meditations.

So coinciding with this sort of creating and putting-out-there hiatus, I've also decided to do a sort-of fast this week (today, May 25th, through next Friday, June 1st).  I haven't yet decided what to call this fast, so I'll refrain from slapping labels on it.  To give you an idea though: it would be called a "secular media fast" by some, but I don't really believe in the word "secular" in the sense that we tend to use it.  I don't believe there is a single thing that is devoid of the divine, I don't believe that art is temporal.  It's more of a "I'm not listening to music that doesn't bring God to mind in some sense, I'm only reading books that edify me spiritually (This is a big deal. It is not because other books are bad. It is because I have starved myself of the spiritual in the literary world for a very long time and I am in desperate need of some spiritual edification by way of one of my favorite things - books.)" kind of fast.  In other words, a "Sufjan Stevens/M. Ward/Jon Foreman-listening, Bible/faith/art book-reading, meditation time."  Don't ask about the M. Ward thing; I couldn't explain it to my mother, so I won't try to explain it to you.

Anyway, I figured I'd post some of the things I've been reading and listening to and meditating on in lieu of writing about myself like usual.  I don't expect them to be (necessarily) as earth-shattering to you as they have been thus far to me because the Creator of the universe has tailored them specifically for me.  How absolutely beautiful and outrageous and scandalous does that sound?  Lets just take a minute here for that to sink in.

I.

Come Thou Fount of every blessing,

Tune my heart to sing Thy grace.

Streams of mercy never ceasing

Call for songs of loudest praise

...

Here I raise my Ebenezer,

Hither by Thy help I come;

And I hope by Thy good pleasure

Safely to arrive at home

...

Let that grace now, like a fetter,

Bind my wandering heart to Thee.

Prone to wander, Lord I feel it,

Prone to leave the God I love.

Here's my heart, O take and seal it,

Seal it for Thy courts above.

-bits and pieces of my favorite hymn, Come Thou Fount.  Emphasis on the last section.  My favorite version is Sufjan Stevens',which you can (and should, if you haven't) hear a live version of here.

II. 

"When worship is our response to the One who alone is worthy of it - Jesus Christ - then our lives are on their way to being turned inside out.  Every dimension of self-centered living becomes endangered as we come to share God's self-giving heart... Through the grace of worship, God applies the necessary antidote to what we assume is merely human - our selfishness.  Worship sets us free from ourselves to be free for God and God's purposes in the world.  The dangerous act of worshiping God in Jesus Christ necessarily draws us into the heart of God and sends us out to embody it, especially toward the poor, the forgotten and the oppressed." - The Dangerous Act of Worship, as quoted in Living the Christian Year which I am currently reading and highly, highly recommend.  

III.

"Those who can let go of the day, including its slights and sins, enter the next day forgiven and free.  Those who fear the grave as little as their own bed become available for bold and creative living...we sleep well, as we live and die well, knowing that we are in God's embrace." -Dorothy Bass, also as quoted in Living the Christian Year. I keep picking quotes that are quoted in this book because it's much easier than quoting the entire book, which I would end up doing if I tried to narrow it down to some little gems.  

IV. 

"Plato spoke of the necessity for divine madness in the poet. It is a frightening thing to open oneself to the strange and dark side of the divine; it means letting go our self-control, that control which gives us the illusion of safety. But safety is only an illusion, and letting it go is part of listening to the silence, and to the Spirit."

"And as I listen to the silence, I learn that my feelings about art and my feelings about the Creator of the Universe are inseparable. To try to talk about art and about Christianity is for me one and the same thing, it means attempting to share the meaning of my life, what gives it, for me, its tragedy and its glory. It is what makes me respond to the death of an apple tree, the birth of a puppy, northern lights shaking the sky, by writing stories."

"When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.

But before he can listen, paradoxically, he must work. Getting out of the way and listening is not something that comes easily, either in art or in prayer.

Before I can listen to God in prayer, I must fumble through the prayers of words, of willful demands, of childish "Gimmes," of "Help mes," of "I want..." Until I tell God what I want, I have no way of knowing whether or not I truly want it... The prayers of words cannot be eliminated. And I must pray them daily, whether I feel like praying or not. Otherwise, when God has something to say to me, I will not know how to listen. Until I have worked through self, I will not be enabled to get out of the way." 

