They begin with "Hey Sweetheart" and end with "Love you, Daddy."

Every day, without fail, my father has written me a note on the back of his Page-A-Day calendar.  He collects them up for a few weeks, clips them together with a tiny silver bulldog clip the likes of which I have never seen anywhere else, and mails them to me.  This has been his habit for at least ten years which, roughly translated, equals 3,650 notes and 1,825 clips.  They've been sent to Little Rock, Arkansas and Grove City, Pennsylvania; Aberdeen, Scotland and Florence, Italy.

Those are the facts.

However, to my heart these little squares of paper are so much more:

They chronicle the day-to-day of my parents' lives:
     "went to Barnes and Noble and looked at magazines with Mama."
     "worked in the yard...crepe myrtle is blooming"
     "met the guys at McDonald's for coffee"
     "all this rain has been good for the grass; we saw the first robin"
     "had breakfast at Rexall Grill with Ken and Carol.  Wish you could have been there."
     "it was just a real good day"

Then there are the encouraging notes...
     "I'm sorry you had such a rough day."
     "You will do so well with that."
                    (what?  I can't remember, but it sure was good to be reminded of his faith in me)
     "You are a talented artist."
     "You and Nathan are such good parents."
     "Keep on trying, you can do it."

Other times, the notes chronicle events in my own life...
     finding out I was expecting a son
     moving to Scotland
     moving back from Scotland
     Nathan's new job
     decisions about graduate school
     art shows
     the occasional gardening tip.

And the most precious of all:
      "I am so proud of you."
     "You are a lovely young woman."
     "Kellan is lucky to have you for a mother."
     "I am so glad you're my daughter."

I haven't lived at home for quite some time, but these notes have kept me close.  Each one feels like a tiny stitch in a very long seam that I pray will go on and on and on.      
 
 

this i know

I'm working on a large canvas right now, so big that it confronts me every time I enter the studio.  For some reason, I feel kind of vulnerable about it, like someone will point out all of it's inaccuracies if I ever showed it.  Here's my advice to myself:

1.  Don't be embarrassed about your work.  It's okay to feel uncertain, but never embarrassed.

2.  Read Art and Fear once a year.

3.  Commit thy works unto the LORD, and thy thoughts shall be established. Proverbs 16:3 

Henri Matisse said, 

"To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying 'Amen' to what the world tells you 

you ought to prefer, is to keep your soul alive."

jesus in the breadline

Jesus in the Breadline by Fritz Eichenberg

When I ran across this image today I couldn't stop looking at it.  It makes me uncomfortable.  I'm not sure how to engage with it, because a part of me doesn't want to look inward long enough to explore my discomfort.  In other words, it is good art.

Now...what to do with it?  My twenty-something self would have gotten angry with everyone else for the injustice of the world and thought briefly about joining the Peace Corps before settling in with a latte at Barnes and Noble.  My thirty-something incarnation would have felt dreadfully guilty for not being born into poverty, the outcome of which would be some angsty art that never felt satisfactory.  How does my nearly forty-year-old heart respond?

Rather than feeling angry over my latte or letting my unholy guilt guide my paintbrush, I think a better approach, certainly a more authentic approach, would be inspired by this:

"Prayer is one way we are actively engaged in changing the world....Thus, we do not stop prayer or worship, even though justice is not accomplished and our compassion is incomplete and all relationships are not healed."  (from Space For God:  The Study and Practice of Prayer and Spirituality by Don Postema)

...and lest I think that my work is done with a little comfortable "quiet time," Postema goes on to say:

"So we dare pray even when the social task remains incomplete and fragmented.  For prayer can help us hear the cries more distinctly, can help us see the task more clearly, can help us relate to divine justice more challengingly....Prayer needs to carry with it the commitment of your whole being to bring about just conditions; prayer must have the inner intentionality of being more firmly related to the divine and more reflective of the divine desire for justice in our relationships with others." 

                         

So what do I do when I see Jesus in the breadline?  

Well, first I must get into the breadline myself.  I'll never notice him there if I stand a ways away and shake my fist at injustice or crawl into a corner and cry.  No, I must walk directly into the breadline and look around in prayer for what I witness there.  I really believe that it will only be then that I can truly see, get out of myself, and become the conduit for justice and healing that my best self longs to be.

