inside: the audacity of peace

My husband and I were walking in the November, Coloradan foothills the other weekend when we decided to make our hike a contemplative space for us both.  We took a minute to decide on a topic that we’d ponder: we chose peace.  Then we took 5 minutes of silence while looking at- and walking through the landscape to wonder about what the Holy Spirit had to show us about ‘peace’ in this specific space.

You have to get an idea of the landscape we’re walking through.  If you’re not familiar with the landscape of the foothills near Denver… they’re a dry, grassy, rocky entry to the majestic, evergreen wildness that lay behind them.  It’s getting more and more rare to see green in the city and other places in the valley as we dive deeper into Fall, but the green is definitely gone in the foothills.  We walked on a dirt trail winding through the yellow grass.  Where we were (on a table-top-like mesa overlooking the Denver skyline), the wind gets so strong that the grass doesn’t grow taller than a few inches.  The landscape is similar to that of the high country beyond the evergreen tree line.  The earth is dark with rocks poking up for air often.  Our 360-degree view was shades of yellow, tan, brown and gray.  It’s Fall in this harsh landscape, but there’s a beauty in it.  There’s a beauty in this Fall landscape that is as gorgeous as it is harsh… if we’ll see it.

During our 5 minutes of silence, I was bowled over by this thought…

What if peace is as strong and audacious as beauty is?

What if peace isn’t as passive as we assume it to be?

What if peace is aggressive like beauty is?  Beauty demands that we notice… it grabs your attention and sings to your mind to acknowledge it… but we have to open our eyes—we have to surrender.

Even in the hibernation season, this landscape was awe-inspiring.  The way the rock juts out of the earth, making us ants walking on granite ridges… the way we could see for miles over the flat valley that holds its own beauty of rolling grass and wind through reeds… the way things turn red in Fall… leaves accenting the tan of grass and brown of earth.  

The landscape demanded our attention, demanded our surrender to it’s utter vivaciousness and aesthetic wonder.  

I’ve always had this understanding that peace is this passive, way-down-deep thing, this tiny, barely there stream of a thing.  I’ve always understood that peace is a kernel hidden somewhere and that we must work to grasp it… then forcefully sink our souls into it.  When I’m attempting to find peace in my daily anxiety, I mentally stop myself, and attempt to sink deep and deeper still into this stagnant, quiet, and kind of mousy thing.

I think I’ve been wrong all along.

I think true peace is exclamatory.  I think peace is wild and wonderful.  I think peace is aggressive in its pursuit of us.  We just have to ‘look’ as we do to beauty.  Like the landscape, I think peace is all around us, we just have to open our souls to it.  I think it’s always pursuing us, we just have to submit.  It’s easy to submit to the frenetic… because it’s closest to our face… but it seems there may be a reason that peace is likened to a river.

Maybe it’s just my current season, but I need peace to be powerful and aggressive.  I need peace to fight and win over the frenetic nature of the ‘busy’ life.  I’ll be spending my days this season looking for the ways peace breaks through the noise.

#8 fts Color Floor, Carin Huebner, 2016.

my process: borrowed material

For years now, my mantra has been, “everything is gift.”  I believe this so deeply.  When I’m paying attention, I see it everyday.  When I’m paying attention, I know each minute of this life, the times with loved ones, the time spent doing what I feel I’m made to do, is all a massive gift from something larger, better, and purer than myself.  The last few years, I’ve been noticing this mantra manifesting in a bit different way in my creative process and my understanding of being a creative individual.

My creative process is centered on the idea of borrowing.  Everything in this life is gift to me… and so… everything in my creative process is borrowed.  In the same way that I must create out of existing matter, I believe I must borrow inspirations, passions, and wisdom that go beyond my self and my own understanding in order to create.  In the same way that I dip my fingertips into a vast pool of photographic tradition, skill, and practice to glean my mechanical processes, I dip my fingertips into a massive, supernatural pool of wisdom to borrow what I believe this artwork is and what it needs to say to this world. 

To many, this may sound kooky… the fundamental mind rages a bit against the mystical pieces of who God is and how we interact with Him/Her. 

When we tap into our creativity, we are, in a small way, union-ing with the One who originally created—the Original Artist.  Therefore, it would make sense if when we are engaging the creativity placed within us by the All-Knower that we would get to access a TINY, TINY part of the inspiration and wisdom that He/She embodies. 

It is uncanny the amount of times I’ve heard an artist or musician explain that through their creative process they feel as though they access something bigger than themselves.  They feel they borrow a knowledge or enlightenment they’ve never experienced or known before.  The creative process puts us at the end of our own wisdom… we stand at the edge and ask questions of being—something else answers and fills the space.  A bridge is created between this world and another one… between the edges of my being and the being of something (Someone) more infinite. 

#5, fts tentatively named Color Floor, Carin Huebner, 2016.

inside: creative prayer

One question I get asked the very most (besides what the heck spiritual direction is) is for resources and ideas to make prayer practices and disciplines a little more colorful.  In a very broad brush, the modern evangelical church in America has limited many to a linear and reason-based (or more broadly: intellect-based) experience of God through the Quiet Time (the reading and studying of Scripture by one’s self).  However, there are SO many other practices and disciplines for daily experience of God that are a little more geared towards the abstract mind and the imagination, BUT are still rooted in Tradition and doctrine that most of us can get behind.