-selections from Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water: reflections on faith and art.  For the record, she is the author of my absolute favorite book growing up, A Wrinkle in Time.  So discovering that she also wrote a book about Christianity and art made me totally freak out.  I searched every...single...bookstore I have been near in the last month before finally giving up and ordering it on Amazon.  I just started reading it today; it has already been every bit as wonderful as I had hoped it would be, and more so.  So, if you like art and find it to be firmly bound up with your faith, GO FIND THIS BOOK AND READ IT. 

V.

I mentioned earlier a book called Living the Christian Year: time to inhabit the story of God by Bobby Gross.  Essentially, it follows the liturgical year, giving a little bit of the history and significance of each season in the church calendar and providing devotions for each week of the church calendar.  Having grown up Episcopalian and Anglican, I've been surrounded by the church calendar and the liturgy my entire life.  I've found it too easy to dismiss it and deprive it of its importance and beauty.  Whether you've also experienced this, or the liturgical year is somewhat new to you, this book is absolutely amazing.  It too is new to my reading list, and it is definitely taking up permanent (or at least semi-permanent) residence.  

Anyway, this coming Sunday is Pentecost, which marks the beginning of what is called Ordinary Time, which is basically the six months where nothing big like the Son of God being born or dying is going on.  Ordinary Time, as Gross describes it, is the season of flow, of rhythm, of being filled up with Christ and pouring it back out on the world around us.  In terms of the liturgical year, it begins with Pentecost, where the disciples received an outpouring of the Spirit, and follows the story of their ministry, of the early church.  It is a time for taking in the Spirit and pumping out light and life and love into others, much like your heart takes in and pumps out blood.  An even flow, a constant rhythm.  So in terms of meditation, I've been thinking a lot about what that looks like and practicing how to constantly have both of these things in my life - Christ in me, Christ flowing out of me - rather than my usual schedule, which is a lot of neither of those things.  Ordinary Time, I feel, is the perfect season for me.  Because the idea of the rhythm is tantalizing to me, and also because I am terrible at it.  Also, the liturgical color for Ordinary Time is green, which is my favorite color.  My Abba Father loves me outrageously. 

IV.

Reaching, always reaching
Never reaching solid ground

Seeking always seeking
Never seeking what I've found Baptize my mind
Baptize my eyes
Baptize my mind
For a seed to give birth to life
First it must die

Both my hands are filled
With guilt
(Give me absolution)
Both my eyes are blind
With filth
(Give me absolution)-lyrics from Baptize My Mind by Jon Foreman.  Listen here.  

an accidental hiatus

So I've been taking an accidental blogging hiatus.  Well, kind of a general writing hiatus actually.  At first I resisted it and tried time and time again to write anything - poems, oddly rhythm-ed prose (I guess technically still poems, but I discount them), trite bits of scenes...anything - but it all sucked and it wasn't real so I stopped.  I didn't get why I couldn't write.  I thought it was because I'd reached my limit...that I'd already said all the things I had to say and I was done, my time was up.  But that's not true.  People like me, (much to the vexation of folks who haven't got the time to read the flighty soul-wanderings of silly girls) we never stop talking/writing/coming up with things we think are important to say - if only for our own mental health.  Then I thought it was really because I'm not an artist, that there isn't one single artistic bone, cell, atom, whatever's smaller than that, in my body or soul.  But then I started thinking about what an artist really is and how there aren't really any specific requirements and all that.  My current working definition of an artist is just somebody who likes to create things with purpose.  So I realized it was unfair to say there is nothing that makes me an artist, because I'm a kid who likes to create things that have or serve a purpose.  Sometimes that purpose is just to get things out of my brain and onto a thing - a canvas, or a computer screen, or a doodled-on crumpled-up piece of paper - so that I can see it and figure it out.  Sometimes that purpose is to understand the world around me a little better and put my understanding out there in hopes that maybe someone else will understand the world a little better too.  Sometimes - though, honestly, not nearly enough...and when I say that, I mean rarely ever - it's to glorify God, this absolutely creative and beautiful and breathtaking Being that, for some reason, chose to imbue me, this punky, lame, flighty kid, with an appreciation for creativity and beauty and soul-excavating through art. 

