etsy
You can view my artwork along with two of my friends (charlie jones and crissy kight) at HerOwnHands.etsy.com. Check it out we will be adding things often!
Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (1)Living is easy with eyes closed
I have been really low recently. I have been feeling like I live such a sanatized life
I heard a quote that said
as christians we are ” Trafficking in unlived truths.” that is true at least in concerns to me…i feel very jaded and somewhat marginalized.
I feel like “church” is a production and that if you want to find real truth about Jesus you have to seek after it. it isn’t going to be served up to like sunday brunch. i feel like God is in everyone and everything. it is hard for some to find the divine in an animal or insect. it is easier for me to do that then in some people. that is judgemental sounding but i have trouble finding it in me too. sometimes i doubt, not God, but what we are doing, if we even get any of it at all. i have only begun to open up to the idea of things not being so sanatized and generally abundant.
i feel like living with our eyes closed is way easier than opening them even alittle. once we open them up alittle it is all over, it is so hard, you fight everything and everybody all the time, you fight yourself. i feel like i have been losing that fight, especially with myself. but, once i do open my eyes alittle, i will have some peace, because finally my beliefs and actions will be in accord. maybe i can learn to be me in time enough to change something in this place. hopefully someone, somewhere will be changed for the better…
take these sunken eyes and learn to see all your life.
Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (0)The dark discovering the day
Something is going on inside me and I don’t know even how to name it. I feel like I am fighting. There is a song that I like that says ”it seems like the daylight is coming and no one is watching but me”
I feel sometimes like no one is watching the beauty and wretchedness around them. There are simple things that revel to me that God is trying to get us to just see each other. He puts us in a place and gives such beauty to people. everyday things are so beautiful and so sad. There are moments, like at an intersection, when all the lights are red, those moments to me are like magic, it seems like a mistake that the other light should have turned green by now but hasn’t and it gives us all a moment of sameness at least in general, and we can feel connected in that commonality. There is beauty in the fact that one of my co-workers adopted a baby years ago, because it was a shaken baby. that kind of love and respect for life is amazing and can’t be conjured up by mere mortals. It is beautiful, i know that individual days had to be hard for her but she loves him and he loves her. and the sum is worth more.
I know this is rambling on but I feel so alone sometimes in observing small things, (like the complex masterpiece of a peanut shell. It is so amazing and brilliantly made.) I marvel at the complexity of the interactions of people and how everything works together. It feels like all of humanity is a living organism that breaths and moves and can feel each other in a way.
There are also horrible things in this world. We are selfish beings, we are willing to let others suffer and toil just to supply us with things. We are uncaring and evil we create problems for ourselves and complain when we are in situations that we have made. and that is just everyday bad things.
We sit like apathetic zombies in front of glowing screens while the world passes with people longing for acceptance and love, and we don’t give it to them because it would mean a change to our routine or it would inconveince us in some way or they don’t look like we do, or aren’t of the same social class or religion or sexuality.
It is hard to make sense of how so much beauty and sadness can co-exist. how a person can have experienced love and also hate. it is like when the sun is on the horizon and you can’t tell if it is dusk or dawn. it may look the same but what we make of it or what follows it is what makes the difference either that horizon will fall into darkness or discover the day. We must remember that everything we do, any choice ripples though our entire lives. And Jesus told us that, when he told us that the murder starts in our minds and works its way out till it is having it’s way with other people in our lives and then outward. For if we can be lowered enough to hate we will also kill. But we can love and love will do the same as hate, it will work its way out and effect the people around us in ways we could never imagine.
I thank God for the freedom to be what we choose to be, we can be darkness or light, He wants are love. but doen’t demand it.
I was in church today, listening to what I considered to be a sales pitch instead of a sermon and as I was railing against the figures and facts about mega- churches and how to correctly shake someones hand I saw a stream of light reflecting off the pew a few rows up. That light was the reason I stayed because I thought that was a good enough “sermon” to have been there, and I thougth it was a great symbol that the light reflected out of the church building back into the world.( at least it appeared to, to me)
I feel like right now God wants me to see others, and see Him in others, I think He is serching behind my eyes for me and longing to find Himself.