If sitting down to work your way through the Study Bible sidebars of an entire book of the Bible for a whole month at the same time every morning is your jam… these practices probably won’t be the most fun for you, but they could be extremely beneficial.  If you’re a visual learner, aesthetically oriented, an abstract thinker, or people have said you ‘have a colorful imagination’ then these may be a staple for your rhythms of life with God.

With any prayer practice: do as you can, not as you can’t.  Start small: don’t expect to jump into a new contemplative or prayerful experience for 2 hours the first go, or don’t expect to have a page full of instructions from God on what your life is going to look like tomorrow.  Contemplative space varies every time and it’s a practice… it takes practice to get deeper into the space.  If the practice is a little awkward the first few times you try it… you’re probably doing it right.  New practices take time to sink in with us.  Give yourself ample grace especially if you’re trying something out of your comfort zone.

Here’s a short list of some creative prayer practices with which to sprinkle your days.

Visio Divina:

Latin for “divine seeing,” Visio Divina is a great practice for the visually oriented or picture-processors.  If you’ve practiced Lectio Divina… you get where I'm going with this one.  Visio Divina (like Lectio Divina) is a long-practiced spiritual discipline. Start the practice by choosing some visual form of media.  I usually suggest a painting or image of a scene from Scripture, and for new practicers a scene with Christ in it is great for this exercise.  A great go-to of mine is Rembrandt’s depiction of Christ calming the storm. 

Allow yourself to process the image on deeper levels:

• Enter into a prayerful space.  Get into a relaxing position that you won’t fall asleep in.  Acknowledge the Holy Spirit’s ability to communicate with you through this time and this image.  Open yourself up to the space and the One you hope to meet there.
• Slowly allow yourself to look over the image.  Don’t get caught up in judgment thoughts like the quality, talent, or your taste of the image.  If you’re an artist, it can be quite taxing to avoid your historical or compositional analysis of the image, but illustrating your knowledge is not the intention of the exercise.  Like other meditation forms, allow the thought to come up, and gently let yourself move past it.
• Notice color, texture, line, emphasis or other visual story-makers without diving into the actual story quite yet.  If you know what the image is intended to be about, submit yourself to simply taking initial observations.  What are you most drawn to in the image?  Do you have a more visceral reaction (be it positive or negative) to certain aspects or portions of the work? What is bringing your attention to the things you notice?
• What is your initial emotional response?  What do you feel?
• Spend some time wondering at the things that stuck out and the feelings that were initially evoked.
• Then return to the image again for more reaction and response within yourself.  What you are struck by or what stands out in the image and within yourself may change.  Stay open to the process.  Look at the forms, colors, and textures again: what impacts you?
• Enter a prayerful space around what was brought to your attention.  What does the image have for you?  What is being communicated through the image?
• If you use an image with Christ in it… where is He in the image?  What is He doing?  What is His demeanor and what is He conveying?  If you were in the image, what or who would you be?  What is your vicinity to Christ?
• Does the practice open up longing or desire in you?  Are you experiencing hope or loss?  What would Christ say to you if you were in the painting with Him?
• Take some time to process what you’ve experienced and felt.  Make some journal notes if that helps you process or to remember your time in this space.

Praying in Color:

During my time in seminary, a mentor of mine told me about Praying in Color.  Sybil MacBeth has created books to outline the practice and guide individuals through the practice.  You can find out more information about Sybil and Praying in Color here.  I was actually drawn more to the Praying in Color book for children versus the book for adults, so be open to possibilities.  Your soul wants what it wants. 

Praying in Color combines the act of doodling with the act of prayer.  If you’re one of those people that doodles while you’re in class or workshops and retains information better this way, Praying in Color would probably be great for you.  If you have a hard time focusing while praying and find that you often don’t pray for others or specifics because you get sidetracked, this practice may help you focus by drawing you in via the doodles.  Sybil has created a great method of outlining greater thoughts and getting more specific.  For example, you could start with a shape and name it after your friend then you could draw spirals off of that shape and name them things that you know your friend needs or wants, or things you hope for, for that friend.  Overall, Praying in Color is a great little way to get the imagination to meet your prayer life and vis-a-versa.

Blind Contour Drawing:

Contour drawing is one of my favorite prayer exercises.  I originally practiced blind contour drawing in my art classes growing up.  It’s not an easy practice for those that are fearful of relinquishing control.  The first time I engaged blind contour drawing as a spiritual practice was in a spiritual direction session with my first Spiritual Director.  The director had me close my eyes and draw how I felt about a tricky transition in my relationship with God.  Boom.  I know.  That’s what’s so fun about this practice: you can take something very abstract and process it cognitively through a very abstract, artistic process.  Drawing with your eyes closed allows freedom for your mind to work in different ways, and therefore process what you’re feeling from a different cognitive perspective. 

And so, it’s as simple as it sounds: take a blank piece of paper and your choice of drawing utensil.  Close your eyes and begin wherever you desire on the page.  In utter freedom, move your drawing utensil around the page freely but in a controlled manner as you allow your mind to meditate on a specific phrase or topic that you want to emotionally process.  The two biggest things to remember with blind contour drawing is to never pick your utensil up from the page (you’ll lose your spot entirely and probably end up drawing on your table), and never open your eyes before you feel you need to be done.  If you open your eyes before the practice is finished, you get all up in your head about everything and start getting into a judging mindset. 

