Abide

Yesterday was Good Friday.

If you have friends and family like mine you probably saw a lot of "It's Friday, but Sunday is coming" posts online. And I get it. For years even as I tried to sink into the meaning of Friday I always consoled myself that Sunday was coming.

Good Friday two years ago I first heard of thinking otherwise. It was right after the veneration of the cross–pretty scary itself to a girl who grew up Southern Baptist. The priest said that Good Friday and Holy Saturday were more than stopping posts on the way to Easter Sunday.

No, she told us it was for abiding in the sorrow, the brokenness, the heart-ache.

That felt like someone tearing a life preserver from my hands– how could I survive the weekend without clinging to the approach of Sunday? Wasn't that what Easter was all about–not having to wait with death? That weekend I wrestled more with my understanding of God than I had in a long time. And it was good.

 Two years latter I'm still wrestling with God and crying out like Jacob, "Bless me!" What does that wrestling look like? I don't know as much as I did two years ago, but I'm learning how to abide with God. I'm learning how to sit in the rubble of my plans and see God there.

Good Friday and Holy Saturday are about waiting in darkness and doubt. About having our idolized ideas of God smashed before our eyes.

This year I encourage you to stop rushing to the comfort of Easter Sunday and abide in the mystery of the cross.

I don't know what that looks like for you. Abide by the Quaker singer songwriter  Carrie Newcomer captures what the time in the shadow of the cross is like for me this year. You can hear it and read the words in the video below.

Maundy Thursday

"I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." John 13:34-35

Mandatum novum – New Commandment – this is where we get the "Maundy" of today from. And how easy this new commandment sounds at first, "love one another." Especially after "love your enemies," loving one another – those with us –sounds easy. But leave it to Jesus to say something else to shift our understanding: "Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another." And just how is it that Jesus loved the apostles?

A few verses earlier in John 13 we see Jesus wash their feet. Foot washing may seem strange today, but it was a standard service that any good host would have offered to a guest – to be performed by a servant of course. But here is Jesus in the middle of celebrating Passover taking off his robe and doing dirty servant's work.

Jesus says he's going to wash the apostles's feet and Peter says "no way." Why this response? Because Jesus – the Messiah – was doing the work of a servant? Yes, but the bigger issue was that the work Jesus was doing required seeing how dirty Peter was.

Following Jesus around dirt roads on foot, Peter was probably pretty filthy. It's no wonder he didn't want his Messiah to see, touch, hold his feet. It seemed both beneath his idea of the Messiah and a shameful revelation of his dirt. But this dirtiness was no fault in Peter, it was the result of obedience – literally following Jesus on the road. And in his love Jesus sees the full filth before him and washes it away.

So what does it mean to love one another in a foot-washing way? Might it mean sharing the places where the daily dust and dirt of brokenness and hurt cling to us?

Retro Satana

Retro Satana. Get behind me, Satan.

I was seven, maybe eight when I was taught how to rebuke Satan.

Perhaps my teacher meant that I should tell spiritual attackers to get behind me in the name of Christ. But at that age I heard and believed that any attacker should be addressed such. I believed with the passion of a child who wanted to understand the world.

Thankfully no one tried to do me physical harm while I still believed that rebuking Satan was a better defense than running.

For many years I understood the passage in Mark 8 where Jesus says to Peter, "Get behind me, satan," in that context. A rule to follow. An example of how to handle danger. A Jesus-approved response.

When I was a little older I considered the passage anew. By then I had relationships I valued with those in authority over me. I was horrified for Peter. I couldn't understand why his concern for his beloved teacher was so violently rejected.

And Jesus's response sounded like a violent rejection. "Get behind me," read an awful lot like "get out of my way" or  even "get out of my sight." I could just see Jesus's face turn hard with disgust as he spoke. Then there was that cutting epithet of "Satan."

But this passage isn't what I thought at eight or even at eighteen.

Peter kneeling before Jesus

You see Peter had just announced his belief in Jesus as the Messiah. This side of the cross it's easy to think Peter is retracting here. As if at his first belief he understood all that was coming, but changes his mind when he actually hears it. The tradition of my youth even suggested that Peter was briefly possessed.

Peter is speaking out of concern or his beloved teacher. Yet this isn't concern like "have a snack, Jesus." No, Jesus has just announced the way of his work is through suffering death. Peter says, "Don't talk like that." Jesus says, "Get behind me, satan."

I don't know for certain what Jesus was getting at with the "satan" epithet, but I do know it wasn't the idea of Satan I grew up with.

How do I know?

Well, Jesus was a Jew. Obvious, I know but so easy to forget when we are trying to understand his words and parables. A Jew talking to Jews. They wouldn't have had a pointy-tailed being in mind.

The oldest reference to "satan" in the Hebrew scriptures is in the book of Job and is actually "the accuser."  The prosecutor. A title, not a name. A role in the court of the Almighty. Not a being vying for power with God. 

So Jesus isn't call Peter an evil being, but what about that "get behind me business"?

What has Peter said that's worthy of this response?

