Please take care of me,

I'm a little lonely and sad when the day is finally over.

Dreamt about a double layer of ribs; I pulled air into my lungs hesitantly and slowly to feel if they would rub against each other...

You.

Isn't it better to read than I ?

“ Hatred, for example, has no place within God’s good creation. It is unimaginable in the context of God’s plan for the earth. Nevertheless, hatred cannot exist without the creational substratum of human emotion and healthy assertiveness…Creation will not be surpressed in any final sense.”

-- Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained

I like that because the evil is not the strongest, like the cynic in my head always suggests. It is not rooted, instead it lives only as a parasite and it means that nothing can be without good, nothing can survive apart from what he is and what he has said.

Psalm 10.17-18

O LORD, you hear the desire of the afflicted;
you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.

I would like to spend the two years with HALO somewhere, or something like it. I want something thats tangled there in my heartstrings and I still can't figure out just what it is...

We enter
the green river,
heron harbor,
mud-basin lined
with snagheaps, where turtles
sun themselves--we push
through the falling
silky weight
striped warm and cold
bounding down
through the black flanks
of wet rocks--we wade
under hemlock
and white pine--climb
stone steps into
the timeless castles
of emerald eddies,
swirls, channels
cold as ice tumbling
out of a white flow--
sheer sheets
flying off rocks,
frivolous and lustrous,
skirting the secret pools--
cradles
full of the yellow hair
of last year’s leaves
where grizzled fish
hang halfway down,
like tarnished swords,
while around them
fingerlings sparkle
and descend,
nails of light
in the loose
racing waters.

Mary Oliver; Climbing the Chagrin River. This is such beautiful use of language.

Repetition

Maybe it's an impetuous and immature part of youth, seeking to break the reoccurring patterns or deviate from the norm and introduce novelties at any opportunity. I think that what is simple is often what is most deeply profound - and honestly, it is what we need most and don't look to with respect. To arise each morning with breath still moving in and out of our chest cavity, to find the sun has arisen with us, to heal from the daylight in sleep after the ever consistent onset of night, to see the moon rise and keep guard over us when the dark does come. We expect this, we wouldn't wish it broken. I want to be an old soul on the porch of life here, one whose heart is contented by the staccato of what must always reoccur:

Psalm One hundred and thirty-six.

This is the fabric under our feet, the morality that rocks us in its back-and-forth like a mama and her wicker-back chair.

Simplicity

Covet not.

I'm sorry,

I know it's below zero out there, but I LOVE the snow. It is wickedly beautiful.
Would you like to know what else is beautiful? Vocabulary. Saturation, faithfulness, and essential are all words that gave me a stomach ache today from experiencing them freshly and yet still knowing their presence like familiar friends.

This morning

I wish I had a camera so I could have shown it to you.

...Just imagine an understated sunrise, snow dusting the trees on the horizon line, thin green and pink streaking low along a very powdery blue beyond.

Instead of growing and letting myself be shaped to love others increasingly better, I find I shape myself to be better loved. I do need to desire love to be healthy, but how do I get big enough to keep that away from my motivation? How can I love because He loved me first? It is the first day of spring classes, a beautiful day - and I am reminded that even if I forgot, even if I walked out my door with books over my shoulder, eager and rearing to do well and learn much, He would sustain me. I don't have to recognize it for God to be great, He is One - eternal; above, before, and after me. But how much better for me to hold tight onto the rope and bucket that will let down into my well of deep, dark peace.

For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Romans 8.26-27

It is almost ten o’clock, I can see the snow falling from my window by the street lamps and I feel better in spirit. It is good to be home here with my friends. Kaethe and I watched a half hour of His Girl Friday, and we will finish it later on. I have homework to get done. My newly accquired, two-dollar copy of Anna Karenina sits on my bookshelf, a crumpled tissue with spots of blood from my running nose sits ontop of it. I am imagining that it is too cold outside for people to be walking around, but there are still some trails of footprints on the powdered sidewalk. The orangey yellow lights in the parkinglot illuminate huge piles of ploughed snow, and a couple standing at their car, sometimes kissing, sometimes kicking the snow at their feet.

Megan turned out her light, my head is so congested and I have felt like going to sleep since we had lunch today so I will finish my work in the morning. Class begins at 11.30, Work and Vocation with Doctor Carmer, then Life Drawing immediately after with Professor Seitz. I am excited, my body is not feeling well at the moment, but I feel a membrane-like layer of hope. It’s thin and kind of see-through, but it’s resilient; sticks together and holds its form even when it gets a little stretched or pulled on.

But I do have a new home,

So its alright. Maybe its reflective of my tendency to pull away, or of my current feelings about returning to the cold East, but look, there are stairs. Come up and stay with me, yes?

Farewell is mostly a sad song.

Tonight is my last night to call California home. Tonight is also the first time that the realization has made me feel like crying. I’m not ready for the snow yet, not quite. I like feeling the hot sun of the past two days weave in with the fibers of my muscles, making me stronger – I cannot even tell you how much I love the feeling of the deep icy Pacific crash against my body when I get in its way, I love the goosebumps that prick up on my skin while it goes numb, purple and white at once. I love the knots that the salt and sand and wind tie into my hair and I love to lay on my back and really see with my eyes how huge and great the sky is. I love to watch the moon rise in bright white even with the sun still in the sky. I love to track the birds and think about why they fly. I like to dig holes into the cold, damp sand with Amanda and then carve out a tunnel under the surface until we can feel each other’s fingers meet in the middle, with Alli digging her own little hole to the side of us. Pushing sand, hunting for sticks of bleached wood, stones and rocks, finding a bone and a seed pod.
I love how the sunlight looks on all the grey and charcoal and dirty white asphalt, sidewalks, industrial buildings, warehouses. I love how it dries everything to a hot, simmering surface. This place has rugged bones that are softened by a covering of green and dry, sandy-orange umber. Looking at the mountains from above, their ridges and peaks are worn, smoothened, and their sides fall away, trenches just like the ones that appear in a mound of beach sand that sea water has been poured over. The land always looks so alive to me, almost saying, ‘come settle into me, I am rich and there is much to give.’

A morning excursion tomorrow, for Amanda and I, to the sand....

