Living out of the centers enables us to belnd for a moment into a grater background than our own fears, to merly be still and know that God is God. It means that I don't figure out, I don't alalyze. I simply lose myself in the experience of just being alive, of being in a community of believers, simply knowing that it's good to be there, even if I don't know what "there" is or why it is good. An inner stillness assures me that it is enough right now to be centered, to be in Christ Jesus, and that gratefulness is both the heart of living and the heart of prayer.

--B. Manning, The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus 128

weekend. This one has been good. Restful. Refreshing. Nothing major, but some nice things. I feel a bit more alive, like I have some room to breathe and I feel a little bit more like a human being and a little less than a robot machine. Something about three hour talks have this healing effect that is just right. I said a couple of stupid things today and I was able to laugh about it. All I did was be with people today and that is sort of a different experience, but it is right and it is good. I did not accomplish anything except putting the whites in the washer. But being with people makes me want to be here still more. It makes me feel more present in this moment and less worried about tomorrow and what she's going to think and what grade he is going to give me. It helps me remember than even if I fall hard upon my face, it is not the end of the world. There is light beyond the end of this semester--er, tunnel. There is a lot more to life than this whole ordeal. That was yesterday and that obstacle was overcome, but my life is really about the breath that being with other people breathe into me. Just to get all of that stuff out.

Today was a great, adgenda-less day. Its daylight savings, so my internal clock can't even control me becuase it is messed up. To just sit somewhere else, do something else, totally free from what must be done. Ah, beautiful. Magnificent.

I have been thinking about this idea that Iam just okay becuae my creator siad so. Not becuae I chekced all the right boxes or becuase I am up on my homework or becuae my spiritual life looks like it is all in order. Just becuase I know I am. I am safe in the arms of Abba, no matter how stupid or weak or little I feel. I am pitiful and that is good. I've been reading through the divine conspiracy and the last chapter I rad was talking about when the Bible says that God has mercy upon us, it actually means he takes pity on us. Becuase we are just pitiful and he is totally okay with that.

Today, for the first time in a while, I am totally happy just to be here, where I am. I feel less harsh against myself. I feel at ease and free and joyful. I am thankful for a good friend who just masages my soul. I am thankful for a friend that I can just be with and not be fawned over, but just to be with her. To be totally honest, to just say the stuff that tears at my heart, rips like a knife and pounds like a drum on the inside, longing to break out. It makes me feel real and honest and like I'm breathing air. A lot better than just having to sort it all out myself. Hm. Nice.

most recently, covered in paint has been my natural state. I only have fingernail polish on my thumbs and pinkies becuase it has been that long since I did my nails last. But I don't bother to take it off or put on new becuase I know that tomorrow and probably the day after I will be abusing my hands with toxic paint and abrassive soap. Most people know that is more than a common occurance for me to have oil paint in my hair, my ears, my eyebrows and also gracing the tip of my nose. Most of my clothes have little splotches of pigment ground into them. I am dirty.

And today, after getting home from spending 4 hours in the studio that may or may not prove to be fruitful on monday, I put on a white shirt. And suddenly I remembered something that I have not remembered for quite some time: I am clean. Cleansed. REnewed and restored. Each moment, regardeless of what i've done or what I've siad and what i've thought about that guy in my class who actually turns out to by my neigbor like the guy that samaratan saved. I am clean. I don't feel like it much. I feel like and ugly, dirty, shameful little girl just doing enough to get by before someone realizes it.

But I wear a white shirt today becuase I am clean.

"I cried out to you in my distress and you answered me."

Last night I threw the journal and the pen across the room. Yesterday was a hard, awful day and I did not like it. My ego got a bit bruised and I had to stop and think about what was really important and where I really am. I've been thinking a lot lately how things aren't like they used to be. I'm not who I used to be. I'm not as secure as I used to be. I don't have as many answers as I used to and I feel a lot farther from myself than I used to. Things are becoming less nailed down and the rushing river is getting faster. And I think most of the time i've lost hold of the log I used to feel more firmly beneath my grasp. Now, more often, it seems like I get little glimpses of it from far away as it bobs up and down in other lives and other people and different ambitions. I like to say that I seek after God to shatter the illusions that I believe about him but I actually don't like it when I find them broken. Either that, or I think that means I can't find the comfort in him that I used to find and that is a lie.

I've been thinking a bit about remembrance, looking back on things that used to be and then also figuring out what are just really great seasons and memories that just aren't anymore. Days that were good but are not today.

God has felt far more recently. I don't know who he is much anymore and I don't know how to find him, i have forgotten and become fearful and doubtful about what it really means for him to be near. Last night I really thought to myself maybe he had forsaken me. I feel like I deserve to be foresaken becuase I don't take the time to find him. Life is way too complicated most of the time and I feel alone. Isolated. Cold and in the dark. Maybe I'll find him when I don't have papers to write and paintings to worry about and drawing to practice. Someday... I mean, honestly, it is hard. HArd. Complicated. Complex. It seems to much simpler to just think about the things I can see. (but something inside me, or maybe something I was told when I was a good little girl tells me this isn't supposed to be true.) And so then I become this AWFUL, SINFUL, UNSPIRITUAL person becuase I just want to focus on the worldly stuff. I just not the person of faith that I thought I was or was supposed to be becuase this is where my focus is. Well, this is my life. This is me today.

