Inklings from Moss Rock

There's a tree growing out of the water here, but I wonder which was here first, the tulip poplar or the riverbed. I am grateful for the wide-open respites that can be found not so far from my ordinarily inorganic life. And I am grateful for those people who are happy to lay with me on boulders overlooking a little creek and write about whatever is in our souls. Not even talk, just write. Through my fringe of unruly bangs I can see Leah's yellow pumps, Lauren's brown flats and purple sweater. We don't fit in here, but there's no one to tell us otherwise. This is our world.

Nature never seems unfamiliar to me. It does not exist as a part of a system where there are, innately, any high expectations. Sometimes when I go into a new restaurant I am all anxiety because I don't understand how the system works. Part of me feels like I missed the part of the game where they explained the rules. Do I pay at the table? Am I supposed to clear my own dishes? Do I tip? But here in the woods there is none of that. The forest could care less whether or not it feels my footfall, and yet it still feels so personal to me. It is what I wish it to be.

I'm not sure if I'm in this system or out of it, but I know I'm not above it. I can enter it, alter it, appreciate it, or destroy parts of it, but it can too easily humble me as soon as I might venture to tame it or capture it. The wilderness without so quickly tempers and overwhelms the wilderness within. I know it's important to feel small in this way sometimes. For this moment, this is all there is, and it is enough. So much more than enough.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." -Thoreau

I'm still breathing.

When We Get There

I discovered this afternoon that one of my favorite people in the whole wide world has a blog. Sarah Grace has recorded thoughts publicly in a few scattered places, but I have found this one to be the most consistent. As long as I have known her, she has been a source of great hope and insight; And where she is eloquent in person, she is astounding in writing. I was recently reading an entry of hers that followed a line of thought we often travel when spending time together, that being the direction of our individual lives, especially as it pertains to the will of a very myterious God (of whom, I might add, we both find ourselves rather fond), and the risks and benefits of pursuing great and small aspirations. She had the following to say:

But what's more crazy is how much I don't pursue the things I dream about in my heart. I'm too scared of what I love. That is just no way to live. Like everything's going to leave me. I'm just sick of it. Life is waiting while I wait for it to leave...And I hide, too. Behind dreams that perhaps don't mean as much, but are more convenient...[I want] to be a little bit more free of the anxiety of a life that must have it figured out.

And I am a prime example of said anxiety - of the life that must have it figured out. Before I get there. Before I even leave here! I am frequently reminded of a discussion we had at DF about a year ago about the call of Abraham and specifically what God told him (and didn't tell him). Genesis 12 says that "The Lord said to Abram, 'Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you." In the chapter, God goes on to give Abraham promises of provision and blessing, which were eventually fulfilled when his barren wife made him the father of a nation (I mean, totally what Abraham was probably expecting, right?). But any indication as to location, ETA, or even travel direction is conspicuously absent.

Later, in Hebrews 11 we find out that, "By faith Abraham, when called to go to a new place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going." There you have it. He went.

So let's recap. God tells Abraham to "Go to the land I will show you (as in, I'll tell you when you get there. Or maybe, you'll find a clue at the next watering hole or in a joke one of your fellow travellers tells. Or even possibly, the location has more to do with your heart than with geography). And Abraham (probably not without some reservation) just starts walking. This is terribly difficult for me to grasp.

I find myself with this unignorably restless spirit, not a lack of contendedness, per se, but an underlying anxiety over the idea of being left behind, of missing out on the rest of my life. I also find, simultaneously (have I mentioned my ambivalent nature?), that I am paralyzed by the number of possibilities and the fear of not choosing the very best one, not to mention the fear of not having stable ground under my feet. So I sit here, weighing the possibilities, talking myself out of moving toward somewhere simply because I don't know where somewhere is. I don't even usually have a vague idea as to the general direction of somewhere (as if anyone travels a linear path). Ok that's not totally true, I usually have one up on Abraham in that I at least sort of have some tiny measure of direction. But the point is, I don't end up actually going anywhere. Fear is quicksand, my friends.

Of note is that control was not an option for Abraham, not when he was truly fulfilling this nebulous call. And it's not for me either, not if I'm heeding this restlessness that I have a creeping suspicion was carefully and intentionally woven into every single fiber of my being.

Cory really broke it down pretty simply for me when she said something along the lines of, "Do what you really want to do, and if you don't like it, try something else." Sometimes we just need people to vocalize the things we already know to be true. I've done it for others, and I trust they will continue to do it for me.

Oh, and I'll call you when we get there.

Here's an old (and semi-relevant) song from a little over a year ago that I wrote for a particularly dear former-Louisianian.

These days it seems like the hardest decision you make is to get out of bed

And the strongest contender to holding out hope is your own voice alone in your head

Who ever told you that you have to be so tough?

You're too wise to believe all those half-truths you hear are enough.

And it suddenly becomes very clear

That there's nothing left for you here;

This place has known all of you it can possibly know.

