Spring Break Throat Zombies and other musings.

Post Tonsillectomy, Approximately Day 5.  I'm  writing this really early Wednesday Morning, or really late Tuesday night, depending on your definition of when a day begins or ends.


At the time when most of my peers in UMSL's art history department were beginning a voyage at the big apple or picking up more shifts at work, I reported to the hospital for the first of a few surgeries meant to make my life easier in the long run.  In this case, it was the tonsillectomy--since all out sinus surgery was denied by my health insurance--and included in this one procedure was a straightening of an obnoxious deviated septum and the removal of what turned out to be ten nasal polyps from just my nose--since no other polyps were allowed by insurance to be touched.  Trust me, this wasn't what I had in mind when dreaming about the savored middle-of-semester vacation, but better to have this done now when the work load is nill and then light near the end of this recovery process.

Going in, I'm not gonna lie, was terrifying.  But I had never before truly been under the knife.  But I was asleep through the process before being woken up in a fit of nausea and motion sickness.  Apparently, dying my hair red updating my hair color a few days before the procedure worked out in my favor -of-more-anti-nausea-medication, since us, uh, melanin-deficient folk have sensitive constitutions, according to the nurse, that is.

Sleeping, you would think, would come easy, but it doesn't.  Thanks to the saccharine-sick tasting pain killers they have me on, the pain stays manageable; I feel somewhat human save for this frog in my throat.  But I have to set an alarm to wake myself up to take it every four hours, which makes me a paranoid bear not wanting to miss a dose.  I've been learning these past few days to sleep in spurts of a few hours apiece, and to sleep sitting up.  Only after a few days could I manage to watch tv, even via hulu.com on my laptop, since something---either my broken throat or the strong med--have led to feeling dizzy and motion sick after the slightest movement on screen.  I do much better with books or with quiet conversation while both parties are sitting.

Food has been quite the adventure!  I'm trying my best to consume as much liquid as I can, but even liquid hurts to swallow.  The first few days I could only eat mush....and trust me it's so hard to feel full on mush, so I have been hungry.  Things that go down easy include apple sauce, creamed soups, sherbets, and eventually mashed potatoes.  I was excited to add scrambled eggs and pasta to the list the other day.  Ice cream is hit or miss since dairy turns the stomach unless I'm feeling particularly well.  And pudding, while creamy, is just tooo thick. I've been downing apple juice like crazy.  Not only is it gentle, but it's different than water or flat soda, but its thick enough to mask the taste of my liquid painkiller.  Today was a bit sad, since after a day and a half of semi-solid food, all I could tolerate was liquid again.

My family has been doing a fantastic job of caring for me.  But, there's just something about having your mom around when you are at your lowest physically, though, that's incredibly regenerative on its own.  My mom rocks like that though.  And even my dad has been helpful--in the retrieval of re-fill meds and keeping me company.  I've had a couple visitors thus far, too....mainly the fiance a few times and my friend Valerie.  Not a large group, so I've spent a lot of time staring at the damned ceiling.

So, I've caught up on my Community, House, Castle, Grey's Anatomy, and Bones.  And just this evening I watched Creation...the movie about Charles Darwin during the time he wrote Origin of Species.  It was a pretty well-done movie actually, providing a human insight into the inner struggle of the man who changed much in the way of world-views in the west.  The slow pace was a good thing in light of motion-sickness...

Since this is my art-faith blog, I could provide all of you an update as to my latest research regarding my senior project/thesis, and how I'm rewriting last semester's look at the art of Makoto Fujimura through the lens of "the Sublime" along the same vein as critics like Robert Rosenblum.  Honestly, it's just hard to focus right now.  Even though I have read quite a bit, I doubt I have retained, or will retain, any of it.  And I'm trying not to push myself.....something much easier said than done.  Sitting and doing nothing = much harder than working and reading and writing. 

