the ministry of imagination

levity.

2012-02-10T11:02:00.001-08:00

I should start making these.

kye kye

2012-02-09T07:30:00.000-08:00

It might be cheesy, but I've been thinking about the voiceover for this video all morning, especially in relation to what God desires for us, the place of our dreams and desires in discerning His will, and this idea of our lives in Christ looking different from the world.

How do we train our ears to hear His voice constantly? How deeply do we believe that He can speak? And how much grace is there for us if we stubbornly refuse to listen?

instagram lately

2012-02-07T17:15:00.002-08:00

galatians

2012-02-07T05:56:00.004-08:00

"But what happens when we live God's way? He brings gifts into our lives-things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely...Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives."
- Galatians 5:22-26 (Message translation)

doing good...

2012-02-06T10:01:00.001-08:00

Just got word that I got accepted to go to this in the summer...pretty excited!

swagger

2012-02-04T10:14:00.002-08:00

For some reason I can't get enough of this video. There's something so compelling about it, and reminds me how much I loved M.I.A.'s general bad-assery when I was in first year and listened to Arular almost every morning on the way to school. This woman has swagger, and seems to get away with so much...

perspective

2012-02-02T06:29:00.002-08:00

Why are we as humans so wired to never see beyond our small lives, beyond our temporal set of circumstances that seem overwhelming and blind us, when in reality they are so insignificant, like our lives? When in reality we should be happy to be alive and breathing for one more day?

God speaking perspective into my stress this morning, asking if I was in danger of loosing my job, if I woke up this morning worrying about how to feed the kids for one more day, reminding me of the warm house I live in, the food on my table, my four year arts degree that is deathly unpractical. The clarity of these words, the ways in which they differ from the state of my heart, convicting me of their provenance.

mo(u)rning

2012-01-31T04:36:00.000-08:00

cold and quiet mornings, dawn seeping as I wake confused, conflicted, challenged.

the desire in all of this to always be everywhere with all the people I love and the impossibility of that all. the struggle to follow our God and hear His voice, to make sense of this all.

one day we'll fall down and weep and understand it all. All things.

nature and grace

2012-01-29T08:52:00.000-08:00

"The nuns taught us there were two ways through life: the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you'll follow. Grace doesn't try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things. The nuns taught us that no one who loves to way of grace ever comes to a bad end."- Tree of Life, Malick

I spent the weekend talking about this film with my community, and now have a desire to incorporate the way it celebrates beauty, the way it holds me breathless in the face of how beautiful life is, and can be if we're willing to see it, if we believe that it is if we look carefully enough, into a discipline. I'm thinking I might try to watch it weekly (which is a commitment at 2.5 hours!), but I think the reminder that life is beautiful, and fascinating, and points to an incredibly creative and ultimately loving God, could be a good thing for my soul.

This line from the trailer, which never made it into the movie, is also haunting me this week:

"Someday we'll fall down and weep, and we'll understand it all. All things."

It's also interesting that the top passage, the theme running through the whole movie, is lifted almost verbatim from The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis. These passages from his work were resonating with me...

"Nature is not willing to die, or to be kept down, or to be overcome. Nor will it subdue itself or be made subject. Grace, on the contrary, strives for mortification of self. She resists sensuality, seeks to be in subjection, longs to be conquered, has no wish to use her own liberty, loves to be held under discipline, and does not desire to rule over anyone, but wishes rather to live, to stand, and to be always under God for Whose sake she is willing to bow humbly to every human creature."

and a prayer for the week...

"O most blessed grace, which makes the poor in spirit rich in virtues, which renders him who is rich in many good things humble of heart, come, descend upon me, fill me quickly with your consolation lest my soul faint with weariness and dryness of mind."

love

2012-01-27T13:14:00.003-08:00

(Photo by Beth)

my favorite three year old, source of so much joy, is making an appearance on Beth's blog, and it reminds me of how much I miss him and the ways that he sees the world. I think life would be the best spent with three year old boys everyday...

"As we were swinging, he noticed the moon in the sky, a small sliver (“Look Bethney! There’s the moon!”) and we began planning a trip, because it felt as though we could fly there anyways with the swinging we were doing. I volunteered to bring peanut butter sandwiches, and he volunteered blueberries. I asked who could come and he said his mom and brother, as long as they brought things to eat too. I told him the moon was made of cheese and that we should also bring crackers. We concluded with a run around the playground, escaping from moon alligators and crashing our ship but making it out safely."

anxious little heart

2012-01-17T16:05:00.002-08:00

Oh hey little anxious heart, so quick to forget God's promises and overflowing love. Ours is a good God.

"Maybe we have to make space in prayer for the belief that good things happen too," he said kindly, kissing my forehead and putting his arm around my shoulder.

Maybe we do. Maybe we have to surrender to that which is infinitely higher, better, and wiser than us.

Maybe we will do it kicking and screaming.

But I wonder what it would be like to surrender to love like that, to trust it fully and finally, to find the energy in swimming with that stronger current rather than always against it, to be always looking back, second-guessing, doubtful and unsure-to dive into rivers of mercy confident of being carried, thriving as they split the land ahead, overflowing their baks, making fertile space for all the marvelous yet to be reckoned."

Today is a day of kicking and screaming.

georgia

2012-01-16T13:58:00.000-08:00

my joy today was a shy little four year old named Georgia. we met in the waiting room of the x-ray clinic, both of us dressed in ridiculous hospital gowns, hers coming down to her toes. after calling me "that girl" for a while, we exchanged names and smiles, and settled into a similar feverish stillness ("mommy...that girl is so still!") it was nice to know, in the midst of illness, that someone else was going through the same thing, and could still keep smiling and being curious.

pina

2012-01-13T07:22:00.000-08:00

"Over the last few weeks,
I've seen and read many interviews with Pina,
and it was impossible not to notice in them
how little she trusted language.
Sometimes she was struggling and tormenting herself
to finally say something
that was actually quite simple,
but then, not at all
in a world in which the simple things
have long become the hardest to get across.

She would often look around helplessly
when she couldn't find the rights words,
as if she might possibly find the answer with her eyes.
That's where it became evident
how much more Pina relied on her look instead on words.
At least she trusted much more in what could be seen
than in what could be said.

Blind people are supposed
to sharpen their sense of hearing in compensation.
About Pina, you could almost say the reverse:
her mistrust of words
made her rely all the more on her eyes,
but in a very particular, unique way of her own.
She honed her gaze into an extraordinarily sensitive tool
for recognizing and analyzing everything
we say and express with our movements and gestures,
for everything we reveal about ourselves through them.
We do that involuntarily and unconsciously,
and most of it remains invisible to other eyes."

-Wim Wenders, on Pina Bausch's death in 2008

Going to see "Pina" this weekend, and am really, really excited.

vocation

2012-01-11T13:43:00.000-08:00

read all of this...

KS: How does a person know that a particular vocation is what God intends for him or her?

RG: I think the only way anyone can know one’s vocation is by discerning it in prayer. One has to be in relationship with God. That means, for a Christian, being in relationship with Christ and looking for that guiding hand and feeling the force of that hand when you are going off the path. God is always trying to bring you back on to the straight and narrow way, and because his hand is gentle, it is all too easy to pretend that we do not feel it.

Of course the real danger with any human life is rationalization. If you rely just on feeling, then most of the time you are going to think: Well, if I want to do something, that must mean that God wants me to do it or is giving me permission to do it. We confuse God’s will with our desires, when in fact God may be willing that we resist those desires.

