accountability

So, once again, I can't believe how long it's been since I posted and how much has changed. Those changes have been especially powerful in the past couple of months. After a long period of waiting, much of it dependent on Walt's continuing recovery from heart surgery and related conditions, I can see  - well, feel more than see - God moving in both of our lives in powerful ways. I'm not at all sure where he is taking us, but there are a few things I do know. That itchiness to return to making art really got rekindled during my July staycation. For twelve glorious days I journaled, bought and read books, visited museums and thrift shops, hung out with my husband and old and new friends, pinned, checked out websites, read backlogged email, decluttered my house, walked in the park, rode my bike and worked out.

I got launched on a journey of - well, I was going to say self-discovery but that's not quite right. Perhaps finding out who I really am in Christ. Not the person I thought I should be, but a recovery of the gifts and talents and point of view that God gave me. When I first became a Christian, I still carried a lot of baggage about what I thought that meant and I was very fearful that who I was was not acceptable. It's taken me a while to sort that out enough to be able to embrace the creative spirit God made me to be. I'm much more confident in His love and care for me which makes the opinions of others shrink in importance.

I've been using this book from Janice Elsheimer of late. It's a Christian version of "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron. I love it and hate it at the same time, which probably means it's doing me good.

A good friend told me to look up Makoto Fujimura , which I did. He is an amazing and generous artist and Christ follower who founded IAM (International Arts Movement) which led me to The Working Artists Initiative.. Genius! It's been set up to solve the exact problem I've been having, which is to create good consistent work habits that will hopefully stay with me for the rest of my life. They sent me a leader's packet that will help me to set up a 12 week, six member multi-disciplinary accountability group. I have five interested artists and writers and am prayerfully looking for one more. It's kind of comforting to know that enough other people have this same issue so that someone actually came with a solution.

after Frankenstorm...

Here's the inside cover and first page. Kind of a mess from a technical standpoint, but hey, I'm learning how the materials behave. For instance, tissue paper when wet with Modgepodge pulls on the paper beneath it. I had to glue two pages of the notebook together to create enough structure to support the first page and it still pulled, bent and wrinkled. I'm not complaining, just observing and making notes. It may be that this quality will be useful in the future. Also some colors of Sharpie Extra Fine Point Markers run when wet with ModgePodge (dark green) and some do not. I think this page has a very childlike quality to it and it was childlike fun to make. I'm excited to see what's next.

So it's November 3rd, and I'm posting on gratitude daily on Facebook this month. It's a good spiritual discipline for me - I've been feeling a little lost and discouraged the past week so it will help me keep it in perspective. We're just a few days out from being pounded by Hurricane Sandy and we had very little damage. Our power was out for a night, internet down for a couple of days and some minor roof damage and leaking at home and glitchy phones and computer service at work. I am so grateful that we are OK. I pray that no matter what people are going through, that God will use this to draw many to Him and to each other. An event like this puts stuff into a perspective that I forget when things are going well. It makes me think of one of my favorite scripture verses from one of my favorite books (and one of the very few I've memorized);

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
    I have called you by name, you are mine.
² When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
    and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
    and the flame shall not consume you.
³ For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior."               Isaiah 43: 1b-3

Art journaling for Jesus

After much delay from a variety of sources, here is the front and back cover of my first attempt at Art Journaling for Jesus. The delays were caused by lack of focus, lack of sleep, logistics, time crunch, garden variety artist self esteem issues, and competing responsibilities. I'm not in love with the finished product so much myself, but I enjoyed the process and I love the possibilities. I will definitely continue - now I have to fill it up. I hope He likes it.

I've been thinking and talking about the restoration of the sacred to art. Thinking about re-reading Francis Schaeffer's "How Should We Then  Live" which examines the loss of the sacred in thought and culture, including the arts. And thinking about how so much of what passes for Christian art and music today is commercial schlock - nauseatingly sweet and devoid of power. I'm not saying I'm so great or that I've got the inside scoop from the Holy Spirit on what it should sound like or look like. I do know that there's little out there that moves me into a closer experience of the divine - and much that has the opposite effect - and makes me want to apologize to non-Christians for all those big-eyed figurines and flowery teacups with Bible verses printed on them.