Well, that's all for now.  I'm trying to keep it slow right now.  As much as I want to jump back into life, I hear that I'm approaching a critical zone (between days 4 and 9) where anything could happen, and, well, I don't want to risk it. 

The End of Semester Grind.  This year it is brutality of fingers on laptop swinging a million miles a second. It seems.  Here I am racing the clock to get this particular paper done in time to drop of the essay by my professor's house, which I don't think is going to happen before she gets home.  This week has resulted in the production of nearly thirty pages so far, working on the next set of ten, and then there is ten more to work on after today which I am saving to work on AFTER my French exam tomorrow.

All I can think about at this point is how much I want Friday to come, Friday....sweet Friday. This particular Friday meaning that the term is over and I can rejoice.  Friday, how you taunt me. Cruel Friday. Only two days away.

The Journey as we never intended but always needed.

I missed last week, on more than one level.  I fell short of my own goal.  And here I am, meditating on the next week of this journey, finally.  Last week was a quiet Sunday.  My fiance left town to handle inventory with his unit in another state, so I had what should have been a quiet week to myself, except that it was far from quiet.  In the hustle and bustle of closing out the semester, I found myself running like a chicken with no head trying to get my final list of assignments finished in time for the last week of class, and with a day of financial stress and a broken laptop in the midst of it. 

I consider myself fortunate for having the chance to celebrate mass at all last Sunday, with the youth of the parish closest to me--as opposed to the one I belong to, which is a few parishes over.  It was a beautiful mass, contemporary music, but one hundred percent mass, and it was completes with what was actually my first Eucharistic Adoration, albeit for only twenty minutes. Imagine! Worship with the actual physical presence of Jesus, right there, in front of you.  As Catholics believe in the transubstantiation, that the bread and wine actually become Christ, then a new layer was added to our worship.  And I wound up on my knees in a way that I hadn't been for quiet some time.

A week later I am still thankful for that time.  And as this is the week of Joy, I rejoice.  That my own journey as a student will soon come to a close for the semester, and that in the midst of the darkness term paper writing brings, there is a joy far greater than completion of school work.  There is a joy coming to save me from my fears and from my own darkness and from my own sin.  But without the journey through the darkness of anticipation and doubt, that joy at the end won't seem as bright, for the darkness always makes the light brighter. And that light, equally, provides us the hope that we are seeking.

Immram is a Gaelic word for Journey, and not just any journey, but a spiritual journey, often through water.  St. Brandon is said to have gone on an immram.  A modern retelling of an immram can actually by read about in C.S. Lewis' Voyage of the Dawn Treader, one of the Chronicles of Narnia.  It is a journey over water in search of the country of Aslan beyond the East.  It's nearly impossible not to think of another event that happened in the east, in our own world, when a small child was born---a child in a land to the east who came to be a savior for mankind.  Like any devotee, the three wise men went on a journey, a pilgrimage for this God-baby.  And today, two thousand years later, many more pilgrims go and visit the land of this child's birth.
Advent is the immram of our hearts. Remembering that Israel wandered their own pilgrimage in the desert, that Abram made a journey in the desert, that the wise men and the even the Pevensie children made a journey through dangers and toils with nothing but a promise or a hint of the greatness promised. We wander through our own sin, our own darkness each year. And by facing that darkness inside each of us, we can bring our sin to the surface so it can be forgiven, so that we can be healed.  Part of that healing, however, comes through our journey--through scripture, and mass, and fellowship. We are reminded of it on Christmas, when during the longest night of the year we are comforted by the fact that we live in the years after the child was born. The promise was fulfilled.

My own journey this year has been fraught with term papers, doubt, fears.  And each day of the journey, lessons to learn.  But when Christmas morning comes, I won't have to worry about them.  I'll finally get to spend time with my family again, admire a beautiful tree, and cuddle by the fire with my honey.  But not yet.  This journey is not yet over.

But that wont keep me from rejoicing at the possibilities.

