Stories from the street

Stories are the life-blood of a person. They make us who we are. They help us understand one another. How we think. How we act. The decisions we make. The values we hold dear.

I met an artist the other day who told me about how he started painting. Why he paints what he does. He said that he had a rough childhood growing up. He was abused, and he couldn't handle the stress of it all and wanted an escape. So he started abusing alcohol and hard drugs, and eventually found himself in rehab. He sought out counselling, resisting help at first until he found a person whose story he could relate to as well. They suggested he try out art - so he thought about it. And here he is - 29 years sober, an artist for 24 years. He paints with watercolours and fills in the top with oiled pens and symbols from Carl Jung.

Despite being a dropout, he reads a lot of Carl Jung psychology, and his paintings are supposed to portray his 'unconscious.' He said that he has a lot of trouble painting life around him, and that he finds solace in expressing his inner self instead.

I have to say that in that one soul was the talent of a dreamer, and I took home one of his paintings gladly. It's beautiful and is hanging on my wall right now.

It's kind of amazing to think how much strength is in a person. How someone who might have been labelled a failure or a reject has more strength that I think I could ever fathom coming up with myself. That man gives a gift to the world through his hands. He shares a part of his heart and his mind with the people who come in and out of his life through his art, and in taking a piece home, perhaps I am, in a way, also taking home the story that made it.

Let's not give up on one another but always have hope for tomorrow.

See Terry's work here.

Feeling lost and found

It's a funny feeling when your life seems to be hurtling forward at unprecedented rates, and you have no control of where it's going. Kind of intimidating.

Strange how it both bothers and does not bother me. It appears that the thing that bothers me is more not knowing than actually the part where I don't have control. But then again, maybe knowing is having control. Or perceived control of what will happen. Then again, our plans rarely come to fruition. There's usually some new and exotic twist that makes life interesting. Worth waiting around for.

So I guess I'll just wait for the surprise.

Slaves to Righteousness

What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey — whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness... Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:15-22


Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

O to grace, how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.

Polished Shoes

I am given the power
To live in the white tower
Shall I be a king
Stamp with a signet ring

Or can I make the choice
That others cannot
To live at the bottom
Instead of looking down from the top

Can we march around the walls
Trumpets high, marching tall
And break down the bricks
Of this place of conflicts

Throw away our polished shoes
Pick up our sandals
Let's paint our skin
Holding hands, enter in.

Metal wings

we’re born from the ashes
broken bottles and
blood-stained rags
cold hands hold and mold
our crying bodies
in blankets and cloth

the ice is melting
tears in ripples
frozen rage against
the bars and cage

blaming those hands
born to broken people
burned in mortar and char
in the foundries of past.

there is weight in flight
with metal wings.

Oh Pracrastination!

Swerving roadways of black
And paths for wand'ring eyes
Graphite and blue-stained hands

A friend!
Laughing
Chatting

- Sighing

The eyes drift to the sea
Of ups and downs on white
To soon create my own -

In time.

Breaking the power hierarchies

I've decided that Jesus was a hipster. But the very best of hipsters. not the snobbish, "I'm so much better than you because I'm environmentally-friendly for not showering for 3 weeks", kind of hipster. But the counter-cultural, I'm going to break the social conventions, kind of hipster. And what better kind of hipster is there?

Story time: A very lovely young man told me like I was like a lovely princess the other day. funny enough, I was utterly offended. I didn't say so, cause I knew his intentions behind saying such a thing (and he's a little eccentric in the first place), but I nonetheless was thinking "ew."

I think that power is one of the worst social constructions within the world. We have these made up hierarchies based on whimiscal characteristics of a person. Someone wealthier than someone else now is 'above me.' Someone 'smarter' is 'above me.' (note: knowledge itself is subjective and constantly changing). Someone with more life experience is 'above me.' Something with higher morals is above me. And, if you don't mind my feminist and anti-racial rants, someone who is a 'man' and 'white' is above me. Ew.

Imagine a world where everyone stood on equal footing. Where we saw a person not for how they looked, what their gender was, how educated they were, how they dressed, how they talked, how much income they had, but instead, discarded it all and treated them like... I don't know... a human. Like myself, or yourself, or ourselves.

Jesus was a total power-crusher. Look at John 4 and the story of Jesus with the Samaritan woman. Here's a woman from an 'enemy' culture, a gender that is far below males (obviously) to the point that women were not allowed to speak to men, nor vice-versa, and from a religion that was considered evil. Add to it that she's had five husbands and is living with her sixth lover out of wedlock. This woman comes to get some water, in the high sun so that there's probably no one else around, and then sees this Jewish man. She's probably a bit taken aback to see a Jew in her community first, but goes about her business anyway, expecting no trouble since she'd normally be ignored.

But Jesus, being his amazing divine self, is like, "Yo - I'd love some water." First, he just talked to a woman (shocker!) and second, by drinking the water, he's going to be considered unclean to enter the Jewish temples. ScAN-du-lous! All this saying that by the end of the story, she's been told that he knows about her past, her lifestyle, he knows her standing in society, but that he's the Messiah and wants to accept her into his revolutionary kingdom.

So awesome. That's my God. just breaking down the power structures. Loving us no matter what. Can I get an amen?