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!

"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....

Hospitality is not found in the hotel industry or the local medical center.  Hospitality is found in the human heart.  And if we're human, we need the gifts of other hospitable humans!  I've been reading about the tradition of Japanese tearooms and find the art of hospitality to be at the center of this artistic ritual.  The teamaker knows the art of making tea for the express purpose of having an intimate conversation with loved ones.  The tea room is set up with one focal point and the rest of the room is simple with only natural material in the room, such as mud walls, bamboo or paper windows, so as not to detract or distract  from the intimate gathering.  There are just a few people who come to the table and watch the host carefully prepare the tea and the conversation centers around tea utensils or scrolls or whatever has been provided as the focal point of the room.  The rooms are very small and are designed to be a respite from and chaotic and sometimes violent world.  There is an aesthetic attitude and thought surrounding Japanese tea and the ceremony involved in the experience.  There is beauty found in the aged, worn and discarded object here in the tearoom.  There is life to be found in the cracked, imperfect vessel.

Hospitality is different than entertaining or showing our things off to others, though sometimes it seems that is what we equate with hospitality.  Hospitality and simplicity can live side by side.  In fact, maybe these are better pairings than the usual partner of hospitality, which tends to be complication.  If we can offer shelter and respite from what the world offers, then we can indeed be hospitable and what we attach to hospitality can melt away, since those are our own attachments that don't have to accompany us as we seek to welcome.  After all, what is hospitality but the welcoming heart of God?  This welcoming heart of God doesn't require that we have a swimming pool and a 5 course meal laid out; only a longing to connect with and care for another human heart.

I would love to hear some thoughts on this subject of the universal.  As I am steeped further into the artist community, I am being exposed to different world views and thoughts around what the purpose of art is.  I read a very interesting interview recently about two brothers who make art together.  The interview was laced with an obstinate rage emanating from these brothers who seem to be miffed at the culture at large.  I think they are coming from a place of anger, which I understand.  Appreciation for art in our society seems to have deteriorated over the years.  They make very difficult pieces and they probably have been subjected to ridicule over the shock factor of their pieces.  This anger has led to an elitist position and a cynical expectation of the viewer.  They don't believe there is any such thing as universal truth or beauty.  They don't believe that art can create a language that can be understood by the common person.  There is an intellectual hierarchy that has been created through these beliefs.  I have seen bits and pieces of this thinking everywhere.  In the process of writing, I had been given lots of advice with the same flavor such as the suggestion of "dumbing down" the work to make it palatable to the mass market.  I believe this to be erroneous because I believe better about people.  If we make good art and literature, our culture will reflect that goodness and that level.  If we continue to dumb down, how can we expect readers and viewers and patrons of the arts to expect more?  The making of reality tv shows, for instance, erodes cultural expectations of what good art is.  It is the responsibility of artists to expect more from those who enjoy the art as well as the consumer of art to choose well what to support.

I understand what these brothers feel, but I think they are approaching the problem in the wrong way.  I think that art can be a powerful bridge, but I sense in these brothers that they prefer the chasm.  I do believe that art can speak universally.  We are all human and all share similar experiences.  We know when we have been brushed by beauty.  It steals our breath and we ache to be a part of it; at least, to have beauty nod in our direction.  To be human means to suffer and we all have that in common.  Art can be a universal language to bring comfort, hope, healing and relief.  To be touched by a fleeting moment of beauty, whether through a home-cooked meal that didn't originate from a box, or a brilliant piece of art that demands our engagement, or a bloom on a flower that may last until tomorrow, is to experience the beauty and frailty of humanity in all its mystery and brilliance.

So, what is our responsibility as artists???  We keep making art that speaks of the good, true and beautiful in all its authenticity and by doing this, we have an opportunity to shape thought and culture.  Art is a prophetic language and has great power to shape and form.  Sometimes, the viewer won't "get" the art.  That's ok.  We continue to make it anyway, encouraging and teaching the viewer as we go.

