Adrienne Rich
Ideal Landscape

We had to take the world as it was given:
The nursemaid sitting passive in the park
Was rarely by a changeling prince accosted.
The mornings happened similar and stark
In rooms of selfhood where we woke and lay
Watching today unfold like yesterday.

Our friends were not unearthly beautiful.
Nor spoke with tongues of gold; our lovers blundered
Now and again when most we sought perfection,
Or hid in cupboards when the heavens thundered.
The human rose to haunt us everywhere,
Raw, flawed, and asking more than we could bear.

And always time was rushing like a tram
Through streets of a foreign city, streets we saw
Opening into great and sunny squares
We coudl not find again, no map could show—
Never those fountains tossed in that same light,
Those gilded trees, those statues green and white.

Mystery

"Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland."

-G.K. Chesterton Orthodoxy

"Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you. The mould in which a key is made would be a strange thing, if you had never seen a key: and the key itself a strange thing if you had never seen a lock. Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance..." C.S. Lewis

I have recently finished The Problem of Pain and can't keep the last chapter out of my head. So beautiful. I love how Lewis explains the mystery of our longings. I highly recommend this book, though lets be honest, I would highly recommend anything by C.S. as would a ton of other people.

Confession

Doubt and longing are my recent repeating anthems. Recent being years old.

Normally I shoulder my insecurities with laughter, but have recently found myself too weary for mockery.

I find this flow of my brain rather melodramatic, and yet, though I wish to be someone who can shrug off the judgement of others, who can laugh at oneself and at the inelegant plight of being human I sometimes find going from one activity to the next all I can do.

In the silence I must admit that I am not always sure. Of myself. Of others. Of God.

I cannot fathom how to hold my posture in all this chaotic shuffling, in these griefs present, past and waiting. I long to be be strength and stability or to at least feign these foreign figures. Truth of late, however, seems to seep from my eyebrows raisings, from my jests, from the way my body slumps. Truth and confusion, or the truth that I am confused.

In these moments I am thankful for the landscape of the earth and the huge, unreal looking clouds - the yearning of them, because they help me to step out of my own insistent dreads and doubts and make me feel more certain that there is more, that there is hope.

"The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit." Ps. 34:18

"The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup, you hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places: indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance." Ps. 16:6

An Appeal

You, my friends, wherever you are,

Whether you are grieving just now, or full of joy,

To you I lift this cup of pungent wine

As they often do in the land of France.

From a landscape of cranes and canals,

Of tangled railway tracks and winter fog,

In the smoke of black tobacco, I make my way

Toward you and I ask you a question.

Tell me, for once at least laying

Caution aside, and fear and guarded speech,

Tell me, as you would in the middle of the night

When we face only night, the ticking of a watch,

The whistle of an express train, tell me

Whether you really think that this world

Is your home? That your internal planet

That revolves, red-hot, propelled by the current

Of your warm blood, is really in harmony

With what surrounds you? Probably you know very well

The bitter protest, every day, every hour,

The scream that wells up, stifled by a smile,

The feeling of a prisoner who touches a wall

And knows that beyond it valleys spread,

Oaks stand in summer splendor, a jay flies

And a kingfisher changes a river to a marvel.

In you, as in me, there is a hidden certainty

That soon you will rise, in undiminished light,

And be real, strong, free from what restrained you.

That above the mold of broken flagstones,

Above memory and your transfomration

Which is like the lifhgt of birds when ice

Crumbles in the traces of hooves – above everythin,

It will be given to you to run as celestial fire,

To set sails ablaze with your flame at dawn

When ships trail smoke and archipelagoes

Wake up, shaking copper from their hair.

No, I address you here, from the ashes of winter,

In the simplest words, not to induce doubt

Or to call melancholy, for instance, the sister of fate.

On and on. The heart is still beating.

Nothing is lost. If one day our words

Come so close to the bark of tress in the forest,

And to orange blossoms, that they become one with them,

It will mean that we have always defended a great hope.

How should I defend it? By naming things.

That isn’t easy. I say the word “dawn”

And the tongue by itself affixes “rosy-fingered”

As in the childhood of Greece. The sun and the moon

Have the faces of gods. I am not certain

That Poseidon won’t emerge suddenly

From the sea bottom (he wears an earring)

Ploughing the waves with his motor, towing a retinue of nymphs,

And when I wander in alpine forests and meadows

Every cleft in the rock seems to me a gate

Through which one enters the underworld. I wait for a guide.

And space, what is it like? Is it mechanical,

Newtonian? A frozen prison?