Somewhere else (than here) I am...

I’m still seeing mountains, frosted and buried trees. A rabbit in his fist; but up here I don’t mind. Up here there is a taste for it in my mouth and we are grateful to God and the rabbit’s life. My clothes don’t matter here, it’s okay that my hair is long and has nothing but soap and melted ice to keep it. I don’t have to bother about pressed linen or a solid red lipstick line in order to read and cook and look out windows. We can listen to records but the snow’s paradoxical sound, the creak of the floor as a bare foot steps across it; the sounds of the house outside and the fire are enough. Maybe neither of us even talk much, we love one another because we can be alone together. Sometimes a word might start to rise up in my neck, but then to let it dissolve in with our quiet is just as rich a contribution to our discussion as speaking would have been. There is enough speech around us to lie still for centuries and listen.

Hearing his voice saying words is far more sacred than if we were in the city. Before nighfall he would sit on a rock in the white, a David with his lyre, cold smoke streaming from his mouth and nose while the rare and careful sounds came. We’ve listened to try and learn from the foxes, the crystal ice snap, the stars in small puncture wounds to the velvet-thick heaven. The pouring forth – he won’t touch it because here is a place redemption hadn’t needed to come until we did. We know we are being sanctified, but the pouring forth is an ancient holiness and to join our water with the voices, our voices must first know a harmony or create in reference to its rhythm. If he ever sings, I lie down and touch the scars on each bare twig that will swell into buds.

Its this kind of morning in my thoughts. I keep trying to get away from where I am even though I am preoccupied with missing what I'll be leaving behind when we go. Ah well.

Evening

The back of my hands smell like Stetson.

Feel like I want to read a Dickens novel.

Also feel like digging my shoulder blades into a hillock of sand, where the ocean's push is heard but unseen from my spot

- and where I could read Dickens.

The scent on my hands makes me think of rushing rivers, the silhouette of a man standing staunch in the water’s flow and casting his line in twilight glint. I could read in the mountains too; maybe my hillock of sand could be replaced by a pine fire and the fly-fisherman.

Recapture my wandering feet and nail them down

I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness and you will acknowledge the Lord.
Hosea 2.9-10

The Swans

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

- Mary Oliver

Love, Alexa

      dear jordie           -->    i am overjoyed that
   you are going to      -->        be home in
 less than two weeks                 it is so weird
that these 4 months                      went by so
quickly maybe                             it is because
because i have                           been partying
so much                                        just kidding.
my performance                            for choir
choir and                                      all I have
one tomorrow                               aka Saturday
We had a                                     performance
on                                               tuesday
 that                                             went
 amazingly                                  well . the,
Agrons                                       are coming
 to my                                       performance
   on Tuesday                          which i am
so so excited                         about about.
I hope you                         had an amazing
som 4 months                       at college. i love
      you and i                   will see you
    in less then                  two weeks and
   i will probably            be there to pick
you up if i am aloud to.   ok i
love    you  love you  love you x infinity
and   will   see   you soon    say hi to
friends   love    your    little   sis


Can't recreate the loops in her handwriting, the punctuation, the drawing in the middle that broke up her sentences. But, you may get a sense of what's smiling in me now.

This morning a package came with a black dress for tonight, a new Kings Of Leon album, and hilarious letters from Jeff and Alli.

I was laughing out loud in Chesters as I read them, their letters always make my entire week.

Okay there is no way I can read philosophy and enjoy my music. Its sounds like driving!! Windows down, ocean and cliffs to the left, sun up above and in my eyes....I want my curving green hills, my downtown, my vineyards flashing past, my rocks and sand to watch the waves from, my friends.

Home is always going to build. I used to think that wasn't my home, that I didnt fit there on the coast - and I was right, I don't fit anywhere. But I am a very happy guest of Oregon, of California, of Massachusetts, and now of South Carolina too. Homes aren't lost, they add onto eachother. You can go back and be a guest again.

How beautiful artmaking is...

Bruce Herman

I just don't have words for the goodness you can feel in it.

I liked it better at this stage.

But the thing is, you can't go back. So you just keep painting honestly, putting down what you see in the mirror as best you can, and take drinks of the mercy that's held in cupped hands in front of your lips.

Teacher...

…thank you that something mattered today. Something really physical invaded our metaphysical talk.

Time to count blessings:

Because of my aforementioned discontent, I ought to find no less than twenty good things. I've got at least fifty blessings on just a square inch of the back of my hand I'm sure, but twenty to start with for now.

One. My more-than-comfortable bed.

Two. Advil for headaches.

Three. A roommate to motivate me to take said Advil.

Four. A pair of glasses to help my eyes see.

Five. Strings of christmas lights in our room and wrapped around trees.

Six. Texting that allows me to laugh with a sister who is on the other side of the country.

Seven. Hot, running, clean water to turn on and off without a thought.

Eight. A finger ring of mysterious black wood, found floating in the ocean by my sister who eventually passed it on to my hand.

Nine. A welcoming and generous family taking me in for the holiday.

Ten. Socks on my feet, with ten more pairs in the drawer.

Eleven. A full stomach.

Twelve. Memories poked and pressed like a mint leaf by the Christmas decorations that are appearing.

Thirteen. Hugs, hands, respectful human touch that grounds a person so well.

Fourteen. Color in the world - color that changes too.

Fifteen. Megan laughing across from me with her headphones in.

Sixteen. A patient book of true holy things that will remain true when I don't.

Seventeen. Frost on the grass.

Eighteen. Frost disappearing in the morning when the sun comes up over campus.

Nineteen. Classes to go to.

Twenty. A ticket home.

It's hard to make a happy list when you aren't happy. Even when you have no reason whatsoever in the world to be unhappy...but God won't forsake me to my own greedy dismissal of the good things that more than half of the world is denied.

I want more humility - I've been asking for it, and He gives it to me in sticky red spoonfuls. Maybe I could write a Christmas list with those kinds of things on it...

Ich fühle krank.

Und Arbeit gefällt mir nicht heute.

This is dreadful. Timing couldn't be worse for apathetic lethargy to set in - I have finals to finish in a blaze of glory, people!

I just watched an hour's worth of a movie instead of working on a paper and I've never really done that before. Now I have a headache and want to go to bed early, but the paper must still be written and my 'big picture perspective', which is also unhelpfully timed, makes me waste energy trying to even justify writing it, instead of just going at it with blind, persevering industry.

I keep digging out motivational quotes and paragraphs, convicting lines written by church fathers and historical heroes.

Like BB gun pellets bouncing off Jack and the Beanstalk's giant, all of it. Still sitting here finding the relative importance of my assignments almost funny.

Autumn is coming to a close.

I would like this. Everything about it....one day.

The sunlight is beautiful now; its becoming winter light, but because we haven't had snow yet, there is still life that you can see and feel in the grass and the trees. I love the solid, clear blocks of sun that come with such clarity, neat and geometric as life settles down because the harvest parties in the woods are being replaced by gentler discussions inside our homes.

Everything is getting colder and harder and I look forward to the soft acoustic of snow. Its easy to romanticize, easy to forget how the ice comes too, and how it melts and mixed with dirt to become wet, sloshing mud.

But we aren't there yet. Winter is on its way, yet late November crispness still gives the fallen leaves a skeleton (the snow will make them limp and flat) as they are tossed everywhere by strong winds. Green still spreads across the ground like an aging carpet and like everything else it has some grey around the edges. Frost comes in the mornings too, glorious spiked crystals of white helping the world get used to the cold before December finally comes.

I am glad for the winter, for the humbling quiet it can force us into. I just wish I was a wild animal who could hibernate as we are probably supposed to. Instead, rigorous study is my lot - something I'm grateful for too, but sleep would be most natural and I am tempted to follow Annie Dillard's advice when she says “I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.” Surrendering to our instinctual needs, and ceasing to live by the ‘additions’ we have built on to our humanity, that is what I want. I don't do it very well, but oh how much I want to! I am grateful to have been created and to live embodied, to be clay infused with life from the breath of God's own mouth feels good - and I know that He is my one, my great necessity. I want to 'dangle from it limp.'

Dixie moonlight, Swanee shore

Headed homebound just once more

To my Mississippi delta home

Southland has that grand garden spot

Although you believe or not

I hear those breeze a-whispering:

"Come on back to me"

Muddy water 'round my feet

Muddy water in the street

Just God don't shelter

Down on the delta

Muddy water in my shoes

Reeling and rocking to them lowdown blues

They live in ease and comfort down there

I do declare

Been away a year today

To wander and roam

I don't care it's muddy there

But see it is my home

Got my toes turned

Dixie way 'Round the delta let me lay

My heart cries out for muddy water

I do wish I was Southern sometimes. Such romance.

Painted my first self portrait yesterday and I look like a cartoon in it.
Will be working to correct that in subsequent paintings for the rest of the semester.....

Soured feelings.

My attitude is not very good today.

I think if I were to ever get a tattoo, I should have the words of Christ on my hand,

"It is finished."

Maybe both hands.

It would call out my crippling perfectionism, rebuke my stress, and slap my lack of trust in the sovereignty of God across the face.

(Suzanne Valadon,)

A book of her work is open on my desk - I haven't had time to read anything about her but I look at what she paints, and so I hear some of what she says already.

Although, aha, I should point out that this painting is not actually Valadon's. This is Maurice Utrillo, and I connected the two only because I found his piece when searching for hers....

...not very clearly laid out, there.

Today is a day of non-sequiturs, even though this does actually follow logically. I do know that Utrillo was the son of Suzanne Valadon, illegitimate and disposed to alcoholism before the age of thirteen by way of his mother's choices and his grandmothers attempts sweeping up after her. She loved him and encouraged artistry however, and even though I've read that he developed his own style, I am fascinated by the relationship to his mother's. Unique, I think, to come across mother and son painters...

Count the joys in your pocket.

Hannah asked me for a happy list; and that itself must go on it!
I am rarely happier than when collecting together the daily moments of goodness, extraordinary and not.
..and rarely more so without the presence of a kindly and honest simple-heart. She is one!

(It might look like a strange happy list, but it's what has made me feel full lately. It comes straight from my journal - in the future I will stick to legitimate lists I promise.)

A new book!
An hour in between homework and class to lie on my bed,
Reading a Psalm and wanting to reread it many times
Falling asleep with the open pages of a Sword tucked against my breast
A roomate sleeping next to me,
(our beds pushed together like little girls do)
Sunshine outside, cold with an invisible quality of Autumn,
It’s the reminder of death I think – so insistently emblazoned
but in celebratory richness.
Watching people be people,
Reminded of their fallibility but happy to see it –
because there is room and reason for You to be present, working there
even in people with higher built knowledge, more focused understanding
…or at least what seems like it.
Conversation and dinner with Mandie last night,
ouch, something kind of hurts and I know its because I am selfish.
Flipping a page of the art book on my desk,
a floral still life with fruit that is very beautiful (I usually don’t like them.)

Learning – maybe relearning –
Disheartened by my backsliding, I feel more pathetic than before
So I’ve got fistfuls of blonde
[and I wish I was brave enough to tear, to mourn and really sorrow about it.]
But then encouragement whispers through my hair:
sanctification.
This is good.

Confession with a circle of young women,
(let me be specific and honest!)
Justice and its difference from charity, Thomas Aquinas.
Why we must pray and ask for God’s eyes,
seeing where my heart for people is:
A steady smoldering of joyous heartbreak excites me –
I am studying for them,
getting up early to read for them,
struggling to be better and compassionate for them
and so that I can make Him happy.

Painting burgundy Giraffe spots,
studying a magnolia and myself;
Hearing the two women behind the library circulation desk,
one talks excitedly about how Christ is outside of time and controls it for us,
Later remembering how wonderful children are
And listening to a story written respectfully and lovingly for them.

Yesterday, we took a walk in the rain. Yesterday there were leaves being carried down the street in a stream alongside the curb, and there was beach sand there under the water. There was a big white dog with kind, regal eyes who ambled alongside us obediently even though his fur was collecting the drops and making him unhappy. There were stones and pebbles to crunch with each step, the smell of rain on the asphalt and the fallen leaves beginning their death into the sweet earth. There was an ocean, majestic in its cold, crashing life that calms you through its wisdom and fills you with dread at its ancient, wild, depth. Like palest jade and icy milk the waves would rush toward us over the rain-dimpled sand, pooling into a small lake upon the beach and then retreating hastily to fold into itself once more with an insistent attitude and kind of need. But it isn’t ignoring you; the white will foam and rush and move in a desperate communication of something, something. It wants you to understand and is frustrated that you don’t.
I tried to listen and I heard myself, my memories, my comfortable house of heart that is there in the sea. I think I heard that Someone had been there with the waters, far ago when the spirit of God was hovering over them and before they were enlivened to breathing, skipping, oratory waves by the creation of a moon. But the sea is so alive on its own now, just like bodies with the breath of life in them. What was it like before? The sand was cold and sloped in sensuous lines all down the beach, interrupted by one dark black arch of driftwood, granite rocks, a hillside of brittling trees with leaves slippery in the rain. I splashed through the water but was careful with my footsteps; I didn’t want to ruin the stoic dignity of the sand and shore.

He knows I am frightened, and says 'Do not be afraid.'

Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.

Lord, I have been letting down my nets all night long. I have spent my life catching fish since I learned. Last night I took nothing. I know the waters are still the same as they were when I finally took the nets out to wash them.

I didn’t sleep much the night my painting needed to be finished, but I chose to sacrifice some rest because I felt well settled in my work, it was the right thing to toil for. Something has been growing in my mind, a conviction that I need to push hard and pursue a strong voice, a legitimate presence as an artist. I am scared to truly be one. I want to protect my vulnerable pride because I know how few people do it well and actually succeed, I want to comfortably continue in my work without the tears of frustration, the hours of sleeplessness and the many, many, many canvases I might have to discard or scrape down or leave behind because they simply are not true depictions, hard as I tried.

But at your word I will let down the nets.

I am still weary though, God – because I do not know where the future goes. Because I have already spent my energy, because I’ve seen that my present knowledge and talent is merely the dribbling infancy of good Art. Because I am learning things from three different disciplines at the same time, and I can barely grip those as tightly as I must in order to make it worthwhile. Every night I stay awake late, and rise early from mouth-wateringly blind sleep to finish a task, which was replaced by another before the first was even completed. I summon more strength, then more, then more, but the world has still not been satisfied.

‘And he said, “Go again,” seven times.’ [1 Kings 18.43]

So have mercy on me, my God who witholds no needful thing from me. My obedience feels limp but I will put out into the deep, even after I’ve fished all night.

And when they had done this, the nets were breaking and the boats were starting to sink….

"You are changed, You aren't any part a little girl anymore."

"Lately I've never felt good enough. I've always wanted to explain to him that I was not good."
"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good. Is that it?"
"I guess so. Maybe that's it."

East of Eden.

Jordan

The thing about a river is that she flows all alone, unlike trees who grow together and the earth that is one substance. Until she reaches the sea, she is companionless and aches as she moves. My painful loneliness is as bittersweet as always, and I almost venture to ask that you never take it away - you are the sea I rush towards, I will not settle for a lake or a marsh along the way simply to ease sorrow.
Thank you for my name and my love. I miss you and I am waiting to meet you.

Flags displayed for the celebration of a fisherman's wedding.

This photograph reminded me of driving through Gloucester after church last year in the fall, with two of the loveliest women you may ever meet, Hannah and Kristin. I am so excited to go back!

Why didn't I plant the mustard seed?

I don’t want my romance and idealism to be too squashed by increasing encounters with adulthood and the generally unromantic world surrounding, but I am realizing what a fairyland the past nineteen years have sort of been, especially the most recent one. At least in the face of what might be ahead now. My dreams were so rosy until the past month. Even the struggles and hardships I had forseen to accompany my ambitions were hazy around the edges with a quixotic kind of lustiness, and I was so eager to keep running ahead into future days. Something about the way this summer is passing seems to be giving me a taste of what it would be like to have my education cut off, my plans redirected and changed. Get that flavor off my tongue.

An old man knocked on the front door and startled me, but he was asking to photograph the black eyes susans underneath our window. “Thank you for this,” he said.

I thought that life seems to become less and less romantic in many ways, but perhaps at the same time, it is all a matter of what one wants to see in the world. I want to see charm around me, I will look for it and feed it and make sure maturity doesn’t live in the window box alone. I'll knock on someone's front door and ask to photograph their flowers. Thank you for that, sir.

My Gordon email address isnt working and its hitting me that not returning to Gordon might actually become a reality. I don’t want to leave the community I have there, I don’t want to stop what feels like such progress…I want to study art, to be guided in philosophy and reading and theology, I want to pray and be prayed for and walk by the pond and stay up late writing a paper because I spent too much time in the kitchen with Kaethe and Megan eating brownies. I want to hear the speakers in chapel, I want to slosh through rain and snow on cold dark winter days. I want to meet someone with a vision, but even more I want to grow in deeper friendship with the radiant young women there who I respect and love, who already see a flicker of purpose and calling in themselves. I should remember it isn’t Gordon that sets up my future and orchestrates my present, but you are. If I am not going back to Wenham, I will cry and cry more and then look around and see what other thing you have purposed for me. I once thought I wanted to attend Westmont more than anything. You gave me Gordon instead. Now I think I want to spend three more years in New England, travel to Salzburg for a summer, and talk with my friends while it snows outside more than anything. Keep next to me, and remind me what matters every second.

Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me."
Jesus replied, "Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?" Then he said to them, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."
And he told them this parable: "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.'
"Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry." '
"But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?'
"This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God."

Planting

I want to have a garden that is wild, unrestrained and overflowing with indigenous flora. I want to step across a long grassy path set with large flat rocks, a basket over my arm full of stones and seeds and uprooted plants. I want a pair of garden rainboots to wear with my favorite beige dress, and I want to care for and cultivate the earth that I live on while letting it be itself.

Perhaps I might learn something about how to raise children from a garden like that. Perhaps something about cultivating my own character.

I like these words.

I Taught Myself To Live Simply, Anna Akhmatova

I taught myself to live simply and wisely,
to look at the sky and pray to God,
and to wander long before evening
to tire my superfluous worries.
When the burdocks rustle in the ravine
and the yellow-red rowanberry cluster droops
I compose happy verses
about life's decay, decay and beauty.
I come back. The fluffy cat
licks my palm, purrs so sweetly
and the fire flares bright
on the saw-mill turret by the lake.
Only the cry of a stork landing on the roof
occasionally breaks the silence.
If you knock on my door
I may not even hear.

A National Geographic photographer named Steve McCurry took this. It makes me think about heaven and I can't help but realize wonderingly that this is actually a picture of earth.

Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.

Mahatma Ghandi said "Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.” That is why I think I have hesitated to even journal to myself the past few weeks. I am afraid all my words would have been said without the heart of artless, virgin love that would set them fragrantly aflame, pleasing to the Lord.
I do have a heart without words right now, but my charter comes from Saint Augustine: "Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you." I intended to read a lot the next few weeks; study is easy though and right prayer is hard, so I will push up my sleeves, tie up my hair and try.

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.

Maya Angelou


Love has left His high holy temple, and we are now the place in which He abides, if we will abide in Him.

Isn’t it strange how many days go by? How many things happen, whether or not we think that they matter, and then how soon they are completely over, untouchable because the window of ‘present’ has passed by them? How soon they are simply a journal entry, not alive anymore – just a memory. Something that happened once but has gone and can only ghost through printed lettering put together to describe it or hover in the deepest recesses of a brain. Still there, stored and filed, but in a wilderness that cannot be ventured into. A place things can only venture out from unexpectedly but cannot be retrieved because they are far, far in the distance.

Maybe somewhere I have a reflection image of that hospital room, and the man who sat in a chair waiting for his somebeody to come back out to him. Maybe I have the taste of the July 24th dinner I ate when I was three, maybe I have the sound of the way Shannon’s dog barked from behind our fence. I had pet the fur of a cat, I pushed through playground gravel looking for a lost birthstone, I put my nose in the carpet to catalogue a different smell, I picked a scab off of somewhere my skin had been cut. Blood rushed to my head through these same veins I have now and pounded against my temples when I hung up-side-down, I stepped on a rainpuddled sidewalk in a single space at a particular moment, I tasted my own blood when I hadn’t before known the rusty metal-salt of it, I heard my name come from someone’s tongue. For eighteen years, eight months, two weeks, eleven days and 42 minutes with one, two, three more seconds I have been breathing from outside of my mother’s body and taking more, more, more into the wilderness of my conscious at each flare of ‘present’.

Then I can't help but look at someone elses skull. Something I cannot penetrate and will never look through. But they have seen and touched and felt and remembered years worth of the present, and it is all there – somewhere – in their head but it seems so small for so many years, too small.

That’s why it is so fascinating to talk with people, to watch them as a memory emerges from their mouth. Do you know the sound of someone’s footsteps? Recognize the feel of their hands, though blindfolded? Have you copied some of their described memories, painted with your own fill-in-the-blank colors, and re-stored them in the fortress of your own brain?

I am caught up in the things that will be 'forgotten' so easily and fast; minutia - the sting of bleach in my lungs this morning, the hair color of the woman I walked past a few hours ago, the shape of a single dying tulip that I noticed for a slice of a second. It will fade away soon, maybe even tonight. I have already forgotten half of the things I touched, saw, felt with my hands from the moment I woke up. So I wonder about it all.

A Conversation with a Lady

Have you ever really listened to someone's voice and wondered why it is they choose to change tone, pitch, volume when they do? Maybe they don't realize they are doing it, perhaps we don't realize we do it, but I think it is because everyone has a music.

By the way, did you all know I admire Abigail Adam's very sincerely? I do. She was a woman to emulate, and she makes me laugh. "Well, knowledge is a fine thing, and mother Eve thought so; but she smarted so severely for hers, that most of her daughters have been afraid of it since."
Oh, silly daughters. Perhaps that is not funny, but it struck me that way and I laughed. However,
"If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women."
Yes, I am realizing that it is not radically feminist or Amazonian to affirm that we have worth, wisdom and leadership to give the world.
"Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and diligence."
Ardor and diligence can be so much to take though, Mrs. Adams. I want to float down a stream and nap on a river bank and read in a tree. I don't want to do things all the time. There is a season for everything and sabbath is a blessing.
Yes, true but do not let that obscure the fact that "Wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues."

There are great necessities in the world, so I will keep working.

Managing time, trying out decisions...

Seek first the Kingdom of God,
and then everything else will....


"I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of the world is coming. He has no claim on me, but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us go from here.” John 14.30-31

So that the world may know that I love the Father.

Rise, let us go from here.

Grandmother’s handwriting on the white paper

‘

modern garden

grass

liatris spicata

siberian iris

blazing star

papyrus

baby tears

interesting

clean

,

Strawberry stains on the white plate

rectangles of sunlight

neat, clean, ordered study

my books on the rug – in my lap – on the chair

pages assigned to myself

going unread

lie still

and my heartbeat moves my whole body

a pendulum clock

full veins, heart prone to wander

rays of sun

warming skin

quiet

sounds soothe and make for real stillness

I wont write what I love

because I love it,

the dance on the bricks

the chime in the tree

the metallic, the rust, the green living friend for the breeze

I noticed her age

but I don’t want to know -

timeless, forever, she’s always.

avocados, sea salt

blueberries

a glass of clear water.

Sometimes it doesn't seem like it,

but:

Forbidden fruit a flavor has
That lawful orchards mocks;
How luscious lies the pea within
The pod that duty locks!

~ Emily Dickinson

 

Since I can remember I've had a secret affection and desire for the bad boy, for forbidden fruit. It wasn't until I read Redeeming Love that I really truly wanted a man of God. Because until then, I had never seen such a good, 'luscious' as Miss Dickinson said, portrait of one. By the way, yes, this book is a Christian romance novel, but it is so much more. It has touched every person I know who has read it in remarkable ways (and it is certainly not just women.)

Harmony in miscellany

Erika took me to Starbucks today, and I was so encouraged by her as usual. Why is it, I thought later, that we are so drawn to people who are just like us? Are we that enamored of ourselves, or just accustomed to be timid in the face of unfamiliarity? I know we all must relate on at least some fronts, but I want to figure this out a little more. It is at the heart of the way different races, genders, ages, the socially arranged – people of the world – relate to eachother. I have a small picture of what it all looks like as God perhaps will again make it.

California has been flavored by Mexican culture since before it was officially a part of the United States, and there is much that we learn from one another. I love what California is because of its strong Mexican heritage, and living on the East Coast for the past seven months has brought into even sharper focus how much I love it. Yet I have always had this concern for my lack of experience in living life among a group of people who are truly unlike me, because I when I think about heaven, I know that it will not be a giant white chapel filled with endless rows of white Protestants and Hispanic Catholics. Humanity has been designed in such a rainbow of culture, color, voice, and spirit so that something in me is uncomfortable only knowing two of the rings.

Going into Lynn last semester for a service project among middle school girls put this on my mind even more often. Elizabeth had just come to America from Africa less than a year before, Salina had lived in New York since she was a baby, and Mikayla was from Arizona. When there wasn’t much official volunteering for me to do, I was always content to just sit and listen to them laughing and talking with each other, admiring how beautiful they all were. I would pick up on a quiet hint in a lighthearted conversation that showed one of them was hurting. Sometimes a joke meant to make everyone else laugh wasn’t entirely a joke, and my heart would crack a little for her. Seeing a circle of girls all create something unique from the same box of beads, or hearing them make up stories together where each one contributed something completely distinct from the others, brought a strange kind of joy and pleasure that I can only associate with goodness.

The world is broken, and everyone living here knows it. This life infected with pain, suffering, cruelty and injustice can be like the “sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent” that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of during those dark years of segregated America, and we all await the “invigorating autumn” that will restore us to life as it should be, the good life. I know the good life is life as God sees it. He filled the world with people that are a different colors: ebony, cinnamon brown, pale white. People who sing, dance, yell, whisper. Right now many of us who don’t look like each other, or who don’t do the same things, stand apart and tragically judge or condemn or scratch the backs of our necks in awkward uncertainty as a response to what the King takes such enjoyment in. But one day, all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics who have realized the truth of Christ, will be able to join hands and sing: Free at last! Free at Last!

"To be a responsible person is to find one's role in the building of shalom, the re-webbing of God, humanity and all creation in justice, harmony, fulfillment and delight. To be a responsible person is to find one's own role and then, funded by the grace of God, to fill this role and to delight in it." - Cornelius Plantinga Jr.

By the way, Megan is making me laugh so hard and I cannot even attempt homework.

She is different from me. And I think I love her more every day with every little difference I notice.

Prayer

Oh I am never as good as think I am, God my Father, thank you for your constant and patient overlookings. I do wrong almost as often as I breath, I am the farthest thing from the angel that I sometimes think I am. But even when I am unaware of truly how low I am among all other creatures that roam the earth, you build and break up all about me that must be fixed and freshened. Thank you for the white houses on green slopes of grass, the vineyards and the mountain peaks and the lamplit evenings for reading – despite the woman that I am, you bless me like I am an angel, fit for the heavenly river banks where I am resting and breathing deep of your sun-warmed oxygen. When you call me up to my feet again, force me to climb higher, to push deeper into the undergrowth, and not to turn the places of rest you give me into the end of my work and journey. That yearning which wearies and saddens me – why is there no one who holds and can look into my heart here? - do not let me resent it. Let me treasure the empty part that eats at my mind and spirit, and let me be round with thanks for the vapor that my time is, because it will always draw me to you. It will always remind me that I have only taken a spoon to my digging of mystery from the Universe. One day I will join You where you are dwelling outside of time, and because I know this, I can glory even more in the blink of Your eye that I am. If this sliver of a second is as beautiful and blessed as it is, if it fills me up and leaves me content on the river bank, how much more will I dwell in peace at the oceanside of Your palace? My God, you are so good to me. Even just the rainfall is such a full kiss on my lips!

Achtemeier,

I underline it with pencil:

God has enclosed all people in disobedience, in order to have mercy on all.
?
It is going to take a very long time to begin working through what that means.

P.S.

!

Madison McKenzie May

My baby sister. How much I love her! I came across a poem in my book this morning that she wrote a while ago, and it made me smile so I thought I should put that smile out into the world for everyone else.

The marvelous sky
So dark and deep
Changes her clothes
When we fall asleep.

From the pale dress of blue
With soft white lines
To velvety gown
That sparkles and shines.

Each glittering sphere
Was handmade and placed
By the loving hands
That created each race

These wonderful marvels
That she wears for hours
Are what this world calls
Stars.

History class cancelled,

"Justice is not optional," Dr. Strauss said, because justice is the symphony of God's created things given the space to be what they were made to be, with each peculiarity contributing to the sound that pleases those who hear it.

After watching the arraignment of Robert Gulla yesterday, the young man who murdered Megan’s friend Allison, and hearing the details of how he abused and so purposefully mutilated her body to the point that her life couldn’t stay inside it any longer – and after hearing Dr. Strauss mention the afternoon where he had to be the voice (in translation) for the man confessing to the details of how he tortured one of Dr. Strauss’ youth group friends, I am reminded of just how ruined this earth really is.

What is death?

At what point can the spirit no longer remain in the body? How is it tied there?

Does it leave like we think it does? Where?

How can someone break another person so brutally that they die?

Your Kingdom come here to earth.

Adam and Eve were never bored in the garden, I know they had business to attend to. I used to imagine that they would work with gold dust and lumps of silver, polishing stones into clear jewels and stringing the trees with what they made, so that when God came to walk with them in the cool of the evenings He would find the pathways of their garden lined by their baubles, put there to catch the amber light for Him.

The resurrection of Christ has ushered in the New Creation, as Dr. Hunt said again today. I don't think that this world is a waiting room that we are trying to coax all non-believers into so at the return of Christ, we will take them with us when this planet is abandoned for a city in the clouds. I don't know where Heaven will be - maybe a city in the clouds, maybe the exact same earth we have just restored by new Words from the mouth of the one who first made it - but I do know that we as a church may have slipped into idleness like the Galatians. Not an idleness that keeps us from spreading our news of salvation, but we cannot stop our cultivation of the earth just because we have come to think that it will be destroyed at the second coming. Paul chastised the Christians in Galatia for this kind of attitude – and besides, isn’t sleep the sweetest, food most satisfying, leisure most precious and love most understandable when we are occupied with something good, that matters and is bettering?
"I would live in Your love."
If I am seeing love dimly through glass, and if that dim sight is as beautiful as it is, we are going to explode with the clear sight that will come.

I think I understand some of why we can't look at the face of God as we are now.

The thought of life as it is set right, sopping with the clear water of fresh youth...that is not something I really want to wait around for.


I would live in your love as the sea-grasses live in the sea
Borne up by each wave as it passes, drawn down by each wave that
recedes;

I would empty my soul of the dreams that have gathered in me,
I would beat with your heart as it beats, I would follow your soul
as it leads.


I am sorry I keep repeating poets, but how beautiful is that? So much of Sara Teasdale's work is written to me like a Psalm that I want to capture and hum inside myself, for the God whom I love to hear - even as He is not the one she meant.
It reminds me even more of the responsibility that I have been charged with, to be the devoted culture maker that Calvin Seerveld exhorts us all as people of faith to be. My pretty friend Tala let me borrow a book of his, and each page is so laden with wisdom that it feels like putting apple marzipan in your mouth; it tastes delightful but the richness forces you to put it away for awhile until your tongue has taken in the sweet and let it settle. I have to reread at least twice to keep from letting it all walk right back out the front door of my memory.

That itch I have spoken of before, that discontent which won't allow me to resign my passion for obedient, love-driven art into simply decorating the walls of a church or painting an illustration of David and his flock, has begun to show its purpose. Reading Rainbows for the Fallen World by Seerveld and Walking on Water by L'Engle has watered the root growing in me, so that the green tips of a baby life-mission have started pushing up.
The thing that ultimately made me want to study Fine Arts at Gordon was a paragraph in the department's policy on undraped models. "Christians ought to reclaim cultural territory surrendered to their secular counterparts and to redeem this territory for Christ's glory. ... Great artists of the past have used the human figure. Contemporary Christians should reclaim it for God and His purposes as a means to leaven popular culture. "
This is exactly what Seerveld talks about when he challenges older Christians who scorn the novels, films and song lyrics which saturate every modern minute with godlessness, but yet who are not encouraging the aesthetic work of their younger believers – and so the artistry of secularism reigns. As he says, “Such evocative human activity as art is must be sanctified, and must be sanctified by believers who are not dabbling but who are given christian training to know what they are doing. And that is a mission which marks a grown-up body of Christ.”

I remember once my Dad and I listening to the resplendent, haunting voice of Sarah McLachlan, and as she lifted it into a soaring high note he said, "If that can be so beautiful on earth, imagine what heaven will be like?"
I am so saddened that such artistic voice, lips and fingers like Sarah's are absolutely glimmering in the image of our Musician and yet might not join in with the generations of eternity. I am saddenned she is not singing for Him right now.

I wish we didn’t have to turn on christian radio stations for the ‘message,’ but any other for good music. I wish the garish advertisements that aggravate everything we touch and look at would be injected with some integrity. I wish the New York Times best seller’s list was chock full of masterful literature by proficient writers, who make a living by their service under God’s restoration agenda. Is the world really any different because of Grace? Do they know we are Christians because we, together, look like heaven on earth?

Winter would like to stay for dinner, too.

I am covered and wrapped in my blanket with the sunflowers on it, because I sort of wish that the snow was sunshine.

Transparency

Soap bubbles and stained glass windows leave a colorful shadow when light pours through them.

Water and mirrors reflect light, intensifying its presence.

Sometimes I am told to be brave and speak for the light, sometimes I think I should speak when I haven't been told, and then I turn into stone. I am still soaking in the warmth, and I haven't moved from my spot in the sun. But my shadow has turned blank and grey, because the light is blocked. Anything behind me must move, or it will cool down in the dark.

I love to teach, I love to care, I love to help by giving my thoughts and insight. I want to push people further along in understanding, lead them to discovering wisdom when I have found some for myself. But if I block the brightness, if I have obstructed their view of God, their love for Him - if my voice has filled the air so that they don't have to seek truth from the lips of Elohim himself - I have wronged them. Even if I think I am loving, I am doing the greatest damage I can by hindering their nearness to the Heart of existence. And so I must only act when lead by the Spirit. Let me decrease to a thin, colorful membrane that the Light may increase, and radiate out from within. 

My spoonful of sugar

Like that wholesome apple which keeps the doctor away, finding a piece of poetry regularly keeps the dreamer in me alive and well. I was heartbroken as a littler girl when I heard my Anne Shirley say, "I have grown too sensible for romance." I grew too sensible for romance too. So I am taking a higher dose until that sensibility is fought back and imagination pulses through me a little stronger.

The city? Yes.

I am afraid of the city to be honest, on my own. But how I love to explore it (if I am not alone), learn about it, and imagine living in it. (See, just a spoonful of poetry is all it takes, and I grow better.)

...It is a building beside a park, third window up, a dalmatian who wears a red collar to walk and sit beside with a book on a bench. A small balcony, a box with basil and echinacea, photographs pinned to the wall. Shelves with dishes and cups that stack precariously high because there is no room for them in the cupboard, pink soap and a sink to set it near. Creaks in the floor, honey yellow walls, a telephone, a rug and thick blanket. Jazz and old voices, newspapers, coffee stains and the little girl on the floor above who likes the Dalmatian. Art on the streets, music across the way, cars and bicycles and a laundromat. Opera in the winter, ice cream cones in the summer. Protests and celebrations, history and movement and the throbbing heart of the rest of country around it...

No commentary on why I don't think I actually want to live in the city. I'll just keep furnishing my apartment and walk a few blocks for bread and tomatoes and baking powder.

Without Athena?

I miss my copy of the Odyessy (did I ever have one?) - studying Greece without it is simply devoid. Of what, I'm not entirely sure. I think the fascination that used to come from the myths themselves is no longer coloring the study of politics and daily life, and I know certainly that 'summaries' never satisfy me. I feel like I spent hundreds of dollars on a giant summary - actually, thats exactly what I did.