Seriously scary stuff, because I like my latte and it is easier to hold humanity at paintbrush-length where the only grime under my nails is from turpentine and Payne's Grey.

And yet, Fritz Eichenberg haunts me with his inconvenient woodcut.  I can't stop thinking about the Holy One divesting himself of his deity and taking the bread when all the while he is the Bread of Life in disguise. 

the SS Honest Purpose

Today I ran across this little piece of literature written by a woman named Mary Brooks Picken in 1924:

"I made a declaration to the effect that I never let Fate paddle alone in Mr. Wish's leaky boat.  I learned long ago that a happier, safer ride could be had in the good substantial boat, "Honest Purpose," especially when I was helping with the oars....I say, always, that sincere desire is unworded prayer and that if we are earnest and have an honest purpose, our prayer will be answered, and answered wholly in accord with our own sincerity and unselfishness.  Wishing for things and praying for them are vastly different.

Every day is ours to mold as we will.  If we wasted it in idle wishing, we must pay.  If we build for the future by being faithful to our desires, we lay paving stones that make a safer and more comfortable road for the rest of our lives."

I found this in a fabulous book called Amy Barickman's Vintage Notions.  She has a lovely website...www.amybarickman.com.  Great stuff, and very timely for me.  Ahoy!

lesson learned

Our last autumn was tough.  I mean, tough.  As in, October our car was totaled with Kellan and me in it on the way to school.  A family member had a bone marrow transplant that required Nathan to spend his Friday-through-Sundays in Pittsburgh.  Since our car accident happened on a Friday morning, he had to leave us in the emergency room to get down to the hospital, and I had to text around to find a friend to bring us home.  The next week our garage door broke with the rental car inside (again while Nathan was on his way to Pittsburgh) and I couldn't get Kellan from school.  On and on and on...

Let me state, this is not a pity party.  I'm just setting the scene for what was, for us, a really challenging time.  Our life plans seemed to be put on hold and we were left wondering why why why.  (Oh, did I mention that our new, certified-preowned car turned out to be a lemon?  The first day I drove it to school it died in the carpool line)

Oops.  I forgot this isn't a pity party.

Here's what happened next:

The family member got to go home from the hospital early

A very kind garage door repairman heard the panic in my voice and dropped everything to come right over to get me out in time to get my son from school.

I was surrounded by love as a dear friend picked Kellan up from school, kept him at her house, and fed him dinner while we went emergency car shopping.  Did I mention that she did this on the fly because I called her as we were stuck in traffic and couldn't get home until after bedtime?

The other driver claimed complete fault for the accident.

A friend left her work to come get us at the emergency room.

The Subaru dealership (Day Subaru on West Liberty Avenue in Pittsburgh) took back our car, apologized and offered us a wonderful deal on a brand new one.  Who does that?  Jeff and Tony at Day Subaru.  They said if you don't have your integrity than you don't have anything.  Not your stereotypical car dealer.

My books made it successfully to the publishing stage.

Another important thing:

On a Wednesday afternoon while all this craziness was happening, Nathan called me from work.  "The circus is in town," he said.  "I think we should go."  

At that moment, the circus seemed like the most irresponsible, expensive thing we could possibly do.  "No," I said.  "We don't have the money, or a car, or the time."  But Nathan was pretty adamant, and so off to the circus we went.  

I can't describe what that did for our family.  Nathan said we needed to do something fun and he was so right.  He stopped by the dollar store on his way home from work and bought $20 worth of glowsticks, necklaces, bracelets, light up rings, and glow-in-the-dark swords.  Let me tell you that $20 will go a long way in the 'glow aisle' of the Dollar Tree.  We drove into Pittsburgh through a beautiful autumn sunset.  Somehow the promise of the circus helped us to leave off the endless discussions about value for money, gas costs piling up, scary garage door bills, Kellan's hard time with Daddy being gone.  We just had fun.

The life lesson here is obvious.  But just to make sure I don't forget, here is the reminder: 

  The Circus Came to Town, 2015.

check the lost and found

Well, call me Bloggy McBloggerton today (I usually write one journal entry after months of forgetting I even keep a blog), but this was too good to pass up.  Also, after all the existential crises in the last post it seemed important to think about something a little lighter.  And this is so funny... 