And, well, things actually seem to be more simple, a bit easier when I don't worry so much about my spiritual stature or what I'm supposed to do or what words I'm supposed to repeat. When I can just say, "GOd, I don't know where the hell you are right now and I am certainly too tired to go searching after you, you abstract wisp of an evation." Why do people have to act like it is just so easy to catch the peice of smoke that God seems to be most of the time. HE says "come to me". Come to what? Maybe i'm just being cynical and sacreligious, but these are things I need to know. Why does it have to be so hard? But you know what, it makes me feel a lot better if I can just be me. If I can just breath in and be what I am. To stop thinking about how to be spiritual on top of productive. I don't know.

Today was a better day though. It is a good thing that God doesn't get scared off by our doubt. Funny how sometimes just letting those doubts come out is just so much more freeing, so much more comforting. To be honest.

Yesterday was a hard day, but I realized something, a little. I feel like I am just catching little snippets of this idea, tasting just little hints of it. But that my identity can never be found in my artistic ability or what my career is going to be. I sort of watched my illusions of my own grandeur come down yesterday. And I had to think to myself-- what if I wasn't good at anything? What if I just kept on falling and falling and falling, facedown, unable to acheive anything, move forward in any skill or accomplishment. I like to find my identity in being an artist or artistic person becuase it makes me feel like really cool. I like that people envy me and I can say to people in my mind, "you will never be the creative person that I am." I like people walking into my house and seeing how creative I am and wishing they could live here. I like walking into other people's houses and thinking how much better I am at making things feel homey than they are. now that none of you are going to invite me over... But seriously. I can't find myself in that stuff. I cannot find my worth and purpose and self in that stuff. Its weak, its surface stuff that could be gone in a moment.

I was thinking to myself-- what if I failed painting this semester? Would that be the very end of my world? Would I really just have to quit everything? I mean, this is the whole reason I am going to college-- to be a painter and to be a teacher. What do you do when you find out that you suck at the whole thing you are striving after? Its like you work towards a goal and you get to the end and realize the whole thing has fallen in the middle while it was in the oven? So your life gets rearranged a little.

Yesterday I was humbled. Things feel a little more risky, but also at the same time, feel less risky becuase there is less to loose. A smaller distance to fall, I suppose. I am thinking about what it would be like to have to start all over agin. To take the stuff I've bene doing and approach it from a different side. A wakeup call. I suppose that may be what they mean about growth through hardships. Learning to get up with your face all covered in mud. To stand up even though you suddenly find at least five more questions running around in your head. I don't know. I feel like I'm just writing things that sound nice becuase I can't really put words to the warm glow of the birth of an idea emerging from the shell of its seed.

I was thinking this morning as I walked through the chunks of wet snow to work how so much of our lives are lived out of the subconscious, the part of us that we cannot manipulate becuase they just flow out. And how the things in ourselves we attempt to control and "be" often come off artificial and fleeting becuase they aren't really embedded in us. And how when we try to stifle the things that really are brewing down below, its like icing a fallen cake. It looks good for about 4 minutes. but the broken cake chunks come showing through eventually. I want to be made new from the inside. I often find myself praying the words, "penetrate me with this just one little thing."

I just feel like a failure in a lot of ways-- mainly in how often I truly take time to be silent before God, the amount of time I seek things to be penetrated with. I wonder how he can love me when I don't take time to let him love me. When I just get busy. I don't know. Lost. Its how I feel most of the time. Lost with a few glimpses of sweet enlightenment.

evidence that we are still traveling the same road

As I was exploring a few things on my blog in passing this afternoon, I sort of accidently rediscovered some old posts from right around the time I graduated and this afternoon it has made me think a bit. I've just been thinking about how things don't really change all that much. We think that we can just pray our holy thees and thous and try hard and God will take the junk in us and just automatically whisk it away, never to be seen again. Wrong. Daily I think about how someone wise once said these simple words: Our God is a Journey God. And I am daily reminded in my studies and in my frustration that God's way is the way of the process, not the quick, easy solution. He is not the God of the bandaid and he is not the God of the quick fix and he is not the God of our instant gratification desires. He is slow-- as someone once said, God has an abundance of free time. He is not worried about us getting it all figured out right away or even as fast as we possibly can. He likes to work us slowly and completely. Something that we cannot quiet grasp in our modern, American lives, I'm afriad. HE is still working on me and he is still bringing up the things in my life today that he was beginning to churn in me a year and a half ago as a mere high school senior, entering the biggness of life. I'm still here. Take a look at a couple of these posts, if you'd like to take this jounrney back with me, and here are a couple that really connected that day and today:

Highlights

I just began reading "The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus" by Brennan Manning, and he touches on a lot of things that just drive deep into the dark searches of my soul. Here are a few highlights:

"it is this love that enables us to love ourselves without excuses and without questioning. We love ourselves as we are because faith has convinced us that God does so. We no longer worry about spiritual growth (which is just another form of idolatry anyway). in living out being-loved, we move beyond the oppressive demands we impose on ourselves, beyond idealistic claims of the ego that tells me who I should be, must be, ought to be. My friend Sister Mary Michael O'Shaughnessy has a banner in her room that says, "today I will not should on myself." I don't have to be somebody else-- Mother Teresa, Saint Francis, or Billy Grahm" (Manning 29).

