Friends Share!

Last night Tami and I went through letters that we had written to each other 20 years ago. Those were tumultuous years for us both. Twenty years ago those letters encouraged us as we held hands through the mail and we were amazed at how timeless those words were. The lessons we learned and applied in those days are bringing forth fruit even today!

I found a newer "letter" that I had written to Tami, but this one was sent via email. It contains the same intense sharing for which we are noted: April 15, 2003
Tami,
I sat outside this afternoon, in this beautiful weather, scribbling some notes. Even though Diann had been here for 4 days and left yesterday, I still feel the need for "intellectual talk". Therefore, I am going to share with you my journal, in doing so, I will be sharing my heart - and this is what I love to do. I hope it makes some sense to another mind.
...
I'm writing at my make-shift desk: a board stretched across the ample arms of an adirondack chair. On it are my notebook, beverage, highlighter and a couple of books - Friends For The Journey by L'Engle and Shaw; and Only Fifty Years Ago by Gladys Hasty Carroll. A sheaf of papers: enlarged copies of papercuts from Wana Derge's book, are peering at me from beneath the books. These books are not only good reading, but are also useful for holding the papers in place as a breeze eddies around me. The cat is laying stretched out at my feet. And Acorn, the bird, is chirping in her cage. I positioned her cage half in and half out of the sun so she also could enjoy this incredible weather. The stimulus of a Phil Keaggy CD "Still Life" floats through the open office window and my chair comfortably sits on the patio - out of the sun but not out of the freshness, security and peace of this place. What an incredible blessing and experience this is! I'm enjoying the beauty of this house we so love, and the solitude of our backyard. Almost everything that I so enjoy is merely a few paces away - or it's on my desk now! How can God be so good to me!

Today I even made the final IRS loan payment from a loan taken out 3 years ago. On this day of April 15 we sent in the 2002 tax forms and will be getting some money back, and we completed paying off the 1999 tax bill! It is delicious to have such rich contentment at this moment. I don't want to lose it or diminish it.

I sense a rich joy soaking down to my very toes. Oh, to be able to express in some form, or in a variety of creative forms, the majesty of God's artistry! His Art lies within and without every life form. We behold it with our eyes, but we also embrace it with our heats, minds and senses. His Artistry seeks a level deep inside each individual. Art is more than a beautiful painting, a gracefully executed dance, a perfectly formed sculpture, or a moving group of well-selected words or images. Art, from the hand of God, is all of those things together and much much more. All these forms swirl simultaneously in some great inner dance within all that lives. It is much like C.S. Lewis writes about when he tries to convey the Trinity.

However, God's skillful Artistry has incapacitated me. I'm unable to express the joy of His presence in such a multi-dimensional way. I sense it, but it turns at a 90 degree angle within me and blocks further flow. I don't allow it's conception to fully play out within my heart. I want to stop it - like stop motion camera work - so that I can capture a moment. It is too much for me to grasp at one sitting, or in one moment. It is because I am slow and heavy. Yet, to stop the unfolding of His Artistic drama so that I can savor it, can also be a means to suspend the power of it. The sorrowful truth is that there is a time to savor the facets of His Workings. There is also a time to allow the drama to unfold it's holistic purpose so that I can gain an understanding of His Mission statement through it.

For example, I am decidedly refusing to leave this habitation of peace. A misguided desire for muchness, or my internal "Attention Deficit" disorder, would move me away from here to look for a "better" place in which to view God's Art. Or it would attempt to drive me to look for a better means to express to Him what He's stirring within me. NO, I am seated here to stay for a duration. I will allow this duration to work its way through me. I will not try to sketch (badly), or sew (fitfully), or knit (disjointedly), and be confused about what it is I'm to do at the moment (creatively). I'm just a-sittin! And I'm just a-stayin'! I am not going to harbor guilt feelings about work that awaits me, or "art" that is not conceived and possibly never will be.

For this is His moment in me. Whatever I try to do myself is flat and lifeless. I am awaiting the waking of His Artistic Life within me. This can only come as I allow Him to freely work deeply deep down in the cold currents and dark seas of my soul and to bring out the Life of His Spirit in me. The awakening and refreshing of His life in these dark fountains release His artistic forms through this stilted and clumsy frame.

True Art takes time. A lot of time. It is tedious. How much more willing I am to look at art second-hand, to jealously view the results of someone else's creativity rather than persevere through the messy tedium of working, reworking, and working yet again through the germ of my own idea. Honing an idea, developing a concept, is like playing with modeling clay. It is never set, and develops best through the warmth of my own hands. It is the exhausting workingness of it all that can be off-setting.