Or the lofty space of Einstein, the relation

Between movement and movement? No reason to pretend

I know. I don’t know, and if I did,

Still my imagination is a thousand years old.

Jump into the water with your clothes on.

Such heaviness (deadweight, as sometimes in our dreams).

It’s the same with us. We wear the brocade

Of past centuries or dress in false purple.

Covering our faces with velvet masks,

Classical, playing again what has been played before.

And yet, I affirm, this is the earth of wonder.

It gives us the gift of eternal youth.

To you I lift this cup, here, on the stage.

I, one voice, no more, in the vast theater.

Against closed eyes, bitter lips.

Against silence, which is slavery.

- Czeslaw Milosz

I have been thinking far too much about future plans recently. Possibly this is to keep my mind occupied. I don't think I want to process the last couple of weeks, of sadness, of what means to be back in the States, but around 2000 miles from where I might possible call home, (I'm really not sure where to call home), what it will mean to be back here again in just a few months surrounded again by family, but also by the unfamiliar and by the impermanence (I'm not currently planning on staying in Montana forever). I don't think I can process it all, so instead I dream about grad school, about going back to Belgium, about the millions of possibilities (normally highly unpractical) so that I don't feel like giving up already at coping.

It has been so good being surrounded by family, around people who get my sense of humour, who I can be completely random and annoying around without fear of rejection, yet at the same time it has been highly difficult. Highly difficult to acknowledge a goodbye to someone I really love, to see my Grandmommy on repeat and missing my Granddaddy (telling the same stories over and over), to say goodbye to the one place on earth that has remained truly like home to me and to my dad and to my siblings (my Grandparent's house) to see my little sisters (particularly one little sister) sad with all the huge things she has to deal with of late (moving, death and dealing in general with the ups and downs of life) and to feel myself incapable, incapable of healing any of these wounds and sadnesses, incapable because I too am sad, incapable because I have no advice to give, because I feel a tad lost in all these things as well.

This whole past year has been full of humbling and these past few weeks have been particularly so. I can't say that I understand what God is doing in these things, but I am attempting to trust. At times I feel as though I have peace, that despite my incomprehension I am capable of acknowledging at least that God has these things in control and that ultimately all will work out. I still fear though, for this life, for these things. I don't always trust. I waver, doubt and worry. I am thankful that grace is not dependent on me.

Mainly, I am currently just overwhelmed will all these things. I have read 5 books in these past 2 weeks just attempting to keep my head above water and also to keep some perspective as well (thanks God for stories!). I both do not want to process and desperately want to be able to wrap my brain around things so that I can function more fully.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Reminder.

"When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

"Where, O death, is your sting?”

“Where, O death, is your victory?

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." -1 Corinthians 15:54-56

Trying to feel this passage and not to just know it. Sometimes it is hard to feel as though we have the victory over death in Christ. Though it's good to remember that Jesus still cried over the death of Lazarus even when he knew that he not only had the power to raise him, but was going to do that right away. I have to remind myself that sadness is still okay (though it is no fun) and at the same time that it is not the end either.

My hands ache to be making something of value.

Sweet arias sound just beyond comprehension,

vivid colors blink in and out of focus,

you, even, at times untouchable, me too hesitant to try to reach

past doubt, past insecurity.

Still, I will remain here, rooted yet waiting

to be dug from the confines of dirt, sand

and earthworm's slimy trace against my toes.

Dear world.

Dear world, wind burnt and glum,

I am half chocked from the desire to speak without words.

Even in the rose, aqua and deep purple of perfect evening sunsets

I struggle to find the eloquence in this spinning world.

I'm sorry for this absence in myself, this awkward gait,

these wants, these airs of melancholy that hum around me,

for the way my heels stick to this crooked surface

and slide away from the loveliness of living,

the knowledge of grace, the gorgeous sight of hope.

I promise to remember when I can,

to find peace with the who, what and where of being this specific person.

to find delight in the breeze, the dusty moon, the brilliant sun

to find less of myself and more of others and other things.

I promise to at least try.

Still, at this moment, I can but breathe, wait, and etch these tired thoughts

upon a blank bit of night.

Mood

"What if the water that came out of the shower was treated with a chemical that responded to a combination of things, like your heartbeat, and body temperature, and your brain waves, so that your skin changed color according to your mood? If you were extremely excited your skin would turn green, and if you were angry you'd turn red, obviously, and if you felt like shiitake you'd turn brown, and if you were blue you'd turn blue.

