+ 18 months

A new post.... hmmm.... I guess all I can say is, "I am lonely." Sadly, that would draw unwanted questions and attention on facebook. So, I will write it here, where no one will read it.

Someone knows me better than myself....

Most of the time, I am scared to call myself an artist--one who God has gifted with creative talents, one who has taken the time to cultivate, learn, and struggle through creating. I think, "I am so not an artist. I'm not good enough. I'm just fooling myself. I'm a fraud."

Last weekend, I went to Imago Dei's artist's retreat. I almost didn't go. I made up all kinds of excuses.... Perhaps the only reason I stuck with it was because I had promised to drive friends down there. So I went. And it was amazingly profound. There were no bolts of lightning or flashes of intuition. But there were simple, refreshing, lovely realizations that encouraged and inspired me.

Saturday, after lunch, we were supposed to make postcards that represented us as artists. There were magazines to cut up, paints to paint with, markers, cloth, sewing tools, carpet--any possibly creative material that could be there was there, basically. I sat down with a few magazines. As I flipped through, I found a picture of a path with a tree off to the left. It was an ad for Toyota. I tore that picture out.... and then the words, "Is she being honest?" "perfectly, thank you very much." "WHY?" "dreams" and "drama". I glued the picture of the path over a square I had cut out of an old map.... then the words at the bottom ("dreams" and "drama" went at the horizon). I had also found the sentence, "Someone knows me better than myself" and the word, "NAME". I pasted the sentence in the middle of the path and then "NAME" up at the right hand corner.

Now, I am not a visual artist by any stretch of the imagination, but I was fairly satisfied with myself. The path analogy and the words captured my journey as an artist: the dusty, rugged path {that leads to God knows where} is strewn with questions and few good answers, but "someone knows me better than myself"... He draws me to be an artist--an actress, a director, a musician, a (dare I say it) writer. He NAMEs me as His daughter, one made in His image--made to create.

Inside Out

A thousand times I fail

Still Your mercy remains

The art of losing myself

In giving you praise.

Everlasting

Your light will shine when all else fades

Everlasting

Your glory goes beyond all shame


That's just the first verse and chorus of a song we sing at Imago Dei. I've sung it so many times in the year and a half that I've been there, but it wasn't until I played it for worship that the words really stayed with me.

It echoes Psalm 94:17-19:

"If the Lord had not been my help, my soul would soon have dwelt in the abode of silence. If I should say, "My foot has slipped," Your lovingkindness, O Lord, holds me up. When my anxious thoughts multiply within me, Your consolations delight my soul."


And I fall down every day into the mercy of God.....

Bus poem

if I knocked

on your door

past the closely-clipped

lawn and the tulips planted in rows

and the shiny beemer--

would you open it?

or would you see me from behind

the lace curtains

and turn away--

smiling your perfect, plastered smile

leaving me to knock again

and again

echoing through empty hallways