Fly Forward

I was browsing the bookstore the other day, as I love to do. I was struck with the amount of Memoirs that could be found. Everywhere I looked there was a beautiful looking cover that contained the story of someone. Most of the people writing memoirs I've never even heard of. They are everyday people with remarkable stories to tell....true stories and events in the lives of these people. More and more people are entrusting other people with the intimate details of story. What a beautiful thing. We need to hear and share in one another's stories.

If you're a writer and you are stuck in your writing, begin by telling some part of your story. Even if you're not planning on revealing a best-selling memoir; even if you must deviate from your current project, begin to write some of the events that happened to you. Writing some scene from your life may help to get you moving in your current work. The work of writing your personal story does a lot of things. It may jar a memory and bring in some workable material. More than that, it helps to bring you in touch with humanity. Your own humanity. It is good to be human. Jesus celebrated our humanity when He became one of us. Even back in the garden, He declared it to be good. Telling and writing our story helps ourselves connect with our own humanity in an authentic, genuinely sincere way. Frederick Beuchner says, "We are men and women of sincerity, Paul says, and God help us if we're not because that's what we're cracked up to be, and sincerity you'd like to think would be the least of it. We are commissioned by God to speak in Christ, and to speak in Christ is to speak truth, and there is no story whose truth we are closer to than our own, than the story of what it's like to live inside ourselves. The trouble is that, like Christ's story, this too is apt to be the last we tell, partly because we are uncomfortable with it and afraid of sincerity and partly because we have half forgotten it. But tell it we must and, before we tell it to anbody else, tell it first of all to ourselves and keep on telling it because unless we do, unless we live with, and out of, the story of who we are inside ourselves, we lose track of who we are. We live so much on the outer surface and seeming of our lives and our faith that we lose touch with the deep places that they both come from."

Maybe Buechner got something we're just starting to get....story is important....it's important to tell and it's important to hear the stories of others. I think people are hungry for this sharing of humanity and it's becoming apparent as I visit the bookstore. It seems to me to be a universal language that all can understand: the power of storytelling......the human story. Tell your story! Write your story! If even to remind yourself of the deep, deep beauty of a life lived....your life; your perspective and the most accurate one there is!

I'm speaking to writers quite a bit right now on this page, as I am offering myself some morsels as I begin to think about wanting to write something new. But the attributes of a writing life, I think, can be applied to life, in general. We, as humans are not tubular, with our categories all lined up and sectioned off. We are absorbent. What applies to one area also bleeds into another. We try so hard to section ourselves like grapefruit, but that doesn't work for us, since we are not in the citrus fruit family. To be a whole person, we must see ourselves wholly rather than in segments. How I am fed spiritually bleeds over into my physical health. How I see myself creatively informs my views of the world. We do have categorical names for what it means to be human, but each piece of my humanity speaks into and informs my other pieces. So, as I think about writing, I've been thinking about what informs that exercise. There are so many things that do. A good piece of writing seeks to tell the truth...the truth about humanity and relationships. To write well, one must be honest about the human condition. This is difficult to do! How does it happen? Where does it happen? The wrestling match begins at the computer keyboard or the blank sheet of paper. The process of writing is not the romantic, idealistic one we usually imagine. We see a seasoned man smoking his pipe at the seaside with his typewriter as if he's simply taking dictation from a loud voice from the heavens. This picture doesn't paint the truth; in reality, it looks more like grueling hours of staring at the blank page, the slow, meandering of intellect that seems to linger somewhere afar off and is quite delayed in returning to the long, boring process of getting thoughts on paper. There is also the never-ending battle with what Anne Lamott likes to call "banshees and drunken monkees"! You know them! The voices! The inner critics! Call them whatever you like....we all have these loud voices that hunch and hover and make their beds and take up residence in our brains, our hearts, our souls. And not just one......they come in packs. They seem to have a very intricate and distinctive strategy and they always seem to work well together. They never disagree or come with dissenting views. They are unified in their message. Their message is merciless and harsh. They come to pour lemon juice on your open, gaping wounds and they come very well versed in knowledge of your particular bruised spots! This is why I love Anne Lamott's choice words for the scoundrels. It puts them in their place. In the middle of such an assault, the banshees and drunken monkees sound like the voices of reason. They seem to have their points and we give them the floor to make their case. Why do we do that???? They are, after all, inebriated and misinformed! There are two things that I know to be true. One, if something is worth doing, these banshees and drunken monkees will show up. Two, if you're going to do the thing that is worth doing, you're going to have to deal with the banshees and drunken monkees! The best way to deal with them that I have found is to speak the truth and they will scatter. They come to feed you lies and you must tell yourself the truth. Tell the truth and send those creepies away!!