Everyone could know what everyone else felt, and we could be more careful with each other, because you'd never want to tell a person whose skin was purple that you're angry at her for being late, just like you would want to pat a pink person on the back and tell him, "Congratulations!"

Another reason it would be a good invention is that there are so many times when you know you're feeling a lot of something, but you don't know what the something is. Am I frustrated? Am I actually just panicky? And that confusion changes your mood, it becomes your mood, and you become a confused, gray person. But with the special water, you could look at your orange hands and thing, I'm happy! That whole time I was actually happy! What a relief!"

-Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close Jonathan Safran Foer

Learning

I've been learning a lot of late, or at least relearning and reprocessing things that I have known, but have not yet known into action. Slowly I'm beginning to realize that I do not have to be good at everything, that I don't have to be constantly proving myself. This desire, the urge to be superior, I am learning, cheapens the things I love. Paint, poetry, music and, well, existence, if merely done to be the best, or even to be better takes away a lot of the joy and most of the reason for doing these things at all. Yes, I want to be better, but I want to be better because I love these things and want to be able to communicate something through these mediums truthfully and meaningfully (and yes, I mean through the medium of existence as well) and not simply to be the best.

As I write this out it seems such an obvious statement, such a simple concept, but something that I find highly difficult to keep in my brain, one that keeps slipping out as I slip into the day to day and yet it also seems quite significant for living and enjoying that whole endeavor of existence.

"Oh to grace how great a debtor" keeps circling round my head of late and with these kinds of realizations. How simple things get twisted and obscured worries me, but the fact that it isn't so horribly and desperately terrible to forget because I know I am given grace abundantly and constantly is a very happy thought.

A short rave on books.

I must just state that I love books. A lot. I love the elegance of words well formed, the sentences that grab hold and run through your life forever after, the deeper resonances that cannot be put into words but that still fill you with a sense of meaning and an awe of the world around. I love books because it has so often been books that have made me desire to live and live fuller, because books often (or at least the good ones) never claim to be the end all, but merely a pointing finger.

There is also something about the ink, the smell of the pages, the weight of all those words in one's hand.

I have recently been taking more advantage of the Zaventem library's rather impressive English section, have shaken off the guilt of reading in English while I desperately try to cram French into my brain and have accepted again that I need these distant teachers. I realize that this is a rather ridiculous post, but there it is.

I am in intense gratitude for books and language and people like Madeleine L'Engle, Nicole Krauss, C.S. Lewis, Nabokov, Milosz, Wilbur, Marilyn Robinson J.R.R. Tolkien, and many many more.

I've already shared this many times, but I was re-watching it again tonight and had to share it again. Thanks Jeff!

Encounter 10: Jeffrey Overstreet on the how of storytelling from International Arts Movement on Vimeo.

I Am in Need of Music

"I am in need of music that would flow Over my fretful, feeling fingertips, Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips, With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow. Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low, Of some song sung to rest the tired dead, A song to fall like water on my head, And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow! There is a magic made by melody: A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep To the subaqueous stillness of the sea, And floats forever in a moon-green pool, Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep. " Elizabeth Bishop

Art. (?)

I've been thinking A LOT about art and faith recently. How does art function in proclaiming the beauty of faith? How can I tangibly wrap my brain around these things? How does one judge good art from bad art, art as propaganda from art as proclamation? How does one judge the integrity of a piece of art? I struggle with a lot of "Christian art." I will admit that I to often judge a lot of it without appropriate thought, because a lot seems simply propaganda or simply, well, bad (I've been convicted that this is far less the case than I think).

I believe so strongly in the merit of art. It has been used to call me back to truth so often (as Milosz might say). It's often beauty in some form of art that reminds me of the intense beauty of the creator and creation, that makes me see how impossible it is for there not to be a God. I need these reminders. I need Monet and Kandinksy, Milosz, Wilbur and Kenyon, Lewis, Nabokov, Tolkien and Mckillip, Satie, Debussy, Over the Rhine and Radiohead. (to name but a few of the million of artists that have influenced my life.)

In these random thoughts I've been missing my books and missing the easy access to English books. I particularly want to re-read Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water. I've been searching for some sneaky way to read it online, but to no avail. Instead I ended up with a plethora of quotes from her that I felt compelled to share. So, instead of rambling on I will merely paste these quotes below. They may appear random, but I swear they all fit together quite nicely in my head.

"Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth."

"To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, not even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist."