As I read over the line I bolded above, it struck me how much I worry over my spiritual growth and how this really is a form of idolatry. I'd really never considered this, but how true it is. So often, I put my ability to claim "good Christian-ness" over my relationship with God. I think that somehow my relationship is dependant upon my ability to conjer up enough faith and the right answers.

I'd like to go back to the idea that I am spiritually bankrupt. I'd like to go back to living a life just being loved, throwing achievement to the wind and just accepting God's love and being okay with all that I am not. How do I stray so far? How do i forget this one fundemental thing? i don't know. To be honest, I feel as though I have even failed the ability accept something free, the most important thing of all.

This was the post that stopped me this afternoon becuase I have just this week decided to re-read Mannings, Relentless Tenderness of Jesus and have been thinking about this particular passage. I almost envy the young, fresh thoughts that I had then becuase I feel much more bogged down now that I am in this place even than I did then. I find it nearly impossible to find clarity now, to pin down in myself the things that make me feel "okay" in this moment of my crazy college student lifestyle. I have been thinking a lot lately about what I was like as a Senior in High School, the thoughts I was having the goals about what kind of person that I did and did not want to become in college. And I have sort of wondered, now over 500 days later, millions of steps following those thoughts, if I have really done that. I think about how I never could have predicted where I would be today, the places that I would be, the church I went to this morning, the people who's lives I have found myself a part of. Take a look at this:

As I look back over this past semester of struggle, i realize that a significant part of me was left somewhere. I forgot that Heidi is not a person to be abused or condemned or second-guessed if i was going to try to live happily within her body and live her life. I used to have this freedom that i want to regain. step out of the box.

One of the things that i had forgotten is that in Christ, I am a new creation, a beutiful butterfly, soaring in the wind. I have a Holy Spirit within my very depths that allows me to trust the deepest longing of my hearts. This no condemnation thing means that unless i am being convicted of a sin that i simply need to walk away from, the crap in my life is not my fault, but is an opportunity to see God in a different light. the tendency for me to become overwhelmed can be maintained, i do not have to be defeated by guilt, fear, or doubt. I am okay.

I began a new job this week. A job that was a huge sacrifice of my summer, a sacrifice of my comfort zone that I am already seeing God reward me for and use to teach me. I believe in my last blog i said something about thinking that I would spend the summer sipping lemonade while i watched God slip all my issues away on a cloud. today i can smile knowing that God is able to do stuff in my life outside of my expectations and apart from my terms. It was not my plan to spend the summer working full time in another town. This was not what i thought i wanted. But, oh! How God loves to surprise me! i love my job. I love the people. I relish the opportunity to be a part of all these new lives, my world is being drastically stretched and my heart is being broken for the hurting that I am already in contact with.

One of the most crippling things i encountered in the first few days of work was my hang ups on what others may be thinking of me. I am the only freshmen out of about 13 new people working at the college. I began to question whether or not the person I was in my "childhood" (which happened to be about two weeks ago) is good enough for the person i am supposed to be as an "adult." My identity shifted a little with the change. But then I was reminded that my identity is found in who i am in Christ, who my creator says I am. I remembered that the first element required for interaction with others is my own opionion of myself. its the "love your neighbor as yourself" factor.

So, here is my goal for the moment. Love Heidi. She is important to me. Have some grace for Heidi. She needs some room to breathe. it seems strange to think that my life is about being loved. Thats my principal function on this planet: to be passionately pursued for a love relationship. I've been thinking lately that if we are to love the things that God loves, that includes ourselves. What a blasphemy that must be to God when we despise the things that God holds closest to his hearts and the one peice of creation we know best: ourselves. this not to say that we should be proud in a sinful wya, but we should be grateful to God for giving us the grace to encounter his creation in such an intimate way, to be such an integral part of who he is through being his most special creation. wow.

I still have a long way to go. More of my day is speant working through this "folly" and "scandal" as B. Manning describes it, than really freefalling in it, but I thank Abba for the grace of this moment when I can be free from this searching, this grasping for breathing room, this small grain of love I muster for myself. But in due time, I will be made complete. Someday, I hope to live basking every day in the depths of this grace, but for now I just thank God for his grace when i cannot see it. seems impossible, but i guess thats just how God works.

I have found myself very much back in this same place recently. THis place of self-condemnation and of hatred and working as hard as I can find time for, to see myself in the light of God's love. It has been hard. It has been like trying to breathe under water. I think i thought when I wrote that post that it would be getting easier, but i'm seeing now that it does not. It is a daily walk, a step by step process. Every moment looking to God for breath and peace. Looking to him for grace and compassion for myself. It is very hard.

But I've been thinking this week, how God just wants for us to seek him for our livelihood each moment of the day. He doesn't just fix us and send us on his way becuase that would mean that we would have no need for him and that we could do it on our own-- and isn't that the very disease in the first place? So, in light of this, wouldn't God's choice to keep us discovering more weakness and sickness really be the cure? The disease isn't our hardships, our frustrations, our struggles with ourselves-- these are symptoms. I think maybe the disease is our independence from the One who loves us deeply, the one who longs to hold us in his arms and our absense from his arms is what our disease is. Maybe.