Mosaic of:  (L)  the divine visitors promising a child to Abraham & Sarah (R) Abraham & Issac

One of the great benefits of the lectionary is that passages like this aren't read alone. Gospel passages are interpreted alongside Jewish history. This passage is paired with Genesis 17 where Abraham is promised offspring from his wife Sarah. They laugh. They fall on their faces laughing at what God has said. Then they try to make God's promise true.

You see Abraham is nearly one hundred "as good as dead," and Sarah has been barren her whole life and is now post-menopause. They cannot imagine how the promised end (offspring like the stars) can come through the way described--through people like them. People lacking in everything they thought required.

So they try other means.

Of course we know what happens after they've tried other means. After they've forced Haggar, a slave woman, to have a child by Abraham. After she bears a son and relationships get really messy, then the unimaginable happens. Sarah has a son by Abraham.

That's what I think is going on with Peter here. He can't imagine the messiah coming to glory by way of suffering death. "Surely not," he says. This is unimaginable. We will find another way. This can't really mean your death, Jesus.

That's when Jesus says his famous line.

I'm told that "get behind me" here is the same Greek phrase used when Jesus first calls Peter. It makes sense -- to follow is to get behind. "Follow me and I will make you fishers of men" might read "get behind me and I will make you fishers of men."

This deeply changed my understanding of the passage.

Jesus is calling Peter to follow him again -- just as he did by the Sea of Galilee. Peter has been following Jesus physically. He's tried to follow Jesus mentally too. Peter even came to believe in Jesus as the messiah. But then he had his own understanding of what being messiah would mean.

He can't imagine how the promised end can come from death.

So Jesus calls him back. Calls him from the role of accuser or tempter back to the turning of his heart toward God. Calls him back to all he has learned about the ways God works.

Get behind me, satan.

Follow me, accuser.

Follow me and see what unimaginable will come to pass.

Vapor, Vapor says the Teacher

I grew up Fundamentalist.

Growing up Fundamentalist meant growing up reading a lot of the Bible. Sad? Read the Bible. Happy? Read the Bible. Confused about love or life or the Bible? Read the Bible.

As a teenager and young adult I read at least one Psalm or Proverb everyday. I liked these books. They fit how I understood the Bible.  I didn't read a lot of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes didn't fit. After all, an instruction manual shouldn't say one thing was good and then say it was "Vapor of vapor." (Ecc. 1:2)

This meant that when I sat down to read Ecclesiastes this week I had read the book fewer than five times.

Honestly, I was afraid.

What if even now Ecclesiastes came up as a giant question mark to me? What would I do if I read a book of scripture and couldn't conjure even a weak purpose behind it? 

Last week I was pondering what to make of a remembrance of decay. This week Ecclesiastes called me to rejoice in the remembrance of death. Yes, I said rejoice in the remembrance of death.

Death in Ecclesiastes is especially hard. It doesn't have the familiar hand holds I've long used for death. No resurrection. No life after death. No promise that the time of death is in God's plan for a greater good. According to the teacher, there is no action, no memory, not even praise of God after death.

Not disheartening enough yet? The teacher goes on to say that not even memory will remain of those who die. No memory of the wicked. No memory of the righteous. (e.g. Ecclesiastes 1:11)

That hurts.

But when I open up to what is being said something changes. When I read Ecclesiastes this week I wasn't depressed. No, I read the remembrance of death and was encouraged.

Hang on with me while I try to explain.

You see, I'm a perfectionist. No, really. I want to be able to know what it is you want from me and fulfill that wish--all before you even voice it and making it look effortless. I'll leave it to your imagination then how much more I've acted that way towards God.

So Ecclesiastes?

Perfectionism has some good to it, but it also causes pressure. Anything short of the ideal becomes utter failure. There is an awful pressure to choose, to say, to do the perfectly apt thing the first time. It is crippling.

For years I have not written long-form for fear of the first draft. Why fear? Because the first draft would not be the final draft. I could not bear to write something imperfect and so I chose to hide instead of live.

It's in that moment that the Teacher encourages me.

It is in this moment that hearing that both the wise and foolish alike die frees me from fear of failure. Either way I will die. But this voice says, "Yes, you will die so live well. Enjoy what comes from the hand of God and know that it will not always be what you deserve."

Once that would have sounded fatalist to me. Once that would have seemed like selling God short. But not this reading. Not this Lent.

According to the Teacher, Ecclesiastes is a search for wisdom and understanding. The book has different voices, poetry, and proverbs--confusing proverbs.

In all those voices, in those confusing proverbs the Teacher reminds us that we are creatures of God. Like the animals we will return to dust, like them we were made. Like them we should enjoy the gifts that God sends--rain and light, harvest and sleep, work and knowledge, beauty and love.

Taking wisdom from the simplicity of animals after whole books like Proverbs seems odd. Yet it is not so great a stretch when we remember Psalm 148. That every created thing from moon and stars to insects praises the Lord in being what it was made to be.

So often we are not like the animals. In our desire for perfection or in our fatalism we forget to live. Instead of enjoying the good work and the good food, we try to "feed on the wind." (Ecc. 2:11)
 
I cannot help but hear this as freedom. Freedom to love God and do good.  Not out of fear of punishment or hope of reward, but for love of God. Freedom to enjoy the gifts of God and help those in need. Not in despair or striving against God's order, but because we were made to do so.


