Visual Faith

Art is a subject I’ve wanted to study – not art history, and not the how-to. I’ve collected many books and it may be what I write on next, having blogged about the calendar for two years and putting it in book form (I really have several books in meself to write!) (and, as I’ve written sometime this summer, I am going to change my blog format … someday … when I’ve more time … haha!). But my art quest began moreso with “Come to me as a child” and the desire to Recapture the Wonder (which is the title of a book by Ravi Zacharias, and then there’s Dangerous Wonder by Mike Yaconelli). I want to study of the power of beauty, the power of the visual – Visual Faith.


I got a new Bible for this year’s devotional/ meditational/ lectio divina/ contemplative reading. It’s called the Mosaic Holy Bible, using the word mosaic as referring to us believers. On our own we are little more than bits of stone and glass, but together we make up the body of Christ, reflecting His image. The front third of the book has guided Scripture readings appropriate to the church season, along with writings encompassing a great cloud of witnesses from old to new; prayers, hymns, and poems, as well as full-color artwork – all for engaging the soul. Then the last 2/3 is the New Living Translation. I’ve not read that translation and am finding it refreshing.

I recently read the section titled “Creativity”. Remember, calendar girl me has told you our Christian Year begins the end of November with the start of Advent, and we are now in the season called “Ordinary Time”, the 22^nd week after Pentecost. I really resonated with this creativity theme. Even if I weren’t artistic (which if you say that of yourself, I’d question your definition of “artistic” and maybe some quotations and comments here will help you think this through) … I’d still value the thoughts worth pondering.

“Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us” … So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them … Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!
- Genesis 1

“Deep within all of us is a longing to recapture a sense of wonder, to marvel at the mystery of God and His creation like we did as children. But through the years our capacity for wonder has been stifled by busyness and ambitions, and we have resigned ourselves to explaining away all that once made us gasp in awe … Our sense of wonder is a blessing from God.”
- Ravi Zacharias


“Every experience of beauty points to infinity.”
- Hans Urs von Balthasar

All creation proclaims God’s craftsmanship and glory day after day and night after night—they make Him known in their way.
- Psalm 19

“I am creating new heavens and a new earth … Be glad, rejoice forever in my creation! And look!”
- Isaiah 65:17,18

I have been looking. I do notice. I do appreciate, hopefully beyond a rational assertion … but in the realm of aha!!!!!


“Art has long been a spiritual practice. Its modern stigma has undeservingly dampened Christian creativity and squelched the innate novelty with which we were formed. Fortunately, churches are once again beginning to embrace the full range of the arts, exploring the nonverbal ways God is glorified.

Of course, we were given this very mandate and model for creativity in God’s creation—nature and humanity are brave testaments to an imaginative Creator. As we enter an awestruck posture, it is right and appropriate to respond using the creative nature with which we’ve been blessed.”
- Mosaic Holy Bible

Our imagination as Christians has been primarily nourished by the spoken and written word as well as music. The church and its experience with beauty appears to be estranged, and the role the church could offer has been supplanted by art galleries and theaters. In desiring to respond to the presence of God with the whole of our beings, is there a place for visual artists and their responses in church? In saying above that we’ve been moreso nourished by literature and music, could I also say that we’re mal-nourished in our visual imagination?

The importance of creativity “is that the Christian life involves the use of the imagination—after all, we are dealing with the invisible [like God], and the imagination is our training in dealing with the invisible—making connections…”
- Eugene Peterson

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
- Albert Einstein

The root word for imagination is “image”, meaning a visual representation, a visible impression, a mental representation or idea, a simile or metaphor. The visual has a way of sticking in our memory and making demands on our conscience long after the explanations have been rubbed thin by the frictions of daily life. We do need moral propositions and principles, but we need images too, because we think more readily in pictures than in propositions. And when a moral principle has the power to move us to action, it is often because it is backed up by a story or visual image.

Christ is the visible image of the invisible God … Through Christ God created everything … “For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through him God reconciled everything to himself …”
- Colossians 1:15-20

“Creator God, your Spirit enables our own creative abilities as we allow you to work through our words, our hands and our imaginations.

We thank you for the beauty of created things, for pots and bowls moulded by the skilful manipulation of clay, for a portrait which captures the essence of a personality, for the written word which transports us to a faraway place, a poem that captures the raw emotion of a moment, a prayer that speaks to our heart and soul.

You are present wherever mankind opens its eyes to see, can be heard whenever mankind opens its ears to hear, can be felt as hands are outstretched in faith.”
- John Birch

“The desire to create is not taught. The world and everything in it is the workmanship of the Creator. As created beings, we carry the image of God, not least of which is an innate urge called creativity.

Creativity is a spiritual discipline that followers of Jesus have too often ignored. As far back as Genesis, God gave humanity an artistic assignment. He asked Adam to name the animals and thus invited him into the creative process with himself, the Creator.

Unfortunately, the beauty and order of creation were soon scarred; God, however, was not deterred. The story of Jesus is the mark of the creative master at work. Only divinity could take something as offensive as the cross and use it to restore beauty. He continues his redemptive plan by empowering us to join him in this creative work … And the Spirit came in power to an expectant group of Christ-followers, and the creative force embodied in one person, Jesus Christ, is now available to everyone.

Peter quoted the prophet Joel to describe what has happened: ‘In the last days,’ God says, ‘I will pour out my Spirit upon all people’ (Acts 2:17). And with these words, God’s creative spark ignites the hearts of men and women in a whole new way.

God the Creator now places his divine imprint on our spirits. Pentecost shatters the glass ceiling of possibility. The garden is now replaced with an upper room, and the new assignment goes beyond simply naming his creation to calling his creation into a regenerative process, making old things new.

Wherever there is a divide, God’s creativity in us leads us to build a bridge. Wherever there is doubt, God’s creativity in us stirs our imagination and produces faith. Wherever there is despair, God’s creativity in us pictures and pursues hope. Wherever there is injustice, God’s creativity in us finds a way to show his love.”
- Mark Miller

Travis had a poster that said “Expose yourself to art”. And I think it was Madeline L’Engle who said to not judge art, but let art judge you.

