The Highest Form of Hope

Well, I've started my internship. Good news is that my teacher and the staff at St. Joe's seem really great. They welcomed me with a medalion of St Joseph that was blessed by the pope! (pretty cool - thanks Benedict!) It was really special - I was touched. A few staff have really gone out of their way to make me feel welcome. A plus of being the only intern is that everyone knows who you are and it seems that their genuinely interested in what I'm doing.

Being in a Catholic school is really interesting. I had no idea that God was so central to the policy and the atmosphere of the schools. Today we had a big meeting with all the staff of the Catholic system at Circle Drive Alliance Church. There was mass, and then several keynote speakers. All the speakers encouraged the staff to reconnect with their faith and to share their faith with the students. I can say that I felt spiritually encouraged by the whole thing.

One thing really bothered me though. It bothered me so much that I almost started crying. I have never celebrated mass before - I think I've only been in a Catholic church three or four times. I'm not Catholic. I didn't know any of the traditions that go along with mass. I'm not even sure if I'm crossing myself correctly! I felt like a complete outsider. Even though I understood and agreed with everything that was said, I felt like a complete tool. I guess that's what people feel like all the time when they come to church and are not used to our customs and language. The most frustrating part was that I really wanted to participate! - But I couldn't, I'm not Catholic. The saddest part was the Eucharist. I considered these new colleages brothers and sisters, but I could not come to the Lord's table with them. I knew before hand that this would be the case. I just wasn't prepared for how sad and isolated I would feel.

Yes, I know this picture has nothing to do with what I'm writing, but I just wanted to cover all my bases.... (find more badly translated English or "engrish" at www.engrish.com)

In two days I begin my internship. Eight hours of work at day, plus driving time. I'm going to have to leave Hepburn at about 6:45 am and I'll probably come back at 6:45 pm. The teacher I'm working with is very different from me. She seems like she's barely holding it together (well, maybe not so different). On top of this I am the only intern at St. Joe's - I'll have no one to hang out with. Paul says I'll do fine but I'm not so sure. This isn't like school where I can get away with not studying. Apparently some kid's education might be at stake! The worst part is that I'm going to be away from my family and friends and that basically I'm expected to put my internship ahead of anything else. No sick days, no nothing.

I don't know how I'm going to do this!

Think of me when I drop off the face of the earth in two days.

The Water Jug - Velasquez

What is art?
Can it be anything? Does it have to be good? Does it have to have meaning?

I've been thinking about this question because I dread the day when some fifteen year old asks "Teacher, but what is art?" during my internship in an attept to derail my lesson on perspective. Others have asked me this question with the intention of discreditting art itself ( or certain kinds of art). If anything can be art, then art isn't really that special.

This question is philosophical in nature, but it's also practical. How do we evaluate art? What is good art? Is bad art not art?

Art (by this I mean the arts: literature, visual arts, music, poetry, dance etc...) is about seeing. It's about noticing things - sight, smell, taste, sound, touch - as if for the first time. Artists have to be facinated by what seems mundane to others. Notice how Velasquez takes as much effort to depict the water jug (perhaps more) as he does in depicting the human figures. A musician is facinated by tone - A quality that we all appreciate once it is made into something beautiful and pleasent to listen to - but when it is by itself, tone can be very boring to us unmusical types.

Much of the creation of art is very monotonous. I remember an assignment I had to do in first year painting class that exemplified the artistic process. We had to choose an indoor space to paint ( I chose my living room) . First we did four studies of the space (about 3 hours of work). Then we had to complete four more studies based on one of the studies we did before (another 3 hours). Then we had to make a three dimensional model of the space ( 3 hours). Then we had to add color to model (2 hours). And then we had to paint a picture of the model (3 hours). And finally we had to do a final sustained painting of the space (7 hours). I hated that painting so much because I was so sick of the subject matter.

Obviously I have a ways to go before I can find facination that sustains 21 hours of painting my living room again, but seeing is something that must be learned. As I become more experienced and as my visual vocabulary expands, I have become increasingly facinated by the visually mundane. Perhaps this is where the stereotype of the excentric artist comes from. I haven't ever tried explaining my love of rusty barrells and the way the paint is flaking on the "Mueseum of Wheat" to anyone - its just too weird.

