Category Archives: Art

Palm Sunday and Mounds State Park

Posted on 1 April 2012 | 5 comments

Today is Palm Sunday. I love Palm Sunday because it means that Lent is almost over. While I love the season of Lent, I love its end as much as, if not more than, its duration. I enjoy thinking about serious things, but I also enjoy the excitement that comes with Easter and realizing that all the suffering and sadness comes to an end with the risen Christ. Though I am not silly enough to think that all of our earthly suffering comes to an end. I know that very real pain exists in this world, and I know that even remembering the resurrection of the Messiah is not enough to assuage some pain.

Palm Sunday is also one of my favorite Sundays because, for many churches, it is one of very few high holy days where children are encouraged to play a part in the service. Too often, I think, churches don’t have children participate in the service (they might totally mess things up, right?) unless it’s a special service, like a Christmas play or something. Children and youth seem to always be an afterthought in the Church, but we’d be well off to listen to their voices and learn from them, like a reciprocal relationship, instead of always putting them off to the side, in Children’s Church or the Nursery or the Alternative Youth Service. I love Palm Sunday, because it almost always involves small children, and any willing youth, waving palm branches and shouting, “Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest!”

I remember how special I felt when I was a child and I got to be one of the Christians who proclaimed the coming of the Messiah. I (probably over-zealously) shouted my Hosannahs and waved my palm branch before (possibly not so) delicately laying it on the pile of branches on the altar of the church. I had a little extra spunk when I was younger. After Sunday School we got to go collect a branch apiece to take home with us, and I would always take it home and press some of the individual leaflets in my little white leather-bound KJV bible with Jesus’ words in red letters. That bible was so cool because it was a children’s bible, but it was a real translation (if you can call the KJV a real translation), and it had these strange watercolor type pictures in every book. I remember the one for Genesis was Joseph in his amazing rainbow coat. The Preface to the Christian Scriptures had this picture:

I remember getting in so much trouble in Sunday School over this exact picture. One of the adults was explaining to us, “See there is no door knob on the door, which means that you have to open the door to let Jesus inside. He can’t just open it himself. You have to let him in.” Then I said, “Um, the side of the door you can see has the hinges. The hinges are never on the same side of the door as the knob. Jesus is standing in front of the knob, so we can’t see it.” Let me just say, it doesn’t pay to be an observant little kid in a conservative evangelical denomination (Nazarene). I am sure my punishment by my Sunday School teacher for this event is one of reasons we ended up becoming Methodist. For all their faults, at least Methodists use their brains! But back to Palm Sunday.

I am not sure that I’ve ever missed a Palm Sunday service before in my life, but today we chose to sleep in and then go for a walk at Mounds State Park. Going to Mounds was a great choice since all the wild flowers were bloomed out and the weather was a little drizzly but perfect for hiking. We walked the opposite direction that we usually do, and it’s the way I like better, because I notice more beauty coming around that way. I’m not sure why I notice more, but I do. And today was no exception. The park was absolutely beautiful. Breathtakingly so. I didn’t wave any palm fronds, and I didn’t shout Hosannah, but I was able to worship in a way I don’t usually worship in a building called Church.

So this week, as I look forward to Easter, I plan to do several things to remind me of what is coming.I am going to play more, run more, and swim more. I am going to fast, eating only one meal (dinner) each day. And, I am going to pray more and be more mindful of the beauty all around me.

Peace.

*

I have found that writing here (nearly) every day during Lent has done wonders for my mental health. Paying attention to the things around me and reflecting in a spiritual way always makes me feel better, more connected to my surroundings. I don’t know why I don’t keep this up. One entry a day isn’t too much to ask, right? Also, I just cut my hair; it’s pretty crazy, but so am I.

Crazy Hair. Woot. Woot.

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Posted in Art, Children, Christianity, Easter, Goals, Grace, Hair, Lent, Mental Health, Play, Religion, Running, Spirituality, Swimming, Writing

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Tomorrow is Palm Sunday

Posted on 31 March 2012 | Leave a comment

Holy Week begins tomorrow on Palm Sunday with that triumphal act of Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem.

A Mosaic of the Triumphal Entry
Taken from http://murraycreek.net/higher/chapter4.htm

Holy Week is by far my favorite week of the Christian calendar. Why? I can’t really tell you. Maybe it’s the fact that I love the whole glorious mystery of the death and resurrection. Maybe it’s the anticipation of the forty-some days of contemplation an denial leading up to Easter. Maybe it the intense focus on the death of Jesus Christ on Holy Friday. Maybe it’s just that I know soon and very soon the heartache of this forty days of wilderness will be over. There are a lot of maybes leading up to Easter, but somehow Holy Week always succeeds in stopping me right in my tracks and making face mortality in this life. It’s a beautifully tragic week with a most fantastic end: Jesus comes back from the dead and we rejoice. We get to live forever with Jesus, because we get immortality in the next life. That, my friends, is a pretty spectacular promise.