Domestic Books

I have two books from the library (actually ... I always have more - got audio books, and some garden books, and some DVDs)(found out once that our library limit of books-per-person is 100! "One hundred!" you might exclaim. "Yes." When leaving on a road trip, little Dawson cleaned the shelves of wild animal kid books and the librarian said, "I can't check out any more since you've come to 100" [we had some at home all ready].) One of the books I had out last fall and bought one for a Christmas present, but wanted to read some things in it again. Monte and me, while driving around Wisconsin last fall heard the author interviewed, which is why I got the book. It's called: Milk - The Surprising Story of Milk through the Ages with 120 adventurous Recipes that Explore the riches of our First Food, by Anne Mendelson.

Since I've been making soured milk/ buttermilk sourdough breads I'm wondering about making cultured buttermilk like I regularly make yogurt. And yes, it can be done. If the buttermilk says it has "live cultures" and no added gums or stabilizers, it can culture milk just like you would make yogurt, tho sitting out at room temperature for 12-18 hours. Of course REAL buttermilk comes from the process of beating cream to make butter and draining off the liquid which is buttermilk.

The other book I have, as I'm sitting outside on my pergola, is The Gentle Art of Domesticity - Stitching, Baking, Nature, Art & the Comforts of Home, by Jane Brocket, who lives in England. As a back of the book quote says, it's "A deliciously charming book crammed with garden plants, cookery, chickens, childen and all life's good things ... presented with wit and articulation." It truly is lovely, full of beautifully colored pictures and great thoughts. Like "Domesticity, not domestication", "The gentleness of the gentle arts", "The art of the possible", and "Yarnstorm". She knits, quilts, creatively bakes (or "Bizarre baking"), reads inspiring books ("The domestic library"), tells stories (like "Peas peace and laughter"). Thank you Kaye for thinking I'd like this book - I DO!

And oh ... I forgot ... I do have another book from the library I've been reading at night (finished it last night). It was recommended by one of my blog friends - Debbie from California: Clementine in the Kitchen by Samuel Chamberlain (Phineas Beck). The Beck family were living in France and Clementine was their cook. When Phineas's company called them home because of WWII rumors, Clementine wanted to go with them (so she could go to the movie theaters a lot). It's a delightful read, with spatterings of French, as he tells of Clementine's recipes and her excursions into the Boston countryside markets for food for her recipes (she can't speak English). If I had a pear fruit tree I'd like to try growing a pear in a bottle and preserving it in brandy as a table decor, which is what Clementine's father did. It was fun to experience with her, her first taste of a barbecued hot dog and beer in a paper cup, and her dislike of American's ice water at meals.

I do love books! as you'd discover if you visited us and saw all the built in bookshelves in just about every room (let me think ... Yes, every room in our home has built in bookshelves, except one of the bathrooms and laundry room ... but books are still sitting in those rooms too).

Living Literally?

I'm reading (listening to) the book The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, by AJ Jacobs. The book begins with him talking about his not so usual beard, maybe like Moses's, walking about Manhattan. It's a very fun book ... and thought provoking. I got it from the library and may want to own it.

A secular Jew, Jacobs read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation in several translations, bypassing the one the bookstore said he could read anywhere and not be embarrassed - which looked like a girly magazine - which he started wishing he had bought when getting strange looks on the subway - yet has a thoughtful remark as to why even buy such junk anyway (not the Bible but the girly stuff).

Jacobs consulted Rabbis, Christians, and visited Amish/Mennonites ... atheists, popular Christian radio/TV people, and Red Letter Christians ... and even takes a trip to Israel. His wife and young son had to somewhat journey with him in this 381 day trial.

Jacobs' earlier book The Know-It-All followed a period of reading through the entire encyclopedia. We used to do Library/Pizza Hut summer reading program "Book It". Travis was such a voracious reader and FAST that I gave him challenges, and one was the E of our encyclopedia set.

It does beg the question - how do we read the Bible?

Velveteen House Again

Once again our Velveteen House ... As I write, young people are outside around the campfire cooking their breakfast.

Dawson went camping this weekend at the annual Bow Jamboree. We used to always go to this since 1982, camping with hundreds of other archery hunting families - lots of courses of targets to shoot at and fun activities. Monte hasn't been archery hunting for several years - until more testing is done on whether wasting disease in elk and deer, like mad cow disease, can transfer to humans. For probably more than twenty years our main meat we ate was elk, with some deer, and an occasional antelope, moose and bear (and I've eaten rattlesnake, mormon crickets, and I can't remember if I've shared lion, raccoon, and coyote with friends who've eaten them).

The kids here are from our church youth group who were camping all weekend. The graduating seniors finished the trip here last night and will leave today. Camping? I guess they all slept in the bunk house last night. It didn't rain here (it sounds like west Denver got zapped last night with horrid hail, wind and rain that broke tons of trees, windows, roofs, and windsheilds - and snowplows for some hail removal). Lots of cloud and lightening movement that Dawson captured with his camera on a tripod. And I'm posting their campfire pic at one point when they said they were creating a volcano.

Lots of activity around here these summer days. Always friends of Dawson's around working (whom I cook for and pay). Like yesterday, I was weed-eating the lower fruit and asparagus garden (because of excess rain this year the grass and weeds are as tall as me!) and I'd like to finish today, unless it rains soon - it looks like it and is cool. Gary has been coming and cutting down giant dead trees with Dawson and fixing the campfire amphitheater since the old log seating was rotting. Aaron and Connor cleaned out the old ferret house (putting the large fish tanks in the bunk house) and they all had fun figuring out how to get it down to the old chicken coop. It's now attached to the front of the coop and the coop cleaned out and painted and shelves are being built. Gary and Dawson moved the fish tanks and stuff down there yesterday, so the bunk house got cleaned out (Dawson saw and caught a rat - I didn't think we have rats in the mountains). Dawson's welded some frisbee catchers for his frisbee golf course. Connor helps Dawson finish the rock work with his artistic ability (he's the one who's always playing the piano, as he did again this morning). Nick is occasionally here, as he is now, working on more meticulous carpentry jobs. Girls have come and gone too, eating here and playing games and watching movies. The woods junk has been cleaned up with loads taken to the dump and the old dog kennel torn down. Once the playhouse/Dawson's museum of Natural History is cleaned out - Monte's rocks and Dawson's bone, nest ... collections - I'll go through organizing all the yard tools in there. Monte's been slowly going through all his geology stuff in the garage and throwing a ton of stuff away. Then it'll feel like most everything is done around here - ready for the next season of life with Monte and me as empty-nesters. But then grandchildren - and we'll need to rebuild a swing/play area again and get another dump-truck load of sand.