"It isn't easy, it does take an incredible amount of discipline, you don't just write just when you feel like it or you're not going to build up much of a body of work. Inspiration comes to you while you're writing rather than before....For me the discipline of writing and the discipline of prayer are identical, in that I have to let myself be got out of the way because that's not a do-it-yourself activity, and listen....When you write, don't think, write. You think before, you think after, you don't think during. When I'm praying, when I'm truly praying, I'm not thinking, I'm not speaking, I'm shutting up, so perhaps if God has something to say I can hear it. So writing too is an act of listening, listening to what has to be said."

"In art . . . we are helped to remember some of the glorious things that we have forgotten and some of the terrible things we are asked to endure . . . ."

-Madeleine L'engle from various and sundry works.

Waiting

I feel as though my life thus far has only been a preparing, a laying out of instruments, sterilizing scalpels and stethoscopes and lathering my chapped and waiting hands in the sudsy water of the maybe while the world pins me onto its surface and time bends to enfold us mere mortals. And I hope that these gatherings, the collections of facts and figures, my acquired, though feeble movements, will be used.

Kandinsky

I'm not sure what it is about Kandinsky that keeps bringing me back to him again and again. Maybe it is because he was a synaesthete, maybe it is because he loved music, maybe it's because he was Russian, maybe it is because he recognized art as a pointing towards something else, something more, maybe it is a lot of things. Whatever it is I just so adore his paintings.

Of late I have felt myself highly incapable of explaining myself via words. Each time I try I merely walk away frustrated and desperate. I blame this partly on learning French as English gets pushed to the back of my mind all jumbled and feeling abused and my skills in French just barely at a young child's level (on that note I have a profound new appreciation for how frustrating it must be to be a little kid). During this I have found myself painting so much more, painting like a fiend, painting like my life depended on it. Even that though does not always seem enough to express the millions of hesitant thoughts crowding at the front of my brain, preventing me from sleeping and attempting to strangle me with each of their seemingly immediate needs (pesky thoughts). Kandinsky helps. I wish I could say why, but these painting seem to express my thoughts, thoughts that feel important to express (why? I don't know).

That is all.

Morning reminder

Mon âme, bénis l'Éternel! Que tout ce qui est en moi bénisse son saint nom!

Mon âme, bénis l'Éternel, Et n'oublie aucun de ses bienfaits!

C'est lui qui pardonne toutes tes iniquités, Qui guérit toutes tes maladies;

C'est lui qui délivre ta vie de la fosse, Qui te couronne de bonté et de miséricorde;

C'est lui qui rassasie de biens ta vieillesse, Qui te fait rajeunir comme l'aigle.

-Psaumes 103:1-5

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits,

who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases,

who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,

who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.

-Psalm 103:1-5

Suspended

by Denise Levertov

I had grasped God's garment in the void

but my hand slipped

on the rich silk of it.

The "everlasting arms" my sister

loved to remember

must have upheld my leaden weight

from falling, even so,

for though I claw at empty air and feel

nothing, no embrace,

I have not plummeted.

Every so often after being faced with where to live, what to eat, how to think and what to know among various other decisions and complexities I get the impression that the world is too scary a place to be, that life is too intricate a beast to inhabit. My arms begin to ache with all the things they should be doing, my eyes blur, my head nods, I desire only a soft bed and a silent corner in which to curl into and weep. Added to these momentous tasks and these towering obstacles come the people, people who weave in and out of life and who tangle into the very fiber of its flavor. They come with complexities of their own that one could spend a life time just trying to unriddle. They come with their own insecurities and thoughts, with their quirks and opinions of importance that seem irrefutable, but diverse and contradicting.

Sometimes I grow too confused for words. I stumble, weary and hesitant with a question always hanging from the corner of my mouth. I desperately want to understand the swift rhythm of the days that pile at my feet and in front of my waiting body, but find myself too caught in the beat to decipher the pattern.

Like Solomon I am constantly praying for wisdom, or, at the least, for some sign as to what I should invest my ebbing energy into. More and more I realize, I grudgingly admit, that I can not hold all the answers, even if I could deduce each moment's meaning there would be no way for me to hold it all in my head at once and in that absence of cohesion I would still be torn with that weary feeling of failure. I must remind myself constantly to grant myself grace. This is the place where I must believe in the sovereignty of God, even in the small things, or I would hurtle into a coma of unknown fear, a frozen posture of indecision based on the highly significant reason that I know that I can not know all the angles.

I wonder if I will ever come to a juncture in life where this theme of absolute bafflement will cease, where I will be able to accept the complexities without bounding and tripping upon my desire to understand them, all of them.