I've never had my hands in clay before the beginning of this year.  It's a fluke that it even started this year!  For my BFA, I have to have 8 classes of art electives on top of my concentration and minor.  The only class I could take that fit my schedule was a class called "Handbuilding"....what???  Is......That?????  O well; I signed up for it, having no idea what I'd be doing.  I was, quite frankly, scared of clay.  I think I must have attempted something in elementary school that must have bombed.  I don't remember anything like that in particular, but I seemed to have some sort of aversion to the material.  In fact, the first day of class, I didn't go to my clay class right off.  I decided to show up in the printmaking class and see if perhaps they had space for me.  They did not.  I showed up 5 minutes late to clay and luckily, she didn't give my space away.  I had no idea what was waiting for me.  The moment I got my hands in the clay, a new romance was born.  I fell in love; I was enamored with this earthy, elastic piece of heaven.  Each class period was three hours long, but it felt like 20 minutes.  For those three hours, I would lose myself in daydreams, thoughts, the way the clay felt in my hands.  I had all kinds of conversations with that clay.  I poured my frustrations, my passions, my affections and everything else into the process of making something with it.  In the process of being introduced to a new medium, I was also doing some Ignatian exercises in a group setting (Ignatius of Loyola, an ancient of the faith) with Renee Farkas who is a spiritual director here in Franklin who does wonderful work (check her out at Ambernest.com).  My experience with clay converged with this passage in the Ignatian work I was doing: Jeremiah 18:1-6 - "The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 'Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words.'  So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel.  And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.  Then the word of the Lord came to me: 'O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done?' declares the Lord.  'Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.'

I'd read that before, but having a new experience with clay, it caught my attention as it hadn't before.  Clay is unpredictable.  To work in clay, one must be patient and steady.  You can't have a finished piece overnight.  It is slow, steady and I was told early on not to get attached to any of my pieces.  Somewhere in the process, whether during the construction or the firing, you can easily lose the structure or it could turn into something completely different than planned.  I found this to be very true.  I found that if I could keep the process open as long as possible, there was space for more possibility.  Often, I'd throw something back into the slurry to reform and rework something.  Making things out of clay began to be something of a co-creation.  As I intuitively listened to what the clay wanted, we worked together to make it something it wanted to be.  I think that is a lot of what God hopes for us; that we co-create as we converse and walk together, mutually listening, as in any relationship.  Unlike me, God's artistry is perfect.  He doesn't make mistakes in His creative process.  He takes discarded, broken vessels marred by the Fall and reworks, rearranges and re-forms them back to something that is beautiful.  Working with clay facilitates my awareness of God's creative process in me, around me and in the world.  As much as I love the clay, I see that He loves being in my life, touching and whispering and fashioning beauty all around and in the midst of the chaos.  It has been a sacred place for me this semester; a new way to see God and a new way to draw near.  Ironically, after trying to bow out of my first clay class, I will minor in it.  The Fall starts throwing with the potter's wheel!!!  Yipppeeee!!!

Raku Clay Handbuilt Pinchpot (1 of 7)

"Tension", 2011 Jennie Schut, Oil on Wood

This is a painting I did for my Painting 2 class recently.  The process is called Verdacchio in the Italian version and was implemented by masters such as Carravaggio and Rembrandt.  It is not finished.  I will apply glazes of color to the existing black and white.  The process is very interesting and seems to translate to life; all facets of life.  This method of painting achieves an illusion of depth and richness by adding multiple color glazes to build up color slowly and incrementally.  Each layer is somewhat of an oddity.  I will paint the forehead yellow, the face red, the neck and chest blue.  It will look crazy and inexplicable during each layer.  But each layer is necessary to the form.  Without layers and layers, we are left with a flat, unbelievable and indistinct composition.  This is life, isn't it???  Each layer formed, on its own, seems indescribable, incomprehensible and rather odd, leaving us groping for an explanation.  Timing is everything.  When we are prepared to accept another layer, we receive something that could read as quite enigmatic.  When we acknowledge that we are on a process; a series of receiving, we can live with some mystery.  There is an order to that mystery.  One layer cannot be received before the other layer.  They are received in a particular order.  Our lives are laden with small, thin layers that are, by themselves nothing, perhaps even oddities.  But combined with other layers, the picture begins to make sense and the effects of multiple layers are a remarkably rich depth that can't be substituted or created by another quicker, less arduous, less painstaking process.  It becomes a sacrificial investment of time, resources, material, and SELF to create something that is beautiful and eternal.  There are no shortcuts available on a true process.....

Look for the final painting coming soon.......

