The Arts.

Today I saw a post about a thing called Canvas Conference. I don’t really have any idea what it is, but I do know this: even the simple notion of a conference that promotes the creativity and beauty of the gospel makes me want to either cry or sing. The raw and profound power found in the creative arts, one expressing her soul through movement or words. All is laid bare as the canvas of choice is beautifully flooded with the bright and passionate bursts of colors beyond imagination.

The genuinity of those who have no other way to convey their impressions, their feelings, their life lessons that they’ve learned either easily or painfully. Maybe it’s that I long to be one of them, able to express myself effectively using a mode of communication that penetrates even the hardest of hearts to allow the seed of beauty to sprout, take root, and utterly wreck that person for both the mundane and living in mendacity.

When the arts break through the Great Wall we build around out precious unarguable logic and reason, inexplicable feelings result. We can’t reason it away. We can’t just ignore it because its power is something we seldom know in this day and age of marked by only that which we can see. The arts have a way of melting ice and revealing vulnerability beneath.

A vulnerability we work our entire lives to cover with actions and achievements and success. We try to cover our true selves by what we do. We betray our true selves in order that we may appear how we perceive others should see us. But the arts are a door for that true self to peek it’s meek head out in the hopes of educing the true selves of others.

Whether it be the movement of the words we choose or the way we move our physical body, whether its through a brush painting or fingers plucking strings, whether its flooded with anguish or filled with ravishing hope, it moves. It moves in a way that little else can. It unites the heart and the mind and reveals aspects our mind would not unlock before.

The arts are what move me. And I hope to fall back in love with them. To make time to experience and to express through them. Because the inexpressible can be conveyed through the simple beauty of creativity.

Screwtape.

I am utterly and undeniably blessed by the family I have. And so thankful for the insight, like this quote my dad just showed me:

"You must have often wondered thy the enemy [God] does not make more use of his power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree he chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the irresistible and the indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of his scheme forbids him to use. Merely to over-ride a human will (as his felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for him useless. He cannot ravish. he can only woo. For this ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve....Sooner or later he withdraws, if not in face, at least from their conscious experience, all supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs - to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish....He cannot "tempt" to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away his hand....Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."
             -Uncle Screwtape
                C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

My Prayer.

From April:

Be still. Be quiet. Be present. Just be.

A lesson I’ve learned over and over, but can’t seem to hold onto. A mind that races and rushes, that hypothesizes and synthesizes even before sufficient information is provided. A mind that turns things over and over, analyzing them to death, then becoming paralyzed by the analysis, is stuck in the rut of limbo.

What does it mean to be still? To know that you are God? To find strength in quietness and trust? Especially in a world where rest is a foreign concept to us. The fine line between rest and sloth, the way we at times “rest” as a way to justify throwing all responsibilities off. It’s a command, not a suggestion. In the Old Testament you repeatedly tell your people to rest. You will fight for them. You will carry them. You will lead them. They need only be still. They need only to trust but they just can’t seem to do it. Their mistaken mindset that they must have a visible king to rule over them, that they must find fulfillment in another god, that their loyalty is with the gods of other nations- it’s those mindsets that lead them over and over again to a place of darkness, want, and desperation. Then from the pit they call out to you, you’re angry, and your wrath is just, but you instead reach down and lift them up. You offer them another chance to know you and trust. You offer them a redemption they don’t deserve, not only lift them out from darkness, but lift up their heads as well. Yet the cycle continues as they prosper, and promptly forget your goodness, even with all of the memorials and reminders you’ve commanded them to set up so that they may remember.

And now, trying to figure out my next steps, my mind is a tangled ball of yarn that even I can’t find the end to. It’s not something I’m proud of, but something I need to own up to: I’m running ahead, unable to read the road signs I encounter, and my direction is absent and I’m a mess of stress trying to decipher what he will reveal in due time.

I’m on the far side of the cross-cultural transition from the field of Beijing with meaningful work, good friends, and total independence to jobless, lacking a support system (and data to connect with one), carless, living with my parents, and quite dependent on others. The money is flowing out with all of the expenses that come with transitions and living in America yet none is coming in.  I even share a room with the cat, who apparently has more sway than I do in how the room is run. I have just a few months. Then I’m back on the run to Beijing again, but for only two months and in an entirely different capacity. New residence, new job (that would be that of study), new friends, new requirements. Figuring out how to get to Chicago to apply for the visa and making the money to pay for it. Wanting to visit friends who have moved on and are in much different stages of life than I, yet having no means of transportation to go say Hi. With the prospects of going to an IVY league and figuring all of that out, the financials that go into it and how to straighten all of that out. Trying to find jobs, make money, grow spiritually, invest in family and keep my sanity. I can only imagine the neurons in my brain bouncing around like pinballs but with the exhaustion of a man running an iron man. I’m not sure how much longer they can keep up the pace I’m requiring of them to run this unending race. I forget what it’s like to have a mind at rest.  A mind that can shut off. Like a guy. Who has an empty compartment they can set apart for zoning out. I wonder if I would find respite there, in shutting off my mind.

I’m all about being still, yet it’s been so long since I’ve done it.  It seems I always have to come crashing down for me to realize my need for it.