KS: What aspect of Christianity or Christian belief most resists a rational account?

RG: I think the Christian faith, particularly the Catholic faith, is a very reasonable faith. Catholics think that faith and reason are both important and mutually supportive of each other. In his encyclical “Fides et Ratio,” Pope John Paul II begins with this wonderful image: he says that faith and reason are like the two wings on which the human spirit ascends to contemplation of the truth, and it does take both wings. I think that the strongest, most mysterious and, in some ways, the most impressive aspect of Christian faith is that it challenges natural human emotions. Perhaps the most radical of all of Christ’s teachings is love of enemies. I would not say that love of enemies is contrary to reason. But I would say it is contrary to the natural emotions that we have, and so it challenges us in a fundamental aspect of our being, because we are not just pure minds. We do have emotions and we do have feelings, and loving our enemies is not only difficult, it just goes against the way we are made. To me, the fact that Christianity could make so bold and radical a demand is more evidence for the supernatural truth of Christianity.

I see the Christian faith as a faith that integrally involves a hope that is not a matter of blind faith. Of course, since the whole story of salvation, the whole story of redemption, is so marvelous and transcendent, it is plainly outside the realm of our ordinary experience, and thus it is a challenge to reason, because reason ordinarily deals with what is normal—what happens most of the time. Here you have something extraordinary in every way; so yes, there is a certain kind of challenge to reason, but not one that should lead us to think that we should praise the irrational or that our faith as Christians is an irrational faith.

gundersen love

2012-01-10T05:31:00.001-08:00

flight

2012-01-08T00:22:00.000-08:00

There are times when all this seems romantic and exciting, this flying across the country, this back and forth and two lives and big cities and dreams. There are brief moments at the gate at Pearson, at the luggage carousel, tired plane eyes and waiting rooms, when I see myself for a split second the way someone else might.

But more often than not it consists of yawning suitcases packed with guilt and goodbyes, libraries packed into lunchbags that just don't have room for your childhood favorites, of never feeling like the time is long enough, even when it is, or might be, and according to whom? There are touches and glances, silences that anticipate that early morning flight and the months that will pass before I am here again.

There is that first five minutes in each new (and old) place when the strangeness of it all sticks to the windshield of the minivan, driving away from the airport, past your cousin's house, everything still in place.

There are nights stretched with a heavy heart and the desire to just always be everywhere with all the people I love at once.

things that remind me of joy.

2012-01-05T22:30:00.000-08:00

I've been talking with friends lately about what joy really is, and reading some quality writing on the subject, and the more I learn about this evasive little word, the more hesitant I am to claim things as "my joys" as I've been quick to do over the past months.

so until I know more about what joy really is, I'll call these moments things that remind me of joy, give me a small peek at what joy in all its entirety might be like.

- laughter, laughter, laughter with my mom, with friends, over kindergarten loves and flammable substances and egg noodles
- cooking with this one at sunset, constantly checking on a twilight sky that was beautiful in a changed way every ten minutes, singing along to this and this, so utterly content to be doing simple things with friends
- my favorite three year old, as quotable as ever, trying to convince us that he was old enough to drink tea with us by proclaiming loudly and earnestly "I'm a tea boy!"
- an invitation by said boy to play dinosaurs once again, collapsing on all fours in the kitchen into a mess of tickles, loud roars and hugs

the maytrees

2012-01-04T20:55:00.000-08:00

"The question was not death; living things die. It was love. Not that we died, but that we cared wildly, then deeply, for one person out of billions. We bound ourselves to the fickle, changing and dying as if they were rock." - The Maytrees by Annie Dillard

The Perfect (Life) and Death of James Lee Byars

2012-01-01T15:57:00.002-08:00

James Lee Byars represents everything I love about conceptual art.

Highly influenced by Japanese Shinto practices, "Byars absorbed the Japanese penchant for ceremony, particularly as it manifests itself in Shinto, as a means to imbue ordinary gestures with highly specific meaning and significance. Byars' art is an attempt to use his presence to draw attention to the many overlooked but profoundly important aspects of everyday life."(Siedell, God in the Gallery 97)

Siedell discusses his practice in God in the Gallery in regards to the ways in which his work "acknowledges that life is a preparation for death." (98) In his piece The Perfect Death of James Lee Byars, he wore a gold-lame suit, and then "lay on the ground, which was also painted gold," making himself invisible and performing a ritual of disappearing.

Siedell says that "Byars's work cannot ultimately be separated from his life. His was a life lived as a work of art, shaped and formed to produce something of beauty in preparation for death. Despite the fact that Byars's primary influences are Japanese, his practice is similar to the goals of the early church fathers, for which there exists no distinction between a person and his works nor a distinction between important and unimportant in one's life." For the artist "Faith was a way of seeing the world, of noticing. Byars's artistic practice, without question, regarded all the world had to offer as a gift." (99)

I love these ideas that Siedell presents; the tightrope-act of negotiating the dangers inherent in erasing the distinction between that which we do and that which we are, the seeming impossibility of eschewing the concept of importance and of abandoning hierarchy, and this emphasis on attentiveness in faith and the search for beauty. His adoption of the methodology of St. Paul at the Areopagus in approaching culture is one I'm eager to think more about and trying using in cultural analysis.

stillness.

2011-12-30T12:15:00.002-08:00

like like like this.

"We have become addicted to merely looking at things and beings. The more we regress from seeing to looking at the world—through the ever-more-perfected machinery of viewfinders, TV tubes, VCRs, microscopes, stereoscopes—the less we see, the more numbed we become to the joy and the pain of being alive, and the further estranged we become from ourselves and all others."

ok, and this too...

Other friends try to go on long walks every Sunday, or to “forget” their cellphones at home. A series of tests in recent years has shown, Mr. Carr points out, that after spending time in quiet rural settings, subjects “exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory and generally improved cognition. Their brains become both calmer and sharper.” More than that, empathy, as well as deep thought, depends (as neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio have found) on neural processes that are “inherently slow.” The very ones our high-speed lives have little time for…

Nothing makes me feel better — calmer, clearer and happier — than being in one place, absorbed in a book, a conversation, a piece of music. It’s actually something deeper than mere happiness: it’s joy, which the monk David Steindl-Rast describes as “that kind of happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.”

umm, and this? (excerpt from Erica Grimm-Vance's PhD dissertation on the aesthetics of attentiveness)

“Thereare only two things piercing enough to penetrate our souls in this way; theyare beauty and affliction.” - Simone Weil (S. Weil, 1977b, pg. 467)

She believed them to bethe most potent forces available with which life educates the heart. She wouldcount them as likely candidates to cut through the thick skin of presumption,the onrushing momentum of habit, focus attention and to account for the powerof aesthetics. She remarks on the connected role of the body

“Through joy, thebeauty of the world penetrates our soul. Through suffering it penetrates our body. We could no more become aship’s captain by joy alone than one becomes a ship’s captain by studying bookson navigation. The body plays a part in all apprenticeships.”(S. Weil, 1977b,pg. 450)

advent

2011-12-28T13:53:00.000-08:00

My church family at FreeChurch Toronto has always had a heart for the arts, and for doing something extra special aesthetically throughout the Advent season. This year we decided to produce a series of 3 videos on the theme of "gifts," each focusing on a different aspect of what we've been gifted with as a community, and all the gifts being tied together by the sense that the most valuable gift we have to give and receive is time spent together.