Filed under Uncategorized | Comments (2)a call to love
there is fear outside my door, it creeps and slithers in, through the cracks
the cables
into all the boxes
that tell me about the world.
broken bodies, lives destroyed, fighting, slavery, slavery to the dust, the high towers that will fall.
we will all fall,
fall into the dust of which we were made the dust that we love, all the possessions , all of the possession.
this dust, the demon we love more than people.
for our weapons are strong, they kill without conscience
for they do not see our eyes the expression of fear, race, or age
they harm
with equality
does it matter to the dead that this war is of our holy democracy
does it matter to the orphan that it is for the greater good that his mother was destroyed,
are the homeless given solace in the security of our structures, our far away victory
our safety is their starvation.
there is a fear inside me, it is let in by boxes that tell me how to view the world.
it is a contrary view to that of my God. my God that claims victory in love
who resurrects bodies from death, who repairs lives, who turns and forgives the enemy that kills and
knows not what they do.
this propaganda hate machine, feeds the dust that we sin in, it feeds the need to destroy
all who do not agree,
all who do not capitalize on the weaker ones, all who do not know the song of this world.
kill the boxes for We have a new song. one that is on earth as it is in heaven
it is so quiet now
it is slow building, a small chant in the distant, a collection of voices, a primal song ,
that all were born with
its words are still
left on our lips.
there is a fear inside the church.
it is the twisted fear of a rebellious apathetic people the fear of mortals, the fallen
we are called to be more, we should be screaming into the wilderness,
message bearers, worshipers of the Most High God, the fire that lights the way in this lost empire
a falling babylon, eating itself alive
We are His chosen dwelling place. His people called into love.
His love is strong, He brings life without reservation
for He sees who we are
and loves us
with equality.
We now have a hope that no fear can tame.
a secret chord
i had a simple and beautiful experience with God last night.
i was praying, i have been trying to pray recently in a way that i haven’t ever prayed. i have been trying to pray not asking but longing, revealing weakness and really talking to God as much as my stupid pride allows. i was praying in my head, i very rarely pray verbally, and at some point in the prayer, i stopped speaking and listened. i felt/heard a strum or a tone a vibrating cord, in my mind/heart it would ripple and come back and radiate out again it was beautiful. it was pure feeling and whole. this may sound silly or plain, but it was very peaceful and yet very powerful. i felt so blessed and like God was impressing something important upon me…i have been kinda frustrated the last couple of days…i kinda feel like God was showing me he has it under control.
it was beautiful.
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ashes for beauty
my life is a mixed up mess most of the time. i am never where i want to be and hardly ever where i am supposed to be. i have lived my life with the worldview of me. i am self-addicted and so absorbed with living for myself that i had no time or energy to give to anyone else, leading to many strained/failed relationships. i am currently fighting my self-addiction, and yes i realize the irony of the self-indulgence of a blog.
i have been reading alot recently, this all began when i got fed up with everyone telling me what to believe and that i had to be a certain way to be loved and accepted. so i started to read. it all started with “the irresistable revolution” then i read “blue like jazz” and now moving on to “velvet elvis” along with tons of articles and one really great visual book. all of these are circling around the subject of the emerging church and the debate amongst christians over christian spirituality and the way we christians have really been jerky to pretty much everyone and messed up alot if not all of what Jesus was saying. let me just say i am sorry about that because i have played a role in that mess. anyway, i have been reading and finding truth in what these guys have been through and what they are saying. they all seem very disillusioned about “church” and so am i in so many ways. i have started feeling like i have been lied to, i started to realize that the building i called church had become an idol to me and the people around me, we didn’t care that people were starving, or that people were hurting or being oppressed in the world, we cared that the carpet might get stained if we drank something in the sanctuary or that someone said a curse word. i became upset that we had taken a beautiful and revolutionary message of non-judgemental love, and turned it into a conformity club that doesn’t allow discussion and had strayed so far away from the radical idea of love for all people that we had started actually turning more people away than accepting them.
i started thinking about what it would mean to take what Jesus said as if he meant it, and it was true. that would mean turning pretty much everything i do and the church does upside down. that would mean starting over…pretty much…luckily we have what Jesus used to build it in the first place, a bunch of wretched individuals that through divine intervention have realized they are wretched. and being wretched you begin to see others as beautiful, and realize you must be beautiful too.
we need to trade these ashes, either our body,the churches body into something that God can use, something beautiful, something that takes my worldview of me and shift it to the worldview of you before me. i want to know other people and love them. i want to find God in other people and i want them to find Him in me.
i am messed up and never where i am supposed to be, but that is who i am and God still loves me.
anyway that is where i am right now.
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