five different colors on, chris bathgate, the five o’clock sunlight trying to stay warm as it slides down, thin microns, sitting on the floor scraped knee and elbow positioned carefully, chocolate in small piles next to me, the almost feeling of a summer evening, the front door open the back door shut, daylight for an hour longer tonight.
with erin with kind of tears in my eyes with grandpa’s flannel on with art being made on the table.
“there is no need to be afraid”, tyler told me.
“you are a daughter of God.
you have good eyes and a good soul and God is using you.
He is going to use you whether you are a world renowned artist or a bagger at trader joes (cause God knows you wouldn’t be a bagger anywhere else)”, he said to me.
there is so much freedom in this.
freedom in knowing that God has caught me and is catching me. He has come through so many many times, there is no reason at all for me to fear if i look at what He’s done in my life. freedom to see and take in and and breathe out and make knowing that all i am seeing, breathing, making is going to be okay with God—- even when i fail.
humility, no fear, grateful for eyes to see such beautiful things.
grateful for such a soul.
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. - Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude
for my class, i am supposed to be taking one hundred pictures a day for a week. before i started this project, i thought it would be simple. three days gone and i have found out just how difficult this is for me. i am scared. of lots of things, but this morning i was scared of taking pictures that were no good. yesterday i was scared of taking pictures of things that people would think were silly. the day before that i was scared to take pictures at night. (so weird.) and so growing. i feel like i am learning to draw again- spending hours of frustration trying to see things that were impossible details until the second or third hour of staring and making marks. i am learning to see outside of the things i see everyday. i am learning to see inside of the things i see everyday. i am learning to be disciplined and not fearful. probably the less fearful i become, the better my art will be.
i let these things fill me this morning, and i took hundreds of pictures no one will ever see in order to get to the ones that i loved; the ones that got it, got what my soul was seeing at that moment. for four more days i will do this. four more days of learning what it means to be restful in what i create- art that does not come from fear, but from a place that is completely and utterly whole. four more days.
This semester I am taking 15 units of classes that terrify me.
This semester I am taking Shannon Leith’s SEEING class.
This semester I am learning to unclench my fists.
This semester I am trying to trust God with every bit of everything.
This semester I am going to eat as healthy as possible.
This semester I am learning to love within boundaries.
This semester I am determined to be a finder.