This is the first of the films, focusing on the gift of community, shot by the talented Jeff Bergen, and edited by the masterful Paul Chin.

while we're at it...

2011-12-26T22:46:00.000-08:00

Marilynne Robinson on beauty:

You have to have a certain detachment in order to see beauty for yourself rather than something that has been put in quotation marks to be understood as “beauty.” Think about Dutch painting, where sunlight is falling on a basin of water and a woman is standing there in the clothes that she would wear when she wakes up in the morning—that beauty is a casual glimpse of something very ordinary. Or a painting like Rembrandt’s Carcass of Beef, where a simple piece of meat caught his eye because there was something mysterious about it. You also get that in Edward Hopper: Look at the sunlight! or Look at the human being! These are instances of genius. Cultures cherish artists because they are people who can say, Look at that. And it’s not Versailles. It’s a brick wall with a ray of sunlight falling on it.

At the same time, there has always been a basic human tendency toward a dubious notion of beauty. Think about cultures that rarify themselves into courts in which people paint themselves with lead paint and get dumber by the day, or women have ribs removed to have their waists cinched tighter. There’s no question that we have our versions of that now. The most destructive thing we can do is act as though this is some sign of cultural, spiritual decay rather than humans just acting human, which is what we’re doing most of the time.

love!

2011-12-26T22:17:00.002-08:00

I think I'm in love with Annie Dillard. I knew she'd be someone I liked when I read that she had once responded to the question "What's your sign?" with "Slippery when wet."

All that to say, I think this is the start of a long and fruitful literary relationship. I'm off to buy as much by her as I can first thing in the morning, and plan to read through all of tomorrow.

overwhelmed

2011-12-25T12:48:00.002-08:00

keep waking with this on my heart...

Peace Song by Kye Kye on Grooveshark

patience and usefulness

2011-12-22T10:39:00.000-08:00

Lines from one of the latest posts over at Pray For Ian...

Many who can labor without weariness cannot suffer without impatience. Men are seldom equally skilled in the use of the two hands of doing and bearing. Patience is a grace that is rarer and harder to find than activity and zeal. - Charles Spurgeon

"We need to deal with God... that God may be glorified in our condition, whatever it is. If he wills for us to be rich and full, that he might be glorified in our bounty; if he wills us to be poor and low, that he may be glorified in our patience; if he will have us healthy, that he may be glorified in our labour; if he will have us sick, that he may be glorified in our pain; if he will have us live, that he may be glorified in our lives; if he will have us die, that he may be glorified in our deaths" (Romans 14:8)

"We tend to evaluate our own “usefulness” based on what we can do for God. But God doesn’t evaluate us on that basis. As Oswald Chambers says,

God plants His saints in the most useless places. We say, "I should be here because I am so useful." Jesus never estimated His life by the standard of greatest use. God puts His people where they will glorify Him, and we are not capable of judging where that is. -- Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest

God planted Joseph in an Egyptian prison for 13 years. God put Moses in the desert for 40 years before calling him to deliver Israel from Pharoah.

David too spent lots of time in “useless places” - desert caves and strongholds hiding from Saul before God exalted David to became king.

Jesus spent 30 years in obscurity before a short 3-year ministry, then died a “failure” on the cross, having had seemingly little impact on Israel.

Paul spent lots of time in prison. He could have viewed his jail time as useless, but through his imprisonment the gospel spread to prisoners, guards and beyond. And Paul wrote a number of his letters from prison which we might not have had God not put him in a “useless” place."

joy.

2011-12-18T07:51:00.000-08:00

a night exploding with life, faces and relationships and aliveness pushing against the seams of the house. Messiness in every form conquering every corner, but it being the kind of night where you're constantly passing paper plates loaded with turkey and stuffing and freezer corn across the room, for someone at some unseen end of the table, arms reaching, forks stolen, words shouted.

and my favorite parts being the unintentional calm brought by the children in the crowd, spending half an hour slowly tearing apart balls of play-dough with a one and half year old, nose buried deep in her incredible curls. Reading stories on the bed with a gaggle of young ones, small bodies buried in comforters, leaning, breathing softly. Holding a newborn for what felt like hours, her particular weight in my arms, the gentle rocking she required, being the perfect placeholder, all I felt like doing in a room full of conversation and presents being torn open. Watching a six year old patiently build and re-build a precarious tower of blocks over and over again, the concentration consuming her face broken every so often by smiles in recognition of her accomplishment.

and the best part of the night by far being life as explained by my favorite three year old, who made so many appearances on my blog this summer for the joy his wit constantly brings me. When asked to describe the taste of the red jujubes we were carefully placing (then eating) on top of our ramshackle gingerbread house, he replied "Tastes like...flowers, and red, and names!" The green ones apparently tasted like "that dinosaur with the big mouth" that we had spent the better part of the evening imitating, crawling around on all fours much to the amusement of the rest of the party guests, growling under our breath.

And then hearing the Nativity story from his perspective, one in which he was genuinely excited about playing the part of an angel (with a robe so big he was constantly tripping over it). When asked what the three wise men brought Jesus for gifts he replied "Balloons!"

The Disgrace of Grace | Cardus Blog

2011-12-17T10:05:00.000-08:00

The Disgrace of Grace | Cardus Blog

little things

2011-12-17T10:03:00.000-08:00

i've been treasuring some small, quiet things this week, little triumphs in the midst of jetlag and fatigue and the difficult dance of readjusting to living at home.

the sight of the Vancouver skyline, a patchwork of glowing yellow squares set into the endless tile patterning of glass condos, from the Granville Street bridge.

three of the best meals I have eaten in many months, finally relaxing enough to enjoy food again.

time to hole up in a bookstore and read whatever my eyes come to rest upon.

visits with old friends, laughter permeating December nights when it gets dark almost at 4pm.

long trips in warm cars, nestled between family members and secure in the back seat.

mountains seen from my window in the morning.

and the best nap I have had in months, curled up on rough wool cushions from Nepal in front of the stove in the living room of my grandparent's house. Dishwasher comfortingly filling the silence, conversation in the distance, and the room settling into a late afternoon darkness of the rain and the stands of pines outside the window. A place, a space I keep stored up inside me all year to dream about when the city, the anxiety, and all that is uncertain looms too close on October afternoons.

home

2011-12-11T08:36:00.001-08:00

my dad playing piano on a Sunday morning while I'm still in my pajamas makes me feel all of five years old again. the deep comfort and rightness of this is tinged with sadness, growing up making all these things the same and different...

morning

2011-12-08T04:37:00.001-08:00

i was up to see the dawn this morning. it was a morning of lifting praise to the Maker of such a beautiful world, of resting assured, amidst anxiety about the future, that it doesn't matter where i end up as long as i can keep praising the one who made me, assurance that there will always be mornings and moments like this, sky changing, heavy bags of groceries in mittened hands, and love.