I am discovering this week that I want for my life to be about the external stuff-- school, acheivement, what I do, what is measureable and visible-- becuase this is a lot easier. This is easier than the thing that I really want deep down and that is for my life only to be about my dwelling in the arms of my Abba and inviting others in. It is a lot easier for me to say the things that dictate my life are the due dates and the assignments and the places that my instructors want me to go. These things are measurable. They feel like i am working towards something. Honesty, they are the biggest things in my life.

But I am on this journey to love better. That is really what my life is about and I don't get it. I feel frustrated because I feel like my life is trecking down this path towards accomplishment and it is separated from the path I really want to be on by this thicket of barbs and trees. I can't see myself spiritually. I feel sort of external and wasted, trying to sort out who I am supposed to be spiritually with who I am physically. Most of the time, I feel like all there is to me is student and then I feel this pressure from this otherside that I am supposed to be something more. That somehow this consuming occupation is supposed to be second place. And honesty, that is a lot of pressure becuase being a student is big time. It takes up a lot and it makes things a lot more stressful when it isn't supposed to be the big thing. It is supposed to be a vessel for the bigger thing. But I feel sort of alone in that bigger thing. It suddenly becomes me against this other thing that I know that I am, but feel like i'm not supposed to be. My life is supposed to be this spiritual thing, this relationship thing. But I'm bogged down enough just by putting charcol to paper, paint to canvas, pen to notebook.

So that is all sort of vague and confusing, but I don't know what words to use. I suppose that is the root of the problem. IF I just had some answer that I could pin it down to, then maybe I could get it together. But I dont. One more thing.

This weekend was a missions conference at my church. Yesterday many of us from the church split up into different teams all over fort collins to serve the community. I walked around the neighborhood near the church (which is also the neigborhood around my hosue) and we just raked leaves for people who needed help. And things like that alays just get me thinking, get my heart pumping. Something in me is warmed and I just wish I could do more thatn just a few hours. And something else was warmed up in me. We were mostly looking for elderly people who could not rake their own leaves, but it was not easy becuase there were alot of students who live around here. And the people we were with really wanted to find the elderly, but as students ourselves, my roommate and I thought what a bigger blessing it would be for us as a church to go out the students in the area who don't know that they are loved by adults, who need to know how imporatnt they are. People forget that just becuase students are young and capable of doing things for themselves, service sometimes means going out of your way to help someone just because-- not just becuase they have physical needs.

And I always have this passion, this question of how can college students be served? Honestly. They are all around me. How can I help my church understand that college students need love from adults. How college students don't have families all around them all the time and how they need to know that they are valued and seen as more than a menace to society. It is so frustrating how often at work I hear even parents being less than loving and respectful toward thier own children.

At the same time, I find a constant frustration in myself becuae I am so shy. I am afraid of rejection most of the time and assume people do not want me close enough to really bless them, really serve them. I am constantly frustrated that I am surrounded all day long by students who need to know that they are loved and who would be so blessed by a little foot washing for thier tired minds. A little break from the condemnation of thier lifestyle that is just seeking some celebration and some adventure. But I am afraid. I am shy. And I am busy. Very busy. Just like them.

And so, this morning as my pastor spoke on the question of "Why Missions?" I was doing a lot of thinking about where I am right now. My roommate often asks me if some of my frustrations are from the fact that maybe I have checked out of my present life in anticipation of what I will be doing next semester and I am working hard not to do so, but in some respects, maybe I am. I am thinking, I am shy and I am scared to death to initiate relationships with the other students in my classes and hopefully I will learn the skills to get over that next semester. So until then... That maybe a bit of my attitude. I feel inadequate. I feel small, I feel like as a christian, people see me as someone without a brain and who just thinks what people tell me to think, that I don't actually have a place in the real world. Like I cannot identify with most people.

I think I should get to the point soon becuase this is becomming very rambling. The point is this: I am discovering in myself this great heart for service, but I often find myself held back by fear. And I wonder, how can missions be done if there are all of these things just in me that are out of whack, so much that there are few people that I find myself touching hearts with. That is hard. And I wonder how long I will find myself in this place. But I seek healing and I will continue to walk this journey, even if I find myself on the same road many years ahead. Either way, I choose to keep walking it in faith, even when I cannot guage my own spiritual stature. This is just an idol, isn't it?

This has been a very long, full week. And I'm tired. I think I have earned the right to a break. But I don't think i'm going to get much of one. too much work. i'm tired and I just want to complain. I've been wanting to complain for a couple of weeks now and I haven't done a very good job not complaining. But I feel sort of isolated in my work, isolated in my lists of things to do and I don't feel like there are many people around me who can say I've done a good job and so I don't see it either. All I can see is that I still have to paint again tomorrow after I did it for four or five hours today and that I have reading to do for tuesday. And even though I turned in a paper or some other assignment every day this week and will do so again on monday, I just feel like a failure. I just don't feel very good about myself and I don't feel like i'm really accomplishing much of anything right now becuase its this wheel just turning and turning.

And I don't feel like i'm a very good person spiritually becuase all I think about is what is next on the adgenda, which leads to how much I don't want to do it. Why don't I like doing assignments? I like learning and I like school and I love all that is being poured into me, but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, I don't like it. I just want to stop. I want the right to take a break and just be a kid. I feel like I have to do it all on my own and it is just drudgery. I feel like a looser most of the time, and that I have to apologize for myself a lot, and I don't like that. I don't feel at ease and I don't know what is wrong.