After closing my computer and before heading to my studio, I happened to glance at my son's "art desk" (the raised hearth of our fireplace that is a perfect height for an eight-year-old to kneel down and create masterpieces).  Before I relay the story, let me tell all you moms out there that this is not fiction!  Yes, expensive glasses were left at the bottom of the taekwondo gear bag, under a mouth guard, chest protector, and most notably, a heavy plastic helmet with durable face protector.  Wince.  Cha-ching to Dr. Soderburgh.  His Christmas bonus came early this year.

But I digress.  Here's where it gets fun.  I saw that Kellan was in the middle of writing a new book with the working title The Glasses in the Big Gear Bag.  It goes like this:

"One day there was a pair of glasses on a boy named Kellan's face.  He was going to ATA.  He soon noticed that his glasses were on his face.  Kellan didn't like to wear his glasses at ATA so he dropped them in his gear bag.  See illustration below:

 The glasses thought they'd look around.  They saw songjobongs and a bongmongee (both items used in taekwondo and completely misspelled here) and sparring gear.  When the glasses saw the songjobongs and bongmongee they were thinking, "Oh no!  Weapons!"  But when the songjobongs and bongmongee introduced themselves and told the glasses they were nice, the glasses weren't scared anymore."

To be continued...  

trompe l'oeil: our own personal Jericho

Recently Nathan told me about a visual he had had to describe where we've been in the last couple of years...he pictured a completely dark room with no doors.  In that room, God seemed to be marching him around and around inside of the perimeter.  As he walked, he kept asking for an open door to walk through that would take us out into a more spacious place, one that wasn't so confusing, and would make the trajectory of our lives more apparent.  But God seemed uncommunicative and so Nathan kept walking.  He described feeling lost...Where was the blasted door?  And why couldn't he see his hand in front of his face?  Silence.  Finally he came to the understanding that there was no door.  The only direction he was receiving from God was to keep him from walking into false doors...trompe l'oeils that were really just walls in disguise.  The Holy Mystery was protecting him from arriving into the wrong place.  Since he shared that image with me, I can't get the idea of stumbling into walls out of my head.

"As John says, God puts out our lights to keep us safe because we are never more in danger of stumbling than when we think we know where we are going.  When we can no longer see the path we are on, when we can no longer read the maps we have brought with us or sense anything in the dark that might tell us where we are, then and only then are we vulnerable to God's protection.  The only thing the dark night requires of us is to remain conscious.  If we can stay with the moment in which God seems most absent, the night will do the rest." (Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning to Walk in the Dark).

Which brings me to Jericho.  That crazy story in the Old Testament in which the Israelites are commanded to walk around the city's walls once a day for a week.  It's found in the sixth chapter of the book of Joshua if you want to look it up.  Brick by brick and stone by stone, walk, walk, walk.  At risk of sounding sacriligous, it seemed like the Israelites were sent on a fool's errand.  Then on the seventh day the instructions sounded even more absurd....walk seven more times around, God said, and then blow your trumpets and give a war cry.  But don't storm the gates or do anything else to take the city by using the tactics you know.  I will make the walls fall down by my own strength.  Not just open a door, but obliterate the wall completely.

What does that even mean?

Well, the Israelites had two choices:  they could take a disorienting, week long walk around a wall, or go home to relative safety that came at the cost of permanent defeat.  

Barbara Brown Taylor (you've got to look her up!) says:
"...the good news is that dark and light, faith and doubt, divine absence and presence, do not exist on opposite poles.  Instead, they exist with and within each other, like distinct waves that roll out of the same ocean and roll back into it again.  As different as they are, they come from and return to the same place...This faith will not offer me much to hold on to.  It will not give me a safe place to settle.  Practicing it will require me to celebrate the sacraments of defeat and loss, but since the religion I know best has a lot to say about losing as the pre-condition for finding, I can live with that.  I think I can even live inside this cloudy evening of the soul for a while longer, where even my sense of God's absence can be a token of God's presence if I let it." 

Here is a picture of what is outside my window today:

Barrenness and beauty.  Warmth and freeze.  The sun illuminates while the snow shrouds everything.  In other words, a picture of Jericho both before and after.  

"If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it." 

(Jesus, Matthew Chapter 10)

In grace and peace, amen.