Psalms 30:4-6
Sing praises to the Lord, O you his saints, and give thanks to his holy name. For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.

heads and hearts

2011-12-05T11:45:00.001-08:00

The 2011 Doe Bay Sessions - The Head and The Heart from Sound on the Sound on Vimeo.

church

2011-12-05T07:34:00.001-08:00

Advent went down in a great way at our church last night. Here are some installation shots, and the video that we made and projected in the background is coming soon.

frizz

2011-11-30T10:26:00.001-08:00

One can very well eat lettuce before its heart has been formed; still, the delicate crispness of the heart and its lovely frizz are something altogether different from the leaves. It is the same in the world of the spirit. Being too busy has this result: that an individual very, very rarely is permitted to form a heart; on the other hand, the thinker, the poet, or the religious personality who actually has formed his heart, will never be popular, not because he is difficult, but because it demands quiet and prolonged working with oneself and intimate knowledge of oneself as well as a certain isolation. Even if, in a full-toned voice, I could say something that would please each and every one, if it were of a religious nature I would not say it, because it is already a kind of religious indecency that it should be necessary to make an outcry about it; on the contrary, religious things have to do with a softly murmured soliloquy with oneself. Alas, things are so topsy-turvy that, instead of having to do with each individual going alone into his secret closet to commune quietly with himself, people believe that religion is a matter for very loud talk.

— Soren Kierkegaard

ordination song

2011-11-29T16:42:00.001-08:00

I always knew you
In your mothers arms
I have called your name
I have an idea
Placed in your mind
To be a better man
I've made a crown for you
Put it in your room
And when the bridegroom comes
There will be noise
There will be glad
And a perfect bed
And when you write a poem
I know the words
I know the sounds
Before you write it down
When you wear your clothes
I wear them too
I wear your shoes
And your jacket too
I always knew you
In your mothers arms
I have called you son
I've made amends
Between father and son
Or, if you haven't one
Rest in my arms
Sleep in my bed
There is a design
To what I did and said
(Vito's Ordination song, Sufjan Stevens)
(words of comfort when all i want is to rest in arms, to close eyes and to trust)

joy.

2011-11-28T11:20:00.001-08:00

today it was a homeless man standing on the corner of College and St. George, dressed as a flower, replete with giant painted petals framing his face. He was smiling widely and laughing maniacally about nothing in (seemingly) particular.

Birmingham Is Not New York: 5 Cautions for Arts Ministry

2011-11-27T08:28:00.000-08:00

Birmingham Is Not New York: 5 Cautions for Arts Ministry

I feel like these are going to be important ideas for the next few years of the development of visual arts ministry in the States and here...

rainbows for the fallen world

2011-11-25T10:34:00.001-08:00

getting into fist-fights with Seerveld and Rainbows for the Fallen World. I wonder if we would get along in person...and why writers on the arts and theology choose such bad art to see as redemptive...

Becoming Weaker

2011-11-24T06:07:00.000-08:00

Becoming Weaker

this day

2011-11-23T09:43:00.001-08:00

this is what i sing, inside and out, on days when life seems full, and there is sun.

birds of my neighborhood - 07 by The Innocence Mission on Grooveshark

love.

2011-11-22T05:33:00.001-08:00

galatians

2011-11-21T09:57:00.001-08:00

"Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original."

Galatians 5:24-26ish (Message translation)

why is this so hard? and while I'm at it, why are Mondays so frickin' hard?

poetry

2011-11-18T07:49:00.001-08:00

lines from a Merton poem, copied haphazardly into a notebook somewhere...

I think poetry must
I think it must
Stay open all night
In beautiful cellars

family

2011-11-17T06:50:00.001-08:00

these voices, these words. to be a family in love with music would be a beautiful thing...

language.

2011-11-14T13:16:00.001-08:00

words from Toni Morrison, in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech...

“word-work is sublime, she thinks, because it is generative;it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference-the way inwhich we are like no other life.

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language.That may be the measure of our lives.”

loved

2011-11-13T07:23:00.001-08:00

let’s get up early now

dive clear into the day

let’s get out of the car with open arms

not wait to be embraced

the flowers that grew

the things that happened since the day you came

nobody knows, darling, nobody knows how they are loved

- karen peris

oh the innocence mission.

story

2011-11-13T07:18:00.001-08:00

Lars Wastfelt's photos never fail to tell a million stories with the snap of the shutter...

content

2011-11-10T17:49:00.001-08:00

sometimes days are good beyond all measure, when you didn't expect them to be, for reasons you can't pinpoint. but they leave you sitting late at night in the top of OCAD, nestled in a colourful windowsill seat, looking out at the night city sky, and there is peace. this contentedness at how things are is so foreign to me most of the time that this restfulness bowls me over, and i drink deep from its well, just soaking it in. good music fills my ears, my mom is on a plane crossing the continent to see me and everything just feels, for the first time in so long, as if it's all going to be okay.

heavy/light

2011-11-09T12:49:00.002-08:00

"everything is too heavy because everything is too light"

Paul Celan's love letters to Diet Kloos makes me wish I could read German....

joys

2011-11-03T13:44:00.001-07:00

there has just been too much to be joyful about lately!

trees in the city putting on all their colours overnight, each street infinitely more beautiful than it was last week, making commutes extra joyful (bikes and leaves...)

weather that lets conversations with lovely friends last hours without chills, hair blowing in the wind in happy, not cold ways

tea! cups and cups and cups, at school and at home

Walter Brueggeman speaking to my heart, with lines in The Prophetic Imagination like
"the task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish and evoke a conciousness and perception alternative to the conciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us."

magical time warps all this week in the mornings, where the time between waking up (seeing the sun rise, sky shift colours, clouds drift) and going to school seems longer than ever. being able to fill that time with reading for fun, with tea, with my bed full of blankets

fall meaning scarves and boots and woolen socks

seeing my community with new eyes

thesis finally getting exciting, anticipating interviewing artists and conversations about art and faith

Miranda July

2011-11-01T10:02:00.001-07:00

This image has been like sticky rice on my hands all day...impossible to get rid of. Haunting too...

yeats

2011-10-30T08:22:00.001-07:00

Using Yeats to talk about bad-boy contemporary artist Adel Abdessemed's work. It's been quite the conversation!

Yeats-The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Bonhoeffer on mornings

2011-10-30T06:45:00.002-07:00

"For Christians the beginning of the day should not be burdened and oppressed with besetting concerns for the day's work. At the threshold of the new day stands the Lord who made it. All unrest, impurity, all care and anxiety flee before him. Therefore, at the beginning of the day let all distraction and empty talk be silenced and let the first thought and the first word belong to him whom our whole life belongs."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

eucharist.

2011-10-28T07:11:00.003-07:00

people dear to my heart, singing songs that have been on my heart. so good.

sisters

2011-10-27T13:10:00.003-07:00

a nun smiled at me on the street today. that is all.

joyful words

2011-10-26T05:04:00.000-07:00

There is in every true and great comedy, a moment where everything goes to pieces, and you watch in horror, wanting to pull it back together and knowing beyond knowledge that you cannot: in the Comedy of Christ, that moment stretches as long as human history. The wedding has not yet come: the villain is not yet exposed. We are caught, not in the resolution, but in the tension: but to mourn is not to despair, and we do not deny the resurrection by drinking deep the cup of affliction.

Let there be joy. Let there be feasts, and let not the somber man forget the sun shines brilliant on blades of grass: and still, all these are not that for which our souls are yearning. They are but shadowed joys to be grasped at and lost after this our exile.

via http://adrieldiaz.tumblr.com/

joy

2011-10-24T11:44:00.000-07:00

today it was a middle aged Italian man, who made eye contact with us and insistently asked "What is better, wisdom or knowledge?" and seemed genuinely interested in our answer. When I responded "Wisdom!" he replied "That's right, because wisdom keeps you alive," and then walked off. I wish I was able to do the same...it would make city walking much more interesting.

cana family

2011-10-19T10:28:00.003-07:00

Ragged Jubilee #2 from The Cana Family on Vimeo.

would much rather this be my reality than reading theory in the library. oh for a field, a banjo and friends with songs in their hearts.

