Sunday, June 21, 2009

Be Still My Love

Be still, my love,
in this moment,
in this place between the moon and the sun,
just before night turns to morning.

Be still, my love,
and stay here with me
in this place between green grass and autumn leaves.

Be still, my love,
and rest a while with me
in this place between coming home and leaving,
going to bed and rising up again.

Be still, my love
and wrap yourself around me until we are one
in this place
between yesterday and now,
between now and forever.

Faith

"If you have a faith as small as a mustard seed nothing will be impossible for you." Matthew 17:20


Lord,

I am not sure of myself to know what my faith should be asking for, so I plant my mustard seed of faith in the soil of Your gracious, lovingkindness to give the goodness that You have prepared for me, because I have complete faith in You.

Wilderness

So I walk in the wilderness,
feet covered in the dust of the generations who have gone before.

Heart pounding in the heat of this desert,
the restlessness and regret within it my constant companions.

Thirsty for the solace of Your voice,
I drink from my memory until I am swimming in hope.

Faith to wait for the quails and the manna
and the Promise of a Land to come.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Road Trip Therapy

The following posts are some things I had blogged on another site...I'm just attempting to consolidate :)...

February 12, 2007

So my friend Andrea called me a couple of months ago and asked if I wanted to go on a mini-road trip with her. "Sure" I said, without a breath of hesitation. Well, we went this weekend and it was amazing! Really, just getting to come home (I had to bring my Phil dog to Momma's so she could watch him while we were gone) was amazing. There is something about the mountains that just pricks my heart and soothes it all at the same time. I have been away from them for so long and the moment they come into view my heart begins to beat with excitement at seeing its old friends. It was great to see Momma, my sister, to see Andrea and her family, and to meet Kendra and Jan and all the kids at the children's home. Normally God speaks to me through other people, I feel His living presence quicken in me when I am around other believers and He moves me with compassion when I am around people who have yet to meet Him. But this time, oh this time He let me rest in His strength and be amazed at His majesty as we travelled those miles hedged in by the mountains. Not to sound like a paganistic, earth worshipper, but I feel this spiritual connection to those great green-gray giants, at once fearsome and comforting. I think about the stories these mountains could tell. I think about my Cherokee ancestors who had homes here before settlers came and how their memories are carried through the wind in the trees and the rivers that run in the earth. I see them in their canoes and hunting their food and clothing and shelter in this land where God placed them. I think about my Irish and German ancestors and how the mountains welcomed and challenged them after a long journey. I think about the Creator who made these high hills, these forces of rock and soil and trees. How His hands hold and protect, how they can be fearful and powerful. How they harness the strength of the earth and give life. And that no matter how small I am, that my Jesus has chosen to make me part of this beautiful place, He has numbered me among His creations. Oh, I want to be on the mountain ready and waiting when He calls me Home.

The Furry, Little Love of My Life

July 3, 2007
He looks at me with those amber-brown eyes so full of love and trust, and no matter what else is going on in my heart it is always softened by this little dog looking back at me. I have been reminded all the more the past couple of days how much I love this furry monster.
Sir Philippi Aragorn Wallace...he is one of the true gentlemen...protective, playful, faithful, and loving. He will be 8 in December, and he will have been my own sweet puppy for 4 years around the middle of this month. I remember the first day I met him...
I wasn't even looking for a dog. I wanted one, but I was still in my senior year at Mercer (no pets allowed for campus residents!) so a dog was a distant thought. And I didn't think I could ever own another Jack Russell after the heartbreak of losing Kipper. Momma, however, did want a dog, and asked me to go with her to Jeff and Mary Anne's (now friends of ours, we met them first as the breeders we got Kipper from) to help her pick out a Jack Russell from their "shelter". Mary Anne let all the dogs out of their kennels and they all ran to say hello, but Phil, well let's just say he knew I was the one and only mommy for him. He "marked" his territory at the casualty of my leg and left to stretch his legs with a good run. Back he came though, and right into my lap. It was not strange for him to be friendly, mused Mary Anne, but to be so familiar...well, that wasn't expected. We played for a little while before saying our goodbyes and back to Macon and Mercer I went.
A few days later my roommates, Brigid and Erin, were talking about getting a dog. This would have to be top secret of course, but surely we could keep it on the d.l. until the end of the semester. That was only a couple of months aways, and besides one of my best friends was the RA for our building. He said it would be cool with him. Of course, I knew just the dog for us to get so I called Momma to ask about Phil. Kevin (yes a girl named Kevin) didn't want to have to hide a dog in our apartment though, so plans for Phil were postponed. I counted down the days until graduation, probably more excited about getting Phil than I was about finally finishing 4 years of college.
But, as it happened, it wasn't until July that I was able to go home and get my Phil Dog. He knew though, the day that I came back that I was coming for him. He happily ran to me and jumped excitedly into the car. And so we've been ever since, true-blue, stuck like glue, best friends forever.
I know that God meant for him to be my dog. He was 4 years old before I got him. And his poor little doggy heart, I'm sure, had been broken, because he had gone to live with another family at one point only to be returned to the breeders because he was abused. But now he's with me. And over the past few years he's become less apprehensive and insecure, more playful and trusting. Momma says it's been good "doggy therapy" for him to be my dog, but I say he's the one who picked me. And now, he's the furry, little love of my life.