So I don't think you'll die here, but you know what you're doin' these days, it don't look much like livin',

And it feels like your heart and your hands are just filled up with sand, despite all you've been given,

You're a long ways above where you started out making this climb

You've got nothing to prove, you can come on back home any time

And if I can't bring you even a spark,

Then I'll sit with you here in the dark,

And together we'll bind up the lonely and cast it away.

And it's funny how you wake up in a town you've been living in for years

But you've never felt so lost

And you still can't believe that you find yourself staring down bridges

You thought you had crossed

So it's time now to let go of your need to know, and let your story write you instead

Remember, you are hemmed in from beginning to end, so you've no need to doubt what's ahead,

Maybe falling to pieces is all part of being made whole

Just to rest in the rescue of hands that are mending your soul.

And in coming apart at the seams

You are stronger than you ever dreamed

Because you are made up of the stories of freedom you've told.

Fin.

All Things New

My New Year's Eve will be less than exciting this year. Actually more along the lines of depressing. I will will breathe an honest sigh of relief as this year draws to a long-awaited close. With a still-burdened heart I will whisper a little prayer of thanks for the promise that all things are made new and that God has placed eternity in the hearts of mankind. And I will reflect with hope on the words I wrote exactly one year ago today, on a much different New Year's Eve:

It's the last cold night of the year

And I am not who I was last December

And I'm not who I thought I'd be

Though, ask who that was and I may not remember

And time won't stand still

No it doesn't wait for any one of us

None of us

Are pulling the strings

But I am not lost

I am buried in frost

Blooming inward and waiting for spring

There is wind in the windows again

From cracks in the panes, and a snowbird is singing

That all winters come to an end

And warmth melts away bitter cold that's still clinging

To memories of last year

And rocks through the glass that left me all in shards

It was hard

But it's time to move on

And clear out some room

For what's begging to bloom

Every corner the light will shine on.

Be Well.

The Now and the Not-Yet

I've grown up loving the Christmas season and all it implies for a person of faith, but it's only in recent years that I've taken fast hold of this concept of Advent. In fact, it seems that the older I get the more meaningful it all becomes - this stretch of time between four-weeks-before-Christmas and epiphany (I know, Advent typically entails only the time until December 24). It's significant that we begin the Christian year with a period of resting, anticipating, peaceful longsuffering (as opposed to actively seeking, doing, going). I don't know why this greater appreciation and understanding of Advent has developed with age, but it may have something to do with life circumstances in that there are now more things which require me to wait with expectancy. Children wait, but their expectancy is, for the most part, short sighted and sure. But compounding years seem to bring both more long-sighted looking forward and greater uncertainty. It's much easier for my expectancy to look like anxiety than hope, and I need the constant reassurance that very little is actually in my hands. (Even as I sit here and write this I'm thinking about the myriad ways in which I'm trying to manipulate my situation to align with what I think will produce the greatest outcomes for the future... and I'm failing.)

Each year my comprehension of Advent becomes a bit more conceptually hearty, although the change is slow over time. It seems to have evolved from waiting patiently to waiting patiently with great hope. And this year I've clung to the idea that we wait with great hope because the promise of a savior was actually fulfilled. The Christian people have a substantiated history of seemingly far-fetched promises coming to fruition. And their hopes have been of eternal importance, and mine are mostly not. I don't think I grasped until a couple of weeks ago that between the prophecy of the birth of a messiah and the actual incarnation the Israelites waited for four hundred years in virtual silence. Four hundred years! It makes my twenty three years seem like a tiny breath. It's amazing to me that over centuries they maintained an ardent hope through prayer and tradition and the passing down of stories over time - that the ball didn't get dropped, the anticipation didn't get lost in translation or completely dissipate over time.

I keep coming back to Luke 1:45, when Mary visits Elizabeth after Gabriel has come to her in a dream and Elizabeth tells her, "Blessed is she who believes what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished."

I have great hope that the Lord works things for good, and I have evidence that he unfailingly fulfills his promises. Yes, I realize that Advent is specifically celebrating the birth of the Savior, but for me there are clearly broader implications about the character and faithfulness of God, and about the way we relate to God and love God by maintaining this hope-against-all-odds.

Yet so many things are still so up in the air for me. Those of you dearest to me know specifically what I seek, the weight of the desires and fears from under which I can't seem to climb.

Because what about the things the Lord hasn't promised, hasn't really spoken to me about at all?

I obviously still have a quite a bit of room to grow in my understanding of this beautiful, refining season and story. Here's to next Christmas.

"Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful." -Hebrews 10:23

Artists Are the Ones Who Show Up

*Cory was looking through my sketch/everything else book last night and ran across this image, after which I had written a couple of pages about the process of sketching the as-yet-unfinished pencil drawing. I off-handedly assured her it was fine to read those private thoughts because I had blogged them before. Which I apparently hadn't. So I'll post it now to avoid having given her empty words. This is from almost exactly one year ago - November 15, 2008:

I'm sketching a picture of a boy with an apple. It's from a magazine photograph. And self-inflicted perfectionist that I am, it's becoming a learning experience in patience, frustration, and critical moderation (the moderation of criticism). An outside eye would call it a good picture (for an amateur) if they were not looking at the original photograph. But the problem is, I am looking at the original photograph, and my self-critical eye wants to follow the lines from discrepancy to discrepancy, unrealistic shadows, various incidences of improper proportion.