2011-10-18T18:29:00.001-07:00

Whoah. This is so good, and brings back so many memories of growing up on U2 (the only thing my dad ever listened to), laying on the living room floor mid-afternoon as a child, thinking about Ireland...

wonder

2011-10-18T06:11:00.001-07:00

two men walking down early morning fall streets just ahead of me, kick-starting cycles of wonder in my head as I follow them.

one is younger, 12 maybe, walking with all the cool aloofness that that age demands, furtively sneaking glances at his hair in parked car windows. Half of his bangs are dyed blonde in a move that seems rather avant-garde for his age, and there is a studied swoop to the way they brush his forehead, which he maintains with quick pokes.

his companion is surely his grandfather, stooped and grey, walking with a measured pace in those loose grey trousers and black orthopedic shoes that make up the uniform of men his age all over the country.

there is complete silence between them, one that seems familiar and is surely the result of many years of practice, there perhaps being nothing left to say between them, or a mutual happiness in dwelling in their own worlds on these walks.

I start to wonder, studying their backs, about the ways in which they reflect each other. To what degree does the grandson look like the grandfather did when he was that age? What does the older think of the hairstyle of the younger? Does he secretly admire the courage in his grandson's step to differentiate himself from his peers, but keep mum on the subject? Is he fearful of what his daughter-in-law might think if he endorsed these hair experiments? Secretly wish he had that same courage to break out of his routine life that has come with old age?

And what about the boy? Will he outgrow this artsy stage and become that boy full of bravado, with beers on his windowsill come college? Attend an art school and slowly realize, among like-minded peers, that he is gay? Spend a little too much time alone in high school and end up in the philosophy department of the city university, lost in overflowing classes and vindicated through the papers he writes?

Then, on the street corner, quick words are exchanged between the two and they part ways with geometric precision, severed instantly from each other, as the younger heads towards the elementary school at the end of the block. How many conversations did it take to get to the agreement that they would accompany each other thus far and no further? Is even a block too close for the 12 year old, is he fearful everyday that his peers might see him in the company of his grandfather? Does he secretly miss his grandfather for those first few steps in the other direction, before returning to thoughts about the video game level he conquered that morning?

So much said by the proximity of two people, by the silence forming a third person between those two bodies.

lost

2011-10-17T19:58:00.000-07:00

what is happening inside when you get lost in thought

bury deep inside yourself until you reach the running river of grief and joy -

the place where you plunge naked into memory, and rise again shining shivering shaking?

(via Tala Azar)

Skateistan

2011-10-17T06:26:00.002-07:00

SKATEISTAN: TO LIVE AND SKATE KABUL from Diesel New Voices on Vimeo.

Truly incredible project, breathtakingly beautifully shot, and really, really worth taking 7 minutes for.

today's joy

2011-10-16T11:12:00.001-07:00

giant gingerbread man spotted climbing a tree. that is all.

I remember...

2011-10-15T21:16:00.001-07:00

joy today left me mouth agape at its incredibleness, walking down Bloor with a ridiculous grin and a heart full of awe.

passing by a church, bustling with wedding activity spilling onto the street, I wondered about the event about to take place, the family dynamics of those involved, what kind of husband the groom, suited up in a brown tuxedo and smoking, would be.

on the next corner a character of an old man stands, also pondering the scene. He has a flowing mane and beard of absurdly white hair, tucked underneath a large hat (the kind one should wear while driving a pick up and showing visitors around a small town) and eyes hidden behind a pair of large aviator sunglasses. His hand was placed firmly over his heart, and I imagined he must be reliving his own wedding day, and wondered who was on his mind.

then, just as I passed him, he proclaimed in a loud, heavily accented voice and a dramatically raised hand,

"I remember Monte Carlo..."

and i was floored by the story contained in that one line.

the ministry of imagination

2011-10-14T18:20:00.002-07:00

"Thus every totalitarian regime is frightened of the artist. It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing future alternatives to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one."-Walter Brueggeman

Brueggeman articulating what my heart is singing tonight.

light.

2011-10-14T05:39:00.001-07:00

The light in these photographs (photographer Lars Wastfelt) is so beautiful and makes me wish for a Swedish childhood...but I somehow remember BC evening light being similar.

getting shivers...

2011-10-12T11:55:00.004-07:00

Scott Erickson is probably as close as it gets to doing what I want to do one day. Not sure yet what to make of his artistic style, but the man is playing with some pretty amazing ideas and doing the things that everyone talks about, but never actually does.

Check out his blog here.

papers still aren't done...

2011-10-11T08:28:00.002-07:00

procrastinating from writing a conclusion to my paper....

From C.S. Lewis' "Screwtape Letters," a little excerpt I once heard while barely concious, that has haunted me since, and which I am still chewing on...

"I once had a patient, a sound atheist, who used to read in the British Museum. One day, as he sat reading, I saw a train of thought in his mind beginning to go the wrong way. The Enemy, of course, was at his elbow in a moment. Before I knew where I was I saw my twenty years' work beginning to totter. If I had lost my head and begun to attempt a defence by argument I should have been undone. But I was not such a fool. I struck instantly at the part of the man which I had best under my control and suggested that it was just about time he had some lunch. The Enemy presumably made the counter-suggestion (you know how one can never quite overhear What He says to them?) that this was more important than lunch. At least I think that must have been His line for when I said "Quite. In fact much too important to tackle it the end of a morning", the patient brightened up considerably; and by the time I had added "Much better come back after lunch and go into it with a fresh mind", he was already half way to the door. Once he was in the street the battle was won. I showed him a newsboy shouting the midday paper, and a No. 73 bus going past, and before he reached the bottom of the steps I had got into him an unalterable conviction that, whatever odd ideas might come into a man's head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of "real life" (by which he meant the bus and the newsboy) was enough to show him that all "that sort of thing" just couldn't be true. He knew he'd had a narrow escape and in later years was fond of talking about "that inarticulate sense for actuality which is our ultimate safeguard against the aberrations of mere logic". He is now safe in Our Father's house."

3 post day? Paper time!

2011-10-10T10:34:00.003-07:00

it's easy to tell when i should be doing homework...blog posts become inordinately more important for some strange reason.

but my excuse is that this is really nice and pretty and should be shared...

Nouwen

2011-10-10T06:13:00.000-07:00

a kind of "reblog" of sorts (Tumblr-style) of the always brilliant B. M. Nickel and the way that she reads my heart so.

these are some things God was also talking to me about while I was chillin' on Nouwen's porch this weekend...

“When I left I had the feeling that many things had indeed come together by focusing on the glory of God. The question, ‘How to live for the glory of God and not for your own glory?’ has become very important to me. During the last weeks I have realized more and more that even my seemingly most spiritual activities can be pervaded with vainglory. [...]
How to dispel the passions that make us manipulate instead of worship? Well, the first thing to realize is that you are the glory of God. In Genesis you can read: ‘Yahweh God fashioned man of dust from the soil. Then he breathed into his nostrils a breath of life, and thus man became a living being’ (Gen 2:7). We live because we share God’s breath, God’s life, God’s glory. The question is not so much, ‘How to live for the glory of God?’ but, ‘How to live who we are, how to make true our deepest self?’

