Grace Wholly Gratuitous, I Mean Pictures

Badgers, Virgins, & Saints

Art, Books, &tc.

Bulletin: for important news, clearly.

Oxie: Magdalen College & New College, respectively.

I've been decorating.
Sorry the pictures are so fuzzy.

A Living, Rushing Wind: On Creativity

Even in California, it's springtime. Birds are singing from the depths of their quick-beating, tiny bird hearts.

I'm re-reading Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water, and I'm discovering reality again. Why do I, a creative person, produce so little? Why isn't all of my free time given to writing diligently, like I ought to do? It's because I often choose to consume rather than to create.

Every day, every moment, I have to choose between consumption and creativity. I rarely choose creativity. In this materialistic world, it's really, really easy to waste your life consuming things instead of creating them.

When a person creates they are giving life, adding cosmos/truth/beauty to the world. When a person consumes they are using up resources--killing and destroying--ushering in a state of chaos. Cooking, reading, writing, loving, praying, worshiping--these create. Shopping, eating, Facebook, watching The Office, hating--these consume.

 Facebook and shopping are not evil, but they take away from the world. I am a consumer of life. Most of my existence has been spent taking.

Perhaps it's a question of balance. Consuming is all right, some forms of it are all right, if most of my life is spent creating. 

I think creativity is a way--a quite natural and simple way--to give to the world. The problem is that creativity is often difficult, exhausting, and frustrating, while consumption is easy and entertaining.

But, I would be a life-giver.

Creating is life giving, and holy, because it is an aspect of God's own Self. God benevolently gives. He lives. He creates life. If we are to reflect his nature, we too must create generously. Creation is an act of worship because to create is to imitate God's nature, and what is more worshipful than living in imitation of the One you adore?

It is much, much easier to consume when I come home tired at the end of a long day. To create I must be ready and attentive. It's hard to push past all of the noise and movement until I reach that still place, the still point, where creativity comes like a rushing wind.


Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things, and give me life in your ways.

Icons of the Real, pt. 2

I'm still mulling over the Mother Theresa prayer:

"Though you hide yourself behind the unattractive disguise of the irritable, the exacting, the unreasonable, may I still recognize you, and say: 'Jesus, my patient, how sweet it is to serve you.'"

Seeing Jesus in the faces of others is not, perhaps, a panacea to making you more loving toward them. At least, not yet.

I've been trying, these last few weeks, to see Jesus in the faces of people who try my patience. But, I've discovered a PROBLEM: people sin. Jesus didn't. How does one see Jesus in the face of a child throwing a tantrum, for example? Or in the face of some creep who drives slowly beside you, offering you a ride as you walk home?

I've been trying this out at work. I think the principle is that a Jesus-follower strives to treat Jesus with all the glory, love, and attention He deserves. Therefore, if I see Jesus in the faces of roommates, family members, or the displaced, I will treat them with loving esteem and attentiveness. But, it's sort of easy to esteem Jesus. He doesn't annoy me, he doesn't smell bad, he doesn't talk back, he cleans up after himself. How can I honor Jesus through a person who sins, or who sins toward me?

I don't know.

But, goodness, think of how holy I'd be if I could do that! I'd be like God. Isn't that just what God does? He looks at my ugly sinfulness and sees Jesus. On that basis, we're friends. How does God do it? It seems impossible.

". . .All the other Distance/He hath traversed first—/No New Mile remaineth—/Far as Paradise—. . ."

Did Jesus look at "tax collectors and sinners" and see his own face?

Hymns are Nice, Sometimes

Michaela Rae's blog post today reminded me that I like hymns, too. Here's one I'm especially fond of:

1. O Love that wilt not let me go,
   I rest my weary soul in thee;
   I give thee back the life I owe,
   That in thine ocean depths its flow
   May richer, fuller be.
2. O light that foll’west all my way,
   I yield my flick’ring torch to thee;
   My heart restores its borrowed ray,
   That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
   May brighter, fairer be.
3. O Joy that seekest me through pain,
   I cannot close my heart to thee;
   I trace the rainbow through the rain,
   And feel the promise is not vain,
   That morn shall tearless be.
4. O Cross that liftest up my head,
   I dare not ask to fly from thee;
   I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
   And from the ground there blossoms red
   Life that shall endless be.

Icons of The Real

To see Jesus in other people you have to first see Jesus in himself, I think. If you would treat a person with reverence and kindness because you see Jesus in them, you first have to become a person who treats Jesus with kindness and reverence.

To see Jesus in the faces of the sick, means that to see Jesus in the face of God is already meaningful.

What would you do if Jesus was physically present at your workplace? In your home? Maybe the answer to these questions is not as straightforward as I used to think.

I can ignore him while invisible, so why am I certain I'd pay attention to him if he was close enough to poke in the arm?

I want to treat Jesus with love and hospitality, and then I want to see Jesus in the students I work with.

And I Quote (In a Manner of Speaking)

Tonight, I'm sad. Inexplicably sad. This week, I feel myself descending. Today, it feels like my heart has been removed with an ice-cream scoop (have I said this before), and now there is just a hole. Waiting. The thing about life is, sometimes, people are just sad.

BUT

As Anne Lamott, or someone Anne Lamott heard or read or knew said:

"He loves us too much to let us stay like this".

Isn't that just the happiest news?



Did you really think this blog wasn't about my feelings?

Mother Teresa's Daily Prayer, Its Relevance

Dearest Lord, 

May I see you today and every day in the person of your sick, and, whilst nursing them, minister unto you.

Though you hide yourself behind the unattractive disguise of the irritable, the exacting, the unreasonable, 

may I still recognize you, and say: "Jesus, my patient, how sweet it is to serve you."

Lord, give me this seeing faith, then my work will never be monotonous. 

I will ever find joy in humoring the fancies and gratifying the wishes of all poor sufferers.

O beloved sick, how doubly dear you are to me, when you personify Christ; and what a privilege is mine to be allowed to tend you.

Sweetest Lord, make me appreciative of the dignity of my high vocation, and its many responsibilities. Never permit me to disgrace it by giving way to coldness, unkindness, or impatience.

And O God, while you are Jesus my patient, deign also to be to me a patient Jesus, 

bearing with my faults, looking only to my intention, which is to love and serve you 

in the person of each one of your sick.

Lord, increase my faith, bless my efforts and work, now and for evermore, 

Amen.