...on art journaling

I' ve been away from the blog for a while, I know, and a lot has happened. The church went through transition - with the founding pastor "passing the baton" (literally) to the pastor I serve as an administrative assistant. It was a beautiful, emotional and well done. My husband Walt had an appointment with his cardiologist and was discharged, which freed him up emotionally to move on with his life. Our LIFE Leadership business is revving up. I took a week of badly needed vacation time. Well, it was a staycation, and it took me most of the week to unwind with a mixture of rest and activity, mostly aimed at trying to get our badly neglected house back into shape. It'a amazing how bad things can get when you begin in a disorganized state and add a year of serious illness. Although the house is by no means in "lets have company over" condition, I made progress and that was very satisfying.

The biggest reason for my absence has been that I haven't been sure what I wanted this blog to be. And truthfully, my vision for it hasn't distilled completely, but toward the end of my time off I started to feel really antsy about starting to make art again. My space to make art is really limited & there are no funds to rent a studio, which was frustrating to me because I like to work big, really big, and that just wasn't going to happen. And then one day when I was noodling around on Pinterest, I "stumbled across" a bunch of people who are into art journaling. I'm fascinated. Beautiful, thought provoking, awkward, funny, raw and revealing, this art form really struck a chord with me, and it can be done on my dining room table. Here are some examples of pages created by other artists.

 
 
I found these on a fabulous  blog. To visit and see a lot more beautiful and provocative arty contributions, go here.

One of the things that struck me in looking at this stuff, and the many other pages I researched was that there is very little art journaling by Christian artists. The spirituality reflected in the majority of the work is relativistic, and some of it is downright sticking it in God's eye. We've come a very long way from the days when all art was sacred. Art reflects the artist's search for meaning and the culture that she lives in, and lets face it, we're living in a largely empty, status and entertainment oriented world. Looking at most art today simultaneously makes me swoon at the beauty (if it's good) and sad. I remember all of the stuff I made, trying to make sense of the world, yearning for God yet not ever satisfied, until Jesus "found me" and I experienced the peace that passes all understanding. I see that same quest reflected in the hearts of other artists, and I pray that He will find them, too. So that's what's happening in my heart and mind these days when I'm not working on other things.

I've started working on my first journal pages and hope to share them here soon.

Uncool

I'm thinking about how it got to be so uncool to be an Evangelical Christian. Was it always so? And if not when did things get turned around? Was it the Big Haired Televangelists that are responsible, or did it happen much earlier? 

I've been listening to Chris Brady's "So Dark the Con of Man'" among other things and musing on just how uncool we are. And the total irony that I used to be one of the people who thought all Evangelicals were idiots who couldn't think their way out of a paper bag. And then I met some really smart, funny, thoughtful Christians, and I was baffled. I tried to reconcile what I was experiencing with what I "knew to be true". Ha! I had to admit, my worldview was inaccurate, or at least incomplete. How could these brilliant minds subscribe to such an uncool and intolerant worldview? Wasn't it obvious that the only sensible viewpoint was the "There are as many paths to God as there are people", "truth is relative and situational" view that I embraced? 

Besides the fact that I now knew several Evangelicals and not one of them had Big Hair or railed at me about how I was headed on the next train to hell, there was another little fact that was gnawing at me. For all of the stuff I had tried (from Native American sweat lodges to Hindu Goddess ceremonies and a whole lot of other stuff in between) none of it had produced happiness or made me into a better, more compassionate person. I could not discount the evidence that was piling up that I was on the wrong track somehow, despite what my culture told me. 


The crack in my cosmic armor  was widening enough for our friend Dave to drive in the wedge. The conversation went something like this. Me "I don't believe the Bible is true." Dave "Have you ever read the Bible?" Me "Well...no." Dave "Then how can you say it's not true?" Me "Ummm". Then he triple-dog-dared me to read it.

Now since I had quite a bit of pride about being open-minded and all, and also culturally literate and well-read, it occurred to me that I really should read it "Since even though I don't believe it, it's such a huge influence on contemporary Western culture, I probably should". Ha-ha, this just makes me laugh now - I was so arrogant I can hardly stand it. 

It just so happened that many years before, a friend had given me a One Year Bible which had been collecting dust on a shelf. And so I read it. Warning -if you want to hang onto your identity as a cool, tolerant relativist do not read this book with an open mind. It could make you ask questions. It could make you look for a church. It could turn you into an uncool geeky friend of Jesus. 'Nuff said.

church family

I've wondered why God has me working at a church, and this church in particular. I could say I felt called, and perhaps I was, but honestly there were some pragmatic considerations beside the joy of working for Jesus. Like decent health insurance at a reasonable cost, and a flexible work schedule.