Examples of what to process with this practice would be: how you feel about a happening in your life, how you feel about God and how He is handling or not handling (in your perspective) something, how you feel about something someone has done to you or someone else.  Notice this practice is mostly geared toward processing or letting out your emotions around something rather than discovering a deeper meaning or insight.  However, the practice can be quite insightful.    

Just Draw:

….But as a meditative experience.  Draw something instead of saying something.  The Spiritual Director that introduced me to blind contour drawing as a spiritual practice, also had me draw in our sessions together.  I remember one session, my director had me draw my relationship with God.  I know, right?!  What?!  I freaked out when she told me what we were doing that day.  I flipped into insecure diva mode: “you know I’m a photographer, right?!  You know I don’t draw for anyone, right?”  She didn’t care.  And thank God!  It was one of the most vulnerable things I’ve done, but it was insanely insightful to get to see how I was projecting Who God was in my relationship with Him.  It allowed our direction session to go to depths it otherwise may not have reached because in conversation I have defense mechanisms and other tactics of self-preservation.

Even if you have zero drawing talent at all and rely on stick figures to visualize your thoughts and feelings, this can be a great practice to get the mind and imagination thinking in a different way and a great way to challenge your own self-preservation tactics.  Drawing as a spiritual practice is a great way to release control and engage your creative self.

Give some of these practices a try and let me know what you think.  Let me know the little twists you’ve made to make it your own and some of the things you’ve gotten out of time in these spaces! 

I hope these are helpful and that through some of these engaging exercises you may get to experience deeper pieces of Who God is, Who He says you are, and His love for you.

inside: finding rhythm in an arrhythmic life

Like everything else, I thought it would look a certain way.

I graduated from my Master’s program over a year ago.  After graduation, I thought I’d have floods of energy, opportunity, more money, and a feeling of contributing to the well being of others, but it’s been different.

I’ve struggled for energy every single day.  The opportunities that I have had have been unpaid or too unrelated, and I spend most of my time contributing to my own well being in order to sustain my sanity versus pouring into the souls of others. 

People have asked (at least) every single week for a year now how my businesses are coming and how life post-grad has been.  For a year I’ve been responding with something like, “I’ve just really been trying to find my rhythm this week.”  Every week there’s been something: vacation, travel for family events, travel for friends, local events for the Church, my own community, my husband, the organizations for which I work, or things like getting a puppy and buying a condo and renovating the entire thing... 

Every Monday I would look back at the former week’s progress and have feelings of depression and despair.  The question I kept asking myself, “What have I done?” failed me endlessly.

And it would continue… People would ask, “How are your businesses?” or “How’s life after graduation?” or “What are you working on?”  And my answer would remain… “I’m just really trying to find my rhythm again after such-and-such.”

It took a year of this to realize that life isn’t going to follow suit. 

I had failed to submit to the fact that life is arrhythmic.  Under this banner of trying to find my rhythm, I betrayed myself by assuming that the scaffolding of every week would be the same.  (I’d like to meet a solopreneur with a family and friends that has two weeks that look the same.)

What does it look like to find rhythm in an arrhythmic life?

It kind of feels like another lesson in ‘do the best with what you have’ or as I’ve been taught so many times, but still forget every minute: ‘do as you can, not as you can’t’.

In all of my striving for what I thought was rhythm, true phrases like ‘have grace for yourself,’ were dethroned by self-invented platitudes like ‘do it all,’ ‘be better,’ and ‘your worth is in your productivity (who’s metric is obviously art sales and directee sign-ups).’  I needed a reset button to kill the lies I was running on and dying by.  I needed to redefine rhythm. 

Where and when did my idea of rhythm become everything looking the same every single week and layering my own magical, amazingly productive, and financially successful pattern over my normal life?  No idea.  But what actually would rhythm look like… in a real life?

Rhythm: “1) A: an ordered recurrent alternation of strong and weak elements in the flow of sound and silence in speech… 2) A: the aspect of music comprising all the elements that relate to forward movement… 3) A: movement, fluctuation, or variation marked by the regular recurrence or natural flow of related elements…” (Merriam-Webster).

I love that part of the definition in 1A where it combines ‘strong and weak elements in the flow.’  It really puts me on my butt.  I somehow believed that every day of every week and every minute of every day had to be strong.  I had forgotten that balance of rhythm depends on both the strong and the weak, the busy and the nothingness, the silence and the chaos, the full and the empty.

In the pursuit of wanting to do it all… I’ve done nothing, and under the banner of ‘finding a rhythm’ I’ve let myself hustle for unreal expectations.

I know in my heart that love from and for God is my foundation… but when I look back over my last week and feel like a failure because I haven’t done it all… that love is obviously not my base. 

In the definitions above, I also love the idea of ‘forward movement’; that rhythm is a combination of strong and weak elements in ‘forward movement.’  I’m reforming my broken idea of rhythm into a definition that fits my arrhythmic life: rhythm is a series of strong and weak moments and/or actions that move symphonically toward a greater understanding of God’s love. 

There’s freedom from striving, doubt, and self-annihilation by busy in those words.  And I’m trying to remember, I haven’t wasted a year trying to hustle into a good work for God… I’ve spent a year learning a freedom I’ve never known for my work.