While a smile John Eudes [a monk at the Abbey] said, ‘Take this as your koan: ‘I am the glory of God.’ Make that thought the center of your meditation so that it slowly becomes not only a thought but a living reality. You are the place where God chose to dwell, you are the topos tou theou (God’s place) and the spiritual life is nothing more or less than to allow that space to exist where God can dwell, to create the space where his glory can manifest itself. In your meditation you can ask yourself, ‘Where is the glory of God? If the glory of God is not there where I am, where else can it be?””

- Henri Nouwen in The Genesee Diary: Report from a Trappist Monastery, chronicling a seven-month break that Nouwen took from his work as a scholar in upstate New York

alive.

2011-10-10T06:03:00.001-07:00

came across this on a friend's Tumblr recently, and I think it came from here. I love the sentiment, and have been thinking about similar things lately...

“I read the stories of other’s struggles and I find it a little easier to love the world after finishing each one. If only each of us had a biography we could distribute - we’d all be so much gentler with each other if everyone’s history was required reading. It’s why you are so kind to me here– because you know my story. But everyone has a story with at least as much joy and loss and love as mine. I think about it all the time – as I look around at people and imagine their stories- the state of their hearts - what they’ve overcome. I just want to stand up at restaurants sometimes and applaud wildly and yell -

‘BRAVO! TO ALL OF US! LOOK AT US, MAKING IT THROUGH THIS WILD, DIFFICULT LIFE! WE ARE STILL STANDING, DRESSING OURSELVES, BREATHING! BRAVO!’ ”

listen...

2011-10-06T05:30:00.000-07:00

my little brother is into Listener right now, and I couldn't be prouder. this morning Dan Smith is reminding me of my imperfection, the way I'm constantly stumbling through life and yet the incredible beauty of grace, and of love despite that all...

Wooden Heart

We’re all born to broken people on their most honest day of living
and since that first breath... We’ll need grace that we’ve never given
I've been haunted by standard red devils and white ghosts
and it's not only when these eyes are closed
these lies are ropes that I tie down in my stomach,
but they hold this ship together tossed like leaves in this weather
and my dreams are sails that I point towards my true north,
stretched thin over my rib bones, and pray that it gets better
but it won’t won’t, at least I don’t believe it will...
so I've built a wooden heart inside this iron ship,
to sail these blood red seas and find your coasts.
don’t let these waves wash away your hopes
this war-ship is sinking, and I still believe in anchors
pulling fist fulls of rotten wood from my heart, I still believe in saviors
but I know that we are all made out of shipwrecks, every single board
washed and bound like crooked teeth on these rocky shores
so come on and let’s wash each other with tears of joy and tears of grief
and fold our lives like crashing waves and run up on this beach
come on and sew us together, tattered rags stained forever
we only have what we remember

I am the barely living son of a woman and man who barely made it
but we’re making it taped together on borrowed crutches and new starts
we all have the same holes in our hearts...
everything falls apart at the exact same time
that it all comes together perfectly for the next step
but my fear is this prison... that I keep locked below the main deck
I keep a key under my pillow, it’s quiet and it’s hidden
and my hopes are weapons that I’m still learning how to use right
but they’re heavy and I’m awkward...always running out of fight
so I’ve carved a wooden heart, put it in this sinking ship
hoping it would help me float for just a few more weeks
because I am made out of shipwrecks, every twisted beam
lost and found like you and me scattered out on the sea
so come on let’s wash each other with tears of joy and tears of grief
and fold our lives like crashing waves and run up on this beach
come on and sew us together, just some tattered rags stained forever
we only have what we remember

My throat it still tastes like house fire and salt water
I wear this tide like loose skin, rock me to sea
if we hold on tight we’ll hold each other together
and not just be some fools rushing to die in our sleep
all these machines will rust I promise, but we'll still be electric
shocking each other back to life
Your hand in mine, my fingers in your veins connected
our bones grown together inside
our hands entwined, your fingers in my veins braided
our spines grown stronger in time
because are church is made out of shipwrecks
from every hull these rocks have claimed
but we pick ourselves up, and try and grow better through the change
so come on yall and let’s wash each other with tears of joy and tears of grief
and fold our lives like crashing waves and run up on this beach
come on and sew us together, were just tattered rags stained forever
we only have what we remember

joy this morning.

2011-10-02T06:29:00.003-07:00

oh yeah, this is why i was so incredibly happy this summer. 3 year olds=font of all wisdom.

kale

2011-10-01T17:45:00.001-07:00

my joy today definately has to be my desensitization to the awesomeness of kale. I bought a particularly leafy, magnificent bunch in the market today and, it being too big for my backpack, paraded it back to my bike. Along the way a panoply of people stopped me to comment on its leafiness and grandeur, some just exclaiming "Kale!" and others commenting on what they wanted to cook with kale.

I felt like a vegetable homecoming queen with a bouquet of distinction.

pray

2011-09-30T20:28:00.001-07:00

thinking about Ian and Larissa, five years later. Remember them when you're talking to God today...

spaces

2011-09-30T20:25:00.000-07:00

Assignment for one of my classes....

The place that I am today in my artistic practice and who Iam as a person are both firmly rooted in one of my earliest memories of beinghappy and contentedly lost in what I was doing.

I am the eldest and only girl in a family of four children,and so growing up was a tumultuous affair. Energetic boys and constant activitycharacterized our family dynamic and quiet wasn’t easy to find.

But I had an escape. Under the stairs in our tiny townhousewas a storage space, angular and stuffy, that alternated between being actuallyused for storage and being a tiny art space for myself. There was a delicateorange Formica table just big enough to sit one tiny girl, a matching yellowchair, and, more importantly, stacks and stacks of National Geographics that mymother had rescued from the local recycling depot, what seemed like moremagazines than any eight year old could possibly read in her life.

Reading through these towering stacks of yellow tomescreated a whole world for me. I started by spending hours just simply leafingthrough them, entering lives and stories entirely disconnected and foreign tomy small suburban existence. I learned about the trials of women in Japan whowere geishas, stared horrified at photojournalistic exposes on overseas wars,and always avoided the sections that featured newly discovered species of fishand a nasty variety of creatures that always reminded me of sea snakes. Thephotographs in all their iterations interpellated me, but were just a littletoo realistic sometimes. In hindsight these hours spent immersed in thesemagazines likely made me aware of world issues and conflicts at a particularlyearly age. This was something my parents probably didn’t fully realize washappening, and might have contributed to the anxiety I often experienced as achild. There is also the possibility, however, that it may have alsocontributed to my curiosity about the world and my ability to look carefullyand thoughtfully at what surrounds me, to see the world as an artist does.

Another essential element of these times spent away was thesoundtrack that accompanied them. My mom had a particular fondness for Kenny Gsaxophone cassette tapes, and so smooth jazz carried me on my solo expeditionsaround the globe. And these times spent silently and hungrily consuming imagesreally felt like fully entering a dream world. When I closed the finalyellow-bordered cover for the day it was as if I had finally settled on theshore of my home port after a long journey, a haze surrounding what exactly Ihad experienced while away.

