She's Baaaack

Back to the blogosphere.  Heck.  Back to Life.

2011 was busy.  And yet, I'm glad it's over.  Wil and I got married, and now....we have even become homeowners.  Despite our shoestring budget, however, I am bound and determined to make this little place a home.  I am nearly done with my undergrad career.....only a year later then expected thanks to transfer confusion.  I just ended a temporary job as a Part Time Sales Associate at The Saint Louis Art Museum for the duration of their fabulous exhibit of Claude Monet's Agapanthus, Water Lilies Triptych.

I will admit, my job did get in the way of church.  I miss Sunday Mass, and quiet revelry followed by Brunch......yumm....Brunch.  With only a weekend and night availability, that often meant getting my needed hours on Sundays....and my week was packed solid from Friday to Sunday at 5.  I know.....bad Christian.  If only weekday mass was later than 8am for weekend working night owls like me

I'm sad to see the job go, but I'm also relieved.  I can go back to my life.  I can go back to my Sundays.  And I'll finally have the time to throw myself into the house project and finish my last two months of French class.....even though in the meantime I will be working to get a new job.  Heck, I even now have the time to edit my Senior project for the upcoming Symposium essay contest!

I haven't been very theological or obsessed with art lately.  Life has been getting in the way.  And frankly, last year was the year of finishing my Art History classes and my Thesis project.  All I need to do now is finish my French requirement and I'll be done.

In the meantime, I feel like I'm at a wall.  Being a part time student means the need to get a job...to pay the bills and so forth.  However, even being credits away from a degree means I can't go for jobs that need said degree.....or not being able to go for a secretarial job that would fit a 9 to 5 schedule.  Conundrums.  I'm limited to hourly work in retail....part times with hours that mean I don't see much of my hubbie.  *sigh*

C'est la vie.

Well, I guess you folks get to read about my upcoming projects, though:

*In the spirit of interior decorating, I'm returning to painting.  The best and cheapest custom art is the kind you do yourself!  It is a good thing I have a strong studio background.  I honestly think, however, that anything that puts me back into the studio will help my creative spirit, and I know Wil has been trying to get me drawing and painting again for a long while.

*Speaking of interior decorating, I need to post pictures.  And get this rooms done.  It's a fun project making a house a home!  I'll try to keep y'all in the updates as I finish rooms.

*My New Year's Resolution this year is to learn HOW to live a simple Life.  I don't want our new house to be an excuse to clutter.  (Note:  I am a HORRIBLE Clutterbug.  I hate this about myself, especially after spending too much time on Pinterest drooling over beautiful interior spaces).  As I have been unpacking I have already been going through the process of purging the unnecessary or the un-beautiful.  (Limiting possessions to only beautiful or useful).  It's gonna be a long painful process, but hopefully worth it in the end.

*Losing Weight.  My weight has ballooned since I started planning my wedding.....meaning all the weight I had intended to lose for the wedding had returned with force plus some by my wedding day.  The extra weight has contributed to other problems: asthma mainly.  I am, though, also frightened of diabetes later in life or when I have kids.  When it comes to food, I love to eat.....hey, I was raised by a couple of foodies, one of which is also a wine nut.  When I do cook, something I love to do, Wil and I tend to eat healthier anyway.  However, we both still have bad food habits that need to go.  (Lent project, perhaps?)  Wil found an online contest sponsored by one of the local supplement stores that is offering a large cash sum for dramatic weight loss stories told well.  There are 12 chances to win (one for every month THIS year).  Sad but true that money is the motivating factor that may make what I have been putting off a reality.....

*Um.....let's see how fast I can land a new job.  I hear the zoo is hiring.  And I would take being a blue-sweatered Gallery Attendant over not being at the St. Louis Art Museum any day!

Inspiring Story:

Church versus Bar. Theyr'e really not that different.
I highly recommend you follow the link above, but then again I am an individual who is shy about my church community, and often feel safer among that environment found at "the bar" that the author discusses.  Granted, the church tries to be the kind of community that hurt people need it to be, but often fails.  Even some real successful churches fail where your home of "Cheers" succeeds.  Take a look on a thought.

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.