What a series of events I have just experienced!  They all seem to underscore one another.  I just spent 10 days in Italy, my second trip there in 3 months.  My husband and I went to revisit some of the highlights from my first visit.  He is still in Rome for a Suicide Prevention Symposium.  During our visit, we went Assisi, an ancient city on a hill that was home to St. Francis and St. Claire.  The town still carries with it a sacred quality left by the ancients and those pilgrims that came after looking for the same thing the ancients were looking for: the Holy of Holies.  There is a mountain that towers above the city called Mount Subasio.  St. Francis and his followers would climb to the top of this mountain and spend days in solitude in the caves in the mountain's sides seeking after something bigger than themselves; truths that would lead to freedom.  James and I felt rather ambitious that day and decided to hike up the mountain.  Three and a half miles later, we made it to a remote retreat center on the top of Mt. Subasio.  As we saw the places that St. Francis saw many years ago, some truth came crashing down on me and scattered fragments all over my dogmatic ideas and square theology.  I think I knew it  all along, but knowing it and understanding it and feeling it and resting in it are very different. 

Thoughts had been forming in the caves of my imagination all summer long as I studied various things, including Astronomy and different stories in the biblical text.  I was getting the feeling that God, as an Artist, likes to break the rules.  I've heard from several different artists that I greatly respect that it is important to understand the rules of making art so that when you transgress against the rules, it is intentional and understanding the rules and their confinements and the purposes they serve help us to transgress against them in an innovative, cutting edge sort of way so that new ideas and expressions of beauty can emerge.  In essence, you learn the structure and then explode that structure to make something new, all the while having a great respect for the healthy restrictions the rules create.

Astronomists are confounded as they attempt to explain the order and origins of the universe.  Most objects in the universe follow a law and scientists can write laws of the universe as such.  This is a helpful investigation.  But every once in a while, scientists will fall upon something they can't explain; something that transgresses the law.  For instance, Venus travels in a retrograde direction (east to west).  It is the only planet in our solar system that does so.  Everything else travels from west to east.  This is a mystery to scientists.  There are theories, but no one can say for sure why Venus doesn't follow the laws of planetary motion.  Another example is Uranus, which is tilted on its side, the only planet to orbit on its side.  There are all kinds of mysteries and some things can't be contained within natural law.

God is a law breaker; LOVE dictates that He transgresses against the law.  The law would never condone mercy or God taking up the task of saving His own creation.  This goes beyond any law.  He breaks the law and explodes it, shattering all of our ideas about who God is.  When Jesus lived and died, taking on the world's darkness, He broke the law by filling it and completing it.  He understood and knew the law very well, allowing Him to break the rules and live by love rather than rule.  Wow!

As I learn to make art, I want to understand the law and then push the law beyond its borders because of love.  Love is the higher way; law is the easier way.  Love requires imagination and undefined borders.  Law requires only black and white.  Love requires color and texture and thought and light.

Above: A Waking Up Grey retreat at the the home of Doug and Lisa Durr in Franklin, Tn...

Retreat servant team: Amy Sheehan, Amie Tindall and Renee Farkas

Not pictured: Tiffany Foss, Lisa Durr and Lauren Farkas

Some of the most beautiful and bountiful expressions of the Gracious heart of God at a Waking Up Grey retreat take place in secret.  God's desires are found in the prayers uttered on behalf of a stranger; His serving nature is found in the hands of those that are busy toiling and His exquisite attention to detail is expressed in the imaginations of those who are eager to hold the curtain back to reveal the breathtaking beauty of the One who holds all things together and who desire that we taste His magnificence.  Being backstage is more awe-inspiring than watching from a front row seat in the audience.  Thank you, friends of God, for allowing me to watch the things He is doing in and through you as you ever desire to show HIM off.  I am blessed to be in your family: "He who is making us holy and the ones who are being made holy are of the same family.  That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters...." Hebrews 2:11

Billy Collins is a brilliant poet, and to have his humorous poem recited by this 3 year old is such a treat!  This little one already has a love for words, the  way they sound and the way they fit together.  Even if he doesn't understand the meaning, he understands the beauty of the way they are situated.  Pretty remarkable!  Just had to share this.....if you are not familiar with Billy Collins and his lovely poetry, you need to be!  He is a brilliant wordsmith.  This happens to be a humorous poem poking fun at the lover's romantic attempt to compare his beloved to the world's imagery.