 I love the church calendar and the way it accentuates the rhythm of being human.  I'm learning about it.  I grew up in a church that didn't acknowledge or operate out of the church calendar.  So, I'm new to its rhythms.  It makes so much sense.....Lent and Easter were unbelievably significant this year.  Easter has always been important in the past, but observing the season for 46 days, there was such a climax on Easter Sunday that I had never experienced before.  So often, I think we skip over Ash Wednesday and all the darkness and death that leads up to the glorious resurrection that we can't fully feel the implications of all of it.  I had the privilege of sharing in the Lenten season with a couple ladies in my studio during the last 4 weeks of Lent and it was such a rich time of sharing and encouragement.  We concluded our wonderful time together with a Seder meal demonstration.  What a beautiful ritual that is full of rich symbolism.  Every time I do it, I catch something different.  The Seder meal is the passover meal that celebrates the Old Testament Exodus of the Jewish people out of Egypt.  And it was the passover meal that Jesus and His disciples were partaking of on the eve of His death in which He instituted the Eucharist.  Two of the passover meal elements become something else on that evening; the unleavened bread and one of the 4 cups served, the third cup being the Elijah cup.  The unleavened bread signified the haste in which they had to leave; they only ate unleavened bread on their journey because they didn't have time to allow the bread to rise.  At one point during the meal, they hide a piece of the bread, symbolizing the hidden Messiah who has not yet been revealed.  What did Jesus do that night, when He knew who He was and what His destiny was??  Rather than hiding Himself, He revealed Himself as The Bread Of Life.  Jesus then took the Elijah cup and made it the cup of His blood, the cup of salvation.  Really remarkable and beautiful, as are the other elements of the meal....

What I've learned about resting I've learned through nature and the Word of God. I haven't learned through people the concept of resting. I don't think I know many people who are intentional about resting. It's not an easy thing to do, nor is it a cultural value. It almost seems counterintuitive to rest in our culture. Since ours is a culture driven by productivity, significance gained through accomplishment, and efficiency, it would almost seem a ludicrous idea to stop simply for the sake of resting.

Yet, there is a strong invitation in the the Word that would have us rest. It's woven all throughout scripture. It's woven all throughout our world. Life is seasonal. God has ordered His world in this way. No one season is more important than another. They all have a purpose to fulfill.

I see God in nature....especially trees....I love trees. If you'll notice with me, trees are not fruitful all year round. After a season of harvest or fruitfulness, the beauty springs forth in fullness of color through leaves in the fall. Leaves are at their prime beauty just before death. But, they are not finished yet. They fall to the ground in their death and nourish the soil for the next season of toil and production of beauty. This is the way God orders His natural world. Rest is required for renewal and restoration. Rest allows more beauty to come later. Rest is very active. This cycle of toil, beauty, fruit and rest is what God has said to be good. It is the creative process itself. In this painting the tree has ceased any work. There are no leaves or fruit. No toil. It is in a place of rest and dormancy. But you'll notice some dynamic things happening amidst the dormancy. Things around it are full of color and vibrancy and activity. Its roots seem to be moving into the deep. There are good things happening and not all that is visible. Some work of rest is done in subterraneous, dark places that can't be seen.

In my own experience of resting, I find it difficult to acquiese to ambiguity. Let me explain. Rest requires that we relinquish the demand for an answer to an open-ended question. It is , as my friend says, a lifestyle of "living in the question mark". If we deny ourselves rest until our questions are answered and our loose ends are tied up, we will never receive the gift of rest. The irony of it is that rest lends itself to working out the questions.

I was given an art assignment where I was to take ink to 3 different 4x4 squares and take 45 minutes a day for a week and spend time working on each square alternatively for 45 minutes so as to apply about 15 minutes to each square for each session. The point was to keep it as open-ended for as long as possible, leaving all parts of the composition incomplete until the last minute. I remember my teacher saying, give the composition lots of space and time for great things to happen. This can be applied to life as well. When we make a choice, we die to all other possibilities and have our answer. And that can be good. But, we tend to want the answer right away, and we don't leave room for other possibilities and allow space for God to work. Sometimes living in the question mark and forsaking a quick, tidy answer will make way for surprises! And, surprisingly, ambiguity leaves a spaciousness for rest. "Be prepared to be surprised" - Sondre Lerche