So, for now… I’ll burn my banner of ‘finding my rhythm’ and I’ll try to tell people about the strong and the weak moments and actions that have shown me more of how God loves.  I’ll try to let God run my ‘business’ a little more… and try to do as I can and not as I can’t. 

inside: making space-lent

When I was young, growing up in a Methodist mega church in Texas, I loved Lent.  It’s strange, but I loved the buzz of conversation around what we were choosing to abstain from; we loved comparing and contrasting what we were each giving up, who was practicing Lent, and how those weird Catholics had to eat fish on Fridays.  One year in high school, however, it all sank in.  Admittedly, it wasn’t the entire season (the 40 days) that impacted me so deeply, but a Holy Saturday service I experienced.  I remember I decided to fast Holy Saturday, not eating again until after the Easter service where we proclaimed, “He is risen indeed!”  Don’t be impressed: this was a season of life where I lived on POP tarts and Coca Cola (really not good).   I remember sitting on the grass at one of our Saturday services where the band put on a great show about the journey to the cross that was already steeped and dripping with the celebration and joy of the resurrection: a celebration that, according to the church calendar, we were premature in addressing.  There’s Good Friday, then there’s Holy Saturday, then and only then is there Easter Sunday.  The ache in my stomach starkly disagreed with the wealth of noise, song, and joy around me.  My boyfriend at the time and his family tried to push a Quizno’s sub on me and I tried to appease their urging with a strawberry lemonade (without telling them of the principal hunger that was railing against everything happening around us).  I obviously don’t know where everyone was internally and emotionally for those 39 days (and Sundays) prior to this, maybe they were absolutely grueling and needed the respite of Easter a day early, but for me… Lent finally made sense.  It’s not about the outward: the conversation, the comparison, the I’m-not-eating-chocolate-so-I-know-the-suffering-of-Christ.  It’s about allowing our small, human thinking to understand a true event (and the emotion of it) that occurred thousands of years ago. 

Gosh, the number of times that Scripture states, “remember” is intense.  I think it’s because we as humans so, so easily forget.  It’s even easier for us to forget things that we’ve not witnessed but have been passed down in our traditions, stories, and practices. 

There’s at least four reasons why the church calendar and Christian Tradition ask us to remember by abstaining or going without during Lent: to make space, to sink in, to give to God, and to give to others.  There’s something in my mind that keeps paralleling the Lenten practice of going-without with self-care: a concept that probably goes directly against a typical understanding of fasting. 

Melting Snow, Carin Huebner, 2016.

Make Space:

Besides the Day of Atonement, Lent is the only season where fasting comes as one of those automatic practices of the season.  Rather than an ascetic practice of harsh self-discipline, the Lenten fast is characterized by a going-without in order to make space.  Our lives can be so insanely jam-packed with ‘busy’ and activities.  All good things, I’m sure, but when we can’t stop, we can’t remember.  Lent asks us to remember; therefore, we must make space by subtracting something from our lives.  It can be thought of as a trigger or creating an abundance of time.  Some individuals like to go without something so that every time they crave it, they orient themselves toward God and remember (in their own small way) the suffering of the Son of Man.  Others are in seasons where they feel led to give up something like social media so that it creates more open space in their schedule in which they’re able to incorporate a spiritual discipline or practice that draws them to God and remembering Christ’s journey through life and to the cross.

Thinking similarly to silence and solitude, space allows us room in our busy lives and minds to reorient toward Christ’s salvific work on the Cross and death’s defeat through the resurrection: the absolute pinnacles of Christianity.

Sink In:

Regular space, and therefore reorientation, allows the salvific gift and defeat of death to become more personal.  More than sitting through a service, our time with God allows him to speak deeply to us in all our wounds and history and say, “I have chosen you.”  Making space allows us to sink into who we are, where we are, and who Christ is to us in this particular season of life.  A friend of mine describes Lent as “a messy season, a season where things get muddy and windblown, where we discover forgotten litter and broken limbs under the snow.  Lent is a path we may choose to deal with this mess.”  We allow honesty and humility to melt us into a real depth within ourselves.  Here we are able to beg the realities of this Lenten season, do I believe God is who he says he is, do I believe I am who God says I am, and what is in the way?

Melting Snow, Carin Huebner, 2016.

Give to God:

We give God a wee bit of the space and time he deserves.  We give God the space and time that we deserve.  We give our consciousness over to God so that we may remember the work he has done and the sacrifice that Christ has given.  We open space in ourselves for God to reach through the chaos of our daily distractions and toils.  We stack hands with the cosmic brotherhood and say, “Amen” in realization of the miraculous life, death, and resurrection of Christ as well as the continual work being done in us, so that we may one day commune again with our Maker.

Give to Others:

By giving ourselves space to remember the realities and truths that our faith tradition is based in, we give a gift to others.  Many people are familiar with the term, “hurt people hurt people,” meaning those that are wounded wound others.  We are all wounded, but for this specific season we are invited to look at the mess and offer it to God.  By taking the blinders off to the state of our inner selves, we help the world around us: we stop operating out of hurt, we start viewing others with more grace, and hopefully start gifting ourselves and others the forgiveness we- and they deserve.  Further than this, however, many also choose to abstain from something that in fact releases some of their funds and/or time to give to others.  The money we typically spend on eating out, chocolate, liquor, cable subscriptions, you name it, can really add up over those 40 days and become quite a nest egg for someone else’s well being.  The time that we typically spend in digital worlds adds up to some significant time where our hands could be doing something for someone else.  Whatever small or large amount that may be, it could give someone clean water, feed an individual or family, clothe a cold body, or countless other things that our money and time can really do.