This consumption eventually morphed into creation, animpulse that I was taught was natural by my paternal grandmother. She wasalways my collaborator, encouragement, and creative soulmate when misunderstoodby the rest of my family. My first recollection of creating with her, nowalmost mythologized in my memory, involves working on a coloring book page thatfeatured a panda. I took a break to go to the bathroom, and when I returned,she had proceeded to colour my panda an outrageous gradient of wild pinks,fuschias and purples, rendering him psychedelic and decidedly unnatural. I wasutterly horrified and indignant at her impulsiveness, faced for the first timewith my perfectionist tendencies and fear of experimenting or taking risks. Ican’t remember the exact moment that I embraced this artistic impulse that shehad so concretely embodied for me, but as the years progressed I startedcolouring outside of the lines, coming to peace with my complete lack oftechnical skills, and honoring the impulse to create that overcomes me atcertain moments, which I have yet to turn into a developed and disciplinedpractice.

The drive to work with the raw intellectual and visualmaterial provided by these National Geographics eventually started to manifestitself in basic collage work. Familiar issues, now old friends after hoursspent together, were dissected and reassembled and recombined on big sheets ofpaper, their absence creating new compositions in the remaining corpse of themagazine. Certain favorite images, of which I only had one copy, were carefullysaved for specific pieces, hoarded for the right moment when they could be usedto their full potential. These early self-motivated acts of creation andcomplete artistic freedom were quickly squashed once I left my safe haven andmoved on to elementary school. In Grade 4 I distinctly remember being deeplydisquieted when told by my teacher that my desire to bend her rules in order toexperiment with colour, line, symmetry and repetition in a piece that featuredtissue paper hummingbirds was strictly not allowed. To a certain extent themore I learn about and look at art it becomes harder to return to this sacredspace I occupied as a child, to that disregard for what has been done andcontentedness to work merely with what I have been given and create from there.

This sense of working from existing material is what bothdrives and worries me in my current practice. I’ve never felt like I hadanything original to say, anything worth proclaiming to the world through mycreations, and have always fallen back to working from existing images, motifsand conversations and remixing, recreating and embellishing them. My practiceis still based mainly in collage and inspired by found objects and imagery,tracing the world in the hopes of learning something from it and creatingsomething worthy of notice. Entering criticism and curatorial practice ismotivated by this desire to see what already exists, to hear the ideasmotivating the creators around me in the hopes of coming to a deeperunderstanding of what is behind their works and obsessions.

I still lack confidence in my ability to create,and the worthiness of any thoughts I might desire to express through color andline and tone, but the lack of fear I see when I look back at my small bodynestled amongst towering stacks of rich imagery is inspiring. I have a lot tolearn from who I was.

fall

2011-09-25T10:50:00.001-07:00

and I'm back after nearly a month of postlessness, for reasons that I have yet to really figure out. but at the prompting of a dear friend, and in missing the act of recording my joys, I'm back.

with a quote penned by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, passed along by said friend, which is resonating in a heart with wobbly walls:

About this Word, Dietrich writes: “… God has put this Word into the mouth of men in order that it may be communicated to other men. When one person is struck by the Word, he speaks it to others. God has willed that we should seek and find His living Word in the witness of a brother, in the mouth of man. Therefore, the Christian needs another Christian who speaks God’s Word to him. He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he cannot help himself without belying the truth. He needs his brother man as a bearer and proclaimer of the divine word of salvation. He needs his brother solely because of Jesus Christ. The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother’s is sure.”

and the occurrence of a joy before my very (bare) feet in a park this morning, half dreaming and half watching a trio of small children ride their bikes around an empty outdoor hockey rink. a grown up BMX biker arrived in the ring, and proceeded to put on a show of an incredible succession of twirls, hops and balances on his ride, right in the middle of their careful, measured circuit. their faces, so in awe of this and backing away from his orbit with a mixture of fear and excitement, made me laugh. i'm sure that in their minds nothing that cool has happened to them ever before, and that it made their day. my heart joined theirs in feeling just a little bit tight with joy.

white owl

2011-08-24T14:06:00.002-07:00

meditating on these lyrics from "White Owl" by Josh Garrels, off of his latest album, Love and War and the Sea In Between, because I really don't want to go...

White Owl

When the night comes,
and you don’t know which way to go
Through the shadowlands,
and forgotten paths,
you will find a road

Like an owl you must fly by moonlight with an open eye,
And use your instinct as a guide, to navigate the ways that lays before you,
You were born to, take the greatest flight

Like a serpent and a dove, you will have wisdom born of love
To carry visions from above into the places no man dares to follow
Every hollow in the dark of night
Waiting for the light
Take the flame tonight

Child the time has come for you to go
You will never be alone
Every dream that you have been shown
Will be like living stone
Building you into a home
A shelter from the storm

Like a messenger of peace, the beauty waits be released
Upon the sacred path you keep, leading deeper into the unveiling
As your sailing, across the great divide

Like a wolf at midnight howls, you use your voice in darkest hours
To break the silence and the power, holding back the others from their glory
Every story will be written soon
The blood is on the moon
Morning will come soon

Child the time has come for you to go
You will never be alone
Every dream that you have been shown
Will be like living stone
Building you into a home
A shelter from the storm

tonight.

2011-08-22T20:00:00.002-07:00

because sometimes joy slaps you in the face and demands to be shared with everyone.

-sitting around a table with people who could genuinely say "Who would've thought we'd be in this place, clean for this many months, eating with these people?" (that Christ would save wretches like us?)
-little boy laughter that puts the entire table into hysterics
-eating blackberries in the pouring rain, laughing at how stupid we were not to bring our rain coats, and relishing the fact that we didn't
-icing portraits drawn on a birthday cake by a six year old

joi.

2011-08-18T22:24:00.002-07:00

tonight I was read a story (out loud!) that I loved as a child, after an evening during which I read the same story to my favorite boys. Also, spinning around in a circle holding onto the hands of a little boy till you're dizzy is highly underrated, and should be done regularly.

one joy.

2011-08-16T21:31:00.001-07:00

sweetest, cutest three year old+Skype=magic

joy. joy! joy?

2011-08-11T22:57:00.002-07:00

struggling with whether or not to continue on with these joys...for reasons that I hope to be able to properly articulate here soon. but for now....

-the most perfect weather yet, and a spontaneous trip to pick giant, juicy blackberries that smacked of summer (hiding between rows, burrowed in the grass, savoring the warmth)
-watching a little girl pull away from her mother on the subway to hand a seemingly random man a sprig of lavender (still trying to figure out the story behind that one...)
-conversations with a 6 year old (amidst to my first trip to McDonalds in probably years)
-and the cherry on my sundae: a frank recounting of what he likes and dislikes about life in general by my favorite three year old, source of all wisdom: "I like flowers! and watermelon! but not dinosaurs....who bite my bum!"

tired joy.

2011-08-02T23:08:00.002-07:00

and amazingly, again, joy pushing through (real) tears and the sense that this is what life really is...struggling to love something when everything tells you it's too difficult, too tiring, not worthwhile, and succeeding against all hope.

-coasting down hills on a bike with a six year old, making Mario and Luigi noises and screaming at the top of our lungs
-the most providential honest-to-goodness lemonade stand (everything flavoured with fresh mint!) at the perfect point of our ride, on the hottest day yet, and getting to be the second and third customers of the day
-literally laughing and crying at the same time, then crying some more, and then some more smiling despite it all
-surprise coffee with my mom at the Elysian Room
-actually being asked by (small) someones to sing, and realizing that Jesus loves me really is an awesome song

weekend.

2011-08-01T22:31:00.001-07:00

au(joie)d'hui

2011-08-01T22:05:00.002-07:00

answered prayer today in the form of persistent shoots of joy pushing through inexplicable fatigue and caffeine heartaches. learning in the process how to choose joy when everything within me is protesting.