Why waste this "one wild and precious life" in crippling fear of messing up or reckless abandon into evil when you can live with an open heart?

Thoughts on Dust

"Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return."

That's what the priest says on Ash Wednesday as he or she takes the ashes from the previous year's palms used on Palm Sunday, mixes them with oil and traces a cross on your forehead.

What exactly is one supposed to make of a remembrance of decay? It's a grim remembrance and I at least remember it all day when I find soot on my fingers and sleeves. As much as I hate to admit it, my first thoughts on the phrase are fearful. Once I believed that the God of the Bible was one who would control people by fear. Fear of punishment, fear of hell, fear of being ungrateful, fear of disappointing.

But I don't believe that now. So what am I to make of this remembrance now?

I don't know. As Carrie Newcomer sings, "I don't know what happens when people die." And that's what this dust to dust thing is about---death, right? I don't like not knowing. Surely there is a solid answer and I ought to know it.

Yes, there are many who would offer me solid answers with so much certainty that my unknowing would seem intentional. And I suppose it is. You see I tried certain answers. I liked certain answers. I liked the power they gave me to avoid the fear of uncertainty, the power to dismiss mystery. But the God of the Bible is a God of mystery. A God who says "I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the Lord do all these things" (Isaiah 45:7) is a God who challenges my easy, comfortable answers.

This is not where I planned to be in my twenties. No, I was trained to be a woman of the church. A woman of a specific church. I expected to be teaching by this age in a school and in a church. These days it seems that what I know is not so readily taught.

These days I have to admit that I am dead. The I who believed uncomplicated truths, the I who believed she had found the Truth before living a quarter of a century. She is dead. Sometimes I still mourn for her and grieve for the life she would have lived.

But someone new is being born. She too is me. As Thumbelina who grew from a tiny barley corn, she grows from the seeds of truth planted deep in the dust within. The dust of the dead I.

Lent is about examining the things that keep us from drawing near to God. Lent is about admitting death, decay, sin, and error. Lent is about waiting in the desert, the wilderness, the sacred dark to see what it is of that dead thing we will find resurrected with Christ.

How easy it is for me to think of the Christian life as static or changing only in the ways I want. But we live in cycles of death and new life. God makes us from the dust of the earth and then we find our dreams, our ideals, our understanding, our selves dim and return to the dust. Not to the dust of futility, but the dust of dependence. For as dust we are moulded by the Creator again. As dust to attempt to reform myself is to remain dead. But it is to remain dead to God who would make me again in Imago Dei.

"Almighty and ever living God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create in us new and contrite hearts..." --Book of Common Prayer; collect for Ash Wednesday

"Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return."

Remember and do not fear, for the same God who made you once will make you again and again with a new and contrite heart.

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In the past I've tried keeping Lent by fasting and abstaining, but those are only one form of discipline. This year I'll be adding things back into my life--devotions and remembrances in keeping a holy Lent.

Below is a phone* wallpaper I made to help myself in this remembrance. It is here for you to use if you too would find a reminder helpful in keeping a Holy Lent.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

*The image is designed to fit perfectly on an Iphone 5 lock screen, but will work on other devices.

How Do You Like Me Now?

In December I posted about designing a planner for the new year to meet my needs. Given how briefly I used my planner design last year before giving up it seemed about time for a check-in.

I printed the designs on Claire Fontaine “Graf- it” paper. This paper is only available in pads, but tears out easily and ran through my cheap HP printer just fine. The paper is 8x11 instead of standard letter and I sometimes miss that extra half an inch, but I really enjoy being able to use watercolors in my planner. It’s not thick enough for a full on painting, but I’ve enjoyed adding in some watercolor doodles.

My faux-dori with charm and bookmarks

After folding the printed pages, I used waxed thread and made them into saddle-stitch booklets. Instead of binding the booklets into a single use cover I followed Sea Lemon’s tutorial to make a Traveler style notebook. I used a 8.5x11 sheet of 2mm leather that I purchased from Michaels and with embroidery floss added another 3.5 inch piece so that if I wanted my notebook to be chunky, inserts wouldn’t hang out. As opposed to the single use covers, this setup has allowed me to make some adjustments over the last month. More about that to come.

Monthly overview with doodles

When I designed the layout I wanted to have variety available in how my months or weeks would look. It has been fun filling in the months and using colors that feel right to me for each month, especially embellished with some month-appropriate doodles. I’m using a single cupcake from my birthday stickers to mark birthdays on the monthly overview and a whole cupcake sticker on the day in the weekly view. I like being able to pair things up this way so I don’t forget again if I’m only in referencing the weekly view.

Sample (clean) weekly notes page

Possibly the most important element of this planner to me was the weekly notes page. When I first added the polar graphs to the layout I almost removed them, but two months in and I’m really enjoying them! I haven’t used the graphs like a spiral-dex as I had planed, but I like knowing that I can easily do so for a given day or week. Instead I have a few standard things I do daily and the charts have been a great way for me to visualize them. For example on one chart I use an entire wedge to represent my “meditation” post to Instagram.