[Here let me say that there is no such thing as "enough" when it comes to glorifying God.  I really suck at it.  I'm trying to be better at it, but really, I suck.  What happens to me sometimes though is that I'll start out writing to my own personal end and then somewhere after the first couple sentences, God graciously takes over and redeems my selfish attempts at creating.  I still don't get why He does these things for me sometimes, but that's just that indelible grace.]

So I decided it wasn't that I had reached my quota of things to say, or that I'm not creative, or that I simply suck as a human being.  I've learned a couple things in life, and one of them is that there are seasons.  And I'm not talking about the weather.  There are human seasons - relationship seasons and well-being seasons and empty seasons and creative seasons - and they can last weeks or months or even years.  For me, there are probably two different kinds of creative seasons: there's the give-and-take, where there's an almost-constant in and out flow of art, and then there's the be-still, where everything I try to create is a flop and I find myself having to sit out the game for a minute and take gulps of the art around me.  The latter is the one I feel I've been in for a bit now (though I've occasionally managed to spit out a post here and there).  I resented it and fought it and tried every trick in the book to get over it, but to no avail.  I'm like a child resisting a nap, fighting and trying to run away, but ever so needing the rest.  And then there's my Father, comforting me: "Shh, shh, Beloved.  Be still.  Rest now.  Attend yourself to My ways, to My art.  Take some time to just sit back and learn, before your work loses its meaning entirely.  Let Me lead you in this rest and then let Me lead you when it's time to start creating again.  Learn to listen to the creative murmurings that I place within you." 

And that's what I intend to do.  It may be that the understanding is the beginning of the end of it.  It may be that I'll be in this season for a while longer.  I'm not sure when I'll get put back in the game.  I'm okay with that. 

However, in the near future, The Prismatic Life will be taking on some changes and maybe even a new home, so be on the lookout for that! Stay real, folks.

basics.

I am scared of rules. I am scared of expectations. I am scared of work and demands and responsibility and school. I don’t know what I want to do with my life because I am lazy and because I am afraid that if I start off in a direction I’ll end up deciding I don’t want to do it anymore and then I will have wasted time and it will be too late.  I am scared of people depending on me for things.  I am scared of structure and discipline and the cold reality of business. I am scared that one day I will revert back to the same person I used to be.  I am scared of not using up every single drop of life I’m given.  I am scared one day I’ll get sick of feeling vulnerable and I’ll close up and stop shining the love of Christ out of my very visible cracks.

I just want to make art and be around people.  I want to learn things from everyone around me.  I want to make a little more beauty in the world.  I want warmth and buzzing activity and creativity and good stories.  I don’t want to be stuck in any one career or job sector or place.  I want to foster community and creativity and raw honesty.  I want to be young forever, but I also want to get old.  I want a family and a home and people who become a part of me.  I want to see the beauty and love of Christ in everything – in the hills, the sunrises, in laughter, in tears, in the stories of rad people.  I want to live a life so full that it overflows and drips over the side of the cup, runs down, floods everything.  I want to run in a thousand different directions all at once.  I want brightness and authenticity and redemption and beauty and justice to be my way of living.

the search for authenticity/new skin

I.
I don't like what I write anymore.

It's unfortunate, a bit surprising, and most definitely chaos-inducing.  This revelation has thrown my brain into quite an uproar, one side demanding an explanation as to why my voice isn't authentic, the other shouting that this is just a phase and accusing me of abandoning my writer-self.  There are a lot of Sarah-selves running around up there, each auditioning for the part of my writing voice.

The real problem is that I read over several of my recent posts (basically since I moved here).  It's not necessarily that I dislike the things I write about and the words I use.  It's more that I don't feel that it rings true, it seems as though I've tried too hard to be authentic and ended up over-shooting.  My words sound hollow to me, my conclusions too final, too immovable.  I tried to end most posts with some redeeming sentences looking forward from each stopping point I reached and none of the little glimmers of hope that I ended with ever took root - they never affected me after I published the post and shut down my computer and went back to my life.  Not one of them.  And while I fully meant them at the time and they gave me hope as I was writing them, they seem fake and empty now.  Like I was putting up this facade and trying to convince myself that I was going to change my life based on some revelation I had.  And I never did it.  Life has remained this pretty steady stream, slow-moving, a little stagnant, wondering when the fresh water and the rapids and the adventure will come in.