Bill is back in Iraq. We were laughing about them both blowing on their soup together, so I took a picture. The picture of Will was taken at the airport as they hung out together till Bill boarded the plane. Baby Will is getting so vocal and rolling over. As I cleaned the ashes from the cookstove and swept the great room floor this morning I was thinking of us probably needing to redo the wood floor for the grandkids. Like when Heather and Will return for the holidays, he's going to be crawling, and our floor is splintering! All the years of raising kids and Dawson having a sand-table in the greenhouse and tracking dirt all over has worn the floor out. People love it, but little hands and knees crawling about will not, and I rarely walk barefoot.

"What is REAL?" asks the Velveteen Rabbit of the Skin Horse.
"Real isn't how you are made" (they were looking at all the fancy toys surrounding them in the nursery). "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?"
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful, "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up, or bit by bit?"
"...You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

We sure do have tons of great memories bouncing off our very loved worn Real Velveteen House walls!

Calendar Stories

Calendar girl me is neglecting some Church Calendar stories that I like to remember each year as the calendar recycles. Stories that are a part of our early church history. Stories that the Catholic Church decided needed to be remembered.

I like the calendar as a tool for remembering stories. I drew up my own calendar as a circle, since we rhythmically revisit the yearly seasons. I’m not Catholic and didn’t grow up knowing anything of church history, and I never read the Bible for myself until I was 19, and that’s when I really fell in love with Jesus, when I seriously wanted to live in relationship with God.

At a desert place in my life, I wanted to strengthen my knowledge of the past. I began with Jewish history, realizing their history is retold rhythmically each calendar year. As my reading took me into early Christian history I started reading stories of people who we remember and they should all have a day on our calendar. I see these stories as a carrying on of the first and second Testaments into a Third Testament.

Why not carry on these stories, “retelling the stories”, “teaching the children”, as scripture so often says. It’s a great way God desires of us, so that we know ourselves, know that our identity is in this larger drama than just me, myself, and I.

So once, when other people were filling out a questionnaire asking who your hero/heroine is with people like Dr Phil or Oprah, I filled the blank in with Catherine of Siena (her calendar day is April 29).

When you read hagiography there’s so much we, looking back on, this is ridiculous and weird. It takes a lot of wading through before you find the real person. But those weird to me things still cause me to stop and ponder, like putting myself in their shoes and try and understand their era.

In Catherine’s era (she died in 1380 at the age of 33) we’d have lived with Europe’s great famine and the plague. An era when most people did not read and write; an era when people desired visions and the stigmata and some lived with self-imposed harsh asceticism; and some women betrothed themselves to Christ.

I wrote more about Catherine last year. The piece of her story that speaks to me is that after three years of secluding herself away, Jesus said, “Enough. The only way you can serve me is in the service of your neighbor!” - and that she did, nursing people, writing books, and writing to kings and popes about reform. Yes, I wrote plural popes, it’s not a typo. Catherine lived during a time called The Great Schism in church history – religion and politics have made history very interesting.

I can’t believe I didn’t post about St George this year (April 23). I usually put my dragon I made on the kitchen table as a visual reminder. It’s a dragon I keep with my Christmas crèche figures (read Revelation 12). Prior to the early 300’s when Constantine made Christianity the empire’s religion, there was a lot of persecution and martyrdoms.

George was a Palestinian soldier who suffered martyrdom in 303 in the persecutions of Diocletian. It’s believed stories of George were brought home to England by the crusaders. It’s a basic tale of good and evil, with many variations – a young knight who rescues a maiden from a flying reptile with bad breath. One tale has him leashing the dragon with the princess’s garter, leading it through town and converting pagans to Christianity; or maybe he just cut off its head. In England, cutting off a dragon’s head, is what’s celebrated. A dragon is often made of bread dough and the children cut off its head.

What intrigues me most about St George is there’s a shrine for him in the Middle East. Jews think it’s the site of Elias. Christians are remembering a soldier championing against the power of evil. Moslems celebrate George as a demigod who endured a series of tortures and call him “Khidir”, the green man. It’s said his shrine has almost more activity than Jerusalem’s Holy Sepulchre – and too, there’s Christians and Moslems praying side-by-side.

And then there’s April 30, another piece of church history. St Pius V, a pope, in 1570 excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I of England. I’m sure you’ve heard of the Council of Trent (not that you know about it)? It straddled several popes lasting 18 years, finalized in 1563. Pius V had the job of instituting it. Its main purpose? Or question actually – what to do with Protestantism? Which really meant NO Protestantism! I’ve written before that Protestantism and Catholicism took over a hundred years of horrible battles, terrible persecutions and imprisonments, before they could live side-by-side, co-existing. It became a Counter-Reformation in the Catholic Church – another interesting era. But you should read about all this.

My brief synopsis? King Henry VIII wanted separation from the Church of Rome. A truly religious desire? No, just political, but the Church ruled then. So Henry and Elizabeth were on the Protestant side, with Bloody Catholic Mary between them. John Knox is another name to know associated with Scotland in this same battle. France and other countries had their battles too. It’s hard for us to imagine living with only one religious option, yet we’d rather other religious viewpoints not exist, right?!

Another person I skipped is Athanasius of Alexander (May 2). He’s noted as a Doctor of the Church (as is two women: Catherine of Sienna and Teresa of Avila), and he’s called the “Father of Orthodoxy”, and died in 373. So Athanasius lived when Christianity was becoming the religion of the Empire, and was a part of the Council of Nicaea, which condemned Arianism in 325 but had to be expanded and affirmed further in 381 at the Council of Constantinople.

Athanasius spent several years with the Desert Father Anthony and wrote his life story, which is still in print today. The majority of his life was spent fighting Arianism and was exiled five times for his defense of Christ’s divinity.

Did you know there’s a James the Less? His story is remembered on May 3. With these calendar days there’s a bit of confusion, just as there is with all the Marys, as to which James this is – whether James the apostle or James the brother of Jesus. Jesus’ brother did not believe in him as the Messiah till after Jesus’ resurrection and Jesus appeared to him. James became the first bishop of Jerusalem.

May 15, recognizes a laborer: St Isadore the Farmer. There’s lots of art work done depicting a piece of his story. He worked for a large landowner from Madrid all his life. Fellow workers complained about his lateness to work some mornings, because he lingered too long praying. He talked with God as he plowed. It’s told that all he did was successful, reminding me of Jacob with Laban. Many art pieces have an angel plowing while he’s off praying.

And then there’s, May 16 – The Feast Day of St Brendan. Brendan lived from 484-577. A stamp was issued in 1994 picturing Brendan in a curragh – a round, hide-covered boat. Stained glass windows have been made of him calling him the Navigator and Voyager. Frederick Buechner tells his story in a book called Brendan. He traveled afar. Ogham, Irish transcriptions written prior to the 800’s, have been found in North America.

Just a religious allegory? We don’t know, but it reminds me of a word I learned: peregrinatio. It's a hard word to define. Our definition of 'pilgrimage' does not really fit this word because since the Middle Ages pilgrimages have plans and destinations and when the goal is accomplished, people return home.

It's been told that three men were in such a skin boat without oars, and when found they said they were "on a pilgrimage, we care not where". It's a celtic word for a journey undertaken for the love of God - surprising and risky and not really having some end or goal in view. But it's not a restless wandering because there seems to be some sense of grounding, and 'at-homeness'.

Brendan's story reminds me that I too have an at-homeness in God, but am I willing to go wherever the Spirit desires me, into the unsafe and unfamiliar - both external and internal journeying?!

Susan Boyle - Singer

Monte showed me this (click) , since the above won't work. Amazing! Beautiful! Great message!

It's now Friday, almost noon, snowing hard (2ft?) and when I saw the above youTube link was disabled I did the above click link that does work. So now I've probably watched this 5 times and I tear up with joy. I had heard about it on the radio and so glad Monte found it so we could actually see and hear.

I'm remembering my friend Ellen saying, "We don't dream big enough!" It'll be fun hearing about where this ladies dreams will now fly!

Wendell Berry Prose

"Do not think me gentle because I speak in praise of gentleness,
or elegant because I honor the grace that keeps this world.
I am a man crude as any, gross of speech,
intolerant, stubborn, angry, full of fits and furies.
That I may have spoken well at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is."
- Wendell Berry

I love Wendell Berry's gentleness and grace in his story-telling. My favorite of his books is Hannah Coulter. They all take place in rural Kentucky depression/WWII era lives. I love his philosophical farmer full of meaning phraseology.

Art's Eternal Value

Beth, an Artist friend of mine, who had to move to Wyoming, sent me this speech. I read it yesterday morning and it's message has so touched me ... I was thinking I'd quote parts of it, but it's so good in it's entirety. I read it to Monte yesterday as we ate lunch (he ate, while my leftover spaghetti got cold :) and he so liked it he asked me to email it to him, and he's passed it on, like to our son Travis.

There's so many favorite thoughts, like ... art having a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us ... in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities ... Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, “I am alive, and my life has meaning”... And then the day after 9/11 - The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on ... art is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds...If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists ... who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives.
______________________________
Welcome address to freshman parents at Boston Conservatory, given by Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of music division at Boston Conservatory.

One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn’t be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother’s remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school—she said, “You’re WASTING your SAT scores.” On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren’t really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the “arts and entertainment” section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it’s the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.

The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you: the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the “Quartet for the End of Time” written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940, sent across Germany in a cattle car and imprisoned in a concentration camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.

Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture—why would anyone bother with music? And yet—from the camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art. It wasn’t just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, “I am alive, and my life has meaning.”

On September 12, 2001, I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn’t this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.

And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day.

At least in my neighborhood, we didn’t shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn’t play cards to pass the time, we didn’t watch TV, we didn’t shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, that same day, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang “We Shall Overcome.” Lots of people sang “America, the Beautiful.” The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.

From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of “arts and entertainment” as the newspaper section would have us believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds.

Some of you may know Samuel Barber’s heart wrenchingly beautiful piece “Adagio for Strings.” If you don’t know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie “Platoon,” a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn’t know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what’s really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.

I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings —people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there’s some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn’t good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can’t talk about it. Can you imagine watching “Indiana Jones” or “Superman” or “Star Wars” with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in “ET” so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn’t happen that way. The Greeks: Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.

I’ll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris; it made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have played for people I thought were important: music critics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in Fargo, ND, about 4 years ago. I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland’s Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier—even in his 70’s, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.

When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland Sonata was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterward, tears and all, to explain himself.

What he told us was this: “During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team’s planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute chords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn’t understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?” Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. This concert in Fargo was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.

What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year’s freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this: “If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.

You’re not here to become an entertainer, and you don’t have to sell yourself. The truth is you don’t have anything to sell; being a musician isn’t about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies. I’m not an entertainer; I’m a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You’re here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don’t expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that’s what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives.”
__________________________
When we watched movies as a family, I used to always make comments about the music's importance in making the scene. "And think of the persons who KNOW music so, to pick the fitting pieces!

And the nursing home story almost undid me, I've seen similar scenes. Heather worked in nursing homes and did some in-home eldercare before she nannied and married. And I'd gone to nursing homes with Monte's mom, watching the people as she played the piano and hymns were sung.

The "why write and enjoy music in a prison camp" reminded me of the movie Shawshank Redemption. The music scene, where one man dares to share the hope in his soul with all the inmates, is the heart of the movie - a great movie.
_________________________
The art piece is "1st Cello" by my friend Melinda Morrison. I'd post art from my friend Beth too if I had access to a picture. I love her work as well.

"Beauty will save the world"
Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Perennial Potager

This week we're supposed to get snow. After an abnormally warm week of close to 70 degrees we'll only be close to 40 for the high this week. But as I posted earlier, this is the time we've been dumped on before (and it was more like 7 ft than 3, cuz the drifting did cover our truck). I think we're south of the dumping going on right now - close to the Wyoming border and out east on the prairie.

As I cleaned up all my perennial beds this week: cutting back most everything (this is the first time I've cut all the raspberries to the ground, they're volunteers in two perennial beds with peonies, lilac, etc, because of Monte bringing the dirt up from the woods, but they're everbearing, meaning they fruit on new stalks ... I hope), shredding all and adding it to the compost bin, and tossing manure and compost on all the beds, I was reminiscing ... I don't know if I've ever been able to clean out the bed on the north side of the house, our front porch, this early. There's usually a snow bank. And some years! ... like when the guys shovel off the porch roof, and then Dawson decides he wants a snow cave, and ices everything ... it doesn't melt till mid May!

I think I'm thee compost queen (other than Martha Stewart, tho she doesn't do most of her own labor any more). It's a joke of ours: I don't want jewelry and such stuff for Mother's Day, just make me a nice compost bin! After going thru many that just weren't right, I'm now content. In our large lower 6ft fenced garden, the compost bin is working. And up by the house, where my gardening is enlarging, I've got a beautiful three-bin one - beautiful cuz Monte linseed oiled it.

I've read of other people's daffodils done blooming and even lilacs by now. I'm at 8,000 ft. Tho I grow most plants for zone 4, we still have only 90 frost-free-days give or take, which isn't long! In some areas I've created micro-climates and have gotten zone 5 plants to survive. So I'm just now seeing the green tips of flowering bulbs poking out and early flowers: snowdrops, crocus, and dwarf iris. And looking at my photos, I see that last year's did not poke out till mid April! So we're warmer this year and not much winter snow.

Of all the library books on kitchen and cottage gardens, my favorite, which I've decided to own, is Designing the New Kitchen Garden - An American Potager Handbook by Jennifer R Bartley. I was reminded of college classes - I started out with a nutrition major and switched to Landscape Architecture (I didn't finish either since Monte and me had married in the midst of my schooling and he was done with schooling and ready to start life, and the life I prefer is everything having to do with home and I didn't need to go to work elsewhere). This book starts with a brief history of kitchen gardens: monastic to the French ... It's a book I'm going to read every word of, with lots of colored pictures, many of them hand-drawn showing her landscape architecture background - like birds-eye views, isometric views, and cross-sections, along with lots of charts.

I've got a lot of work to do this spring. Since with Dawson's rock work last summer (I posted pictures of it last late summer)(and he just did some more yesterday) I've now established a bed strictly for herbs, I have a large old bed with a mixture of perennials I'm going to move. It's very sheltered by the house from the cool wind and is probably a zone 5. It's going to become the very warm summer veggie bed. But I think I'll leave the existing current, gooseberry, and jostaberry bushes there. As I've mentioned before, I was told I can't grow tomatoes here, but I do, very successfully. But I've always had to put them in the same spot and use walls-of-water. I'm thinking more of the need to rotate (yet tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants are in the same family ... hmmm).

I'm trying blueberries again. I called in on a local radio garden show and the "garden wise-guys" suggested I put 95% peat in the planting hole (I actually called to ask about using pine mulch in our area: pine needles). Good to know, I knew I needed to add some peat in our very alkaline soil, but I'd not have done that much. Our lower garden, is now going to be more berry, fruit (dwarf trees and bushes) oriented. I'm adding more this year. Chokecherries and rhubarb were already there from an old homestead planting maybe a hundred years ago.

But what fruit to put up by the house? I'm doing all the veggie growing at the house mixed in with the perennials from now on (I should say "most all", since I don't know what other years will bring. I may go back to doing my mass broccoli planting or winter squash down in the lower garden. Some years I freeze 30lbs of broccoli!). I already have two dolga crab apple trees up here, but am thinking of adding a honeycrisp apple. What I have to think thru is our late frosts. If things blossom too soon, no fruit ... My lower garden is on the edge of the woods with lots of aspen and might not be as warm earlier ... those are the mini-climate thoughts I have to deal with. And should I put strawberries up here too (I am putting some in hanging pots this week in my greenhouse).

Jennifer writes, "Potagers are places of restoration that provide food and nourishment. A deep and mysterious relationship exists between food and having our spirits lifted, and this relationship is profoundly and ultimately tied to the garden." I couldn't agree more. "Potager"? It's root is from French meaning a soup of broth with vegetables, but for Europeans  the word has come to mean a vegetable garden. 

A Alfred Austen wrote, "Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are". Well ... mine is very much a tapestry with informal clumps of color, form and height ... chaotic yet harmony ... romantically gentle, with not very straight lines, striving for more curving paths ... fragrant, and flowers to cut and adorn inside my home. My gardening is a huge source of nourishment for me, both the exercise it gives me, a quiet place to read, pray, and think, and feel in sync with nature (God's heart's other "book"). It's both a sensory and emotional pleasure - beauty out my windows, with even winter visual pleasure.

Years ago I had a bunch of books from the library on the history of art. I remember one talking about the cottage gardens and the practicality of growing fruit and vegetables amidst beautiful flowering perennials and annuals. Some artists walking the back country roads fell in love with these peasant gardens and we now have paintings of them.

In a blog I love, Wisteria and Roses, Debbie posted a picture of one of Monet's famous paintings. I have a book called Artist's Gardens (I think it's out of print) and it shows how artists have been inspired by gardens, even creating their own beautiful gardens. Monet created a water garden with a bridge. He also redid the front entrance garden, much to the classical formal gardeners of his time's disgust, full of nasturtiums - I love it! I always grow nasturtiums (their foliage and flowers are edible, with a peppery flavor, and their seeds can be pickled as capers).

I really need to end this post and get on with finishing my garden planning and scrapbook - my goal for this cold week. But I feel I need to add a bit more on Martha Stewart. I have her first books before she became famous. She did used to do most all her yard work herself along with her husband. I love her gardening book, and there's a cookbook that shows her yard with the mixture of perennials, veggies and fruit, and chickens. I had the same chickens as hers with the eggs that became her signature colors. I think Martha gave America something very needed. She put the heart back into the beauty of homemaking, attracting people back to home.

"What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it."  :-D

- Charles Dudley Warner, My Summer in a Garden

Purim

Purim is a Jewish Festival and it began last night. Purim celebrates victory over enemies, like the redeemer in Esther. Mordecai self-sacrificed himself in raising and teaching Esther - passing on the Torah by educating the children. Purim's lesson is to not lose hope and continue to teach the generations.

In the story of Esther lots were cast ("pur" in Persian) and a day was chosen for the annihilation of the Jews. Persian law could not be changed, but the people were allowed to defend themselves - yet only because of Esther's intervention. She was called, and she obeyed, saying, "If I perish, I perish".

Purim is a carnival celebration full of hilarity. It's celebrated with costumes and the story of Esther is either read or dramatized. Every time the name 'Haman' is said, everyone noisily stomps their feet, hissing and booing. Lots of cheering with Mordecai's name.

It celebrates survival, asking the question, "How do we live with people who hate us?"

Some years I make Hamantaschen (Haman's pockets) cookies. Sweet dough is rolled and cut in circles. A filling is added in the center and the edges are folded over to make three corners. The filling is either a poppy seed filling or fruit (often prune, but any jam can be used).

Some years Purim and Good Friday fall together and my first thought is, "Oh great, such opposite emotions." But it's only seemingly opposite when Purim is a 'Hilarious' holi(y)day. But maybe Good Friday (it is called 'good') should be celebrated hilariously too. With hissing, booing, and stomping of feet (much as Jesus did to the snake in the Garden of Eden in the "Passion" movie) over Satan, and cheering for our Redeemer Jesus who sacrificed his life for us, that we might have life. God provided a redeemer in Esther.

Purim reminds me to ask myself, "Who am I for such a time as this?"

Food for Thought Quote

The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory.

Spiritual Birthdays and Tacos and stuff

Today is Travis's Spiritual Birthday and last thursday was Dawson's. When our kids were little there'd be God-talk-times, but there seems to be a definite time when children ask deeper questions and want to commit their life to God. Monte said he did it when he was eight, soon after realizing that his dad wasn't 'God' and in control of everything. He simply transferred that trust in his dad to trust in God.

I wrote these times on the calendar for each of our kids. Then each year we'd celebrate that birthday with a special treasure hunt meal. The meal had lots of condiments so we could hide them around the house. Since curry (which makes a great treasure hunt meal) isn't a favorite of my kids, we tended to do a taco meal. We'd make up riddles as clues to be left with each food item, guiding them to the next. Eventually everything is at the table and we can eat. There's a final note at their plate reminding them of their treasure in Heaven.

I quick fry corn tortillas so they're soft. Then there's bowls of cooked ground meat, grated cheese, chopped tomatoes, lettuce, green onions, and sour cream, and sometimes guacamole, chips and salsa, and maybe beans. It's one of my favorite childhood meals I grew up with, and my family loves it too. I prefer the soft cooked shells to the traditional crisp shells because the first bite tends to crack the shell down the middle and everything falls out! If you travel to Mexico soft corn tacos is traditional.

I still remember the first time we did this - and we usually retell the story. Heather was just learning to read. Monte was out of town and my sister Kelli was living with us (and that's a powerful story!) so I wrote out very simple clues. Travis, not able to read yet, was practically hanging on to Heather's shirt tail waiting for her to sound out the clues so they could run and find the food. Like she'd be saying, "Look in the re-frig g g g ..." with a hard 'g' sound, as she was slowly walking upstairs. Finally I said, "The refrigerator is not upstairs!" And they'd take off running and laughing.

When Deuteronomy says several times, "teach the children diligently", "tell the children" - this is kinda like another commemoration as is the Lord's Supper and Passover. I'll tell you, our kids never grew up wondering if they were a Christian or not. And what great memories we have celebrating (partying) together around God's Truth and Presence in our lives.

Yesterday at MOPS I did the devotional. It was Tea and Testimony day, so the whole time was filled with five people's stories. Lots of laughter, tears and evoked memories. I combined two things I've posted: The Jar of my life and the Spouse story.

Monte and me thought of some new connections: each of us, so not just me, but Monte, my kids, our friends ... have jars of their lives. I see the larger items as relational, long lasting, for better health and living beyond maintenance, and maybe even eternal. When I got to the part in the story where Sarah's mom felt an urging to pray for Sarah's future mate at the same timing as Travis' horrible illness (if you're lost you need to click on the above stories and read) - I really started crying this time! Through my tears as I put my hand over my beautiful jar of fruit (I took it as a visual aid) I told of the possibilities when other persons have a grapefruit in their jar that they've named "Heart Keeping" and have that relationship with God - that there's a depth in relationships between spouses, relations, friends and community.

I was given a glimpse, tho twenty-some years later, of what the power of prayer can be. And I bet paradise is going to be full of these stories!

Another twist Monte and me are still pondering, is what if two people marry and they seem compatible and their jars are just filled with sand? What might that say? I had quickly voiced the book title "Amusing Ourselves to Death" as a possibility.

This morning I emailed Heather, telling her I think I absorbed her fever last night. I'm sitting here with a thermometer in my mouth. Last night I all-of-a-sudden started getting a tickle-cough, and slept terribly hot, and now if I cough, it's hurting deeper than my throat. We'll see ... we so rarely get sick. I guess it would be good for my immune system.

Heather's fever is low-grade and comes and goes. She talked with the lactation nurse who helped us so much at the hospital. So between having her advice and all Heather's reading and doing, she's going to be ok. Probably the beginnings of mastitis. Other than still wishing she could sleep longer ... she's really enjoying little Will. She says he copies her facial expressions and likes holding her fingers.

My temp is 99.9.

The Prodigal or Love of God Story

"For most of my life I have struggled to find God, to know God, to love God. I have tried hard to follow the guidelines of the spiritual life—pray always, work for others, read the Scriptures—and to avoid the many temptations to dissipate myself. I have failed many times but always tried again, even when I was close to despair.

Now I wonder whether I have sufficiently realized that during all this time God has been trying to find me, to know me, and to love me. The question is not 'How am I to find God?' but 'How am I to let myself be found by him?' The question is not 'How am I to know God?' but 'How am I to let myself be known by God?' And, finally, the question is not 'How am I to love God?' but 'How am I to let myself be loved by God?' God is looking into the distance for me, trying to find me, and longing to bring me home."

From The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming by Henri J. M. Nouwen

Art: The Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt

I love both the artist's work and the author's books. In my lifetime I have been the prodigal, the elder brother, and too, "I am my beloved's and He is mine".

The Gift of Winter Solace

I am so anxious for Spring! We've had Spring-like days this week. Having read some garden books, I decided to water my seemingly dead perennials. Dawson, eating his breakfast before taking off for school, came out asking, "Watering in February? in Winter?"

"Be not anxious." In my anxiety mighten I miss some of Winter's gift? Thomas Merton wrote, "Love winter when the plant says nothing." Have plants lost their voice just because they aren't green or flowering?

"Take off your shoes, for the place where you stand is holy ground." What in life prevents me from seeing burning bushes? What might I need to shed, like taking off my shoes?

The leaves of summer turned their burning colors and fell, leaving bare branches. Do I read between the branches? What would life be like without the spaces? Do I see and read the spaces? Spaces are still there when the leaves are there but we don't notice them. What might my life be full of so there's no spaces, no room for God?

One by one the leaves let go, a precious emptiness appears in the trees and bushes. The naked beauty can be seen, bird's abandoned nests become visible, night stars now peer thru the branches.

Autumn falls into the womb of Winter. Life waits, snuggled into home, hibernating, gestating, and gaining nourishment. Winter is a time to pause and have spent energy renewed.

The bleak, barren trees preach wordless sermons about emptiness and solitude and the need to wait with hope and trust for new life, rebirth. Winter's inconsistent moods often challenge Spring's arrival. In storms, non-bendable branches might break. Winter is an inner season calling me to be more than I am now.

But Winter does cramp my style. It's my least favorite season. Though it invites contemplation and reflection, I dislike going out into the cold. Bundling up from head to toe to mittens is imprisoning. I feel locked in. "Let me out!"

But I shouldn't lock out all the cold unpleasant parts of winter, or life. I would lock out the beauty it has to show me. Winter may seem voiceless like a frozen mask, but it's hiding the vibrancy of life. Like the seed, who must surrender to the darkness, the holy space, I need to risk non-doing, waiting in the creative darkness, just being.

But the dawns are coming earlier and the evenings extending themselves. Let me not hurry the solace of the empty spaces, winter's gift. Let me see with the eye of my soul and listen with the ear of my heart. Winter is a good teacher, a season I should embrace.

Art and Body Gifting

I've readied some of my needlefelting to take to church today for hanging. I mentioned before that our church is set up with a professional hanging system for art. We have artists within our community and we change out the art periodically.

One of my pieces I'm taking I call either "Community" or "Jesus' Body". Scripture refers to those of us who love God and believe in Jesus, as family, parts of His body. I value that our church values the differing gifts within our body and desires to let these differing gifts be used within our community. So often in churches we only see the giftings of teaching and music, and then of course the helping, serving, administration, encouraging ... are ongoing.

I have a grapevine in my greenhouse. I've posted pictures of it. This last year was the most productive year of all, with clusters hanging at our head level all over. All it takes is basically doing nothing! Yes, I still nurture it with fertilizing and watering, and I do need to cut it back as it tries to take up more of the space than I desire. But I used to prune it back very severely, because I had a book ... I found out that table grapes are not to be pruned like wine grapes.

In fact, the severity of pruning wine grapes looks familiar ... It is the center frame of my picture. All around are the three-dimensional vine, grape clusters, and leaves. In a small group, we had drawn grape vines. Ellen had lots of hidden grape clusters saying that she needed community to help her see her fruit. I have gone through very barren times where I've felt my fruit gobbled up, and if I'm not regularly nourished from the source I will remain fruitless. This piece is a Spring, Easter, seasonal hanging.

My other art piece is made up of three. Because they were inspired from the same time frame of reading and journalling, I just hung them on the same backing. The top I call "Starburst". God said, "Let there be light". Walking in His Truth, His light, I don't fear walking out into the world with it's varying culture. I walk, bringing gleanings back to the light before venturing out again on another ray of light.

The middle piece I call "Crucible". I looked the word up and it's origin means "lamp on a crucifix". To me this means, that in all life brings my way, that in all my choices, if I filter them thru the truth of the cross ... It's a God-consciousness in all I do in my every ordinary days (Extra- ordinary!).

The bottom piece I call "Longings". Henri Nouwen had written, "Longings are doorways thru which we come to God and thru which God comes to us". I've pictured my heart with layers like an onion, restricting and fighting the real me, the God-created-me, in being revealed. If my desire is to live out of my center, I don't have to focus on removing the layers, but focus on having more desires/longings, which would mean more doorways of God and me connecting!

Does this make sense?

Anniversary and Spouse Prayers

I've been awake since 4:30. I could say it's menopause, or it could be having drunk a second pot of tea (I often reuse my tea leaves for a second pot - more robust than the sawdust dregs in most tea bags), or it's just the fact that sleep has often eluded me all my life. My body can be very tired but my brain never wants to shut off. Monte always makes fun of my "dichotomy", of talking of my brain and body as two separate beings - but they are! Anyway ... it's become a time the Creator gives me creative clarity.

Yesterday was Travis and Sarah's anniversary. Theirs is one week after Valentine Day, and Heather and Bill's anniversary is one week before Christmas (I guess I could say ours is almost one week before Thanksgiving). As a MOPS Mentor Mom, I've shared this story, and I see I posted it a year ago, so maybe I won't do it as a devotional again this year. Dawson took the pictures and photoshopped the one. It's a family story with "the rest of the story" aspect to it.

When our kids were little we used to have fun with them, telling them the future person they'd marry could be alive right then living somewhere in the world - like Australia, or down the street, or so-and-so. "Naw!" Monte and me are almost eight years apart, so it's fun to tell young kids that that person might not be born yet, or even worse (to them, when they're say 5) that that person might be 12 years old! "Naw!" But we talked about praying for that unknown person. And as teens - that whoever was dating your future mate, your hopes are that they'd protect and honor them, and the same goes for you with who you're spending time with.

When planning Travis and Sarah's wedding with Sarah's parents we were sitting around sharing stories. For some reason we talked about the time when Travis was three and he got very sick. After me sleeping at one hospital with him for a week (I couldn't leave such a little one alone!) and him undergoing lots of tests, they sent us to the National Jewish Hospital. They did more tests and were about to diagnose him with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis ...

Travis was unable to walk. Every four hours when the aspirin wore off, he was in pain. I had to do everything for him. His joints hurt too much to crawl. Monte was imagining his little boy not able to run and play and ride a bike, climb trees ... But then after a month, there was a turning point ...

Sarah's mom, Kerry, asked his age again. She was quiet a bit, then said that at about that time she got an urging to pray for the person Sarah would marry. (I always start tearing up at this point.) We never know what praying may be doing, but we have to believe and trust that it is powerful!

For the devotional, I then went on to play a recording of a song Monte wrote about praying for our kids future mates and the hope "that they love Jesus just like I do". We had sung it as a family and captured Dawson's voice at 5 and Travis singing as a teen.

Hardly a dry eye in the room.

God

God is a verb

Potok Birthday

Today is the birthday of novelist Chaim Potok, born in NY in 1929. He's a rabbi and wrote books about Orthodox Jews, actually Hasidic, raised in New York City with the tensions of the varying values and culture in modern society. 

I mention him because I've read three of his books and really like them. The Chosen and The Promise follow the same characters, and The Chosen was made into a movie. As a parent you struggle with the chosen relationship between the father and his son. The movie shows that struggle in a more painful visual.

I'm even more intrigued with his My Name is Asher Lev, the story of a young artist, whose gifting, developing into a career, is not approved by his father, though their Hasidic Rebbe gives his approval. Here again, great character dynamics. The crucifixions Asher produces still capture my imagination. I see there's a sequel, The Gift of Asher Lev, I'll definitely have to read. The first book (which I will read again) left too many questions. Will they be answered?!

One great question? What is secular and what is sacred? I have my opinions on this, but will leave it hanging.

Presidents Day etc

"For God so loVed the world,
That He gAve
His onLy
BegottEn
SoN
ThaT Whosoever
Believeth In Him
Should Not perish,
But have Everlasting life."
John 3:16

I've been cleaning up my computer and found the above ... and since we're still close to Valentine Day, I thought I'd post it.

Some years from Abe to George's birthdays in February I put a little log cabin on the kitchen table. The red, white, and blue runner, I wove. I was just thinking how log cabins still have an appeal today. Monte always talks about building a small one someday. We visited one in Wisconsin last fall and couldn't get over the size of the logs!

Here's a quote from Abraham Lincoln ...

“Neither [side] anticipated that the cause of the conflict [i.e., slavery] might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. ’Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh! If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

God is not at a nation's beck and call, but the nation at His. God transcends our humanity's limited vision.

Epiphany

The 12 Days of Christmas are now over and this day, Epiphany, we remember the wise men of Matthew coming from afar following a star to find a child who they recognize as a king. They came bearing gifts.

The art piece is by Fabriano. I change out art on an easel in my house. I like making friends with art work. Art touches me, often judging me.

God made the stars for 'signs and seasons'. And here in Matthew God is bringing astrologers into Jesus' story. I posted several days ago about the phenomena of planets in our sky the month of December which made me think of the Magi following ... something.

Were there exactly three wise men? We are told of three gifts. The book Ben Hur names three kings and opens with a dramatic description of how they might have met and traveled together to Bethlehem, but there could have been a whole entourage.

If you were dramatizing the whole Advent season with nativity figures, your wise men would be off in a distance in your house progressing to Joseph and Mary - who would in December be progressing by Donkey to Bethlehem. And baby Jesus and the Shepherds wouldn't show up until Christmas Eve or Christmas day? Many, don't do gift giving until this day.

What ever came of these strangers in Jesus' story? Jesus began his ministering when he was 30. Were the shepherds and magi still alive? Did they hear of Jesus? In the silence of 30 years, I often wonder if the shepherds thought that night a bizarre event, maybe even embarrassed about their extravagance ... maybe the most passionate thing they ever did in their life.

I like to wonder and ponder.

Simeon the Stylite

When I speak on the Calendar, I love to mention Simeon Stylite, who died on this day in 459. He was the most notorious of the popular pillar-sitting anchorites.

The son of a shepherd, he was moved by hearing the Beatitudes. Wanting to be 'pure of heart' he tried living in monasteries, but they all kicked him out for his extremism in self-mortifications. So in his naivete, he literally did what he could to get closer to God.

This is a piece of early church history. Christians were persecuted and martyred, but when Constantine made the empire 'Christian' in the early 300's, the pagans were persecuted. Seeking safety they went to churches bringing their paganism with them.

Serious Christians, frustrated with the watered down churches were asking, "How now to be holy?" Thus the serge of monasteries, and desert fathers. Outside of Antioch were many 'pillar saints'. People would pack lunches and for entertainment go listen to a pillar saint preach - they were tourist attractions.

I wonder if these pillar saints could read and if they knew much of scripture. What would they preach about? Since Simeon had 'separated' himself at age 13, when did he mingle with people to be able to truly know much of life, or have personal experience stuff to preach from. Pillar saints had converts: locals, Armenians, Persians, and Arabs. Simeon had followers - disciples, who in choosing to live close, ended up building a monastery.

Simeon started out on a 10-foot-high pillar. For the last 37 years of his life he lived on a series of ever higher pillars. His final earthly home was a 6-foot-square platform on a 60-foot-high pillar!!! Now set your imagination to work: no roof or walls ... did he cut his hair? how did he sleep? how did he eat? what about excrement? Lightening strikes were prevalent. Maybe a sign of divine displeasure?

Lord Alfred Tennyson wrote a long poem entitled "St Simeon Stylites". Here's a link if you care to read it.
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A year ago when I posted about Simeon, the picture I used was one I drew and had in my "Cycle of Celebrations" powerpoint presentation. Well ... My one present I got for Christmas was an Intuos Pen Tablet. So the above picture is my first attempt at playing with my new art toy. I put the scanned drawing into Photoshop and literally 'painted' over the sketch. Oh how fun!!!! I didn't want to stop (Dawson helped me with some pointers since he had a Photoshop class last year in college). But I just scratched the surface (still don't know how to erase) in all the potential of what it can do. Monte's graphic artist for his geology posters (they are works of art!) uses this tool. She told me to just play, she can't learn from books. But I'm taking my Photoshop Classroom in a Book with me to Texas, when I go in a week to stay with Heather ... waiting on that baby.