Samples for charting out my daily word-count on a story

My most used chart is where I keep track of daily words written for a story I’m drafting out. For writing I use each section of a wedge to represent 200 words. To each her own, but 200 word increments is a sweet spot for me right now. As you can see in the image on the left I was aiming for 800 words a day and using the chart like pie wedges. Last week I tried a new variation on the writing chart to up my daily goal from 800 to 1k. This method is similar to a spiral-dex moving from inner to outer. The picture is from last Monday to show the lines better, but it was a great success last week and I met my goal every day!

Originally I had intended to keep the week notes page entirely blank for weekly to-do’s, sketches, etc. I’ve found that with the graphs along the left side of the notes page I still have room for weekly notes, quotes, and doodles. An added bonus is that with the chart I feel an incentive to do that task each day—a blank or partial wedge drives me crazy!

Beta pocket folder design

So about the traveler’s setup. I made some extra bands with the elastic leftover from making the notebook and have 6 (or 7 depending on how you count) inserts. Besides the five inserts for the planner I also have a notebook with mixed blank and lined pages and a folder with 12 pockets, which shares an elastic with a four sheets of “blog planner” pages from Ray Blake. The notebook insert allows me to make this the ultimate meeting notebook: calendar + notes = success! Also, the paper in the no-name notebook I picked up is fountain pen friendly and can hold water color as well as the Claire Fontaine “Graf It.” When I realized that I would be reading a lot this semester it was great to be able to add in a folder suitable for index cards. I’m still testing out my beta design, but so far I’m really enjoying the pocket insert. The beta design has three index card pockets on the front cover and opens to four 6x 8.5 pockets and two more index pockets. So many index cards!

Two months in and there are only three things I would change. First, I would have printed on letter paper instead of slightly smaller. Secondly, I want a way to turn directly to a given month without twelve bookmarks dangling. This isn’t a large problem as I’m currently working on some stickers to make tabs for each month. Mostly, I wish I would have done this sooner!

Planning Planners

Page from 2013 Gelli plate planner

In 2013  I realized that my standard planner was not longer meeting my needs. Given that I'd been using the same setup for at least five years it was sad to see it go. After several weeks of looking into various options I was pleased to come up with a setup that I thought would work perfectly!
My mom had just gotten a Gelli plate and so of course I was persuaded to use it for my planner. The pages turned out beautiful! It was a lot of fun to consider which color schemes to use each month and bind the seven booklets in to a single book.

Unfortunately there were three major problems with my beautiful planner:
1. The paint from the Gelli Plate made the surface too slick to write on with most pens
2. The book was too thick to fit into my purse so I only carried it when I used my bag pack or biggest purses.
3. When it got warmer the pages stuck together.

By the summer I had broken down and returned to a cheap version of my old setup just to have something to use. The old setup was better than the failed gelli print planner, but it still had its old problems and paper nearly as bad as newsprint.

Not in 2015! This year I sketched out a planner the way I'd want it. I looked over what I'd done and tweaked it some. Several months of plotting later I set up the pages on my computer.  After figuring out double-sided printing and booklet sizes I realized that this setup might meet some of my friends' needs too. This afternoon a download of the planner will be listed on my Etsy store! 

So Long Chi-beria!

Between Polar Vortex and some smaller storms before and after, Chicago earned the nickname "Chi-beria" this year. It wasn't just my little Southern soul shivering in a northern winter, schools and business actually closed because it was too cold!

Chicago and melting Lake Michigan

Now, I come from a glorious portion of the the country where the daffodils bloom by mid February at the absolute latest, so two inches of snow the first day of March was just a bit too much for me. Despite my best efforts to go and do, when there aren't flowers blooming by the end of February and I haven't seen the ground for months because of the snow and ice I start to panic.  Immediately my subconscious decides that spring didn't survive the winter.

It's a pretty silly thing to think. As long as the earth is still rotating, the seasons will keep changing. After all, Hades cannot keep fair Persephone with him the entire year. I know that spring will come, but also I don't know that it will come. When the dark days drag on and the occasional sunny day is below freezing, it's hard to remember green growing things.

Teeny-tiny baby leaves!

But today, today was sunny and warm. When I ventured out with my paints, there were tiny rivers beginning on all the sidewalks and the grass (though dead-looking) had appeared. The main sidewalks were full of people out jogging or walking their dogs and they actually smiled.

Closer to Lake Michigan there were more rivulets and a few trees even had the beginnings of buds. Out on the lake front joggers, cyclist, and dog walkers were all frolicking and so were the birds. From the apartment windows I only see distant pigeons and once I saw a titmouse investigate our trees. Out there, the air rang with birds singing, calling, chiding in many voices.

I settled in and began painting. Just as I was becoming engrossed in the colors I heard a noise I didn't recognize and looked about. Not seeing anything unusually I turned back to my painting. Again the noise and again I didn't understand. After the seagull, who'd been begging for the paintbrushes he assumed were food, left I realized what it was: ice breaking!

Spring is still awhile away (more snow to come this week) but the ice is breaking and the buds are forming.