AnI know I am supposed to be able to run into th eopen arms of Abba and find rest there, but I'm not very good at that either. I don't know where to run exactly or what that looks like. I like to talk about rest a lot, ut I'm in that place in my life right now where I'm having a hard time finding it. I'm having a hard time falling into anyone's arms. I just feel isolated and tense in many wyas.

ITs hard to say, God, you are in control of the time I have tomorrow and this painting I have to fnish that I just fear will be wrong or that I will get lazy before it is really what I want it to be and it is going to show. I'm sorry that it takes me so long to figure out what to, do, where to put the paint. It is supposed to be a learning process, but it feels like it has to turn out at the end like it wasn't a learning process. But that has to be a lie. Why are things so twisted and conveluted. I feel like it would be nice to have someone else carry my burdens for a while, but that doesn't quite feel fair becuase there are students all around me and people all around me who need thier burdens carried too. And so, who am I? I should be carrying thiers too. But instead we stay isolated, we stay alone, trudging through alone. And I don't know what to do with that.

Do you ever just feel like your life is running you? Like the deadlines and the assignments and this thing that you have chosen for yourself is running you along, without you getting much say. And me writing this isn't really helpful becuase that expression is clique and has lost its meaning. Its something that was too abstract in the first place and that just became coined in its triteness because it sounded like a good answer, but in reality no one really knew what it meant. Sometimes I really hate the things that spin around in my head like this and that makes me hate me. It sounds harsh, but its the truth. Sometimes I really hate me becuase of the things that swirl around inside me.

And so Abba, I am supposed to come to you when I find myself weary And I think that I odon't becuase I am ashamed. I'm ashamed that I procrastinated and I'm sorry that I got defeated by the fear of even beginning and I am ashamed becuase I wasted time and I am ashamed and now I must just pay the consequences. Its all my fault. Why should you clean up my messes when I am just too little to take care of them myself? But that's the point, isn't it? You want to cdlean up my messes becuase you made me too small for it. You know i am tired. and you know that just thinking about tomorrow gets me exauseted and thinking about dinishing a painting and then the htought of having to take verything back to the studio is daunting. And you hear those voices that say that I need to do something differently so that I can find some more energy and so that I can just suck it up and feel better. And that I am being lazy and that if I just worked harder, maybe that would be enought but that I also know that it will never be enough becuase there is always somethng more. Something else to do. Some other way to waste time. Waste the time I should be spending doing the stuff I should be doing to make me the perfect student. Round and round it goes.

But I tried tonight at the grocery store and it worked. I asked you for your help and your peace and your strength and your freedom and I found it. You were faithful. In that one little thing. And tomorrow I will probably wake up and not want to wake up and not want to do that one more thing on the list that is church and I will listen to the lies that tell me that it will be more pain than refreshment. And I will trudge out of bed joyless and I will sit through church wondering how long before I can get out of there and do what I need to do to straighten out my life and then feel more guilty for that. And the bricks keep piling up and I'm tired of them and I don't want to handle it anymore, even though this ugly voice keeps telling me that if I just would get over it and buck it up, I will accomplish things, even though I feel numb and miserable. Sickening. Ugly. Procrastinator. Blind. Unspiritual. These are not my names, but I have taken them on, written them on nametags and stuck them to my shirt. I have. I'm not going to act like I haven't. And I need a rescue. And I don't have the energy to go out looking for one right now.

but maybe if I just opened myself to the idea of one... maybe.

moveable

I have posted about this before and will most likely post about it again later when I have a better handle on the words, but I think it is appropriate to bring it up again mainly becuase its burrowing a little deeper into my being. I love studying art because there is so much about life in it. The nature of art is not like other things in which you must simply memorize concepts and reguritate them to earn the official piece of paper. Art is a love affair and a struggle with learning how to make, its a process of frustration, of working things out. And to be an artist, you cannot just know things. These things that you are told and observe must become a part of you before they work themselves out. Its like the art moves into your eyes or your mind or your soul, moves down your arm and out your hands, or legs, or your whole body in most cases. And so, art is so penetrating that it changes everything about you-- if you allow it to. Art is a way of seeing and reacting, not just knowing. Aren't all true lasting things that way anyway?

But the point-- moveable. I am learning in both painting and drawing that you cannot become to attached to things-- you must keep things loose until just the moment when all is right to move in to commit. You want to keep things open to change becuase you are never going to be right the first time you look. Keep it loose. My painting instructor often circulates around the fume-filled studio shouting "No Line! So-and-so-- you! No Line! You can't move that!" THe method of her class (as she commonly reminds us is not neccessarily the only way or the right way of painting) is to learn to paint light as it is seen, to paint everything as a holistic Oneness rather than isolating and locking things in with line. Even though she often says you may choose not to paint this way once you leave her class, I think it is absolutely brilliant. I fear that you may not catch the full effect of this idea without having a paintbrush in your hand, but I'll do my best to put it into words.

When you just have the paint sitting there, together as one, it is not as hard to move things when you run into a problem. Many people think that to avoid unbearable scrutiny of their work, they ought to have it perfect before anyone looks at it. We want it to be set just right right way, don't we? But the idea of freedom in art is just to allow things to be messsy and ugly for a while becusae we know that we are just on our way to having an answer or at least another question (it probably will never be perfect, but to find an answer or, even better, a question is a marvelous achievement!). So we keep things loose. We keep them open. We don't become to attached to the eyelashes before the face is in the right place.