Advent of Hope

"Awake from your slumber! Arise from your sleep!
A new day is dawning for all those who weep.
The people in darkness have seen a great light.
The Lord of our longing has conquered the night."
 ~A City of God, hymn by Daniel L. Schutte

Yesterday was a marvelously peaceful and restful Sabbath, the likes of which I have not had the opportunity to have for some time.  And at the center of it was a marvelous blueberry pancake and hot apple breakfast with my fiance, his sister and her boyfriend while lighting our first Advent candle of the season, the Candle of Hope in a time of darkness.  Our little study included passages from John's Gospel, "In the beginning was the Light....," and then onto Psalms singing of the darkness and clinging to God.  And Isaiah's words are always appropriate to this season.  However, after the candles were snuffed out, I read the Gospel for that Sunday that I would have heard at mass had the fiance felt better: Mathew 24, 37- 44.

It's a passage that reminds us that the hour of HIS next coming could come at any moment, by utter surprise, when we least expect it.  The passage is an alarm, a warning.  Everything else we read points to the darkness that has enveloped the earth, and that darkness includes what lays within our very hearts.  It is a reminder that my heart has a lot of preparation before I can be ready to fully embrace the Incarnation that is coming, before I can be one of those to be taken to the New Earth.  There is much work to do to ready the party scene.

On the outside that could look like hanging decorations for the season to come, or in my case, as a student, it looks like wrapping up overdue projects..... but inside the depths of ourselves?  That takes the courage to lift up our eyes to our Lord and ask for him.  It takes a Sacrament, It takes Reconciliation.  And after that, it takes Hope to maintain our dignity in the dark.

Tis the Season

Christmas seems to come earlier and earlier in the these days, especially in the realm of commercial shopping where now it feels even Thanksgiving gets forgotten about, even though the day we mean to celebrate is at the end of the year.  Many of my friends have already decorated their own homes for the holidays, decked complete with fake plastic evergreen boughs and happy banners, and yet I can't help but mourn.....mourn the death of an entire season.


Advent.

Advent, for any one who is new to the concept, is the four weeks that many Christians use to prepare their hearts to receive the miracle on the incarnation of Christ.  It is a time to remember that there was a time on this earth before Jesus came to die for us and that many were living only with the promise of a Messiah to save them.  It is a time where Christians remember and read the prophetic texts of the Old Testament which hint at what is to come.  All this is meant to make the actual day of Christmas that much more fuller, that much more meaningful, because God, in fact, did come down to earth in human form and he came disguised for a time as a poor child to a young unwed mother.  This season of 'waiting' is also a reminder that as a Christian people today we are also 'waiting' for Christ's second coming.

The first week of Advent also marks the start of the Christian liturgical year.

I often celebrate this time by preparing my home and my heart for him.  And I often center my home worship with an Advent wreath, which I try to make my only Christmas decoration adorning my apartment for as long as I can.

There is this thing I have noticed over the past few years I have spent in the American evangelical protestant church culture: an inherent lack of the acknowledgment of seasons.  Christmas and Easter celebrations seem to come only as interruptions in the current preacher series, and only rarely have I seen any kind of spiritual preparation made to prepare our hearts for the weight and the gift of these two days.  Should a Christian at some these traditions/denominations choose to participate in the sacrifice of pre-Easter fasting, they most often do so at their own accord, not within the communion of their communities, separating themselves from their local bodies of Christ.  And in this, there seems to have been a deep cultural forgetting of these times of preparation, but also of the true celebration of Christmas. Luckily, some protestants have been fighting back with things like the Advent Conspiracy, which seek to spread our American wealth to those who need in and remember the point of the season is about Christ, after all.

In my own home, I try to wait to put up my Christmas boughs and holly until closer to Christmas, but I keep them up when many of my Christian and secular brothers and sisters have already taken them down.