My sketch from the lake front

Drawing Lab: Color

Though my silence belies it, I'm still working my way through Carla Sonheim's great book.

20 drawings of the same dog with a chisel tip marker

I've already confessed to my awe of the blind contour, but some of the other techniques seemed deceptively simple. (Not the one of drawing the same dog in the same pose 20 different ways!)

Drawing and coloring a monkey with three to four "mystery tools" seemed simple enough. Draw, then color.  What I didn't expect was that forcing myself to use the given colors would help me break from the constraints of reality.

It sounds a bit dramatic, but it was surprisingly effective in helping me work through my paralyzing standards for realism in color. Of course, I still hope to return to realistic colors and master them. But, by breaking from reality I've given myself the freedom to see and capture other elements first.

Monkey with "Mystery tools"

Following artists on social media and even meeting up with professional artist often leaves me disappointed at how far away I still am from the realism I love. Taking the freedom to change colors and the looseness required to draw on index cards with a chisel-tip marker, I've been able to explore slightly more refined water color renderings. I hadn't expected it to help, but stepping away from my attempts at realism I am slowly coming to understand the pieces that go into making up a realistic piece.

"Twinky"

InCoWriMo Freebies

Happy InCoWriMo!

Two InCoWriMo letters I just sent out

Much like my first experience with NaNoWriMo, I didn't discover this event until the day it began. Still, I'm definitely participating. Why?

Well, firstly because letter  writing is a good thing. It's good for the writer but also for the recipient (even my 8 year old video game loving nephew is thrilled when he  gets mail). Secondly, I'm not very good at letter writing, I freeze at the thought of having to select just the right words and tone. Yes, you read that correctly: I'm participating in International Correspondence Writing Month because I put off writing letters. That is the beauty of this type of event, the combined power of a  deadline and a camaraderie remove the excuses we normally give for not doing things we care about like sending a note or even writing a novel.

For some of the correspondence I'm sending out this month I painted cards just for the recipient, but I also painted a few things to print onto fountain pen friendly paper. In the name of drawing more people into this event & helping out those struggling to keep it up, I've decided to share two of those paintings.

Below are the images I'm sharing: a Noodler's fountain pen & a blue "Ink-a- Rhino" with a bow tie. To print these images on your own paper follow the links below to download the full size image to your computer. When printing select letter-sized paper (I actually set it up to use 8.3x 11.7 Rhodia paper) and either "Print entire image" for a slightly larger image or "Scale to fit page" for a slightly smaller image.

I hope you enjoy these and writing letters!

Click Here to download the Fountain Pen                               Click Here to download the Rhino

Morning Meditations

I've long thought that mornings should start slowly with a warm drink and a book in hand. Over the years I went back and forth between thinking that it had to be a Bible and accepting devotional books as a substitute. But this past year and a half it has been hard to spend time with either type.


Late last Spring I was introduced to the writings of Rowan Williams (currently Lord of Oystermouth). I savored The Lion's World and then Tokens of Trust. Neither  of these books would be considered "devotional" by my old standards, but they were both of great help to me. Lord Williams has many more writings that I hope to read, but of late I've found following arguments and reasons hard. Last week I sat staring at a page that I'd read twice with no memory of its contents and decided that perhaps I should try another approach.

Making marks on paper is one of my favorite things. When I get a new pen or put a new ink in my fountain pen I love to sit and draw, write, and generally doodle. In fact when I was too busy to do so in the fall, I eventually had to make time for it so the ink on the page could soothe the itch in my soul.

Enter my new morning meditations. Each day I sit with a warm beverage, my pen, a scrap of paper, and the order of service from the previous Sunday.  I read until I find a phrase that jumps off at me (or I go straight to one that caught my attention during the service.)  Then I turn the phrase over in my mind to get a sense of what is most striking to me in the phrase.  From there I try to write the phrase in a way that will enrich the phrase. That means bringing attention to specific words over others and also giving shape and gesture.

No, I'm not a brilliant hand lettering artist. No, my penmanship isn't lovely. Yes, my lines wobble and tilt. No, those things don't matter for this. This is about me savoring the beauty of the words in a prayer or song and scratching that itch to push ink across a page.

Huitzi

One great thing about living in the midwest is that there are craft breweries everywhere. Because these are small companies and can't afford huge ad campaigns, they have to work to stand out. I think it's such a treat to walk through the store and see product design for each company.

Many companies have a theme in which all their beers are named. One of my favorites is called Five Rabbit. Their beers are animal themed with a Central American twist.  I found this beauty at the store during the end of Polar Vortex and let's be frank, I'm a sucker hummingbirds. I stopped to examine the label and realized (of course!) that it is a Five Rabbit product.  The side of the bottle says:

Art journal page (where I should have used a thinner Pen)

"Huitzi is a winter beer that doesn´t wallow in the dark cold days of this season. Like it’s namesake, the Aztec hummingbird god Huitzilopoctli who smashed the winter to allow the sun to return, Huitzi looks forward to the brighter promise of spring. We think of it as a winter cooler."

