The Highest Form of Hope

Interesting doesn’t accurately communicate the weight of this conversation. Maybe the right word doesn’t exist in this language. It would be a word that combines unexpected, unbelievable and life-altering. I’ve been searching for that word, but I am liable to give up the search and settle for a drab alternative.

I worked every other day in the student-run studio on the second floor of the graystone art department. I was under the pressures of completing my BFA show and my mentor was unsatisfied. To add to the pressure I was a “mature” student (meaning I was older than 26). Being labeled “mature” and already having undergone one failed career attempt added to the pressure of a deadline that remained fixed in the future and in many ways couldn’t come soon enough, but in other ways I felt completely unprepared for.

My mentor was a continuing source of frustration. He was stubborn in remaining unsatisfied, if not solely to teach me humility – which, it would seem, was a task he had personally undertaken. I received criticism (vague, uninspiring criticism) if I did what he suggested and criticism if I did not. One day he remarked that I “needed to be more creative.” If I was able to do anything about that I would, but I listened quietly and said nothing, for fear that if I spoke, my voice would crack and the year’s frustrations would be released and turn me into a heap of pathetic crying “mature” twenty-nine-year-old. I was at the point of avoidance. I purposely left the building during his office hours, and retreated to the stacks during those times.

One balmy March morning I had found the initiative to show up in the student-run studio two hours earlier that usual. The sun was already high in the sky, unlike the past few months where I found it nearly impossible to sit up in bed until there was at least a promise of daylight before nine in the morning. Tea in hand (coffee makes me an unfocused ball of nervous energy), the day seemed to hold more optimism than the week previous. But the promise was soon broken. I caught sight of my mentor sitting in the studio reading the paper.

Thankfully he hadn’t noticed me, so I turned to leave and retreat to the stacks once more. I still had an artist statement to work on, and my last painting was woefully stuck in the planning stages. As I walked down the short hallway to the staircase from which I came, I noticed an open classroom with a faint light reflecting on the floor. The class was apparently empty. I peeked around the half-open door, expecting to find some sessional instructor fiddling with a projector. But there was no one.

The light was coming from a phantom door, now open.

Labels: fiction

Noah trying hard to stay awake. It should be noted that Noah is wearing all the winter gear Sasha wore at the beginning of the season. That's including the boots!
Sasha playing shinny.

We had a wonderfully busy week with the youth being out of school! On Monday, we went to the Bushman's house for a game of shinny. Tuesday was a another day in the city, errands and such. On Wednesday we took the youth to Table Mountain. Sasha came along and had his much needed PowerAid at lunch (skiing is hard work)! I showed off my amazing moves on Terrain Park when I went off the first jump and flew into one of the youth. I'm proud to say that I still got it! (the ability to embarrass myself at least)

Labels: family

The library on campus is a large and foreboding block of concrete. It has seven levels and an infuriatingly slow elevator connecting them. Each floor, other than the main level, has a small sitting area where, depending on the time of day, students catch a nap or meet, chat and sip coffee. But other than these seating areas, the rest of the floors are eerily empty, except for the odd workaholic bent over a textbook or Macbook hiding in a carpeted cubicle.

But you won't find me doing homework here. Something about the main library gives me a feeling of unease, and that's not just because I'm allergic to the mold (which there is plenty of after a recent flood left the first floor smelling of uncooked potatoes). Each floor is uncomfortably large but claustrophobically overstuffed with with roes and roes of yellow metal book shelves. Noises are lost in the roes. You would never hear someone walking up behind you until they're close enough to touch. I end up doing my homework at odd times of the day when the library is most empty. It is for these reasons I do my work in "the stacks".

"The stacks" is the only part of the library where you would find fiction. It also houses philosophy, local history and the religion section as well. Though the stacks are part of the main library, it's actually in a different building. There's walkway joining the large concrete cube to a smaller graystone cube which is mostly the art department. But there is no physical way of walking directly from the art department to the stacks, even though they are in the same building and were clearly connected at one point. Every so often I come across a phantom door in a studio or classroom or at the end of a dead end hallway. It's always locked. So I am forced to walk outside, downstairs, upstairs, upstairs again and across and find myself five feet from where I was ten minutes previous.

I don't mind all that much. It's worth the walk to to find a place that is safe and quiet. Though it's an older building, I find it easier to breath. There are some open tables, and the roes are nicely spaced. There are always students in the stacks, but rarely do you hear them. The students who work here seem to have an unsaid understanding. No cellphones, no laptops, no loud talking about the weekend. And besides the occasional knowing exchange of glances, we don't interact with each other.

Considering this unwritten code, it's strange that the stacks should be the setting for the most interesting conversation of my life.