After a short while I began to discover how different this environment is from working in the corporate world. One of the last places I worked (a major player in the cell phone industry) gave lip service to "living a balanced life" and family priorities. They didn't mean a word of it. Work hours were insane, and don't even think about calling in sick. Much of the management was cranky, unskilled and sometimes downright mean.

 Here, family comes first, no kidding. Sick kids  and spouses, and important family events take precedence, and the entire staff juggles if necessary to give the person who needs it the time and space to attend to whatever needs to be attended to. It's so very different.

But the thing that has most surprised me, the gift I didn't expect or see coming (thank you Jesus!) is this. I am working in the midst of a functional family. They're not perfect by any means. But they try, they really try, to be cooperative and helpful and they care about each other. Some of these people have worked together for twenty years, and ten or more years is not uncommon on the staff. They have been through seasons when they were at odds, angry or disappointed with each other. And yet, they are respectful at the least, and loving and generous at the best. They are more transparent with each other than I've ever seen a group of people be outside of therapy. They can afford to be. And when they mess up, they really want to do better - for each other and for God.

I come from a very dysfunctional family, and although my marriage now is very good, for all practical purposes, my husband is my family. My sister and her family live in another city, my husband's brother and his family live in another state, and parents are all deceased. My marriage history is convoluted and would take pages to describe, but let's just say there was a lot of dysfunction there, before I married Walt. I never thought I would experience a loving and functional family in this lifetime - and now I have one. It's amazing to watch people interact with grace and patience, kindness and respect, and forgiveness when things get ugly, which of course they do. We're human after all. Jesus gave me much more than I expected when I went to work for him. Hallelujah!

... and awaaay we go

A couple of days ago, as we were leaving a restaurant where we had eaten brunch after church, my husband passed out and hit his head on a slate topped table on the way down. I turned just in time to see this happen. It is one of the most horrifying things I have ever seen - and once seen, cannot be unseen. In that second or two that it took for me to get to him and determine that he was breathing and had a pulse, I thought the worst. Two years ago our friend Greg stood up to tell a joke to a class he was teaching and died instantly, immediately, despite the prompt attention from a doctor who just happened to be there. I can't help thinking about Jan, Greg's wife who kissed him and put him on a plane to Florida and never saw him alive again.

One day we will laugh about this. Walt is a big man, and the fall had a Jackie Gleason-esque, pivoting comedic quality about it. The wonderful guys from the fire department came, then the emergency squad. We spent two harrowing days in the ER and then in the hospital. Tests were done, questions asked, blood taken. We may never know for sure what caused the syncope but we think it was related to one of his heart medications - which he is now no longer taking. He can't drive for two weeks - we can't risk him passing out behind the wheel. Since he's not on the medication, his a-fib is in full bloom. Life just got a little more complicated, a little more restricted.

What was God up to when he made me turn in that moment; why did He want me to see Walt falling like a stone to the floor?

He is beating the self-sufficiency out of me - at least that's what it feels like. I am so hard-headed when it comes to this. As soon as things are going relatively smoothly I think I am self-reliant. I forget that I cannot even take a breath without His full participation and blessing. I lose focus on Him and barrel on full steam ahead, focused on the task at hand. I think about all of the people that He allows to live their entire lives with their illusion of self-sufficiency intact, and if I am grateful for anything in this mess, it is that He has rescued me from that. Like them, I thought I could take credit for my intelligence, talent, success. Wow, that sounds spiritually arrogant, but I don't mean it that way. If I can think of another way to more accurately express how small, helpless and grateful I feel, I'll come back with an edit.

Life can and does change in an instant. Ask my friend Jan. Ask the students at Chardon High school. Ask the apostle Paul, who fell down on the road to Damascus a Christian-hating Jew and got up a temporarily blinded, broken Christian. I didn't lose Walt on Sunday, but I could have. I did lose my self-sufficiency - at least for now. I know myself well enough to know that without an assist from the Holy Spirit, I won't hang onto this brokenness for long. I pray that the vision of my beloved, unconscious husband falling will be a reminder to me of my utter and absolute dependence on God  for every good thing - and every seemingly bad thing - in my life.