WHAT--Did I just read that correctly: "hummingbird god?" Yes, yes there was an Aztec hummingbird god. Sort of...

Huitzilopochtli was a warrior and sun god.  In art he is depicted as a hummingbird (sometimes an eagle) or a warrior wearing hummingbird feathers. As the son of the earth goddess and a sun god, the legend says that he created the moon and stars from his siblings who tried to kill him and their mother. According to the legend the spirits of fallen warriors would join him in the sun and then be reincarnated as hummingbirds.

The product design for this beer and the stories its name honors caught my imagination. Over Christmas break I found an Art Blanc Modo Arte journal on clearance at Hobby Lobby and bought it as I always do art and office supplies: on impulse.  But like so many journals, the beautiful cover and blank pages keep me from using them. Not this time, Huitzi bounced around in my imagination as the snow fell and became the first entry in my new art journal.

Ice Dreams

 Sculpture has a nearly irresistible lure to me. No seriously, I have to take a friend with me to museums to keep me from touching the statues on display. I learned this about myself in high school. We'd taken a field trip to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia and at the time they had several Roman pieces on loan from the Louvre. I'm not sure if I'd ever seen real sculpture before then and oh it was misery to leave the museum that day.

Sketch from ice carving at the University of Chicago

Since that time I've wanted to try my hand at sculpture. The artistry in sculpture leaves me breathless with awe over the skill and planning it must have taken. Still, because I know in part the artistry required and I think because it moves me so I've wanted to try. But the thing about traditional sculpture is that it's BIG and messy. Trying to sculpt just hasn't fit into my life for the past eight years, until today.

My ice angel when I stopped for the night

I'd been writing in a coffee shop on the University of Chicago campus when I looked out the window and saw people standing around blocks of ice. Well, naturally I stared out the window. When I realized that they were sculpting I stopped to make a quick sketch (above). Sketching meant looking at the place with focus and I realized that people were sculpting and leaving, and then others came to keep working.

By the time I finished a five or ten minute sketch I realized that it was an open event. I can hardly imagine how frantic I looked as I packed up my things and dashed outside. I was given a chisel, an ice pick, and a six pronged ice pick. A gentleman showed me basics for each tool and then I was alone.

All these years of wanting to attempt a sculpture and yet I had never considered what I wanted to sculpt. I asked the people working on either side of me if they had ever attempted such a feat. Neither had. So without further guidance I stared at the ice wondering what to attempt. The only thing that came into my mind was the words of Michelangelo that I had memorized as an undergraduate:

"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."

So I began with an angel. Can I just say that an angel is a pretty overwhelming first attempt? An ice sculpting company was providing the ice and tools and because I asked them, they gave me further instruction on how to chisel out faces and depict feathers. In all I only had about an hour to work before the company (and tools) left.

My angel doesn't look much like an angel, but I learned a great deal.  When I left I still had to walk a half mile home alone in the wind and snow with already numb toes, fingers, and face. Even so I felt more blessed and seen than I have in many days.

Blind Giraffes or lab 2

Blind contours have always seemed to me a mark of arriving as an artist. Certainly not the only mark, but high on the list. Knowing one's hand and tools so well as to be able to render what the eye sees without concern for the hand is basically magic as far as I can tell.

Lab 2 in Sonheim's book is all about making blind contours of a single creature again, and again and then on top of the renderings made! As I rendered a giraffe multiple times I examined exactly which parts of the creature were clearest each time. It was a little discouraging to realize that my contours looked less and less like a giraffe as I worked. I mean I should be getting better with practice, right?

But the thing is I was improving! No, not improving in the goal of rendering the outline perfectly without checking on my hand, but improving. It wasn't until this exercise and examining my results that I realized I've been assuming the goal was a feat of hand-eye coordination worthy of the greatest athletes. In fact this exercise was strengthening my observation skills and helping me realize the details that make a giraffe a giraffe.

Layered contours with color added

A New Year & A Drawing Lab

While New Year's Resolutions are beginning to lag or maybe even fizzling out mine is taking its joyous shape.

It's not secret that I've struggled a great deal since moving to Chicago fifteen months ago. It was sometime last February when I realized to my horror that I couldn't write anymore. Poetry: gone. Fiction: gone. Letters: gone. Personal journal: gone. I'd always thought of the fabled writer's block as having the desire to write but for some reason not being able to do so. This time writer's block was feeling the weight of stories in my heart and mind yet not being able to let them bleed out. Voices, echoes, moments from stories true and imagined crowded in. Once that would have meant writing them out and becoming empowered by them but  this time I was crippled by them and felt unable to even face them.
I did several thing to try to drown out the stories or forget them, but at last in November I forced myself to write. That's the thing of it, there were so many stories floating through me that I'd pushed deeper and deeper until when at last I sat down to write I even said aloud, "I don't have a story to tell." I wrote anyway, just to prove to myself that I could. A strange thing happened then, I began to feel myself waking up. Suddenly the things I had brought into my life to help me ignore the nagging of the stories I couldn't release were obvious for the shackles they had always been.  I left Chicago to visit family for the holidays in a way I didn't expect: excited. Excited to visit family, but also excited to return to Chicago in a new year and another chance to write.