So if art is about seeing, then good art must be close to seeing truth. I don't mean that good art must be "realistic" (in the sense that a painting looks like a photograph), I mean that it must be truthful. Good art notices things that the rest of us just glance over - the way blue looks beside red, the way a line diffuses, the way a tone reverberates through an amp, the way a metaphor describes a feeling that seemingly couldn't be put into words... All these are small elements of a bigger truth that simply cannot be understood in one single way. I do believe that there is truth, I just don't think any of us will come to a full understanding of it by ourselves in this life. But there is something so wonderful about trying to express truth about the most miniscule thing - like the color red. It seems simple, but the more you think about it, the more complicated it gets until you realize that maybe no one can define red (or even paint red) in a satisfactory way.

So what is art? It sounds cliche to say that "art is a search for truth" or "art is a signpost to truth", but maybe cliche is all I can come up with.
Artists take these mundane things and create meaning. Good artists point to truth. Viewing, listenning or reading such things invites us to find facination in the world again - like seeing it for the very first time.

I could only post half of my watergirl comic a few weeks ago, so for all of you who were in suspense... (yeah right), here's the other half. Enjoy!

JP and Charity - this is for you!

"...it is the greatest story ever told which goes on forever, in which each chapter is better than the last." C.S. Lewis - The Last Battle

Lately in my class we've been discussing post-modernism and how it relates to couselling. In my opinion, one of the most valuable contributions of post-moderism and social constructionism is the idea of narratives. This idea is that we construct our reality through narratives - essentially through language. There are cultural narratives (the stories our society tells) and there are personal narratives (the stories we tell about ourselves). The stories we tell about ourselves and others define our reality. Our stories makes us who we are.
The power of language can be frightenning. Chomsky reveals how government and media controls the narratives of our society - maintaining the status quo through words. You could use words to destroy people, setting their reality upside down. You could use language to create relationships, or to end them.
Words are power. Words create meaning.

Christ is the word.
He is the basis of reality. He is the author of life, love and faith.

One of the reasons I love history is because it creates a glimpse into the complex story of humanity's relationship with God. For some of us, we see God's story as the Old and the New Testament - it begins at creation and ends in Revelations. But the story continues; it includes all the people who ever walked the earth. All of them are integral characters in God's story. All of them took part (and continue to take part) in the authorship of their lives - that mysterious balance between free will and predestination. The story will continue for all eternity, with each chapter getting better as the book goes on...

But this existence, this world as we know it now, is only the first line of the first page.

Take me back twenty years
Before the world lost its colour
Eyes closed, pink cheeks beside me
Stirring quietly, faintly sighing
Like a tree that stands alone
In January's night
Red apples, perfectly ripe
Even then you will grow
As light excudes your limbs

Take me back to a time
When every blade of grass was full of wonderful things
When every word had meaning
When every action, genuine

The smell of your neck
As my cheek brushes yours
You make the world new again

Movie Review: Kung Foo Hustle (Stephen Chow - 2004) - Many people assume that I just like damatic movies, but this is not so. I like movies that make me think, but I appreciate just about any genre as long as it's done well. I am a fan of Kung Foo (one of my favorite movies is Croaching Tiger Hidden Dragon). I sometimes daydream that I know "Kung Foo" and can jump really high and run really fast... Anyway, enough of my sad fantasy life. The movie Kung Foo Hustle is a comedy full of ripped off scenes from Enter the Dragon, Gangs of New York and the Matrix triology (why anyone would want to rip off scenes from that is beyond me...). It has communist propaganda, the plot doesn't make sense, and it has cheezy special effects. This movie has many flaws - but it was seriously the funniest movie I've seen all year (save Napoleon Dynamite)! Paul had tears streaming down his face he was laughing so hard. Here are some quotes...
"I won't kill you because you are important to the economy."
"From that point on, I wanted to be EVIL!"
"Sometimes it is good to forget the past. Memories can be painful."
"Once we kill someone, we will get the money and the women!"
"What? Have you never seen an ice cream theif?"
"Who is throwing handles?"
Okay okay. Out of context these quotes aren't that funny. And this movie isn't for everyone, you need to keep an open mind, but it is so worth it. Its best if you watch the movie with the dubbing instead of the subtitles - the translation seems to be better.
Because of the plots various hole and the rampant plagerism, I have to give this movie 3 out of 5 stars - but in my heart I would truly love to give it more. So get a bunch of friends together and rent this movie!