Does anyone remember that the Christmas season is liturgically remembered until 12 days AFTER Christmas, not before, culminating in the Feast of the Epiphany, when the Christ-child is taken before the temple and visited by the old wise men on January 6, and then about a week later when we celebrate Christ's baptism.  I mourn that when this day has come the world has already forgotten and taken down their boughs and holly......just at the time we should be celebrating!  I take as an example a cafe I used to work at, who last year ordered all Christmas decorations be removed on Christmas Eve, so that when they opened their doors the day after Christmas, it was already Ordinary time to them again.

I don't mean to be all up in my rant.  But this bugs me.  And it deeply bugs me that as many Christians have limited their seasonal celebrations of Christ's life to only two times a year, they have allowed themselves to be caught up in the commercial seasons of the holidays rather than the historically sensitive liturgical ones.  As a Roman Catholic, I LOVE love love that we celebrate the life of Christ with the seasons of the year, and allow ourselves whole seasons to remember what Christ did for us during his ministry on earth.  And I appreciate that there are Christians who still live within this rhythm, Lutherans and Anglicans and Orthodox among them.

Next week is the last feast of the Christian liturgical calender: The Feast of Christ the King.  And then, over Thanksgiving weekend, I will light the first Advent wreath candle, the candle of prophecy and anticipation.  And I am looking forward to celebrating that this year more than the hype of the commercial side of the holiday.

Oh, and you won't see me deck my halls until after the season of anticipation has started, my own way of rebelling against a season of corporate greed which tries to rush one of the most beautiful times of the year.
 Waiting can be a most holy cleansing process in and of itself, if we let it.  Waiting gives beauty to the gift we are preparing to receive.

Doubt and Certainty and the Quiet of God

October has been quite the month.

I apologize for my silence.  While I truly have no excuse in regards to counting my own thoughts, it has indeed been busy around here.  My fiance has returned from Iraq and we have been readjusting to one another.  As a result, wedding planning in on hold while major issues are questioned and we both rediscover both each other but our relationship in our dually very changed lives.

And simultaneously, for the past month, I have been dealing with Doubt, and by Doubt I mean some deep dark night of the soul kind of doubt about our existence as human beings and a church.

Doubt isn't necessarily a bad thing.  As we dig deeper into the profound reality of God, doubts often are a sign of growing faith, rather than a lack of it.  When we question, often the very nature of God himself, we become seekers in the fullest sense of word.  We struggle for understanding, but as long as we continue to knock on the door of faith by reading, asking, thinking, praying, we are on a path toward deeper understanding of God's depth.

I have been knocking.  At first, I didn't realize it.  At first, I panicked.  I thought, 'oh my, what am I doing here?  Is this even real?' only to find myself quietly breaking down my faith to its core......which I am sad to say meant leaving "spiritual activity" behind for a few weeks to meditate with my Christ in the silence of my heart.

Even though our Christian faith is meant to be a very corporal, community based practice, sometimes retreat into the nothing is necessary to maintain our relationship with God.  As Americans, it is trend to forget ourselves in the busy noise of our lives, even the spiritual noise of weekly services and prayer groups which are all too often crammed into busy schedules of work, school, kids when we have them.  And the result is that we barely have true time for one another much less ourselves and much less our God.  Think. How many times have you sat in church listening to the Pastor or Priest's message only to have no real time to meditate on it because you had someplace to be the following hour, perhaps a family potluck or party?  How many times has debating specific theological points gotten in the way of God's love?  How many times as the noise of life overtaken you?

While God did make the Sabbath for mankind, many of us have little concept of what a true Sabbath truly is.  It is rest.  It is quiet communion with our maker.  Jesus was aware of this need.  He retreated often into the wilderness to 'lose' the crowd of followers, sometimes taking only his closest friends with him just so that he can return to his roots and be a better leader.  Rest, simply, prevents burn out and the sins which can follow when our bodies and minds become weak to the noise.