This photo from the Amazon listing

 While there are more quiet resolutions for myself about writing, I  was given another new year's resolution as a Christmas gift. When my parents gave me Carla Sonheim's Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists I doubt they meant it to be a goal for my new year, but 52 drawing exercises is just perfect to have one for each week of the year! As the cover might suggest, this is not a book for realistic renderings instead Sonheim says that her goal is to make drawing fun again. The book has seven units and the first is about finding inspiration from animals. Within each unit there are several "drawing labs" with instructions for a drawing exercise and tips for taking the drawing further.
In the first week of 2014 I eagerly started the first lab "Cats on a Bed." The exercise involves using your bed (or in my case a pillow) to make loose drawings of cats from memory and imagination. This was a lot of fun! It was even more fun because when I'd run out of poses that I could imagine a cat in I would turn to my husband and say,"What else do cats do?" and that darling man would describe or ever act out another cat pose. The "taking it further" for this lab was to select one or two favorite poses and render them in another media. Because I'm giving myself a week for each lab, and because I liked several poses I ended up doing several of the poses in watercolors. I included one page of my sketches and my watercolor cats below.
So far the hardest thing about this New Year's resolution has been to not do all the exercises in 52 days!

One page of cats on a pillow

Colored cat

Red kitty eating

Blue kitty turns her back to you

Green kitty just wants to be petted

Orange kitty is scared

Purple kitty stretches

Mysterious purple kitty

The Fox Confessor

With school and work I haven't taken much time for being creative lately, but this week I miraculously finished my coursework before today! What with a dear friend's birthday this week and Neko Case's "Fox Confessor Brings the Flood" on repeat I decided to finally work on another template from the amazing Facebook group Ornation Creation (created and run by Ben Kwok).

Fox "tangle" based on Ben Kwok's template

Unlike my first attempt at one of the templates I consulted several ZenTangle patterns to give some structure to my animal.  (ZenTangle Patterns is a neat place to expand your doodling horizions! My fox certainly doesn't fit ZenTangle guidelines, but there is something soothing in giving structure and direction to ones doodles) For this fox I used three different ballpoint pens. My pen hoarding habit paid off with two different shades of orange, and a brown ballpoint pen. I was also pretty pumped to use my shiny new gold gel pen! The colors survived the scan well but they haven't printed well. The printing is a bummer since I want to send a print as a card to the aforementioned fox-loving friend, but then again a less vibrant fox isn't so bad.

Last month I made desktop calendar with hummingbird sketches I'd done, but I hadn't come up with anything for this month yet. I had photoshop open for another project and came up with a fox desktop calendar for October that I'm pretty excited about. Finished, it's 1280X800 (perfect for a 13" laptop). If you'd like to use it for your own, you can download a full-sized version here. Use it on your desktop, you blog background, etc but please give me credit and don't sell or otherwise use it for profit.

This is a smaller version of the desktop. Download the original here.

Jacob & the Angel

    Yesterday morning I woke with a headache. It seems that the cat and the dust are conspiring against me, to what end I don't yet know. Benjamin and I get up relatively early on Sunday mornings so that we can have breakfast and prepare for church without having to rush. Normally this involves sitting in the living room reading together for thirty minutes to an hour, but because of my headache Benjamin wisely decreed that we should go outside to read. As I have often bemoaned, we don't have any outside area here (no balcony, porch, or patio) but we do live two strong-armed throws from a French Bakery. The bakery shares outdoor seating around a fountain with the other shops and restaurants that we live behind and has croissants that both Benjamin and I love. It was a lovely morning and so all the tables were already occupied when we arrived, but there was still a bench by the fountain. While Benjamin enjoyed his croissant and an essay by Rowan Williams I savored pain au chocolate and read from William Temple's Readings from St. John's Gospel. I've only recently started this work and have been surprised at how enjoyable and enriching I find it.

