoted to the discovery of beauty
Classen is now 51 and an empty nester with her husband, Roger, a surgeon and cancer researcher. Her spiritual quest has taken her to monasteries and theology graduate classes, but her most ambitious project is The Mute Swan, a nonprofit ministry she started five years ago as a way to express her faith and artistic talent.

She publishes "The Mute Swan: A Contemplative Journal of Beauty," which features her watercolor illustrations and articles by religious, both ordained and lay. The free quarterly journal is available online at www.themuteswan.org.

She paints portraits of saints, greeting cards and prayer cards, which she sells and donates to cancer patients, missionaries and religious communities. She also gives workshops and talks on beauty and its presence in art, nature, relationships and life.

The goal of the ministry, which she runs from her home, is to discover beauty in all its forms. Even in the crucified Jesus Christ.

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