I think that's exactly what has been happening to me.  Between a part time job and more than full time academic life, my only time with my maker would come from weekly service and weekly small group.  Being as the service was contemporary in style, when I seek quiet, it only comes across as noise.  While I am not going to reprimand anyone for enjoying a contemporary service, and even enjoy their joyful noise for the Lord on occasion, I was raised enjoying the quiet of a more ancient style of liturgy, one which acknowledges the silence and leaves me in quiet contemplation. Because of my 'busy-ness' quiet contemplation is precisely what my heart has been crying for.


Granted  part of this could be a collision of the variation of the faith life of Catholics to your more evangelical sects, as the expected amount of time put into each faith life differs sometimes dramatically.  Perhaps it's an issue of the flavor of our relationship with God ---- which is very much an open handed issue and does not make one more or less a Christian.  Maybe the only issue is that I am an introvert, who needs God to be my regeneration in my daily life as in my church life.

While I wholly believe we should be in community and that we should be in the word, I don't think the answer is constant 'spiritual activity.'  If we aren't careful, we often leave our non-Christian neighbors by the wayside if the only activity we pursue takes place with other Christians.  I can remember the many times over the past few years that I have turned my best friend down for the true love of just spending time with her and her husband solely because I had some church activity to go to.  I repent of the chances I had to share the gospel with her that I turned down in favor of a service that could have been made up later.

I have also been having to deal with varieties of often opposing theological viewpoints crowding out my quiet times mentally, which is quiet troubling, leading me to question everything down to the goodness of God.  So I am going to come clean, now that I have had the time to deal with and battle out my belief and disbelief.

So that is why I am retreating.  I am dropping the 'spiritual activity' for a time in order to return to the roots, to return to what called me toward Christ in the first place, to filter out the theological noise to focus on the Good News.  And boy, I have been reading. And asking.  And knocking.  And while part of this looks like going back to Catholic Mass for now, it also includes reading my bible on my own more than I have in a long while.  I even have a few friends who have heard my doubts and have nudged me back toward what is important: love --- and my roots --- and to them I am grateful.  I will continue to seek and to knock and search for the place God has set aside for me, wherever that is in the here and the now.  But I won't know without searching.

In the meantime, I am, however, certain of this:

Christ died for my sins, on the cross, and in his resurrection he defeated the death which results from sin.

Christ died for the WHOLE WORLD, not just me, and his gift was free for me, or anyone else to take or leave, because God left mankind with Free Will and wanted us, all along, to choose him willingly.  Because of Christ, we have the option of forgiveness in God's eyes (THIS, people, is the GOOD NEWS).  And in pursuing sainthood, which is relationship with Christ and forgiveness of sins, I will be saved from death and have everlasting life with my Father in heaven.  I am certain of the Trinity, of the Virgin Birth, and of the dual nature of Christ as both fully man and fully divine.

As a Roman Catholic by birth and choice, I look to the Testament of all the above as evidenced in both the Scriptures and our Traditions.  By Traditions I do not just mean rituals and liturgies, I also mean a very rich, ever complex two thousand year history of martyrs, saints and scholars through which I can look to when interpreting the holy scriptures, as well as look to the Holy Spirit which dwells in me and all Christians since the days of Pentecost.

I am also certain of the unchanging Goodness of God.

Of all else, of all the extras in dogma or theology, I may not be certain of, but maybe I don't need to be as long as my foundation is secure. I'll let you know where it takes me.

I love it when I get books in the mail.  Of course, these are all books ordered not so much for pleasure as for class projects for Seminar and Gallery Management, not to mention the simple reality of building a personal academic art library.

The Reading I have Before Me:
Divine Representations: Postmodernism and Spirituality by Ann W. Astell
Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling by Andy Crouch
 On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art by James Elkins
The Inward Eye: Transcendence in Contemporary Art edited by Lynn Herbert.
Thought Through My Eyes: Writing on Art, 1977 - 2005 by Klaus Ottmann
The Artist's Reality Philosophies of Art by Mark Rothko

Yup, looks like I have my work cut out for me.  Doesn't help that I'm only a month into the semester and that my Gallery Management binder already switched to a two incher for all the handouts.