Rouault - Christ on the Outskirts (1920-24)


It's always hard to decide how personal I want to get with this blog. I enjoy discussing issues and stuff but sometimes I have the urge to go a little deeper and reveal a little bit of who I am. I thought about writing this for a while, but I was hesitent to do so. I think I wronte and erased this blog about 3 times. On one hand I think that this might be an encouragement to some. But on the other hand, I'm not too sure I want everyone to know about my personal struggles. Well, here goes nothing...

The struggle I'm talking about is depression. Some of you who know me already know I deal with this. I'm not too sure I really explained it well to the people I love and care about. I know a lot of people struggle with it, so please feel free to share your experiences too, if you feel comfortable doing so.

The term depression can be confusing. Depression comes in many forms and personally I'm convinced that everyone will experience it at some point in their lives. Depression can be rooted in biological causes or it can be external - caused by stress or adverse situations. For me, I am someone who is prone to depression. I don't suffer from it all the time but I go through cylces of it every so often.

When I think back on my life, I can see that I was always prone to depression. Situations and stress would bring it out. Depression is much more than feeling sad. It is better described as a absence of true feeling. Rather than sadness, it is an intense feeling of aimlessness and hopelessness, feeling like I'll never get it right or I'll never be good enough.

My most intense period of depression happened during my first year of Bible College. Various factors, both internal and external were at play. I was away from my family and close friends, I was dealing with the stress of a dating relationship. I was confronting my faith in a way I had never done before. I began to loose a lot of weight, sleep for excessive amounts of time, I lost interest in things that usually made me happy, I couldn't make simple decisions, I began to fear social situations and I had constant thoughts of suicide. I don't want to diminish the fact that my own choices led in some ways to my depression. Even at the worst of times I still had a choice to give in to certain thoughts or to continue to struggle with them. However, I never had the ability to choose to be happy. This was simply not possible. I could, however, choose to live. Daily, sometimes hourly, I had to wrestle with this freedom.

I feel guilty about being depressed. I feel that I don't have the right be depressed because the circumstances of my life are very good. People have become angry with me when I'm depressed saying "How could you be sad? You have a good life!" Others say, "Is it me? Am I doing something to make you sad?" These comments just make me feel worse because I feel misunderstood. The last thing I want is for someone to blame themselves for how I'm feeling.

I get angry when I look back, especially at that first year of Bible College. It could have been such a growing time for me. Did I grow? Maybe. Sometimes I'm thankful that I went through it, but mostly I feel angry. I don't see the benifit. Before that year I was a caring, genuine person who didn't care a whole lot about what others thought of me. I was idealistic but not legalistic. I had grace for myself and for others. I was a leader and I was outgoing.

I don't know where that girl went!

I don't feel like I am a stronger person now than I was then - I feel weaker. I don't feel closer to God - I feel further away. Maybe I mourning for someone who never existed. Maybe she was a myth, a person that I wanted to be. But I still miss her.

Then again, perhaps how I feel has nothing to do with it. Maybe it's about who I am. Maybe I can't see clearly who that is yet.

If you haven't already guessed from my choice of pictures this week, the artist of the week is John James Audubon (1785-1851). Audubon's greatest work was his book Birds of America in which he recorded with amazing detail over 400 species of birds. The prints in the book are all to scale and are incredably accurate. Audubon painted his birds from actual dead specimins. Part biologist, part artist, Audubon contributed greatly to both fields. His Birds of America is still as useful today as it was when he first published it. Audubon's work is important to me because he signifies the beauty and simplicity of science - a subject much ignored by artists. His works, though utilitarian, are wonderfully creative and inspiring.