Amidst all this wearing away of pencil eraser and the blackening of my fingertips from smudge, I think I may be missing some lessons in beauty - lessons of epic proportion in relation to the way I view my life, my productivity.

One immediate issue of note is my inappropriate attitude toward my re-creation as it relates to the attitude of the original photograph. It's a full-page spread stuck in the middle of some article about apple-picking - a kind of "fun for the whole family" thing. In fact, the section of the magazine is called Everyday Celebrations - and the mood is incredibly light and celebratory. This kid is flashing a toothy grin; he's just taken a huge bite of this glorious granny-smith, and in one second he is capturing all that is good and right about childhood - innocence, leisure, dirt under the fingernails. And here I'm hating this effort more and more. No wonder I can't reconstruct that sense of levity.

I've written in the margins - which will later be filled with a background of apple barrels - these words that I've heard a lot lately - artists are the ones who show up. In essence, we're all aspiring toward something, and if we were honest with each other we'd realize that we've all felt, at some point, like we're imposters. It's easy to say I'm not an artist because my drawing of a photograph doesn't entirely resemble the photograph itself, but that would be unfortunate and untrue. I am an artist, simply for the fact that I was inspired to observe the world around me and try to put pencil to paper to express that - and that I actually did it. I didn't think about it and talk myself out of it because I haven't sketched a photograph in eight years, because I haven't ever taken a formal art class. I'm an artist because I showed up. And for that I applaud myself.

I'm also learning some things through the actual drawing process itself. I began the picture with a central element - the face, which I've always found particularly challenging to draw. I've realized that so much of what we perceive is related to light and dark, highlights and shadows. These elements give us meaning through shape, depth, texture. I've kind of taken to telling myself, "focus on this one shadow, this one highlight - take one small bite at a time. Follow this line to the next shadow or curve, blend it, thin it out. Focus on these elements each in isolation with great attention to detail and the picture will miraculously come together." To some degree this works, especially in relation to detail drawing, but at some point I'm going to have to look at the whole picture (as any viewer would ultimately do). It will only make sense when I see these details in relation to one another. This apple doesn't make sense with rounded lines drawn through it until I understand that these lines make up the fingers holding the apple. That the fingers are connected to a hand, tucked into a shirt sleeve of the shirt on the boy who is sitting in a barn eating an apple. Criss-crossed lines are senseless until, together, they create the waffle-knit texture of the shirt. Nothing in this world exists outside of a context. Nothing ever makes sense in isolation. Ever.

Keep pushing through and eventually you will break down the wall you're hitting your brain against.

Just So We're Clear On One Thing

Just so we're clear on one thing, my time is valuable. If I have made time to spend with you, it's because it's important to me. If you're not going to follow through don't even bother.

I'm flexible, not dispensable. Big difference.

What Settles

It's been my great pleasure in the past week and a half to experience a higher-than-normal number of fortuitous run-ins with my wonderful housemate Cory, whether at home or at Urban Standard (my other home). It seems to me this is reflective of the change in our rhythms as of late for various reasons. Anyhow, I am always thankful for these precious well-springs throughout my day. For a humble and gracious wisdom which I always feel has been poured on me as I interact with such a beautiful person.

Earlier this week, we discussed the way it often seems that we all just can't help but wound and crush each other. Humans are so incredibly fragile. I think we don't realize what we do to one another in our inevitable struggle for self-preservation. And this wounding has the unfortunate tendency toward becoming cyclical. Similar to redemptive violence, and likely related to our God-given need to relate to one another, sometimes we just want to make someone else hurt as much as we do. On the other side of the same coin, we hurt one another with the uncareful wielding of our good intentions. A simple lack of forethought or self-control can prove a potent poison. What we mistake for love can quickly become a weapon.

The redemptive part of this cycle is that people are, generally, resilient and have such a great capacity for love. With practice, we learn that we cannot avoid seeing the glory and beauty instilled in each one of us. We bear fruit we previously would scarce have recognized. And, if we let it, healing comes with time. That's not to say we finish suffering or struggling before we die; it seems where one scar fades there are always one or two more to take its place. The point is that we learn to see the mending in the midst of the tearing. We begin to be able to trace the path over which a strong and silent hand has carried us. On a good day, this gives me hope for what lies ahead. Somehow I find myself at rest through the tumultuous forward motion. I wish I had that clarity every day. But today I am holding on to a hand that has made undeniable provision.

What seems to be a crisis, what previously would have made me come completely unglued, now looks like a proving ground for sovereignty. A conduit for hope and courage and a gracious sense of humor. Now, more than ever before, I understand the peace of knowing that everything settles in the end. Through all the process and exchange and reaction, we learn the things that really matter. The products of our labor are those things with the greatest gravity. Strive, fall apart, regroup, repeat, rejoice, remain.

"I am here with open arms to help you along the way.

Just know in this maddening crowd, I am on your side."

-Neil Couvillion

Peace.