Maybe the problem is that I'm in a growing season (well, I guess that isn't exactly a problem, but whatever), one that I hadn't expected, and I've begun to move away from that sort of thing - those moments of trying so hard to be real, feeling like those little bits of hope are necessary to a body of mostly somewhat depressing words and thoughts.  The thing about moving is that it strips you of every bit of your image.  You know, you had your people and they had their ideas about you based on what you had shown them of yourself.  Once you get past those initial weeks or months or whatever, you don't have to do too much work to maintain your image with these people, so you kind of chill out and nobody asks anymore questions.  Being in a new place, nobody knows you.  They don't have any preconceived ideas about you because they don't know anything about you, they haven't even heard of you before (crazy, right? Like who hasn't heard of me on this planet?).  So basically you start out brand new.  Not that you reinvent yourself necessarily, but you more or less get in touch with parts of you you had maybe closed off before you moved because you didn't really need them anymore.  Or at least that's how it's been for me.  It doesn't hurt that prior to moving I was kind of being forced into this mold I didn't fit in (thanks to the sorority) so lots of little parts of me became almost unnecessary and even got in the way sometimes.  (Ridiculous that I let something rule me like that, but by the time I realized it I kind of didn't have a choice anymore.  Judge me as you please.)  And now I'm in a place where no one expects me to behave or talk or dress a certain way and I'm free to rule myself as I choose.  It's freeing and exciting and a bit of an adventure...while at the same time making me feel vulnerable and unprotected and just out there, alone.  Sometimes I like it, sometimes I don't.  But I've started to grow into this other person, this person I haven't been yet that's some interesting and surprising amalgamation of all the people I have been.  I think that's what's supposed to happen when you're turning 20 (which, by the way, is weird. Two whole decades on this planet and I'm just now figuring out where and how who I am and who I'm supposed to be are supposed to meet?).

II.
I've written before about how being in a new place means that pretty much every situation is new and uncomfortable (which you can read here) and it's still true.  I've got some things I do regularly now - nannying, small group, church - but still nothing is entirely comfortable, not that kind of comfortable where you sigh contentedly and sit back into yourself and just enjoy everything without worrying about how much you should talk and trying to smile a lot.  I have some friends...well I guess I do.  It's funny: there is no point where you officially become friends with someone, you know?  No time where you both say "hey so we're friends now, right?"  It just kind of happens.  Which is a beautiful thing and also a nerve-wracking thing, because for a while you're both kind of wondering if you're friends or not yet and what's acceptable based on the answer to that question.  But then all of a sudden everything's cool and you start letting all your weirdness come out and you have jokes and you remember to ask about situations in each others lives.  New friendships are really cool to watch grow and mine are constantly reminding me of grace and beauty and humanity.

I think that I've been in survival mode since I moved here.  Like an animal about to go into hibernation*, I've been continually packing layers around myself for insulation.  Like I'm afraid of the pain associated with leaving some of the people I love most dearly and the city I grew up in and charting the territory of a new city and the new people around me.  And I've packed these layers so tight that they deaden every blow.  They stop every emotion before it hits and soften it so that it barely affects me.  While useful for the pain and loneliness and discomfort associated with moving, this practice has wounded the strength that I think is most important to women - emotion.  And I hate it.  I can't stand it.  And I can't do anything about it, really.  It's not like I can just start tearing these layers off of me because I've done a really great job of securing them - someone else has to do it for me.  And I have to let Him, which is perhaps even harder than it would be to do it myself.  It's scarier, certainly.  Like how terrifying does this sound:

Father, please, I'm begging you, tear this insulation off of me.

Rip apart my self-defenses, my cocoon.

Dismantle the casing I've put on my heart.

Repair my deep connections to life and people and myself.

Let me feel everything again.