I am always seeking what it looks like to live life with an open hand, to learn to become less and less attached to trinkets so that I can take the perfect gifts that Abba holds for each day. I have a passage from the Psalms written on my mirrored closet door that I read each moment when I wake up and find myself asking daily what it means. The passage reads: "The earth is the Lord's and everything in it, the World and all who live in it." I have been thinking a lot lately about what it means for me to say, "I give my life to you." Isn't that a bit of an abstract thought, really? How do you give your life to something? How can you devote each breath and step to someone else? You can't really see those things, you can't wrap them up in a box.

But I think maybe the realization, the penetration of the fact that the earth is the Lords and everything in it, the world and all who live in it, is remaining moveable each day to see anew. I was just talking to a good friend about how I love art becuase it forces you to change, to see and be differently. My prayer seems to be continually that I would be soft. That I would have a calm, pliable heart. That I would have a heart with that does not need someone to remind me "no line!" No Line! No line around what is mine and what is yours, no line around who gets love and who doesn't, no line around who I am and who i'm not. No line around how I see the world and no line around how I see you, Abba. No line.

Something else my painting instructor says is that the more we look, the more we see. I think that is brilliant in its simplicity. It takes time to see. Its really not that hard, but we must take the time. Really, this is my passion in life: to see differently each day. To shift my focus, to see all the more wonder of you each day Abba. To keep from being locked in to what I already know, to abandon the comfortable bed of my illusionistic security. To find that I have no place to lay my head. To learn a few more lessons in freefalling.

Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can't see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being.(1)

This past week I completed my second Formal Analysis for my art history class and thus our study of second generation realism, impressionism, symbolism, and neoimpressionism will be reaching its conclusion, but I'm not sure I have been affected quite as deeply by my studies in Art History as I have by these past few weeks. Unfortunately, some great thoughts about Van Gogh were lost in the oblivion of the Blogger Beta transition, but hopefully I will find some time to rehash them becuase some things are too good not to share. But today I have just completed a close reading on Claude Monet for the essay portion of my exam and again am blown away by the connections of beauty and creative passion and the undeniable connection with our Creator.

Monet. We've all heard of the man. He is one of the most prominent faces of Impressionism, but it is amazing how when a person becomes such a household name, they loose their humanity and their true heart is lost in cliques and cheap calendars. But I have been incredibly fascinated by these pieces of nineteenth century are because it seems that the intent of art has moved past the obscure and hypothesized cave paintings, shrines to the heartless idols, and immortalizations of mere men in now-lost civilizations. Artists have begun to tap into something more personal than the dogmatic, political commissions of the Pope and his distorted exploitation of a forgotten Savior.

Nineteenth century art was immersed in the newly-opened trade with the east, flooding the western world with the ideas of Zen Buddhism and the search for "Sutori" or "enlightenment." It was this idea of "pure essence", or in the case of Monet, "Pure painting" that drove artists to capture the ultimate rhythm of life , the underlying life-pulse beneath the cycles of life, of nature, of the seasons. Van Gogh and the symbolists were especially interested in representing these ideas. Van Gogh in particular strove to represent the pulse of life found in that which was close to the earth, the cycles of breath in creation, to show the spiritual manifestation within the physical realms.

Monet rejected any ascertains that his pulsing representations had anything to do with representation or symbolism. His goal was to attain "pure painting" as he called it, striving to see as a man born blind; to separate the intellectual perception from the retinal reality-- to paint shapes of color in order to paint not the objects themselves, but to record the moments of light as they reflected off the physical.


As William C. Seitz records in his excellent discourse, Claude Monet: Seaons and Moments:

"To critics who discussed the exhibition in 1892 [the poplar series], like the Haystacks and the Cathedrals, expressed a cosmic pantheism. Monet's power was seen to lie in his ability to make a 'purely transient phenomenon' represent 'the sensation of duration, and even of eternity.' He gave little support to these extravagant interpretations and insisted, up to the year of his death, that his only aim was to paint 'directly from nature, striving to render my impressions in the face of the most fugitive effects' Yet behind Monet's brusque statements, and implicit in his obsession with more and more evanescent effects and activities of nature, one can discern a ruthlessly devaluated transcendentalism." (2)

So even though Monet's goal was never to point to God, his aim never any sort of symbolism or revelation of deeper meaning, somehow it was unavoidable. Interesting. Like the ideas from my painting instructor I posted last week, Monet's approach to painting was to totally separate himself from the subject matter and totally engage in light and atmosphere as subject. As much as the uneducated observer would like to believe, his paintings were not about haystacks, or water lilies, or children on the pond, the architecture of London, nor the Thames. Monet's paintings are as much about light as humanly possible. Just as one must carefully each shape found in the reflection of trees upon a body of water, so Monet also painted the tangible in the same manner-- as reflections of light upon the eye. Brilliant.

Monet and other impressionists were not readily accepted in their day because of his rejection of the traditional approach to painting objects in flat local color. He did not paint green leaves as green leaves. He painted the colors bouncing off of the leaves-- lavender, cobalt, red, orange, as in the Poplar series. His goal was to paint "perceptual reality." And so, he fell in love with the nuances, the mystery, the protean quality of the Thames in its grand palette of colors. He chose subjects not for their connection with the viewer, but as vehicles used by light.