Meet David Bunker.  He is my friend on facebook and posted a beautiful, poetic note on longing and dreams and he said I could share it with you, so here it is:

"We all have aspirations. We all have dreams and goals. But I am convinced that too much talk about life as though it were controllable if one only figured out all the steps, has inadvertently made dreams perfunctory excursions of the soul. I say perfunctory in that they now lack the enchantment and hopefulness that are really at the foundation of our deepest parts. Who and what are we at our very depths but dreams? When these dreams are bantered about as though easily formed and easily accomplished, they lose their intrinsic glow. They lose their ability to offer hope. The loss of hope is a terrible thing. At this point the resignation allows for much of the fallenness of this world to berate and attack our soul and we are passive and quiet. We have no sense of childlike expectation.

The soul obeys out of expectation. This posture is not merely wishes and plans but is the very basis of trust in the world. When we lose our trust nothing has clarity. Nothing has substance for all is reflected in its fallen state. We only see the specter of what is not. To dream and anticipate is to trust beyond common sense.

We are taught from very early on that certain behaviors are sensible while others are not. I am convinced that if Jesus were to show up in Western advanced countries today he would appear like some wild eyed misfit and most of His teachings would be considered unrealistic, unusable if not downright useless. As I told a friend...Jesus would not be an efficiency expert or analyst. Life is messy, dreams are weighty and cumbersome, love is fragile and unpredictable.

So much of what animates our deepest parts is birthed and nurtured in hope. When that possibility is shot down through feasibility studies, cynicism birthed from our own unwillingness to admit we have lost our dreams, or a lack of conversation with the community, gatherings take on a selfish tone. Ironically, real dreams of hope always involve the whole. They involve the whole because individuals are willing to reveal their deepest most seemingly idealistic imaginings to others risking ridicule. When we have the courage to be children in front of one another we find that our authentic self begins to speak. We say what we believe the world should actually be like. Now the conversation begins. Now we must begin to trust for these heartfelt disclosures are the only things really holding up our soul. This is the foundation below the foundation. This is the air our very being breathes.

Recently in our community the discussion reflected on how we are all learning how to love. The only way that action is poured out in our community is when we see two things – our lack and our hope. To allow our deepest needs to become apparent is to risk loosing our hope. What if our needs are unmet? What if no one cares? What if I am left alone? All these doubts and suspicions are equally real. They reflect the experience we have had to date when it comes to trusting other human beings. So why trust again? Why allow for our hopes to be rekindled? Because it is who we are.

When we choose to stop longing for the “really real” we become cynical, angry, busy, full of self, overly religious, and despairing. I have had to fight this last one for many months. When all hope seems to be lost where does one go? Where do I go? Answer?....To those who I sense love me. This is dangerous for now I am really opening up my deepest desire. That deepest desire is to belong.

We live in times where belonging is often based around agreed upon ideologies, blood relations, tribal commonalities, money earned & status, position in life, power, who one knows, and many other things that keep our selves set apart. These are all boundaries when projected on those who are "unlike us." For our communities (churches, friendships, neighborhoods, cities, nations) to go deeper into the longing we must go deeper into the impracticality of our dreams. We must go deeper into the sorrow of each person who is losing that power as we speak. We must have the courage to look at one another and carry that darkness for one another. We must say, “Let me long with you.” “Let me hallucinate the divine possibilities of obeying our Savior together and build a highly inept community and village. Let them say (about us) that they are crazy in love with one another and offer up all they have when they have so little. Is that not the miracle of the loaves and fishes? Let our longing cause us to share our loaves and fishes today and usher in the unworkable, unreasonable, impractical, beautiful Kingdom where everything belongs. When people enter real communities of love they should probably say two things. This is dangerously whacked....... & how do I join?

For those who have ceased to long..... AWAKE from your barbituated suburban slumber and really listen to the beautiful soundtrack that is your dreaming heart. This is the music that animates and pushes sacred metaphors into your journal diary entries, your singing on the way to work, your lost time playing games on the floor with your children or grandchildren, your prayers to the Father that are muttered as throw aways but they are indeed your ultimate requests.

Let your longings define your edge. Let your risky behaviors be in loving those closest to you regardless of the cost. Let the risky space of vulnerability be your habitat. Here is to the divine messiness of it all. I bow my knee to the extravagant chaotic embrace of a created world that screams out for my participation. Remember... your hopefulness is your my gift, & your burden, your responsibility. Do not wait to utter your longings aloud. Oh the painful joy of longing's presence! Its place is only found in risk and the tiny reach of the heart's searching. Listen...as Jodie Foster once said...I think there is contact." - David Bunker

To see more of David's musings, you can visit him at http://thepracticeofbeauty.blogspot.com

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!