-wildly riding a tricycle in tandem with my favorite three year old
-said three year old praying for a dinner (eyes and hands tightly clasped!) that was dominated by his giggles
-a water balloon fight in which I was the definite (and most wet) loser
-Henri Nouwen's thoughts on the role of the wounded minister in "The Wounded Healer," particularly his chapter on loneliness and what we are to do with it, and these two passages:

"our loneliness reveals to us an inner emptiness that be destructive when misunderstood, but filled with promise for those who can tolerate its sweet pain."

"Many churches decorated with words announcing salvation and new life are often little more than parlors for those who feel quite comfortable in the old life, and who are not likely to let the minister's words change their stone hearts into furnaces where swords can be cast into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks."

joy?

2011-07-25T22:11:00.003-07:00

counting my joys is the last thing I feel like doing right now, which is probably a sign that I should do it....

-9 people eating the dinner I made with great gusto
-the Outpost cafe saving my sanity again and again
-Josh Garrels' "Farther Along." I imagine that I have listened to this song something like 30 times in the last few days...
-an amazing overheard conversation that included Zizek being described alternatively as super-fun, crazy and gross, and then proceeded to mention Ke$ha and Frederic Jameson showing up at a house party together, with her calling him "Freddy-J" and "FJ."

Also, a whole new appreciation for singer-songwriters with incredible talent when it comes to poetic lyrics. Stand-outs lately include Joanna Newsom (affectionately called J-New in my house this past year), mewithoutyou and Listener.

joy (in the face of it all)

2011-07-21T10:09:00.003-07:00

to be honest, joy has not been foremost on my mind in the last few days, but rather struggle, fatigue and anxiety. but it has been ever present all the same, lurking in corners waiting for me to recognize it...

-baby ducklings (at this time of year! weird...)
-also sighted on my run: two built, Hells Angels-esque men giving each other back massages on the side of the trail. also strange, and hilarious.
-ridiculously good coffee at the Elysian Room
-my mom and I cracking up as my dad frantically tried to measure the kitchen with his arms when he couldn't find the tape measure

and Psalm 100:

¹ Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth.
² Worship the LORD with gladness;
come before him with joyful songs.
³ Know that the LORD is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his^[a];
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

⁴ Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.
⁵ For the LORD is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.

hip hop and Yemen

2011-07-17T22:08:00.000-07:00

Shake the Dust - Yemen from Loose Luggage on Vimeo

joie de vivre

2011-07-17T09:40:00.002-07:00

-playing hide and seek with 3 and 6 year old boys. Let's just say no one stayed hidden for very long!

-the smell of lavender at night

-silently watching a skunk wander around near me with a mix of horror and delight

-my brother. being amazed at how much we have both changed over the last few years, and it being great to have someone I can go to shows with.

-picking raspberries in the city

aroma of the new.

2011-07-13T14:37:00.002-07:00

Great article by Mako Fujimara on our longing for the world that ought to be.

"The World That Ought to Be is that which is already imbedded in our senses. God's hand touches us, even through the cold earth of death and despair, even though we are being washed away in the sea of Liquid Modernity. The gospel is an aroma, the aroma of the New. And the aroma will reach us, even in the darkest despair."

recent joys

2011-07-12T22:54:00.002-07:00

-coming across a bus driver, silently grinning, watching a cat slowly walk through his van, investigating it, in a moment of sunny stillness that felt like a frame from a movie
-walking through the downtown eastside with new friends, hearing stories of heartache, family, prostitution, poverty, addiction and hope
-quiet moments of listening that I could tell meant something
-a walk around the block with a 3 year old, full of curiosity, fascination and enthusiasm, as well as the careful inspection of spiders, grass, and shadows. hearing stories of dreams he had had that involved tornadoes of crows, blue dinosaurs that "I'm not fraid of!" and learning what makes for a good monster walk.

full.

2011-07-12T22:40:00.002-07:00

wonderful times away at the cottage, bursting with joy, ripe sun and swims in the lake that made me feel more alive than I've been for a long time. favorite moments of the weekend include making conspicuous fools of ourselves in several public places, doubled over in unstoppable laughter, our abs aching, for a variety of mundane reasons, like an unfortunate illustration in a bird-care book, awkward segues about diapers and lisps. Also wild raspberry picking amidst an afternoon too beautiful to be real, watching a sunset from Adirondack chairs on the dock, chicken-fights on said dock that ended with one of us in the water, and run-ins with aggressive sprinklers.

joy! joy! joy!

2011-07-06T21:01:00.002-07:00

-an elderly East Indian man (a former hotelier from Kashmir) giving me life advice at a bus stop, on everything from proper toothbrushing techniques to the proper way to pray (apparently God is activated upon praying "Lord, please sustain me" 100 times)
-taking skateboarding lessons from a 6 year old
-early morning coffee on the river with my mom
-more running through sprinklers (a summer discipline to cultivate)

a house of poetry.

2011-07-06T21:00:00.000-07:00

a beautiful, beautiful story.

joy!

2011-07-05T22:59:00.000-07:00

Highlight of my day? For sure this.

wonder

2011-07-05T08:18:00.002-07:00

at...

-two monarchs fluttering around in mid-afternoon sunny stillness

-English Bay in evening, and small children running around in the water

-getting locked in the closet as an initiation rite at work, and laughing with my face smushed into freshly washed linens

joies (des jours)

2011-07-03T19:15:00.003-07:00

time to play catch-up (ketchup?). it's been a while, and although these days have had joys, there has been sadness too, steep learning curves and new life things to figure out. but joys...

-having brothers to talk romance with and knowing they're old enough (and mature enough) to know what they're talking about
-just generally having moments of deep appreciation for my family
-Skyping with wonderful Toronto friends who desire such good things from God
-another moment of being joyfully grossed out by little kids and their openness about bodily functions. i won't get into graphic details, but let's just say it involved a little boy wearing a dress from the dress-up box, a copious amount of snot, and lots of laughter.
-being called silly on multiple occasions, by an assortment of people in my life, both old and young
-singing "In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle" with my little brother spontaneously over breakfast
-seeing Tree of Life for the second time (and still crying, though not as much as the first time)
-getting walked to the bus stop by my dad, like I was in third grade again
-getting evangelized to by a Jehovah's witness at said bus stop and finding the whole situation ridiculous and funny for some reason

and today, spending hours in God's creation, wondering how such beautiful things could possibly exist. Like seeing hours-old baby robins from inches away, blind and sleeping in a heaving pile (something like this...)

beach.

2011-07-01T23:27:00.002-07:00

Happy Canada Day from the west (best) coast! beachy times with B.Nickel...

east van voyage.

2011-06-27T23:07:00.006-07:00

joie du jour.

2011-06-27T22:32:00.003-07:00

-bike rides at dusk.
-this is going to sound weird, but changing a dirty diaper. being so entirely grossed out that i was laughing, which got the kid whose diaper i was changing to laugh, which made me laugh, and entered us into feedback loop that was just ridiculous and silly. and joyful, despite the circumstances.
-this, which I posted on my Tumblr a while back, but has captured my imagination and makes me laugh just thinking about it.

aujourd'hui (joie)

2011-06-26T23:04:00.004-07:00

and today's joys include...

(pictures to come...)

-eating a mango from Chinatown like a popsicle
-Strathcona houses in colours and shades that made us gawk
-Bandidos Taqueria
-walking for hours all over East Van
-peeking through the windows of abandoned buildings
-dancing to this: