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!