Labels: fiction

I've been reading the very inspiring and sometimes uncomfortable Walking on Water by Madeleine L'Engle. The way she writes about imagination so passionately almost embarrasses me. I'd like to consider myself an imaginative person, but she takes it to a whole new level. The regard she holds for fiction is remarkable. It makes me want to believe that stories are far more important than any non-fiction, no matter how weighty the subject... Well, perhaps I believed that at one time, but University beat it out of me.

Anyway, I've been encouraged to write more fictional posts and I happily pass that encouragement on to you all. There are a lot of talented writers on my blog role, so I look forward to your creative masterpieces. Shannon, I expect some profound poetry out of you or at least a humorous limerick!

Labels: fiction, imagination, writing

(For the girl who wants to be like everyone else...)


Lent is not a tradition I grew up with in my suburban Mennonite upbringing. In fact, I once had a rather embarrassing situation on my hands about eight years ago on an Ash Wednesday while working at Tim Horton's (WORST. JOB. EVER.). A woman (a Catholic woman as I soon found out) was at the counter ordering a coffee. I notice a large ash-like stain on her forehead and politely let her know about it (if I had a large ash-like stain on my forehead I would want someone to let me know!). She said thank-you and chuckled at my ignorance. Definitely not my worst experience at Tim Horton's... but I digress...

Lent is a tradition my family and I have adopted it in the last few years (don't worry, we don't make the kids fast... though it probably wouldn't hurt Noah). I was recently challenged by something Paul talked about with the youth last Wednesday. He suggested to the youth to give up something that ate up their time or something that they had grown to define themselves by. I was on the fence on what I would give up this year. I wanted it to be something meaningful. I wanted to give up something I relied upon, something that took up time and money...

So I decided to give up make-up for the Lent season. No matter how "liberated" I'd like to think I am there is still a small (or perhaps moderately sized) part of me that fears I won't be valued or loved or respected if I'm not "pretty". And honestly, I feel pretty silly admitting that.

So if I look a little tired or less "made-up" than usual, don't say, "You look tired, Jessica." Say "Jessica, you're looking mighty liberated today!"

Labels: faith, lent, liberation, life in general, women

Sasha and Noah definitely keep me busy! Here are some of the adventures of the past few months.

Sasha had his first hockey game this week. He spent a brief time in net and the rest of the game he watched his skates as he slowly puttered behind the rest of the team! And of course he stopped dead in his tracks so I could get a good picture of him! Reminds me of my soccer days... staring at the sky, imagining I was somewhere else... picking flowers and happily sitting on the bench. I wasn't really the athletic type. Sasha is showing a lot more interest in sports than I ever did. I thought it was a pretty impressive performance for the youngest player on the team!

Sasha's imagination is as active as ever. He got some discarded jewelery from Paul's mom and was pretending it was treasure last night. He said he found it in a tunnel under a rock in the Sphinx in ancient Egypt. It was all broken but he fixed it with his magic wand. Then he used the wand to turn himself into a guard dog named "Muffin "with a spiky collar. Then he fought the bad guys with the spiky collar. It was an impressive story. I especially liked that his name was "Muffin".

Noah's life seems to revolve around getting his hands on the cell phone. I'm not sure who he's trying to get a hold of, but he has called 911 twice now - didn't know I was THAT bad of a mother. The Rosthern RCMP must have a special file on us by now.

Noah has also shown an interest in art. He already draws more than Sasha does. The other day he scribbled on his paper and proudly announced that it was a "baby". Pretty cute.

And he clearly idolizes his big brother. He follows him around all day, wanting to do everything Sasha's doing. Although Sasha isn't exactly that much bigger. Noah's now 32 pounds and Sasha's about 39 and they're over three years apart! Noah is actually off the charts for both height and weight.

So life in the testosterone overloaded Morgun household continues... Heaven help me!

Labels: family, life in general

It’s been far too long since I’ve read any of Gregory Wolfe’s editorials in Image Journal. I would buy a subscription, honestly I would, but it’s a little out of my price range for only four issues a year. However, after reading this, I’m seriously questioning my financial priorities!

Personally, I have always been frustrated by the pairing and comparing of faith and reason. It is not that I am an “unfaithful” or “unreasonable” person, it’s just that I find it incomprehensible to contain all possible knowledge within these two words. When we discuss how we know something, inevitably it seems we speak of faith and reason. I would heartily agree with the idea that they are codependent. But even this seems lacking to my train of thought and I am left looking for words and arguments to validate story, art and beauty within the constructs of “faith” and “reason”.