I love Bethany’s song To Those Who Wait, yet I race ahead instead, trying to figure it all out, taking the burden on myself, my back straining from the weight of my incessantly racing mind. I desire to surrender all of these things. All of these aspects, these trails my mind is blazing. It’s not up to me to know everything. If I did there would be no need to learn, to experience, to trust in something greater.

There are so many things I think I would enjoy, and second guesses are always knocking at my door to introduce themselves and create hesitation. A hesitation that prevents me from doing anything.

I don’t want to try and blaze my own trail. I can’t handle the stress of dressing myself everyday for creating my own success in a place with only self-reliance and the tangled mess of my efforts.

I want the faith to surrender. The trust to let go. The hope that you are good and you provide, as you have done and keep doing, even though I’m so quick to forget and neglect that part of my mind that reminds me of your faithfulness.

So before I go on, before I try to figure out all my relationships, financials, career stuff, before I try to make things happen educationally, I want to surrender my hopes and dreams. For in reality, I’m not even sure I can define what those are. And that’s part of my stress. If I had a clear target or dream I’d go right for it. I know how to work hard to achieve. And deep down I fear that I would race forward forgetting your faithfulness. You’ve brought me this far, and I don’t want to go further if you’re not there. For where you are, I want to be, just as you’ve said where I am you also are.

Search me and know me, O God, test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. Dig down and expose my motives, purify my plans, and replace independence with trust in you. For there I find strength.

So my conversations with Columbia Teacher’s College. You’ve continually provided financially, so I pray you’ll provide this time. I pray for scholarships, but if it’s loans, show me that it’s your gift. I pray for favor with them and wisdom in my conversation with them. Work in them and work in me now. In your name, I pray for favor. I pray you provide again financially. And if I’m running in the wrong direction, reorient me. Undeniably.

I pray for favor in searching for jobs. Provide, as you have done. Jehovah Jireh. You are a god who provides, so please, provide financially. I will work. You know that. Provide the jobs, the opportunity.

Jesus, I also want to serve, to love others, to offer myself in some way or another. You are good and I trust you will provide those opportunities as well.

In all of this, give me trust in you. I ask confidently, yet I confess the part of me that doesn’t know if that’s how I should pray. I fully believe you can do it. I fully believe you are able. So I ask as your child. Your sinful, forgetful, thirsty child. Your forgiven, justified, glorified, powerful child in Jesus. And I walk forward in that power. I lean into you with all that I am. For apart from you I can do nothing. I know TC is a dark place. I know the challenge there and the light you could make me. If this is from you, make it happen. Favor and wisdom with these people.

And with that, give me the grace to surrender.

Place of Grace.

Something I found from several months ago:

The place of grace that I’ve begun to notice that I inhabit is such an incredible reality that it’s utterly humbling. These transitions don’t have to be this “easy,” these goodbyes this simple. I didn’t have to have such beautiful teammates that are a true orchestra of love, rather than a crashing cymbal of brokenness. Sure, we have our struggles, but those crashing noises are redeemed through love and grace to be a beautiful melody, dramatic and punctuated with rests and fortes. And when worked out with a mutual commitment to love and honor one another and work towards unity, what a blessed environment that can be. Growing and stretching, for sure, but that’s what brothers and sisters and trials are for.

The grace to have the opportunity to teach so many wonderful teachers, the grace to actually enjoy the camp with all the students. The grace to live life beside dear Katie, sharing meals and runs together. I don’t deserve the grace to be able to go to PIB, especially having all the money provided. I’ve done nothing to earn the chance to go to both Australia and Malaysia, to decide to go spur of the moment and leave the next day, to sleep on so many planes. The grace that allowed me to sleep in the airport and has kept from getting sick thus far. The grace to sleep so much, to sort of catch up on my sleep deficit.

The grace to have a room to come home to, even if it’s the cat’s room. The grace to overcome so many of these stomach problems.

It’s a mystery to me how I can be drowning in so much grace and still question his nearness. How so many waves of grace crash over me, yet I forget and ask where is he. God I believe, help me in my unbelief.

Roots.

A wandering traveler who seeks solace and rest in the adventures she has. An itinerant citizen who stays long enough for the baby roots to spread, but soon uproots before the taproot takes hold. The radicle begins nestling itself into the fertile soil, but soon the plant is transferred to a new location, learning to live in a new environment once again. Away from family and friends, adapting to the different nutrients. And the process soon starts all over again.

Who knows the potential of this particular plant, for it’s never given the chance to grow and flourish. Is it due to her discontent that she so often feels the slight taste of dissent? Is it her fear of realizing a reality of stunted growth as her utmost? Is it simply the longing in her spirit to find a home that she has not yet discovered? Will her taproot ever grow thick enough, her root system ever grow deep enough, that being transplanted becomes no easy task?

She lives in a position of transition. A lifestyle of a nomad. The saplings she grew up with have all seemed to put down roots and put them down strong, with a husband, wife, child, or house to go along with their settling. Yet she wanders.

Is this an aimless wandering, or is she following the whispering of one greater. One thing’s for sure: the desire to wander has dwindled and the openness to finding a home has taken over.

 I want to be like a tree planted by the water, trusting in the Father to help me grow.