Lately Gil Dueck (hepburnmusings@blogspot.com) has been discussing some pretty weighty issues about prayer, death, life, and heaven. I thought of an analogy a little while ago about the nature of heaven - I'm sure it was inspired by the words of a friend but I can't remember who. Since I take accusations of plagerism very seriously (see Paul's comment on August 2), I give full credit of this to my annonimous friend.

Imagine yourself in the womb, floating in a warm dark place filled with amniotic fluid. You cannot see much. Your world is very small. You concern yourself with sucking your thumb, kicking and twisting, and so on. You know nothing of the outside world where happy and excited parents wait to greet you. But every so often, you hear her voice. Your mother's voice. You hear other voices too, but it is hers that you learn to recognize. Her voice is your connection to the life outside. True, sometimes you are jostled about as she walks, perhaps you even see hints of warm red light through her skin.
The womb is an important place. It is where we develope into human beings capable of life on the outside. What we are exposed to in the womb is important - it makes us who we will become. Our actions in the womb are also important. We learn to suck, swallow, move our limbs and hear our mother's voice.
But it is only the beginning.
Birth is a terrifying experience. It hurts you as you are squeezed through the birth canal. It hurts your mother as she struggles to bring you safely into the world. But it is worth the pain.
Real life begins when we are born. And after we are born, the womb fades away. It becomes insignificant to us. The life outside is unimaginable to anyone still in the womb. Light, people, noise, music, smells, tastes. We saw hints of it, but only in very small ways.
Birth is like death. It is a transition into something more. The lives we lead on this earth are significant, but only because they make us ready for our real lives to begin. For heaven is more real than anything. There we will begin to know God fully, and also to know our true selves and the true being of others. I believe this is what Paul meant when he said "Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." (I Cor 13:12).
It is hard to live in this perspective - expecting the life outside, life everlasting, life abundant. But our mother is waiting for us on the other side, even though we can't see her. We must learn to hear her voice.

Let me introduce you to someone very special. Her name is Watergirl. When I was in high school, I started my own comic strip starring myself and my close friends. Watergirl is essentially based on a series of nerdy inside jokes. Watergirl started out as a candy striper at the Royal University Hospital where her role was to hand out ice water to thristy paitients. She was splashed with radioactive water by a crazy patient which gave her superhuman powers. Watergirl's nemisis is Vaporgirl (the alterego of my best friend JP). Like all comic books, the Watergirl comic is plagued by inconsistancies that are eventually cleared up through time travel and alternate realiaties. As a note of interest, my husband (Paul Morgun) also made a cameo in the Watergirl series as "Cowman".

Love is not diamonds
It is carbon and coal
Love is not the key
It is the door

If you think that love is the objective
The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow
You are mistaken

Love is a direction
It is not tossed from wave to wave aimlessly
Love is a choice
A conscious decision
It is making coffee in the morning
Filling up the gas tank
Dropping off a letter
Whispering a thought
Ignoring and paying attention
Disregarding other people’s opinions
It is becoming someone else
While remaining yourself

Love is messy and incomplete
Love is sacrifice without expectation

The reward is the journey
I’ve had enough of romance
Romance is arrogant and self-serving
What I found is Love

My husband and I recently purchased a house. We had been renting our house the past few years and fell in love with it so we decided to buy. The house was not without its problems, but there were a few features that we really liked so we decided to renovate. At the same time some friends of ours decided to build a house. Adding paint and shingles to a brand new house is different than renovating an old house. For one, in our house we've had to rip things out and work around our furniture and flooring - trying not to damage what we already have. In a new house you don't have to remove old things in order to paint or or add flooring. Sometimes I think it might have been easier to buy a house that needed a complete overhaul, because you could just take a sledge hammer to everything and not worry about breaking anything important.
Sometimes I feel like our house. Change can be difficult especially when on the surface, things look all right. Or I've gotton used to certain patterns in my life - they don't distress me as they once did. For example, when we moved into our house three years ago, the shingles were in poor shape. It really bothered me at first, but after a few years I stopped caring so much. Unfortunately, these "small" problems, when left unchecked, can lead to a rotton roof. Renovation can be a nuisance, costly, or even painful. I hope I can muster the perserverance to follow through my own personal renovations and start changing things that should have been fixed a long time ago!