God's process is unfolded through the seasons which come and go, then take their curtain call so that the next season can come center stage. Yet, He upholds the promise of the seasonal cycle and finds that it is good. I cannot have summer for 3 seasons in a row, as much as I would prefer it to be that way. Still, I find anticipation in knowing that summer will again appear after 3 seasons have passed. This artistic wonder births a delight and security. This delight and security incubates a sense of well-being. And that is amazing! We don't have to have it all in this moment.

Society around us would tell us that "ARTISTES" stir things up and reveal things that are not always comfortable, as if artists have morphed into prophetic gods to whom we should give our total attention. And yet, God's Artistry does bring a sense of well-being. I will allow that the beauty of a storm does not always engender a sense of well-being: power and awe, yes, but well-being? Not really. Still, this is also a part of God's Art work. The well-being underlying a storm rests within the heart of the believer who knows in Whom he believes, and his foundation is settled upon the Person and Character of his God, and not upon the appearance at the moment. All that I do needs to be also founded upon the Rock Who is my total Source, and through Whose security and truth my work develops.

God created the world in 6 days. But He worked from a plan and each day built upon the preceeding day. Anything that I do is to spring from a plan. A plan gives framework from which a final result is ensured. If there is no framework, there may not be a final result because the building will collapse before the end can come. A plan can motivate one through the tedium of the precess in order to complete what is begun in the excitement of the idea.

God's Artistry springs from a life that is 100% alive. Is it possible, Father, for me to be 100% alive? I know this is true: that true Artistry springs from a life that is 100% alive. I don' t know how to become that. In fact, I cannot become that on my own. It is only as You work it in me, through the modeling clay process that an idea is birthed. However, as I sit here, at my writing desk in this wonderful moment of time which You have so graciously given me, I await the unfurling of Your life. And I seek the unfolding of Your Words which give Light and Life.
Love,
Vicky

Miss Read

In my reading in "Village School" by Miss Read, I discovered a thumbnail sketch of her writing philosophy. The tiny concept follows a telling of the funeral for the school manager on a fine spring day, and of her, the schoolteacher's decision to read to the children from The Wind In The Willows, during the time of the funeral. Miss Read writes:
"Out there, in the churchyard, the black silent figures would be standing immobile around the dark hole. Above them, no less black, the rooks would be wheeling and crying, unheeded by the mourners. They would stand there, heads downbent, with who knows what emotions stirring them...pity, regret, the realization of the swiftness of life's passage, the inevitability of death. While here, in the classroom, sitting in a golden trance, our thoughts were of a sun-dappled stream, of willows and whiskers, of water-bubbles and boats...and, I venture to think, that of all those impressions which were being made on that spring afternoon, ours, for all their being transmitted, as it were second-hand, would be more lasting in their fresh glory.
"Thoughts by a graveside are too dark and deep to be sustained for any length of time. Sooner or later the hurt mind turns to the sun for healing, and this is as it should be, for otherwise, what future could any of us hope for, but madness?"

The book, Village School, was copyrighted in 1956, a mere 9 years after the horrors of World War II. During Christmas break, Amanda, Michael, Bernie and I were talking about the influenza pandemic of 1918 which took so many lives. My own grandparents were sickened by it, but survived. Michael mentioned that it was amazing to him that this was such a devastating incident and yet one which was little talked about. We wondered if it was because the epidemic followed so closely on the heels of World War I and families were still reeling from the losses of that war. To put upon them the thoughts of these senseless additional losses from the ranks of their young and strong, was too much to bear. So it just wasn't discussed. They put it behind them and tried to move on, lumping the flu victims with the war victims.

I relate to Dora Saint's (aka Miss Read) writing mission. I am not demeaning the need to seriously consider ramifications for our actions, corporate or personal, and I am not endorsing shallow thinking. However, when I sit down to read, I do not want to be shoulder another set of unsolvable problems. I am surrounded by unsolvable problems already. I do not want to shoulder the sorrow of the world's inequities by hearing anymore about them. I have a sensitive nature that does not need to be brow beaten by humanity's inate viciousness. I would rather offset the dire by the recognition that we take ourselves altogether too seriously sometimes and it there is definately a time to laugh and enjoy the moment.

That is what I am wanting to do in these years of my life: enjoy the moments and treasure what the moment shows me, knowing that it will pass all too quickly.

End of the Year

A fresh year is upon me and I just finished looking at my old blog. I hadn't read it for months and was pleased that I had done what I said that I was setting out to do this year. I have been working at writing and I have been working steadily at refining my skills in Paint Shop Pro. The satisfaction that I feel is not in the quality of my work, but it lies in the the fact that I worked the plan, even when it seemed like there was no sensible reason to continue it.

Rereading my few previous entries also makes me realize that there is system to my thinking and that the motivation is not ephemeral. This has strengthened an encouragement that I need to press on to the next level.

Practice is what will hone my blogging skills. I am praying that I will stay on target, and that my writing skills will develop along with the diligence of doing this on a daily or near daily basis.