And so he arrives at these images that capture nature in its true reality-- not our preconceived ideas of red apples and green leaves. I think Claude Monet would have been a remarkable man to know. He was so devoted to his the capturing of light and atmosphere that he worked outside year round-- always from observation, never from memory. He worked outside no matter the season, no matter the weather-- snow, rain, wind, often upon bodies of water in his self-invented "studio boat." He had the physical nature of that of a fisherman, a hunter, and outdoorsman. He had this incredible love and attachment to his subject of light that he could not be held back. Times of immensely inclimate weather disallowing him to work led to periods of deep depression.

He was a man connected to the earth. The eternal quality in his work was achieved through his intent to capture each moment of light and atmosphere. He invented what he called "the slotted box" in which he housed sometimes up to a hundred canvases that he took out to the field to work with; in order to avoid a composite painting of a landscape over time, each moment the effect of the atmosphere changed, he changed canvasses. He did not paint landscapes, he painting moments of light.

His astounding artistic spirit and manifestations aside, I am fascinated by the connection that is automatically drawn between such purity it natural representation and the pantheistic, the assumption that in his recording of the natural world, he had to be talking about something else altogether-- something bigger. Interesting, don't you think?

As I have grown older and burrowed deeper in the creative process and the embrace of this incredibly loving God, something in nature is more and more appealing, more moving, more meaningful. I love creation and how everything that the hand and voice of God has caressed is drenched in his own love and beauty. And I love how it cannot be separated from him, it cannot be denied. Monet was not the first to discover the beauty in direct observation upon his travel to London and study of Turner. "Such subjects, it is apparent, were common long before Monet attempted them, and go back to Claude Lorraine and even earlier masters; but the very belatedness of Monet's interest in them indicated its authenticity. It was not imaginative, hypothetical or drawn from tradition, but the result of direct perception." (3)

So Monet was just tapping into something that was already going on. Critics of impressionism did not like the movements rejection of tradition, the rejection of represented idealized forms from the memorization of what one has been told about how it is. They wanted to see it for themselves. And so Monet stopped looking at the man-made scales and formulas, and began to look for the ever-changing nuances of the creation of Some Greater Other-- whether he cared to acknowledge it or not.

Ultimate reality. I remember being in 7th grade Sunday school and a very kind and wise mentor talking about his favorite subject of apparent contradictions and circular reasoning and saying simply, "if you seek truth, you will find it." I think Monet is an excellent testament to this idea. Monet was simply seeking the truth of what he saw. And somehow he stumbled upon God. God in the water, God in the sun, God in the reflection of light.

One more thing. I am especially fascinated with Monet's Haystack series. He chose haystacks not because he really liked piles of dead grass or because of some subliminal messaging about farming. The very reason he chose piles of hay was because there was no prior connection-- in fact, he didn't even care what they were. He was interested not in the subject, but what was reflecting off of the haystacks themselves. They were vessels of light. And I find it no coincidence that Jesus uses so many illustrations about himself and light. I find it no coincidence that so many pieces of our physical life somehow are tied together in vision and science and math and love and anger and passion. How God choose to make everything we see a reflection of something else-- something permeating. How my life isn't about Heidi, it isn't about who people see me as, but what I am a reflection of. I don't want to get to far into an over-used clique, but I am fascinated by how this loving God chooses to make himself known.

In my studies of art this past week, I have realized how God is most joyed when we find the freedom to enjoy him. I can imagine Abba was so pleased to see his little Claude Monet sitting upon the Thames River, enjoying the work of his hands. I can imagine his beaming smile as Claude scrambled from one canvas to another so that he could capture what Abba, the all sovereign creator, was doing with his wonderful toy of light in that moment. And I am sure he is pleased when another one of his children looks upon these beautiful paintings and thinks, what a beautiful moment that must have been.





(1) Romans 1:20, the message
(2) Seitz, William C., Claude Monet: Seasons and Moments
(3) ibid

Thirds a charm. So it seems that more recently, I have sat down to write a post more than once and end up getting a few paragraphs and find myself quickly distracted by something else to read, an email, someone coming in to talk, or some urgent matter. So, tonight is the night. I ought to be studying, but I've been out grocery shoppping until about 50 minutes ago and now it is almost 10 and nothing has been done yet, so what is a bit more time gone by before I start, right? Irresponsibility aside, today I had some good thoughts, so i thought I ought to share them before I loose them.

Okay, so first point of interest. The other day I got around to acutally reading my midterm assignment for my paintng class (one week after the first painting was done, mind you) and found some very interesting truths about life hidden there. I always love how the creative process in the fine arts seems to so often mirror the creative process that God is doing in us. I just love how sometimes it just seems like word for word, interchangeable. take a read:

Always refer to whatever part of the painting you are working on to some other part of the painting. AVOID working on any one part in isolation. Te important tthing is establishing relationships between things, not being as concerned witht he details of each things in itself. The "Thing-in-itself" gets automatically created when the relationships you have seen are "true." So look for RELATIONSHIPS-- the distance between things, the shames amoung and in-between things and reh relative sizes of things. You will be surprised how little work it takes, one the major relationships are established to devlop the remaining details. On the other hand, it takes a lot of work to create an image that has a real sense of wholness and a real sense of space by starting with one isolated part and working on it until it is "right" hoping in the end that they will all add up! Becuase nothing is "right" in itself. It is only right in relationships to everyting else. NOTHING EXISTS IN ISOLATION: EVERYTHING IS INTERDEPENDENT.