It's asking for vulnerability, inviting pain and sadness and rawness.  But it is also asking for depth, inviting Joy and peace and new skin and new relationships to grow.  To make this my prayer is to acknowledge that there are deaths in living, and that there is always life after  those deaths.  New skin always comes after the scab, it's just marked by a scar.  And scarred skin has every bit of life that the skin before it had.  But now it has a story. 

*I don't know if animals actually pack layers around themselves when they're getting ready to go into hibernation, I just thought it sounded like a good analogy.

if you're feeling uninspired

I wrote this letter to myself awhile back when I was having a hard time finding words to write. I haven't written in a million years, so I'm back in that same place again. Fortunately, I remembered this little gem. Here's to hoping it will kickstart my creativity again.

Dear uninspired me:

Please stop checking facebook.  Please stop picking your split ends.  Pinterest won’t give you any more inspiration than the view out your window.  Just start creating.  You aren’t feeling passionate today?  Create anyway.  You don’t know just exactly what to say?  Create anyway.  You forgot your headphones so you’re sitting at Starbucks being aurally assaulted by coffee orders and weird music that’s not yours?  Create anyway.  The sky’s whitegrey and you haven’t done a single thing today and you’re feeling like a messy lump in a world moving at a slower pace than traffic on Mopac between 5 and 7 p.m.?  Create anyway.  Because that’s what you’re here for.  You create for yourself, yeah, but that’s not all.  You create to glorify the God of the universe because that’s what He made you to do and it pleases Him when you use the gifts and passions that He gave you.  You create to bring a little hope and a flickering light to the world.  You create to bring a little sanity to yourself.  So stop caring about what’s going on around you and what’s going on inside you; stop feeling like a mess because you haven’t been productive today; stop blocking out the artistic murmurings in your brain and your soul and just MAKE SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL.  Please.  The world needs it.  And you need it even more.

catharsis

I suppose I should apologize for not writing sooner.  When we left off last, I was frustrated and numb and wondering why I couldn't be sad about anything.  Well, probably two weeks ago, I finally cried.  Yes, dear reader, I was blessed with that delicious NaH20 mix finally.  (For those of you who don't remember your periodic table, Na is sodium...)  What was so sweetly fitting was that it was a picture of the Memphis bridge, not the glamorous, all-lit-up sideview picture that goes on postcards but the take-the-photo-from-the-front-seat-right-as-you're-driving-up-to-it view, that incited my blubbering mess of a cry-fest.  It's ironic because I've been telling people that I didn't even cry when I moved, not even when I went over the Memphis bridge.  And as I am a cliche and emotional person, I should have most definitely been shedding some mad tears at that point in my journey.  But I didn't.  I was reading (read: stalking) a family friend's blog (it's creepy, sure, but I'm not ashamed because she's a fantastic writer and I read her stuff hoping some of her awesomeness will rub off on me) and she and her family had passed through Memphis on a trip and they wrote about it.  It was a really sweet post, about all these different Memphis-y things they had done.  So I'm blubbering through my tears, "I never even went to the Civil Rights Museum once and I lived there for 12 years!" and laughing because they are funny people and madly craving a classic pulled pork sandwich and sweet tea from Central Barbeque.