Lent is becoming one of those ‘sexy’ things in modern evangelical America.  Many churches and congregations that have never heard of or practiced Lent are beginning to scratch the surface of what this season is all about.  My hope and prayer is that we can employ this season and it’s practices to put our inner worlds and our understandings of who God really is in a truer place.  We do this by remembering that the season is an invitation into making space, sinking in, giving to God, and giving to others—Lent isn’t about self-deprecation, it’s about Christ’s life, His death, His coming resurrection, and that our lives and death and the lives of others could be much more because of what He has given.

Melting Snow, Carin Huebner, 2016.

Referenced above: Dave Meserve of Urban Skye and his “A Short Guide to Lent” check out more resources from Urban Skye, who they are, and what they’re up to at www.UrbanSkye.org.

Other Lenten guides and resources that I recommend for this journey:

From the Transforming Center: http://resources.transformingcenter.org/collections/lent-resources/products/lent-a-season-of-returning

From an artist friend of mine (Scott Erickson): http://40-days-prayer-book.myshopify.com/products/prayer-40-days-of-practice-softcover-book

the creative process: the crash.

I text my husband today that I’m going to scrap everything and become a carpenter.

It was a giant red flag…

Let’s talk about that post-creation, pre-event slump… please, let’s, because I could die here.

If you’ve ever completed something big (undergraduate degree, Master’s degree, birthing a child (maybe, I don’t know), won an award), if you’ve ever made a creative work that pushed your boundaries a little more, if you’ve ever read Brené Brown’s Rising Strong, you know what I’m talking about. 

Let’s focus on what it looks like in the creative process, though.

This is how it goes for me (EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.):

·      I piddle around for months not making anything of my own and soaking up all the information and research and good-feel-y-creative-stuff I can.

·      I get inspired.

o   It’s a whirlwind of ideas on writing, poetry, images, paintings, and more.

·      I wait anywhere from a couple of days to months to actually act on the inspiration; using all sorts of excuses that are really just fear of failure or fear of going somewhere from where I can’t return.

·      I finally sit down, get some loose framework of a plan, and get to work. 

o   I’m one of those lucky ones that my current process happens very, very fast and yields a lot of work… but I have to do it.

o   This very, very fast is also very, very harmful: the process happens so quickly that the crash is immediate and I have no idea what just happened.

·      I spend a day or two turning out crazy amounts of images and attempting to name and discover the conceptual meat while I’m working.

o   To some, discovering the concept as I work may seem backwards, but I promise you, there’s concept beforehand that continues to develop as I work, and as a verbal processor… I have to work to discover what I have actually intended—it’s already there, I just have to find what and how it is so that I may articulate it.

·      I spam the world with a handful of favorites, I think about pricing them, and getting them on the Web site. 

·      Then… oh, then…

·      I crash. 

o   The next day, I’m so pleased with my self and my creations; I’m proud of myself for getting in the studio and using all my toys; I’m proud of myself for encouraging my life vein.

o   But, I’m afraid.  I’m afraid I just wasted days of work on something I’ve already created in a different form; something that doesn’t do or say anything; something safe and natural for me that didn’t challenge me; something no one will want; something no one will appreciate; something no one will ever see…

o   And I can stay here for days or weeks or months.

I’m here in the crash now… what I’ve coined in my creative process model as ‘death.’  The death phase is characterized by a complete loss of hope, faith, trust, or inspiration in the original idea and doubt that the concept would have ever delivered.  The death phase is where the entire concept, process, and creative journey as a whole go in the trash can (we do NOT recycle here… because there’s no way this thing could EVER become anything else).  In the death phase, we lose hope and trust in how we were created, in our creative wiring, in our gifts and talents, our skills and education… there is nothing.

I knew I was here—the symptoms are unmistakable.  I want more piercings, I want more tattoos, I spend too much time and money in the grocery store and Target, I end up online perusing (shopping) all of the time, I sleep ‘til noon everyday and am tired at nine in the evening.  In the lowest points, I also end up searching job listings for hours on end and digging myself a grave.  The worst of all: I apologize to my husband over and over for how I don’t contribute financially, and for how he has to sustain us both with a job that’s not his favorite while he finishes his Master’s degree.  I make myself a parasite.

It’s just undeniable, but I won’t pay attention to it until someone else can pay attention to it with me; this is where we get back to my text-confession to my husband that I’m bad at my job and I’m going to scrap everything and become a carpenter (because that’s so much easier…..).

For this round of the crash… I also have an event this week with a project my husband and I have created to engage artists and community in the hard and challenging parts of pursuing a creative career…

I know… I know… It’s just amazing isn’t it?

So, when I would already be reeling from the blow of the creative explosion last week, I’m also reeling from the fear-voice for the event this week.  I’m caught in the middle and, seemingly, there’s no escape besides becoming a sales associate again at an apparel store in the mall… obviously.

But, I’m hopeful.  I’m hopeful because I actually made myself write about it this time.  I’m actually attempting to process what the hell just happened and what is about to happen.  I’m thankful for the event this week and how it will force me to engage the challenges of someone else’s creative career (so that I can stop navel-gazing at mine).  I’m hopeful because I have a community of people around me that, though they may not entirely understand my work, process, or career, they understand me and support me always.