You Are Currently Disconnected

Written July 4, 2007

Technology advances rapidly before us. We can meet online, chat online, instant message, text message, shop from home in our underwear. You name it, we can do it--and it's probably only a few key strokes and a mouse click away. But I wonder somewhere in the promise offered by all that this digital world contains, are we losing something greater. It is something in my soul that feels depleted after I've sat on myspace or downloading music for two hours, or spoken in e-mails and comments to friends whose voices would be a better sound than the clicking keys and songs on their pages.
Sometimes the day fades slowly into night, and I get up from my computer to look out the window and am overwhelmed by that same strange feeling that knocks heavily on my emotions when I've taken a nap or gone into a movie while still surrounded by light, and then wake up or step out of the theatre to be met by darkness. A feeling as if something precious was taken from me, but I sat preocuppied with idle things, things of no value or consequence.
Why is it that we don't go out and look at the stars anymore and just breathe in that which God has created for us to enjoy--the intoxicating sight of the fierce and familiar mountains hemming us in, the rush of rivers that cool themselves in their run under the blue sky, the vastness of sand spilling over the desert all waiting to be touched by human hands and feet or at least the rubber tread of tires or smooth belly of a boat? But no, we search the web and pull up a picture on our computer screens settling for the flawless images made by men's hands rather than the wild beauty spoken into existence by the voice of God.
And then, after poring over these images, we place them across our home pages, backgrounds, web pages, profiles and the like. And just like the mouse in Laura Numeroff's book, for whom the cookie was not enough, we add pictures and search for the perfect songs and answer preset questions on the pages. Questions that we have, for some reason, become afraid to ask and answer in real life--person to person. Most of the questions on my myspace are questions I haven't been asked since freshmen orientation and my FYX class at Mercer-and that was becuase the OA's or someone in ResLife or FirstYearExperience realized they were good ice-breakers and essential keys for us to begin the journey of knowing each other so...they forced us to ask and answer the entire year.
Now, we just click on a profile to see what someone's doing, who they're talking to, dating, mad at, in love with... We want so badly to know others and to be known by them, but we are too afraid or lazy or maybe so imprisoned in this modern form of communication that we speak to each other in comments and texts, reducing our words to single letters or syllables--an acronymn for a true conversation. Don't get me wrong. This form of communication is definitely preferable to no communication, but it's somehow become our main form rather than a bridge between the physical and real encounters.
So, we exist in pictures and comments, binary codes of 1s and 0s, glowing, unmoving, images on our neighbors laptop. And, I think, we've lost ourselves in the madness, trading the real for the virtual because it's easier and looks better and is wrapped in the illustrious image of "cool". The thing that was supposed to keep us connected--make us closer and the world smaller--has, in essence, created a chasm between our souls. Sure we know all about this person, or at least what their profile tells us about them. But we do not know the inflections in our friends' voices, the pause on the phone, awkward silences that I believe somehow knit us together. Then, we sometimes get too personal too quickly because the sense of anonymity and "security" that these machines supply. But in the end, we lose. We reamain anonymous, a reflection of our own disguise, a creation in the other person's mind. We reduce ourselves to acquaintences. We do not see a person smile and their eyes crinkle at the corners as we talk or their brow furrow for need of further explanation. And we miss what is best of all. We do not feel their touch as they talk-- hand on your arm or shoulder, a nudge at something funny--or hear their laughter that real, from deep within, out-loud laugh. We simply respond with LOL or maybe ROFL and drive the distance farther between us, creating a greater disconnect than existed before. We end with a see you later or talk to you again soon, and sign off feeling disappointed and alone because we never saw or actually talked in the first place. We are left standing, words in our hands, voice in our throat to ponder the slow and steady distance back to being real.

More Artwork


"Cherubim" April 2009

A gift for Momma
















"Bones and Muscles" February 2009

Ecorche Study

"...Muscle and sinew, velvet and stone, this vessel is haunted, it creaks and moans. My bones call to you, in their separate skin. I make myself translucent to let you in, for I am wanting, and I am needing of you here, inside the absence of fear..." Jewel









"Self-Consolation" May 2009

















"Bodies" February 2009

Figure Studio/ Pull-out technique

Artwork


"Hands and Feet" April 2009
A gift for Julie
"...Hands and feet are all alike, but gold between divide us,
Hands and feet are all alike, but fear between divide us..."
--Dave Matthew's Band

"Mary" April 2009
A gift for Jane
"...Sing Mary, sing...lullabye The King.
Born to be our pardon, no longer shall we weep,
come soften what was hardened,
sing Mary, sing..." Jennifer Knapp

"Hands Holding" May 2000

Sketchbook

"Composition" May 2009
Foreshortened Composition/Chiaroscuro


"Face" February 2009