Its entirely understandable. Teaching Western Civilization in just one semester would necessitate that fast moving, "just grasp the highlights of each century and the cultures which shaped the way the world now functions." But I liked how I learned it all in middle school far better.

I'll just have to keep studying on my own in order to look into those details that interest me so greatly once I graduate. Will I be able to do that? I hope so - it will have to be a discipline. I am not good with discipline. I desperately want it to be though, even if I only read one new book a month, and I hope I will do it. I know that learning can never come to a halt, since education isn't "the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire," and I suppose it becomes a matter of priority. Other obligations will arise, especially as life moves onward - I will grow up and out of the title of 'student'. In title only; my mind will always wonder and ask questions and find itself unaware of many things. In practice, I hope to continue questioning and searching for ideas and expanding them. Maybe the people who don't are really the ones who have grown old. Not to call knowledge the fountain of youth, but I do think it is some kind of fountain - its moving flowing, searching. I want to find out! I want to understand, connect - grasp and in some way, let it all become a part of me. Putting down the books and closing up questions to go the rest of life with your so-far answers is stagnant.

Knowledge is not the most important thing, but it is a great gift (even while it has come to be seen as a requirement in our part of the world.) Leadership will always require knowledge of something, it plays a great part in wisdom and discernment. Or maybe its the reverse; wisdom and discernment play a great part in knowledge. Maybe they aren't supposed to be forced independent.

Anyway. I miss the Odyssey and the Iliad and the art and the philosophy among the dates, events, and 'significant people.'

Abandon.

I need God to take away this perfectionism, this measured-and-counted way of doing things.
Love in its great power is not duty, obedience, task, or usefulness - it is excess, overflow; a spilling out of burning hot joyous desire.

Give me that God; how I want you!

I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.

Oh plunge me deep in love, put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in a rushing wind.

S. Teasdale



Love is bold and love will risk things. It will risk failure. It will risk the pain of others. Love is passion, love is what I used to think it was. Love is not a tired thing, it has not been used too much. It is a tempest, a brilliant lightning cloud.

It is peace and harmony and stillness and order. But it is also fire and fight and tears and dirt. I want the scratches and the mud of Love on my hands, on my face.

He is Love.

(I dreamed once of the field where I was flying. I flew with cardboard and feather wings, but I also fell, when I started to think about how I was making myself fly.)
I want freedom and passion and pursuit, and I want to soar because I have been caught by love. He is my wind and my flight. I want to get lost.

Hevel

I used to be angry at my desire to make art.

Even if I could become as skillful as I desired, so that I could express accurately what I see beneath my own eyelids, and perhaps then truly create things that communicated, and meant something; even if I could come to that point, I would be doing something purely 'metaphorical.' A representation of reality, a viewpoint, an idea - but nothing real and tangible in and of itself. An image would not put clothes on the back of a naked child, or fill the bowls of starving families with the food they need. Oh, I was told, but perhaps the profits from selling your work could do so, perhaps you can raise awareness and cause something to be done by inspiring others. Perhaps your images can tell the stories of those who hurt. Then they will yield something tangible.

Perhaps.

Yet that does not soothe the itch that frustrates and torments me; I want something deeper.

I do not want to accept that art is simply an aesthetic means to a valuable end. That it is only luxury, something that does nothing real on its own but hangs on a wall while the meaningful work is done. It passes away without moving, walking, breathing.

How can you worship, and please God, and bear righteous fruit without that motion? How is art, not the offshoots of art, worth anything?

Paul does not write about color and shape, line and space, balance and rhythm - the elements of artistry that catch my breath and make my heart constrict. Yet I see them in the world around me, and I am joyful in who God is in such a way that I rarely ever am in a sermon about what He does for us.

Depart from me,

I never knew you.

I know a piece of Him in the kind of beauty art is - His art in the world I know around me.

I still only catch a glimpse, a fleeting moment, where I understand why my passion truly matters, why there is a Divine magnitude to its importance. I am remiss when I do not catch those moments to my chest and press them into my very person, understanding it and recognizing how it is woven into the everyday work of my hands.

One such moment I wrote last year among my prayers, and it echoed through my mind as I watched a film in design class this afternoon. Rivers and Tides is a documentary that displays the work of Andy Goldsworthy, explaining some of what it means to him as the pieces are shown. His materials are moss and earth, leaves and petals, stones and reeds and icicles. He works on the beach, in rivers, in pools of water that have been caught in the rocks. The artwork and sculpture he creates are specific to the land he is working in, and much of what he does will not last more than a few hours; some of it will scatter within minutes. Ice melts as the sun rises, sand shifts with the wind, red pigment in a stream dissipates and settles on the river bed.

Yet his creations are beautiful, and while they do not last, that doesn't diminish their beauty in any way. Somehow instead, the beauty is intensified, because it is so real.

Show me, O Lord, my life's end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man's life is but a breath. Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro. He bustles about, but only in vain; he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it. But now O Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you.

And so I will fling my diamonds heavenward.

The documentary is called "Working With Time." I am struck by the 'with'. He intentionally builds a sculpture on the shore, knowing that the tide will come in a few hours. Instead of ignoring, disguising, or attempting to run away from that reality of life, he uses is, and allows it to give life and beauty to what he does. I was watching him spend hours gathering together driftwood and branches - bustling about for what seemed in vain - arranging them into a swirl that captures the motion of where the river meets the sea, and remembered my prayer. The waves come in, the tide carries away the swirl of wood, and the sculpture itself moves in the way that the art was created to communicate.

I wrote last fall in my prayer book about Psalm 39.

My life is small and fleeting, and I can take nothing from it but my love and the things I send ahead of me - the offerings of beauty and sincerity lifted up for my God. I could live my life here, gathering sparkling gems to the edge of an ocean cliff to throw them into the sky above. I could roam the world collecting precious pearls and amethysts to pour into the sea for Him, just because it is beautiful, even for only a moment.

My earth-life is a fleeting second as existence stretches forward. So am I going to be a glittering second of time that was dedicated to the God of everything who has no beginning and no end?

My art is small and fleeting and I do not know if any of it is sent ahead. But it can be a diamond flung toward heaven.

And that is why I think it matters most.