Psalm for the beginning of September

In the middle of a swingout,

the tension between myself and my partner

so perfectly balanced and elastic that we might as well be one being

with this arm held in common....

when this conversation is neither about me nor you but something wonderous,

and the combination of your suggestions and my honest questions makes for an exchange between souls rather than minds...

if the situation demands wisdom and action beyond what I feel capable of,

requires stepping back, consulting heart and divine,

and moving slowly with humility...

Emmanuel?

not according to schedule, or ritual,

not when you hunt, frustrating as that is.

and not in the answers that volunteer themselves so self-assuredly.

neither in the values we agree upon

neither the summative phrases we use, well meaning..

but through the ache

through the questioning

in the walking

and the wrestling

on the other side

feeling as if defeated

after a nap

... a sliver of truth, of meaning, of visitation.

How often do I feel odd in the middle of my christ following community?

Wired to ring and reverberate with questions

yearning for smells and textures

aching for palpable potent presence in the present

terribly fascinated and frustrated by these foreign stories

of one Jesus event, related by four guys trying to do it justice.

But they didn't.

What could have?

How could you summarize such a thing?

And how do I now look in the eyes of teenagers with shirttails tucked in

and simultaneously act the pharisee about their clothing and task completion

while being fearfully and fully aware God made flesh reveled in healing on the sabbath...

while everyone was looking.

... this tension between freedom and rebellious justice and rebellion

and leaning over the precipice of my own solid ground,

realizing the baked bricks of realism, beauty, tea-drinking, quiet-seeking, illustration

which I had grown cozy upon like a cat with a warm spot on the window sill...

I must leave now for this space between;

must leap to authentically counsel, wrestle, create, and engage-

cold, uncharted, unsettling, unstructured space...

unqualified, seemingly, to navigate myself

let alone lead or meet others there.

Aching that authentic faith first fill me

instead of feeling it's lack 'til we're all on the other side.

the other side.

Be there, Emmanuel.

Like the other end of tension in a swingout,

that intangible but sustaining sense of momentum

that this has meaning

that it's all moving

in a direction.

Kol techilot kashot

The phrase was spoken over me several several times by a pair of beloved friends/peers/mentors the first year I taught high school: beginnings are hard.

And that's to be expected. But somehow we've lucked out (students and I). Transitions seem to be... shall we dare to say it... smoothish?

And it keeps me up at night with a mixture of excited problem solving, hopeful dreams, and a smidgen that smudges into larger smears of anxiety about being prepared and/or doing the experience of creativity and craftsmanship justice...

Being an instigator and sanctuary of creative community?

One little piece of holy grit in the culture of a place rich with pearlescent potential?

This is a beautiful new role to explore. What a gift.

Transitions bring epiphanies...

Curious. One decision has a domino effect. Everything follows. Everything is questioned, re-evaluated, re-prioritized. And in the process, Who You Are shifts... and as the ground shakes... as you pack and move on... some things you leave behind. some things feel like deaths. some things feel like you are losing part of your identity, your being...

But out of the shifting and re-structuring and breaking lately, I've experienced a prying open into new freedom...

1) So, your wiring makes you think you're crazy. So your rhythms and timing are innately "different"... That's not something wrong with you, but something good in you. This I believe.

And, from one creative being to another, I charge you to be brave, authentic, and vulnerable.

I'm not talking about angst teenagers or college students bent on being unique. I'm not talking about loud personalities who constantly act on the need to stirr things up and shock and shake up the status quo.

I'm talking about the secret hopes of accomplishment and secret insecurity of our capabilities we all have - the ways that living in this world and living this life feels like it should have an "answer"... that you don't have. When you (can't help it but) compare yourself to your friends or acquaintences, you wonder why you can't be like them - when what they do and who they are seems to "make sense" and "be on track" and "have direction" while you wrestle.

2)

There is a difficulty intellectually, and emotionally to be creative and be after God's heart. Art is a jealous mistress. God is a jealous God. Making kinds of people have passion and purpose and a need to be heard and

being a gifted and talented individual who is bent on being a good steward, I've found that my earnest pursuit of "doing the best with" and "making the most of" and "using" my gifts and talents results in a mixed bag of feeling on-track and useful and giving and generous to my fellow man and lost in my inner world of ideas and possibilities and potentials.

And I'm walking back into the classroom -- which is a place where my talents to communicate and mentor and delight and inspire are used well.... but honestly, it's a routine that demands all my energy - where I seldom have the energy and internal world momentum to create the work of my heart.

So, I've been subconsciously put-out in a way thinking in my deepest heart of hearts -- "rats! I'm about to teach. All of me and my potential for heart-breaking breath-taking imagery making is about to be buried alive and hidden for a season. What a waste! When will I make these pieces? Being hidden behind a desk? Is this really the best use of my gifts and talents?"

But here's what I'm forgetting. The Giver of the gifts knows how BEST to use them. I don't have to know the answers -- where are my gifts best used? am I wasting them here?

Stewardship and Submission.

Actively being a steward -- developing and choosing to use your gifts for the good of your community, with joy towards the One who gave the gift in the first place.

Can turn into Ownership of the gift -- feeling the weight of responsibility that YOU must develop and use this or else you would be wasting it. Responsibility that if it doesn't work out, YOU are somehow to blame for not having worked hard enough.

Submission -- developing and choosing to use your gifts, with joy, TRUSTING that the places they bring you to, and the people they give you an audience with ARE the places where you are to be.

I didn't think so at the time - I felt more confused than self-assured - but I see in retrospect that I thought I had it figured out: I had wrestled with my gifts and talents and come to the workable conclusion that I was a working professional painter full time in a studio who taught classes... destined to someday make images of heartbreaking beauty that would communicate about the most beautiful thing I know - the soul.

And this is the freeing moment of clarity -- God knows how best to use my gifts and talents and WHEN each of them will come into play, and WHERE they will be useful and good. His timing of when I teach and when I create, when I am "buried alive" and when I am traveling the country in community with fellow making people is THE BEST POSSIBLE TIMING. As Voltaire would phrase - This Is the Best of All Possible Worlds.

I was trying to be all that God made me to be, by God's estimation... and along the way it twisted on itself subtly so that I was trying to be all I could be in my own estimation... and lately He's been breaking those twisted habits of selfish-ness and self-determination and self-definition in my innerworld to call me into open-handed playful willingness again... He's bringing freedom. by ReClaiming his Authority over my life and Who I am and What I do and Where I do it. I don't bear the RESPONSIbILITY of knowing the where and how and who of it all ...

Out came the Sun...

...and dried up all the rain.

Nashville's Great Flood of May 2010 is receding. Mud, soggy things, problems, left behind. Rebuilding all around. I was lucky to escape unscathed. Now, I'm working to help neighbors.

Nashville, my native city, how fond I am of you.
Volunteer state indeed. How proud I am, so far,
of your compassion in the wake of this flood.
God be honored by our loving one another.
May this give new momentum to old efforts towards justice.
May the mud soften hearts on all sides
and remind us of our common humanity.

May Day in Middle Tennessee

Pochade

I've had many questions and compliments on my plein air paint box. Made by my dad, it has served me very well for the past 3 years or more. It is my trusty friend in the field.

For those who are curious:

The Post about its birth. And the forum discussion & description of its construction.

Easter

Self-portrait with Salvation

By his grace

I am what I am

and his grace towards me

was not in vain

This Grace appeared. appears

while isolated. anxious. wrapped up in myself

It Swept up the heart willing

to let go of the weight that weighed it down

Willing to be vulnerably Known

Now Suspended and Connected

in a tapestry of provision,

of Life, and Peace.

Its Way is not tame

Its Lead, improvisational

Requiring I lean fully into it,

giving all my weight.

...and when He ascended on high

He led captivity captive, giving gifts to men.

About the process

Drawing is how I work things out.

When Lloyd asked us to be courageously personal for the sake of imaging the gospel in our lives, I began by going to the drawing board.

As I began drawing, literally "working out" my salvation, finding the lines and images to communicate the experience of the gospel's affect on my life, tearing through page after page, I realized the materials I was working with themselves spoke to me of my condition: the sticks of charcoal breaking across the page and wearing away to leave their marks in my image were as dust... To dust they will return. The newsprint, fragile, consumable, lightweight, used for temporary work reminded me of how temporary this story of mine is. It will be gone before I know it. I realized if this image was to be most authentic, it would have to remain a drawing.

But this story, this paper, needed a frame. Not a mat and frame. Not protected behind glass cut off from everything else. Not mounted to panel... I found myself dumpster diving behind my studio searching for the missing piece. I discovered it in an old pallet... one that has seen many more years and suffered much more weather than I have, bearing scars and sanguine rust. And it fit. This also was true: my story is understood, or framed by, the context of a much older story. a story with weight. That culminated on a trash heap outside a city.

So, here literally nailed to timbers, was my story as I understand it and continue to understand it: a fleeting soul plucked from obscurity and called by name into fullness of life. As I drove the nails to secure the paper, remembering the cross, the final element called to me from it's place stashed atop a bookshelf: a length of Tennessee thorns.

As I lashed thorns to wood, a double reminder of my native Tennessee and the price paid for me, I felt sure it was finished.