I’m hopeful because a friend of mine is forcing me back in the studio today (albeit for mechanical processes I use, but something entirely unrelated to my work, which is perfect).  Also, the series I created is intended for a submission for a local show with a rapidly approaching deadline, so: I’m thankful for a deadline and an outlet. 

In my current phase of life, I’m convinced that this process and journey will never change… that there will always be a creative explosion followed by a crash or death.  I’m also convinced that I could handle it better: maybe be less dramatic, maybe know it’s coming and chat through the process with dear friends that get it, maybe put some scaffolding in place so that the fall and the get-back-up are a little more graceful and grace-filled, maybe.

Until I master this ‘graceful and grace-filled’ however, I need to master the life-promise to myself that I am an artist and I will always create and believe in it.  Gosh, foundation is key, and I forget this every time.

Until then… I’ll be working in the garage with some wood… but mostly just sitting in the studio trying to figure out what’s happening to me.

our world: in the good and the hard, don't let us hate you

The cruelty and evil we’ve heard about this week cannot be overstated; the heinous attacks on Paris (and responsive attacks in Syria), the Garissa University attacks in Kenya back in April, and the bombings in Beirut and Iraq this past week.

How?  How, as a people that so highly value life, a people that have a written history of redemption, restoration, and preservation of life, go to work today, this Monday, after such an assault on human life just days ago.  How, how do we process such evil in this world and what we, we small individuals thousands of miles away, can do about any of it?  How?  How do we process our theology, our understandings of Who God is, in the midst of such horrifying earthly realities?  How do we balance mourning lives so brutally taken while forgiving the criminals; balance trusting in what Christ says about the coming Kingdom, but live every day in the atrocities of this fallen world?

Challenged by some dear friends yesterday, I read an op-ed piece to get the wheels of my mind spinning.  It poignantly, albeit at times arrogantly, challenged the American mourning for Paris in light of the less covered attacks in Lebanon, Iraq, and, earlier this year, in Kenya.  The article made my house church fellows and I reflect on things like how (in response to the Paris attacks) Facebook provided the feature for people currently in Europe to mark themselves as ‘safe,’ but failed to do so for those in Kenya in April.  The article challenged how we cannot open our eyes these few days without seeing a French flag, but maybe we can’t envision the Kenyan or Lebanese flags. 

The article challenged my feelings.  I had basically been crying since I first heard about the attacks when friends in Paris marked themselves as ‘safe’ on Facebook.  The article quelled my insatiable crying.  At the very same time I felt too little and too much.  I was enraged and terrified by this idea that I had overly identified with specific attacks and not others—with specific lives lost.  I was enraged that my media outlets fail to give so much attention (and therefore inform me) to: the Syrian refugee crisis and the mind-boggling ripple effects like the rising unrest and escalating ethnocentrism in places like Sweden; to the bombings in Lebanon; and to the bombings in Iraq. 

Perhaps it was my white privilege that identified more with the romantic City of Lights.  Perhaps it was the whiteness that is prevalent in biased media attention in my country that failed to inform me.  Perhaps growing up through an age of such extreme unrest in Africa and the Middle East has blinded me to the horrific indignities happening there. 

Whatever my excuse could be… I don’t want it. 

I am able to choose not to see happenings in this world—this itself is privilege.  In the cozy comfort of my own home I cry for the events that have taken place in France, Kenya, Iraq, and Lebanon in the past year.  I cry for the events we still don’t know about around the world.  From mass bombings to in-home injustices that happen behind closed doors and curtains.  I cry for the injustices in the French education system that foster hatred through prejudice.  I cry for the brokenness of this world and the depravity of those indoctrinated with something other than goodness.  And I ask… God, how could this happen? 

I know it’s an unfair question… I know all the –ology to dismantle it.  I’m whittled-down to a single thought:

Please, God, don’t let us hate you.

Please, God, don’t let us blame you.  Let us trust that you know of these events, that you shed tears for these events, that far more than our empathy… you feel these events. 

Let us trust that you will do something about injustice, something restorative, something immediate—not only in the very end.

I cannot believe in a god that is able to turn his face from events like these.  I believe in a God that saw his Son’s human body barbarically contorted on the cross.  I believe Christ is tortured again in acts of violence like the ones we’ve seen this past week.  The utter blaspheming of the humanity and dignity of others gnarls Him again. 

I also believe that Kingdom will come… but I believe that we don’t passively wait for its coming.  My only other prayer in these days after seeing such malevolence and violent disregard for life and createdness… God, show me what’s mine to do… And God, protect me from hatred.

And in the midst… a small gift…

Mark 13:1-8 (NIV)

As he was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher!  What massive stones!  What magnificent buildings!” 

“Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus.  “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, “Tell us, when will these things happen?  And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?”

Jesus said to them: “Watch out that no one deceives you.  Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am He,’ and will deceive many.  When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed.  Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.  Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.  There will be earthquakes and various places, and famines.  These are the beginning of birth pains.”

What a mystery that at the end of such a difficult week on this earth, the above passage is the lectionary reading for this past Sunday (November 15, 2015).  It feels like some kind of provision—some kind of solace.  Small, small solace. 

