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valerili
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Name: Valerie
Country: United States
State: California
Birthday: 9/20/1984
Gender: Female
Interests: bridge! crossword puzzles, reading, movies, blogging
Occupation: Student
Message: message me
Member Since:
11/15/2003
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| i am not an artist, nor a musician. the picture i see in my mind, the melody that i hear, stays in my mind, circling in my cranium, entrapped in gray matter that though real, is invisible. the problem is in the translation. i cannot paint the picture because something gets lost in between my brain and my fingers. the moment i pick up a paintbrush and put it to paper, the image i am seeing disappears. i cannot sing the song because there is a disconnect between what plays in me and my vocal cords. right when i open my mouth the tune that was playing becomes something else, something unrecognizable, something foreign. it is as if the life that lives in me lives in me only for my own enjoyment.
but after all, must the world see what i am seeing? there is no need, it would look different to them anyway even if i could paint it exactly as it appears to me. must they hear what i hear? surely not, for the song that plays holds meaning to me that they would miss even if they heard the melody exactly as i did. perhaps it does not matter if the art or music i produce does not match up with what i envision inside of me.
those who do not have this problem of translation, who easily put to paper or to music whatever they envision in their mind, those are the lucky people who get to share themselves with the world. but even as they share, do we get it? do we understand the messages they are trying to convey? or do we make up our own meaning on their behalf? because i cannot make my own picture on a canvas, when i look at someone else's do i project some of what i see onto their creation? because i cannot create my own tune, when i hear music playing do i also hear a little of my own song in that melody?
perhaps that is why art brings us closer, music draws us together. in art, or music, a little bit of what you share meets a little bit of who i am. and that little bit of me meets the little bit of the person next to me who is experiencing his or her own little connection to what he or she is seeing, is hearing. i may see a picture differently from you, you may not hear a tune the same way. but maybe there is a teeny overlap, and in that overlap we recognize each other.
the problem is in the translation, but maybe it is a beautiful problem. different languages, different volumes, different hues, add variety, add complexity, add life. what's in my mind, and what's in yours, and what gets painted, or sung, and what doesn't, are bits and pieces of a bigger picture that we paint, a larger tune that we sing, without even knowing it.
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| yesterday in small group it came up how in this stage of our lives as twenty-somethings (twenty-someones), a big part of our journey is consumed by trying to discern our way amongst many callings, trying to figure out who we are, where we're going, who we want to become, where we want to end up, and trying to figure this out ourselves. in this stage of life we are trying to consolidate all the different bits and pieces that made up our lives until now, and trying to create an identity that's going to take us through the rest of our lives. to add to that, as Christ-following, God-believing twenty-somethings, we have the additional challenge of figuring out where God fits into the picture, how to heed his voice first when there are twenty other (often legitimate) voices calling out to us.
a couple of nights ago jim and i were talking about the difference between desiring God and seeking his will. is there one? if there is, is it merely one of semantics? i think that, fine as it is, there is a difference. we can desire God and still have that arise out of our own selfish natures and desires, like the rich young ruler in mark 10 who genuinely seemed to desire God and yet did so out of his own will, for his own purposes. when we seek God's will however, we no longer feature as the driving source, God does. desiring God, even out of our own will and for our own ends, is a step above not caring about him at all of course, for if we have that beginning longing, even if it arises out of our own will, God can take and shape that longing, so that our desires become his desires, and even more so, his desires become ours. when we seek God's will, however, he becomes the epicenter of all that shakes and moves us. when all we know and want arises from all he knows and wants, there is clarity in our purpose that is missing any other way.
discerning our path when there are so many things calling out to us - career, relationships, ministry, all these things that do count - will be a fruitless exercise unless we start at the right place, seeking the will of God for our lives. as we try to navigate our way through our twenty-something lives, one useful way to think about it is to ask ourselves what will still count ten years down the road, or twenty, or thirty. how can we use our lives today so that we are preparing ourselves for tomorrow? how can we live in this stage of life so that when we arrive at the next we will be (somewhat) prepared? the even bigger, more global, question perhaps is how can we live in this stage of existence so that when we arrive at the next we will be in shape to face it? when this life we know passes away and what is to come is reality, will we be as we want to be, as we should be? the years we have right now are our opportunity to build a foundation upon which the rest of our lives will stack up (yes, i am a stage theorist).
it all seems a lot for a twenty-something to be grappling with, but the alternative to wrestling with ourselves to find a way that counts is that we end up lost and drifting, first a twenty-something floating aimlessly about, then a thirty-something struggling to keep afloat, then a forty-something who has given up altogether, and a fifty and sixty and seventy-something who knows no hope. seeking God's will now will set the stage for him to move as we walk further along the road. establishing our identities firmly in Christ as we discern our way will mean a lifetime of signposts along the way, guiding us till we get to the end. desiring God is a part of this, but seeking his will even more so. as we seek his will, we become deeply connected to him through Christ, and the connection the Son had with the Father is all at once also ours.
"because i live, you also will live. on that day you will realize that i am in my father, and you are in me, and i am in you." - john 14:19-20 | | |
| every now and then i'm reminded of just how human i am.
Lord, fill me with your spirit...may my prayer always be - more of you, and less of me.
not intending to rhyme here, but somehow it's starting to sound like dr seuss!
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| "how does believing in the future resurrection lead to getting on with the work in the present? quite straightforwardly. the point of the resurrection, as paul has been arguing throughout the letter, is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die. God will raise it to new life. what you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it...what you do in the present - by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself - will last into God's future. these activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, undil the day when we leave it behind altogether...they are part of what we may call building for God's kingdom...
...this brings us back to 1 corinthians 15:58 once more: what you do in the Lord is not in vain. you are not oiling the wheels of a machine that's about to roll over a cliff. you are not restoring a great painting that's shortly going to be thrown on the fire. you are not planting roses in a garden that's about to be dug up for a building site. you are - strange thought it may seem, almost as hard to believe as the resurrection itself - accomplishing something that will become in due course part of God's new world. every act of love, gratitude, and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one's fellow human beings and for that matter one's fellow nonhuman creatures; and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world - all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make. that is the logic of the mission of God. God's recreation of his wonderful world, which began with the resurrection of Jesus and continues mysteriously as God's people live in the risen Christ and in the power of his Spirit, means that what we do in Christ and by the Spirit in the present is not wasted. it will last all the way into God's new world. in fact, it will be enhanced there."
- surprised by hope: rethinking heaven, the resurrection, and the mission of the church, n.t. wright (all emphases in original text) | | |
| so in comes 2009. like 2008 and 2007 and 2006 before it, it arrived before we thought it would. like all those years, it too will probably disappear faster than we would like. but in the meanwhile, in the meanwhile...
"there will be time, there will be time
to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet,
there will be time to murder and create
and time for all the works and days of hands
that lift and drop a question on your plate,
time for you and time for me,
and time yet for a hundred indecisions,
and for a hundred visions and revisions,
before the taking of a toast and tea...
and indeed there will be time
to wonder, "do i care? and, "do i dare"...
do i dare
disturb the universe?
in a minute there is time
for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse." - the lovesong of j alfred prufrock, t.s. eliot.
every once in a while i succumb to the beautiful pessimism and paganism of the pre-anglican t.s. eliot.
but on a more buoyant note, i'm really excited for 2009 and all it will bring. God is faithful every year, and every year he softens my heart to understand and receive a little bit more of his grace. 2008 has been a gift in so many ways, and i know it comes from him alone.
in this new year, i am praying philippians 3:10-14:
"i want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. not that i have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but i press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me...forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, i press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."
the old has gone, the new has come! blessed new year all.
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