Do you see it? Its okay if you don't. I realize it may be a bit of a stretch and maybe you can't quite catch it unless you a) have experienced what she is talking about artistically and b) have my brain. But the thing I love about art is that, believe it or not, it is not about the finished product. It is not about getting to the end and having produced something that people can pat you on the back for and tell you you can stop now. Now. The artist's joy is in the process, the making, the discovering, the seeing.

This painting class that I am in right now is quite fantastic becuase it is a bit of a change in the way most people think about creating. And when I read this tip that my teacher gave for us to think about while we were doing our assignment, it just made me think about how much in our lives that we try to get to "rightness" by trying really hard. We talk a lot about "rendering" in my class. Rendering is when you look at a bottle and paint the bottle apart from everything around it. Our focus is on painting this object that we know in our brains is glass and clear and sort of tall with a red lid. And so what we already know about the bottle in our brains gets in the way of what our eyes actually see. We get bogged down becuase we know its clear intellectually, for example, and there is no way to paint it clear. Its teaching yourself to see with your eyes only.

I think in life sometimes we have the same problem. We think to our selves, "The goal is to be a good person becuase those are the people other people like." Being a good person is making the bottle a bottle. And so we paint the outside of our bottle. We render what we think goodness is like. We create goodness in isolation. We modify our behavior, while the other things around us are in shambles. But this thing my instuctor says is intriguing. I get this sense that if we stop worrying about how to get one thing in our lives right and start looking to the big picture, the big picture of what God is creating and doing in the whole world, things are going to turn out better. As someone I know likes to remind me, "there is no quick fix." We want the bottle to be perfect so we can move on to the next thing when this world of wholeness that God has created doesn't work that way.

I hope I am being clear. I have a feeling that you all are probably scratching your head and calling me a crazy artist, which would not be all that wrong of you really. But here is the thing. I think God is more concerned with us painting our whole lives with depth and meaning and messiness rather than worrying about the perfect appearance of thos little things that we are able to convince ourselves we have control of. In art, you have to be willing to allow things to me messy for a while. You have to be willing to move things around, even if you think one little thing that is working well is going to be crushed. You have to keep yourself free and open to change for the sake of the whole painting instead of loving your little baby perfect details in one area. Even if you have a few things together, if the peice as a whole doesn't work, you have to give that up.

I love that God is a God of wholeness, a God of process, a God who is not afraid of moving things around for the sake of his whole world. That he is not afraid of things looking badly, he is not afraid of our mistakes and he is not afriad of our fears and our doubts. I like that he is painting our lives in loose ways to reach this finaly product of wholeness, depth and beauty. He knows what will be just right in this moment even if in our small focus, it seems like nothing is right and nothing will come together ever again. He knows.

For the first time in a while, I took some time this morning to really listen and I realized how little I have been believing God for his love. I find myself hesitant to thank him for the blessings that he has given me, for the places he is taking me becuase I have a sense of shame about them. I wonder if the blessings I have now and this great opportunity I am heading into next semester are really God's expression of love for me or me just being selfish and seeking my own desires. As I write that, I realize that may be a bit of an unhealthy outlook, but these are the thoughts that run through my subconscious, poisoning my joy. Today I sort of realized that either way, it doesn't much matter. The thing that God desires of me is that I know he loves me either way. I am worthy of his love and I am important enough that he would do these things for me. Why is that so hard to remember and beleive and hold on to?

So there are the thoughts. It is just good to know that I don't have to have it all figured out. I don't have to render anything. I just have to look to my creator to see the next step. I don't have to be able to paint every little detail, I just need to be able to pick out the small shapes and the colors and He will work to bring it all together. And some day we will gaze upon the beauty of his handiwork together. What a beautiful thing.

I've lost it. or so it seems. The past week or so I have just found myself worn out. overwhelmed. tired. I'm tired of looking at things. Tired of looking for things. Tired of looking for arbitrary shapes and working on disconnecting myself from the whole of things so i can break them down to really see them as they are. I've stopped percieving the world around me intellectually and have entered the world of only seeing retinally. Oh, how my professor would be so proud. Everything is lines. Everything is just a color. Everything is just a shape. What is the value of that little patch of light and how would i represent it. Is every choice I make about light? augh. Why did I choose the path in life that has to do with sight-- you get tired of looking after a while. I actually thought the other day how nice it would be to be blind. Imagine the thought. To envy the sightless.

I don't know what it is this week. I just don't want to get up in the morning. I am afriad. I am intimidated to go to class and it feels like pure agony to just sit through it. I feel like I am missing something significant-- like my brain has actually failed to fit the size prerequisite for my classes. Overwhelmed.

I don't feel like I have all that much of anything profound to say at the moment. Honestly, I haven't taken much time to listen. I don't think I really want any other information entering me. I'm not seeing any big life lessons right now other than just get by. What a sucky way to live. but nevertheless, there I am. Buried. Too busy to listen. What is quiet?