Please, God, don’t let us hate you. 

Article referenced above:

http://www.outwithgeorge.com/blog/2015/11/14/our-mourning-is-broken-paris-and-privilege

I’m thankful for:

Vietnam-based designer Hubert Southall who is creating overlays for Facebook profiles with the Kenyan, Lebanese, and Iraqi flag filters (since Facebook isn’t providing this option) and has put out an open call to graphic designers around the world to help him, because he can’t keep up.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/facebook-flag-filters-france-lebanon-kenya/

Friend and fellow justice-pursuant, Jonny 5 (Jamie) from the Flobots gave honest and gripping words about his own processing about who ‘we’ are, how we decide who to empathize with, and how to act on behalf of others.

http://flobots.com/2015/11/15/who-are-we-identity-empathy-and-paris/

housewifery: "this is America!"

The studio is a disaster.  It looks like a fortress of blow-up mattresses, sheets, and blankets was attacked by a tour-de-force of dirty laundry and camping gear.  We were out of town this past weekend and last week we had family staying with us.  I haven’t had the time or energy to submit myself to the seemingly, weekly task of reclaiming the studio.

My Mondays have become designated “house things” days, which is great since we often travel weekends, but often leads to me having a total breakdown around my purpose in life…

Yesterday was one of those days where supporting and helping my husband seemed like training for taking care of teenage children.  I spent the day doing laundry, but rebelling against house chores by reading Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly and refusing to make the bed.  There was a whirlwind, however, of washing dishes, running to the grocery store, dropping off and picking up my husband (we’ve had one car this past week), and preparing snacks and dinner to be eaten during my husband’s evening class.

After my husband changed his pick-up time on me (then wasn’t waiting for me when I pulled up)… I snapped.  I realized… this is what all those parents of teenagers complain about.  I was frustrated, but the underlying issue was that I had spent all day catering to needs in the home and had neglected my work. 

I work from home, coffee shops, and a coworking space as an artist and spiritual director.  I’m very passionate and, typically, very sure of my calling in life toward these two career paths.  On days like yesterday, however, I lose it. 

I was in a full-swing identity crisis as illustrated by these symptoms: thoughts about getting my septum pierced, failed attempt to re-pierce my tragus, successful attempt to re-pierce the second holes in my earlobes, never changing out of work out clothes (that I didn’t work out in), an overwhelming desire to buy a new outfit and new deodorant, closing the door so I couldn’t see my messy studio, and reading a book about vulnerability all day long.

After I dropped my husband off for class, I texted one of my best friends about my teenage-husband day and my reciprocal angst.  She shared her own stories about working from home and being married, at times, to a teenage-husband.  I texted her, “I’m not made for housewifery.  I’m a professional something!”  She laughed and said, “I’d rather stain our bed frame than make breakfast burritos and fold briefs for days.  This is America.”

This is America.  And I AM a professional something.

It’s okay that I’m not called to housewifery.  It’s okay that doing dishes makes me angry and that it’s hard to have gratitude while I’m folding boxers for hours (seriously… how does he have so many?!).  What’s NOT okay is hiding behind housework to avoid my calling.  What’s not acceptable is doing the dishes, laundry, cleaning, and organizing to avoid the hard and scary task of putting myself out there.  I hide in the false feeling of productivity with a clean house, while I let my true desires and passions fester with my professional to-do lists.  Then the consequence of neglecting those truly life-giving tasks is an explosion of self-doubt, self-pity, anger, bitchiness, and just plain nasty all over anyone in the vicinity.  The consequence is awful and ugly and I’m mean and uncomfortable, then, I realize what it is: my passions raging against my evasiveness.

Regardless of the state of my house, sometimes I have to say, “Yes” to what I’m truly made to do and, “No” to those nagging household chores… even if it means my darling husband has to come home to a messy house.  He’ll survive a mess.  I won’t survive neglecting the call on my life.

making fóðr.

My husband and I were invited to the unveiling of one of Makoto Fujimura’s most recent paintings commissioned by a local couple.  It was a great experience getting to see a great painter of our time describe a little bit of his process specifically.  Fujimura also used the time to discuss his latest publication, Culture Care.  It was an enlightening experience to hear the artist’s convictions around generative culture and mostly, for me, caring for artists. 

I’ve been in a fragile place lately.  I’ve graduated with my Master’s degree in mid-May and have been searching for a job since.  My dreams don’t involve working for someone else, so people don’t want to hire me to work for them.  Further… I’ve been convinced that I’ve pursued two degrees in the most massively obscure fields: photography (focused in analog processes) and spiritual direction.  Last week was one of my hardest weeks in job-searching so far.  I’ve been putting out 3-10 applications a day, have had two interviews, and endless “unfortunately” emails.  When you naturally have a degraded idea of self… this process is endlessly depressing.  Therefore, Fujimura’s conversation could not have come at a better time. 

I teared-up multiple times throughout his presentation including when he explained to the audience that the fact that he is reliant only on his art and art-making as a career makes him a miracle.  Even more impactful, Fujimura said that we owe artists our life and our children’s lives because when it comes to culture, they are the voice, the megaphone, the barometer of culture.  I lost it. 