 

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Posted in Art, Christianity, Lent, Religion, Spirituality

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Too Many Days of Lent: I’ve Been Revelling in the Weather

Posted on 30 March 2012 | 2 comments

How much of a blessing has this weather been?! The trees are bloomed out with leaves and assorted flowers, the wild flowers are brightly colored and diverse, the grass is growing and growing and growing, and the birds wake me up every morning with their anger or sexual desire, whichever is worse I am unsure. They scream and chatter and occasionally whistle and chirp outside our bedroom window at the bird feeders. They are my natural alarm clock, beautiful and harsh.

Every time I look out the window at the beauty of the day, I want school to be over so I can play outside. I want to go swimming, biking, running, disc golfing, kayaking, and I want to do every other activity that someone can do outside! I want to roll down a hill and make myself sick. I want to be free. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again here: God wants us to play. There is a whole theology of play that helps us to better relate to the divine through spontaneous acts of creative play.

Part of play for me is recognizing who I am in Christ and being free from societal constraints. In other words, I feel free to play when I realize that my identity lies in Christ and not in what other people think of me. And, I play with reckless abandon, which means I have a few people in my life that don’t quite understand me. My greatest desire is to be unencumbered by those things that other people see as necessary. My mom always says to other people, “I think she just wants to be poor.” Yeah, I do. I don’t want to be tied down by earthly possessions or monetary things. I never intended to buy a house. I would love to get rid of all my stuff until everything I own or everything I need could fit in my camping backpack. I’m pretty sure that would make me perfect for monastic life, which is still a kind of dream of mine. I’m not sure I want to be monastic in the “I’m celibate and live in a cold cell with a hair shirt” kind of monastic, but more in the new monastic, communal living sort of way where I share things with my community members.

When I am having these thoughts, my morning prayers typically confirm my thoughts or dissuade me from them. Today they confirm with this quote from Peter Maruin, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement: “The world would be better off if -people tried to become better. And -people would become better if they stopped trying to become better off.” I think living in a self-sustaining community and trying to be better and more compassionate is definitely a way for me to be better off. I think of communities like Simple Way and the way they intertwine work and play in all aspects of their lives.

I would be able to work hard and play hard without trying to conform to some arbitrary economic constraints.

I would only have to please God and provide for my “family.”

I would have plenty of time to revel in the beauty of God’s world and word.

I could play.

Peace.

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Posted in Art, Capitalism, Christianity, CNF, Disc golf, Ethics, Goals, Homelessness, Lent, Mental Health, Play, Politics, Poverty, Relationships, Religion, Social Justice, Spirituality

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Lent Day 15: Healing and Learning

Posted on 7 March 2012 | 4 comments

During my morning prayers, I am also reading Reluctant Pilgrim. In the chapter I read this morning, Okoro writes about a man she was in love with, and unless her words betray her, I would say still deeply loves, or at the very least remembers fondly. She writes about his addiction in these words: “God’s light shines especially bright through the multiple and endless fragmented slices that exist in broken people. And the more rays of light, the more people are touched. But no one expects such light to come from a broken image. I learned to understand the radical beauty of God through Michael’s shards. I learned to acknowledge the beauty of God through my own brokenness” (77). When I read this beautiful description of brokenness, I realized why I have always loved that churches use stained glass to tell the biblical narrative.

Maybe the early stained glass artists were onto more than simply reappropriating the technique of mosaic with a new technology. The multicolored shards of glass work together to not only reflect and refract light, but they tell one cohesive story of beauty and grace. Each piece of art, carefully rendered with fragmented pieces of glass held together by that thin lead casing, each piece of art tells a beautiful story and needs each small fragment to tell it. I should look toward the stained glass to tell me about more than a biblical narrative; I should ask the stained glass to tell my own narrative, and to remind me that we all work together to form the body Christ, as weird and multicolored as it can be.

A few pages later Okoro writes: “I want to find a church that teaches me something about carrying each other’s burdens, about living into the gift of God’s grace so we are free to be the persons and community God calls us to be. […] Maybe I love the image of U2’s ‘Grace’ because it reminds me that God our mother eternally supports and nourishes us and, most importantly, does not punish us for being the needy creatures God created us to be. […] I don’t imagine that I extended grace to Michael. That would be presumptuous. Rather we both got caught up in the delicate but strong grip of God’s grace, that sense of divine love extending outside of God’s self and demanding humility from whoever falls into its arms” (80). I love this idea that we don’t extend grace to each other, and I never thought about how presumptuous it is to assume that we know anything about grace at all.

The idea that we just get caught up together in God’s grace is a profound one for me. I have always thought about giving grace to people, but not about mutually receiving grace, thought that’s exactly what happens. In fact, once I read this passage, I thought about Jesus saying that it’s better to give than receive. Why? Because when we give, we are simultaneously receiving. We can never only give grace, because what enables us to give grace is God’s giving of grace to us. We are inextricably caught up with others in giving and receiving grace.

In addition, maybe a lesson I am supposed to learn this Lent is one of humility. In the argument with my friend, humility was a learning point. In chapel yesterday, denial is a form of humility. Here, today, I learn that grace requires, no demands, our humility. How beautiful! If simply keep asking, God, what do you want with me? I have no doubt that I will eventually learn what it is God desires. I have no doubt that I am supposed to be a shard in the stained glass body of Christ.