       The passage for the morning was John 1:43-51 Philip is the disciple who Jesus goes to, up to this point everyone has been coming to him. As soon as Christ comes to him, Philip goes to get Nathanael. Here things get really interesting because in Temple's translation it Jesus says to Nathanael, "Behold an Israelite in whom there is no Jacob." Then there's that bit where Jesus tells Nathanael what he was doing before Philip came to him and Nathanael is amazed, but Christ tells him that he hasn't seen anything yet. I've never really been sure what to make of that transition. It always seemed like Jesus was saying, "I'm even more awesome than you think and I'm gonna prove it." Which of course is a true statement, but did jive well with my understanding of Jesus. So did you catch the difference in Temple's translation and the ESV? The ESV says, "in whom there is no deceit." Other translations say, "in whom there is no guile." But when Temple replaces those words with "Jacob," a patriarch known for his guile and deceit, he gives the key to what Jesus is saying and who Nathanael is.
      When Philip comes to Nathanael, Nathanael has been sitting under the fig tree wrestling with God. Not physically like Jacob and the angel, but wrestling with whether or not Jesus could be the Christ. When Philip tells Nathanael who the Messiah is, Nathanael doesn't ponder  the suggestion or ask who Jesus of Nazareth is. No, he says, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth." Nathanael has been thinking this over weighing the options and keeps stumbling over Nazareth. When Jesus surprises him with His knowledge, Nathanael announces him the Son of God  (a Messianic name). Then Jesus says, "Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe?" But this is the great thing, it isn't that Jesus said he saw Nathanael under the fig tree, but that Jesus saw Nathanael contesting with God and announced upon his arrival that though he wrestles like Jacob, he has not the deceit of Jacob. It was this that helped Nathanael past Nazareth and to belief. 
       But the images don't stop there! "Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man,” Jesus says. This is finishing the story of Jacob the patriarch. Jacob slept and saw the ladder ascending into heaven and the angels ascending and descending. The angels or messengers of God were doing his will, bringing his messages, bridging the gap between heaven and earth. But Nathanael will see Jesus on the cross, bridging the gap between heaven and earth communicating the will and messages of God and the pleas of His people.
Now I'm sure that this isn't surprising to many folks, but his got into me and encouraged me. I've said for years that the Old and New Testaments are not different books, that Jesus is in the Old Testament as well as the New, but not until reading this did I realize that I'd forgotten the place of the Old Testament in the New Testament. The Patriarch and prophets don't make sense without Jesus, but I'd never realized that they were the key to understanding Jesus's parables!
That was a lot of revelation over pain au chocolate and before you think I'm very spiritual, you should know that I spent a decent amount of time at the fountain thinking about the figure's awkward pose and that it looks more like a spring than a fountain. 

       The sunshine and outdoors helped, my headache was gone within the first five minutes. After church my bike survived it's first ride without a tube popping and Benjamin and I enjoyed a great lunch with friends. Around five that afternoon we decided to go out again, but by that time it was in the nineties and a bike ride didn't sound pleasant. I confessed to Benjamin that this morning the fountain had struck me as something I should try to sketch and so we went back. I made my sketch of the fountain and just before we left I went up to see what in the world it was supposed to represent. Imagine my surprise when I read "Jacob and the Angel" stamped on the post!

Febuary 18th: the warm, windy, & wet day

This morning was warmer than it has been in quite a long time. Shortly after noon the husband and I went out, he to break in his new pipe and me to be warm and paint. By the time we arrived to our destination, it was no longer warm, but windy and threatening to rain. So, while he had his short smoke I made a 10ish minute watercolor sketch of what he was doing. I'm not particularly fond of the rendering, but he is pleased. Even with my displeasure, it is the best painting I've made of him and my best quick painting.

Step Back

March 9th 2012
Gallery 13
Columbus, GA
Bradley Hathaway

"I've been hurting for 29 years now, but I'm not hurting anymore- I've been healed. I had an amazing experience.I don't even know how to say it... When you know that God loves you, you are never the same- it's just an outpouring of grace. I've never experienced that kind of joy and freedom and the kind of man I'm going to be. I don't know what my songs are going to sound like after this. I'd love to tell you how happy I am, but I don't know how to say it except that I'm really happy..."

The South is Seeping in

Magnolias, camillias, hydrangeas, gardenias, and azaleas are the flowers of the South. Sure, ever good Southern garden has roses in the Summer and daffodils in the spring, a slew of other worthy flowers for each season. Growing up, we always had pictures in our Easter dresses taken by the azaleas clustered out front and when I saw them blooming a few weeks ago I warned them that Easter would be later this year and they needn't rush things too much. Because-after all- everyone knows that the Azalea trails and Easter morning pictures are what distinguish the warm Southern winters from the official Spring.

It was a blow to my Southern credentials when earlier this week I whispered to the fiancé that I thought azaleas to be gaudy. Over-grown cotton candy wads, dyed like Easter eggs and piled around one another--that's how I described them. The thing about azaleas that bothers me so much is that each flower is exquisite-- her tiny freckles and blushing pink face like an exotic beauty-- but there are so many on each bush that hardly anyone can see a flower's beauty. Instead there are elephantine bushes packed with pink blossoms dropped onto the library lawn, or lining the street so that they look more like one giant pink blob.

The newlywed grandparents called us Tuesday to pronounce the azaleas at their honeymoon location "the most beautiful azaleas ever," you can imagine that I was not much persuaded by the claim. Even so, the lure of a giant garden (and getting to meet my soon-to-be-grandmother in-law) won out.

A view from Callaway Gardens with the grandparents

Maybe it was the drive to the place or seeing the grandparents' joy or maybe it was the effects of the fairies, but when I saw the place they had been telling us about I immediately wanted to recant. With all the exotic variance I saw them instead as a fairy counsel gathered. With all the subtleties of shade, light, and color they were a dress worn by the forest floor. Wandering through the maze of shoulder high color left me dazzled, but didn't dull the beauty of each freckled blossom, the hairy moss, bumblebees, spiders, or the long shadows of the towering pines. I could have spent half the day in this tiny section petting each flower, admiring the spider's geometry-soaking up the fey of the place.


When the fiancé said we had to move on, I knew that there would be many other beautiful things to see, but I was sad indeed to leave the azaleas that taught me the beauty of their togetherness.