However, I wasn’t completely sold.  It wasn’t an evening of total inspiration and encouragement.  It was a night of pain too.  I’m incredibly thankful for Fujimura and his convictions and the conversations he is amplifying in this world.  However, the pessimist and selfish artist-diva in me wishes we were farther along than we are.  How many people that came to this unveiling only have one name come to mind when they think of ‘artist’?  How many people went home full and glowing because they ‘experienced art’ that evening?  How many people, therefore, were satisfied with that evening only? 

I dream of a world where every individual can rattle-off at least one handful of names of artists they know.  Further, I dream of a world where those handful of artists are a mix of high-profile and scrounging-for-Ramen. 

This may simply be my own issue surfacing, but I do believe it is still extremely difficult for an artist to be an artist today.  Some may argue it’s easier than it used to be, but with the rise of contemporary art museums and pop art, it is still very difficult, I believe, for one committed to conceptual work and traditional processes of old to support themselves entirely from their artwork alone.  Fujimura mentioned this as well.  When he mentioned that we were looking at a miracle in this sense, he mentioned how difficult it is to be a successful artist today. 

The artist’s plight is difficult because our culture values the artwork or the artist as a means to an end.  I know that’s an audacious statement to some, but I truly believe it.  We value the aesthetic of the day… but pigeon-hole our experience of art into that very specific aesthetic.  Further, we aren’t learned in the skills, processes, costs, and concepts of art OR what value and benefit art brings to our world, experience, and personal as well cosmic (over expansive time) wellbeing. 

So then, my question became… “what can I do?”

I cannot simply sit and complain about the current state of things and not do anything… though that would be the lie and curse of being an artist… that we have nothing to give or say that will actually change things.  When, in reality, that is precisely the role of the artist!

And so, my husband and I have decided to facilitate conversation around creatives and their work.

Find out more here. 

formation/creation.

I spent the first two semesters of this thesis-writing process attempting to write book reports.  I wanted to keep it distant and cold.  I wanted to remain unaffected.  My program has been so intensive and this seemed like the capstone, but in a celebratory way.  It seemed to me as though I could just show what I learned without being overly self-aware or sorting through interior movements as we’re encouraged (forced) to do in everything else.  I thought I could just write. 

As it turns out, writing is creative. 

Writing is more like birthing a series of artworks than I ever imagined.  My academic writing has always been fun and easy and flows out of that inflated ego that I have within my love affair of the written word.  It’s different when I write about something from my soul; when I write about something that is so absolutely close to who I am and why I’m in this world.  Those passionate things within me either rip and roar and lash and parade… or they’re silent and unreachable… sinking deep down afraid to be seen. 

It’s so strange that the most important thing is always the hardest.  It’s so strange that making myself write about the passions that I hold most dear would be difficult.  Strange is the way that such paralyzing fear can well with even the thought of writing.

I wanted other people to say it for me.  I cited every sentence out of fear of plagiarism, but mostly fear of myself.  I had become dead and glacial inside.  I’ve been working on the same series for over two years and it remains in the infant stages.  I haven’t shown my work since I left the district.  The pieces of me that do exist in visual form sit boxed and rolled in a closet that isn’t quite mine.  I never realized how powerless not creating made me.  How distant I had become from myself.  But that gracious God helped me stay blind to that until I could handle it.  I was blind until I was able to- and had space to engage the process, to engage myself, to engage creating. 

And this engagement is on a dire deadline and I struggle to be present.  I struggle to stay true to interior movements.  I struggle to want to.

But,

My art is me (my journey) in visual form.  My thesis is me in written form.  The lines are so close.  The boundaries blur.  What is mine and what is not?  What was ever mine?  And then I learn… Nothing.  And the tears come.  All is gift.  Every word, every photograph, every moment—all gifts.  As a tiny co-creator, I recognize that I make nothing… I simply repurpose it.  The Creator made everything and he did that out of nothing.  What a funny paradigm we live in when we fail to recognize that everything that is here, every cell within us, every breath is borrowed from the One who is. 

I am writing about the creative process while I move through the creative process.  I am writing about the Christian formational journey while I move through the Christian formational journey.  I hope my readers will know that.  Beyond the sometimes chaotic sentence structure, beyond the painstaking length, and the utter vastness in subject… I hope my readers know that it was a difficult journey because they can feel it.  I hope they know how real it is to write about what you’re living.  I hope there’s weight to it all… weight that comes with a connection of spirits that only the movement of the Holy Spirit can inspire. 

I hope.  I hope I can realize the good work God is doing in me through this thesis.  I hope there is benefit to going through this so very hard season.  I hope it looks like a flourishing and flurry of art making after graduation.  I hope… as they say… desolation ends with graduation.  I hope to make again.  And I hope I can forgive this seminary season for stealing all my time.  I hope I can realize that it will, as intended all along, make my work better and more powerful and more true. 

It’s almost funny how I forgot coming to seminary was always about making my artwork stronger.  It was always about learning how to make the process more about Him… more about me with Him.  It’s almost funny how this is exactly what I’m writing about in my thesis and what I’ve always wanted to gift to other creatives. 

No wonder this path has seemed so incredibly difficult. 

Not making that deadline means not making art, and that cannot be a possibility.

And so… I’ll type away, pouring myself on pages. 

iconophile.

and then productivity and creativity came to a screaming halt. 

i could not work.

i could not sit still.

the creative engine had crashed and... I saw my section title: 

Iconoclasm.

and i gave a bleak, ironic, but lively little laugh. 

and i typed away...