Who in the world does not doubt????  About our world, our life and, dare I say it, our God??  There is not one.  Doubt is the shadow cast by true faith; therefore, I count myself amidst those who doubt.  Those who don't doubt OUT LOUD have a faith that sits upon the surface because it is doubt and the exploration of it that builds our faith and fortifies the truth already there.  The tension of opposites must be present within us to underscore the beauty of faith.  Without that tension, we are only ghostlike shadows without substance and form.  So, without doubt, we wouldn't understand the gift of faith and the deep wrestle that comes with beautiful faith.  Faith is not gullible and simply a blind belief in something not investigated, turned over and over in our hands, felt, tasted, smelled.  Faith is something we have tested over and over again and it has tested us.  There is an exchange that takes place in our doubting.  When we doubt and investigate our doubt, we are given substance for shadow and when we've received the substance, we have passed the test that faith administered.  To pass the test of faith means to , as Ignatius pf Loyola puts it, be generous toward God in receiving His gifts.  Generosity toward God is simply receiving His presence where I am with expectation that He has something He deeply wants to give to me.  Generosity and faith work together to let us receive from God rather than the antithetical idea of bringing something to God in our generosity.  In our fleshly "generosity", we reject gifts He loves to give us in exchange for the desire to give Him something.....Chuck it!!!  Come with open, empty hands and expect to receive...true generosity understands that all is gift.  You've seen that kind of generosity in the eyes of a child at Christmas...they come to the tree with wild expectation and delight, waiting, waiting to receive.  If you're hungry for faith, mercy, life in your story, grace, beauty, goodness, come with nothing and be counted among His victories in bitter woundedness!!

I'm learning what it means to be seduced by God. He allures me with the beauty of a Lover, though, I tend to betray the Lover for the seduction. C.S Lewis says, "The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not IN them, it only came THROUGH them, and what came through them was longing. These things--the beauty, the memory of our own past--are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited."

How do we sort out the beauty of the seduction and allow the seduction to lead us to the worship of True Beauty....He holds 10,000 charms.....His charms are meant to lead me to Him, but I tend to hold to the charms themselves and settle for those. My heart breaks. I am scattered, divided, diverted. I know what I want to want, but I want something else.

"You know what I mean. For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world (His country, in the experience of beauty). Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. We may go when we please, we may stay if we can.... It is not the physical objects that I am speaking of, but that indescribable something of which they become for a moment the messengers. And part of the bitterness which mixes with the sweetness of that message is due to the fact that it so seldom seems to be a message intended for us, but rather something we have overheard. By bitterness I mean pain, not resentment. We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret." - C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

There it is folks.....that's the inconsolable secret of my heart that Lewis so cleverly penned. I have been pining..... there is no relief. There is a nagging ache when I come up close to beauty. It is not a passing nagging and pining. It is a continual, persistent desire that will not be satiated.

As I work through the implications of this revelation, I found help in the words of Julian of Norwich and her thoughts on penance: "For God regards us so tenderly as to see all our living here (on earth) to be penance. For our natural longing for God is a lasting penance in us, which God brings about in us and mercifully helps us to bear. God's love makes God long for us, but God's wisdom and truth with divine justice make God allow us to stay here, so God sees this as penance for us. This penance never leaves us until we are fulfilled and will have God as our reward.

"But here our courteous Lord showed the moaning and mourning of the soul, explaining, 'I know well that you want to live for my love. But since you do not live without sin, you are heavy and sorrowful'...I love you and you love me and our love will never be broken in two. For your gain I suffer....I protect you most securely.' In falling and in rising we are always kept preciously in one love. For in beholding God we do not fall, and in beholding ourselves we do not stand. Both of these are true, as I see it, but beholding our Lord God is the higher truth. Then we are bound to God, which is what God wants in showing us this higher truth. I understood that while we are in this life, it is very beneficial to us that we see these both at once. For the higher beholding keeps us in spiritual joy and true rejoicing in God while the other, the lower beholding, keeps us in fear and makes us ashamed of ourselves." - Julian of Norwich, Encounter with God's Love

So, in the ache of wanting to possess beauty, open its mystery and dwell there, I am bound to God!...And, He is bound to me.

Zechariah 8:2 - "I am jealous for Zion with great jealousy, and I am jealous for her with great wrath." You long, O God! You want passionately. You are not passive in your love...the burning, the ache, the longing - You're familiar with this unrest. You will have us for Yourself and we will live together in that fulfillment.....till then I am bound to You and You are bound to me.......

I remember last year, feeling like 2010 was a dawning year.  In many ways it was.  The dawning of a new age.  I guess that means that we find ourselves in the morning of a new age this year.  I find myself heading back into a season of wilderness; a time of waiting, a time to exercise my mad skills!  Dang!  It feels like I was just here not long ago.  I think much of life is lived in the wilderness.  The Israelites were there for 40 years.  Many of them died there.  The wilderness actually becomes an old friend who is eager to hold my hand and give me her wisdom.  She is generous and gracious as she sees me stepping into her territory once again and begins to cradle me in the shadows.  I come back here to come in touch once again with my longings; with my hopes.  The wilderness gives me gifts of hope, for in the wilderness, I learn the discipline of delay.  The challenge of being here is the waiting, but the waiting is the work of hope.