In his editorial “The Wound of Beauty”, Wolfe considers how modern thought has tended toward a discussion of faith and reason, goodness and truth, but has forgotten about beauty. He explores goodness, truth and beauty in a three-pronged relationship as the “transcendentals”. And finally he addresses the absence left by an ultimate rejection of beauty.

Wolfe begins by reminding us of some of the foundations of Western aesthetics: “In theory, goodness, truth, and beauty—traditionally known as the “transcendentals,” because they are the three qualities that God has in infinite abundance—are equal in dignity and worth. Indeed, in Christian thought there has always been a sense that the transcendentals exist in something of a trinitarian relationship to one another. But in practice it rarely seems to work out that way.”

Beauty is the ignored sister of the three. We push her aside with phrases like “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, or we relegate her to a discussion on “taste”. We say that she’s nice and pretty and rob her of all authority. We find beauty frustrating; she is decadent, giving without thought of how it could be received. She is unpredictable and we fear her. We even attack and question her relevance. Wolfe suggests that “secular and religious attacks on beauty are nearly identical. Beauty is seen as an anesthetizing force that distracts us from the moral imperatives of justice and the quest for truth. There isn’t much difference between a stern proponent of Iconoclasm in the eighth century and a modern Marxist attacking beauty as nothing but an opiate to lull us into acquiescence to the powers that be.”

The other sisters, goodness (morality) and truth have been hotly contested throughout history, and perhaps now even more so in this post-modern climate. Wolfe suggests that this continuing tension is clearly seen in the “debate” of faith vs. reason, where faith is tied to goodness and reason to truth. It is certainly easy to argue about what is true and what it good, we all want people to think and act the way we do. But in these arguments, beauty is relegated to the sidelines – a nicety that makes existence tolerable. “Secularists and believers alike have either rejected beauty altogether or argued that beauty should make the pills of truth and goodness go down easier. Beauty must serve some other end; it is not an end in itself.”

So what happens when one transcendentals is ignored? What do we loose? Hans Urs von Balthasar considers the ends of a rejection of beauty in The Glory of God, a contemplation on truth, goodness and beauty:

Beauty is the word which shall be our first. Beauty is the last thing which the thinking intellect dares to approach since only it dances as an uncontained splendor around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another. Beauty is the disinterested one, without which the ancient world refused to understand itself, a word which both imperceptibly and unmistakably has bid farewell to our new world, a world of interests, leaving it to its own avarice and sadness. No longer loved or fostered by religion, beauty is lifted from its face as a mask, and its absence exposes features on that face which threaten to become incomprehensible to man. We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it. Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance. We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past - whether he admits it or not - can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.

Terrifying words indeed. But they seem to ring true to me, especially at such a time when Christians are constantly at a loss when confronted with the apparently arrogant “truth claims” we adhere to and the hypocritical moral standards we’d prefer other’s hold as well as ourselves… Perhaps we find ourselves at such a place because we have forgotten the beautiful sister, we’ve forgotten it was the beauty of the story that led us to believe in the first place.

If truth is pursued by reason, as Wolfe suggests, and goodness by faith, what is the pairing for the ever absent beauty? If beauty is not only to serve goodness and truth, what is beauty’s end?

Imagination.

That’s about all I have in me right now. I hope to continue this post at a later time.

Labels: aesthetics, beauty, faith, imagination, reason

"I push, therefore I am."

So I'm trying to put together an adult Sunday school class on "the Arts" (though it will be heavily focused on the "visual"arts), and I am using a variety of wonderful books to do so: Madeliene L'Engle's Walking on Water (generously recommended by Phil Irish) and The Rock that is Higher, Betty Spackman's A Profound Weakness, A collection of essay's edited by Gregory Wolfe, and Hart's Beauty of the Infinite. The unfortunate/fortunate thing about this collection of books is that other than Hart, they are all written by artists. And thus, have little organizational structure for me to glean from. And unfortunately I am of the disorganized artistic type. I have a lot of ideas, just don't know how to arrange them in a concise, easy to digest manner.

It is somewhat (did I say somewhat - I meant EXTREMELY) daunting to facilitate a Sunday school class that has more than its fair share of MA's and doctoral candidates and generally smart cookies... sigh. And I have a track record of having some rather unorthodox topics of discussion... ahem. So sometimes (did I say sometimes - I meant OFTEN) I wonder what people actually think of me when I'm up there. I guess I'm just grateful for the opportunity to learn.

But I am excited. I'm very passionate about this topic and I feel I have a pretty good knowledge base to draw from. Plus I get to pick out a bunch of interesting images! And if any of you who attend this class are reading, let me know what you think would be important to address (note: I will NOT be discussing Voice of Fire under any circumstances).

Labels: art, life in general, teaching