 I miss the South.  I miss twangy accents and southern charm and hospitality, big trees and cotton fields, real sweet tea (the good Lord knows Texans just don't know how to do it right), and my places: Muddy's cupcakes and sweet, busy Republic coffee and getting six donuts for $1.40 after 11 p.m. at Gibson's.  But I've been met with a huge expanse of sky that's made up of different colors (nearly) every single day, "y'all"-users aplenty, some of the kindest and coolest people I've yet had the privilege of meeting, and what's possibly the longest list of concerts I want to go to that I've ever written.  I haven't found all my places yet, but I've been enjoying exploring new ones and trying to figure out which ones are the perfect fit.  I've been reminded that friendships take time and work, they don't just spring up out of nowhere.  If you live in a place for any decent length of time, you run the risk of becoming complacent.  You have your friends, you have your favorite restaurants, your routine.  You forget how important it is to step outside of your comfort zone and go on new adventures and do the hard work of new friendship.  It was easy in Memphis because I had my group of friends (the sorority) and whenever I met new people it was always with them, so I never really had to go out on a limb.  It was easy to be charming and funny and outgoing because I was always comfortable.  Now I'm finding I'm rarely comfortable; and that's hard because sometimes you get to feeling like you're an island, you're out there alone and you'll never feel comfortable and at home and charming ever again.  I have to keep reminding myself that I will indeed be comfortable again, and maybe someday I'll even get to be medially funny.  But I'm also finding that being uncomfortable is a huge blessing.  It's awkward and a little bit lonely and it can make you go stir-crazy if you aren't careful, but it also gives you a whole new understanding of grace and how to extend it to the people around you.  Being uncomfortable is so completely and entirely human; it's one of those things we all feel more often than we'd care to admit.  It should be a shared experience, but we're all so wrapped up in trying to look cool and smooth that we couldn't bear to lay it out and share that kind of thing with everyone else.  I wish I could.  Being uncomfortable gives you the privileged opportunity of observing human behavior at an almost-outsider level; you learn so much about yourself and about the way people are.  You get to learn what you want most in a relationship, what you really appreciate about people, and one of the best things about it, I'm learning, is that you get to tell your story and figure out how exactly you want to tell it.  I went to a small group last week and met a bunch of people and the most popular question was "so how did you get here?" or some variation thereof.  How did you get here?  What a beautiful question.  I wish I could talk their ears off for about thirty minutes, because that's how long it would take to tell the whole story.  There are so many things that went into my moving, so many little stories that I had no idea were connected in the slightest that somehow, at the exact right moment, converged into one big story that I was finally able to see in December.  And the obvious, and really the only, option for a next step was to take the jump.  So here I am.  Uncomfortable, awkward, and a little lonely, but going on new adventures, learning new kinds of grace-living, doing the hard work of new friendship, making a home out of a new city.  And living.

as they say, honesty is the best policy

So I've been trying to write every night for the last few nights.  I've posted a couple things, but, really, they haven't fully expressed where I'm at right now.  I tend to try to keep things a bit (well, you know, kind of) polished on here, but life isn't polished.  It's messy and confusing and sometimes it's really sweet, but sometimes it's pretty brutal.  If you want to know the truth it's that I'm rough around the edges and I'm feeling raw and I don't always, okay, I rarely, know what I'm thinking and when I write things I'm usually more or less yelling them really loud in my head as I type them. 

Annnnnd now commencing the honesty/excavating-my-soul/digging-deeper-than-I-probably-should-and-unleashing-it-on-you business.

I cannot, FOR THE LIFE OF ME, cry.  I keep trying.  Yes, I've become my own bully, but in a sappy way.  I keep reading stuff and hearing stuff and watching stuff that makes me want to cry, you know just that spontaneous overflow of emotions junk, and I CAN'T.  I even got really bad allergies after going running one day and my eyes watered to maximum, but nothing past that happened. Tears tingle the back of my eyeballs, glaze over the front of my eyeballs, even well up, but they just won't spill.  Maybe it's silly, but all my hopes are riding on this.  No, seriously.  I feel like if I could just cry, life would do a 180, maybe with like a kickflip for style.  Like if I could just feel that salty H20 mixture running down my chubby cheeks, I would magically get motivation to do life and inspiration to make a good story out of it.  Like if I could just get my emotions back, everything would be right in the world.  Maybe it's not so silly after all.  See, the way I see it, emotions, feelings, passion - those are the things that make the world go 'round.  And right now I don't have them.  So my little world stopped spinning.  I sleep a lot now.  And mindlessly listen to music.  And write sometimes.  I clean the house on Fridays (that's my rent).  I run at the park some mornings.  And I talk about what I'm going to do.  And ignore texts from my friends. 

See what I'm doing right now, that's not living.

And I could sit here and write about what living is and what it means to be alive and how cool that is and how we should all live deliberately and really, all you've got to do is just get up and do!  But it's actually a lot harder than that.  I know there is a point and a purpose and a Will in all of this.  I have to believe that because I don't serve a passive God, I don't serve a God who acts according to His whims without meaning; I serve an all-loving, all-powerful God who is at this moment painting a dark spot on the canvas of my life.  A canvas that, when done, will glorify Him.  You can't appreciate the bright if you've never seen the dark.