Click the arrow below to listen to Nichole Nordeman’s cover of “Grace” by U2. You’ll also have to click the same arrow on the MySpace Music Player.

Grace (In The Name Of Love Album Version)

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Posted in Art, Christianity, Grace, Lent, Relationships, Religion, Spirituality

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Lent Day 11: A Lesson in Love and Humility

Posted on 3 March 2012 | 3 comments

Without giving too many details, I will just say I have learned a lesson in humility and love this weekend at AWP. To make a long story short, my insomnia didn’t, in fact, go away. It only got slightly less ferocious, allowing me five hours of of sleep for one night instead of three. When I don’t sleep, I get mean, curt, short-tongued. I have been all of those things this week, which led to quite a large eruption of misunderstandings last night between a friend and myself. The quarrel led to me moving down to the lobby of the hotel for quite some time, so I could recompose myself and not put my fist through the mirror in our room. See I told you I have some anger management issues, and I felt as if I could beat my way with small, tight fists through the thickest, heaviest punching bag on the market. I didn’t.

Instead, for a change, I left the room to recompose myself elsewhere. By this morning, after a conversation with my beautiful and sensible wife, some coffee, a session on queer YA fiction, and some prayer, walking, and meditation, I was able to calmly and rationally initiate a discussion of the events of last night. And, of course, we came out on the other side with love and grace, because I am learning that’s how things work out when you practice humility and love.

Here is the photographic chronology of my day:

Walking North on Michigan Avenue

Walking North on Michigan Avenue

A Coffee Shop I've Always Wanted to Try and Finally Did

A Little Morning Reading and a Mexican Mocha

Buildings Dating from the Mid-1800s

Do You Need Some Art Supplies?

Capitalism Block on State Street

I decided to go to church tonight, but I wasn’t sure where to go, so I literally typed the address of the Palmer House in the first blank of the “Get Directions” feature in Google Maps, followed by the word Methodist in the second blank. I figured I couldn’t lose since I live four hours away, and I’d never see any of the people again. I mean, it’s always a crap shoot when you’re a lady-boy lesbian and looking for a church in a different city. Each time I risk rejection from the body to which I’ve belonged since the age of four when I “gave my life to Jesus,” a form of rejection that breaks my heart again and again.

I walked to Temple Church (a.k.a. First United Methodist of Chicago) with low expectations and hoping that I wasn’t dressed too shabbily. I can never accurately anticipate the dress code at a “First United Methodist,” because they are usually the big, old churches that are trying to stand guard and keep from dying out. But that guard-standing usually comes outfitted in whatever is the latest fashion.  I always assume that the dress code is on the upper end of the spectrum, not jeans and the sweater I was wearing. But, as I mentioned, I’d never see any of these people again, so I pressed on.

Temple Church's History in Stained Glass

Destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire

As I walked past the beautiful arts garden, pictured above, I looked to my right and got a glimpse of the Chicago Picasso. I could feel that this hour of my life was going to be an adventure. Electric Jesus was in the air. I strolled through the revolving door and up to the security guard. Yes, you read correctly, I walked confidently over to the security guard, and said, “Can you please tell me where the church service is meeting tonight?” She pointed me up the stairs and through some double doors.

I was a bit disoriented as I walked through the thick wooden doors, because I was released into a space that looked like a storage closet, only without anything in it, too big to be a closet, too small to be a respectable hallway. The space was a hallway nonetheless, and I began to search for what I was sure would be a large stone chapel or sanctuary. Instead I found the small, intimate chapel pictured here. In fact, I had to ask the lovely man in the picture if I was in the right place.

A Tiny Church Service in a Huge Church's Small Chapel

By the time the service started with a greeting and then a hymn that none of us really knew, I realized I was experiencing the Body of Christ in a very real way. The mix of people was diverse: various ethnicities, social classes, sexual orientations, gender identities, and abilities. There were people there with children of varying ages, and older people who were there alone. The bulletin specifically spelled out that we were all welcome.

The service followed the liturgy while still being personal: we confessed as a group and then offered silent meditations of our own. When it came time for the prayer requests, the congregants shared intimately and without reservation, and then we prayed for those concerns. We passed the peace! Finally, we collected tithes and offerings and shared the Eucharist together. We stood together around the communion table and celebrated the Great Thanksgiving as we looked each other in the eyes. I could feel the Holy Spirit hovering there in our midst, like the soft breeze that blows off Lake Michigan in the summertime, and as refreshing.

Jesus’ body was broken, His blood was shed, and we were redeemed yet again. A glorious miracle.

Several times the intimacy and the beauty of it all overwhelmed me to the point of tears. Here, four hours away, is the type of community I long for each Sunday. Here, in a church I assumed would be too uppity for my jeans and sweater, I met my Jesus in the realest way I have experienced in years. Here.

Today was a beautiful mess. Peace.

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Posted in Art, Christianity, Family, GLBT, Goals, Grace, Insomnia, Lent, Mental Health, Queer, Reading, Relationships, Religion, Spirituality, Writing

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