An art adventure

So I'm thinking pretty seriously about signing up for this thing called "the sketchbook project" () I'm not a wonderful artist, but I like to do it.

Is the point of sharing art for the sheer enjoyment of the loveliness of the piece or is it about sharing a part of the artist. Enjoying a shared human experience, appreciating the way we experience the world?

So maybe I'll do a sketchbook. That'd be pretty rad.

Speaking of art...I'm currently sitting in the Salt Lake City airport and the view here is beautiful. The mountains here look so serene and magnificent. I guess I should put Utah on my list of places to visit. Breathtaking. Creation really is the best illustration of beauty and somehow of truth too.

It seems like truth and beauty go together, I like that.

airplane ride

i have been on a lot of planes in the last couple weeks, in fact i have spent 46 hours on 10 of them and tomorrow I get on two more...it can't be that healthy to be on 14 planes in 2 weeks, can it? but really weird stuff happens when you are traveling and funny stuff and funny stuff that wasn't funny at the time but is probably funny now :)

i love it, so i'm not complaining.

i also drove to Pittsburgh two and a half weeks ago and am driving to Colorado in a week and a half, man that's a lot of miles

but i was reminded by this blog of a story that i want to share.

i was on my way out of central asia and on this smaller plane, not even affiliated with a major airline...so you know its a bit sketchy.

i get my ticket and see its an aisle seat [now i'm used to having status which kind of makes me a little carnal and snobby about travel]. i board the plane, find my seat and my heart sinks when i see that the man sitting in the window seat is the size of the Rock, as in Dwayne Johnson. he is a huge man. and his bicep definitely comes about 6 inches over into my seat.

so i squeeze in, kind of sit forward so as to not touch this man. before we even take off i'm so frustrated in my heart that i'm praying that this flight won't take off and we will have to be on a different flight or something.

which is crazy, don't ever pray for travel delays when you have 3 more connections that day.

any way i'm super frustrated by giant arms and he is not even making an effort to stay in his assigned area. we take off and i'm fuming. eventually he adjusts for a second and i ninja my arm back there. so finally i feel like, okay i can make this happen, i can get through the rest of the flight. i was feeling a little nauseous, but i thought that was because i had no personal space.

but then i see, giant arms has a clear pepsi bottle that he's spitting into. the guy is totally chewing tobacco. its the smell that makes me want to puke, probably mixed with the fact that i had no personal space. and now i've seen it.

that's just rude.

at least get a bottle that i can't see through.

when i finally got off that flight, i was relieved and when i boarded my next flight, which was 8 hours long, i was happy to see a normal sized man was my seat buddy.

its the little things

i've found something i really enjoy: letterpress stationary

image found here: http://www.lintcoat.com/cards/paperwheels-letterpress-cards

I think its something about the texture, it is just beautiful.

also, isn't that card adorable, it makes me want to do something wrong, so i can send it :)

Blogging More

I set really strange goals for myself
For example, this year I said I wanted to wear high heels and lipstick once a week this year. And it has been so fun to do that.
I also said, I want to run a sprint triathlon and guess what, I did it!
So I'm what some would call tenacious. I've decided that I want to set that tenacity to a new goal:
To blog more.
I don't know who reads this, if anyone. And even if people used to read it, I've been slacking for 6 months, so you might not still be reading it :)
But I don't think readership is the point of blogging.
My journal is filled with emotion and depth of this particular time in my life, but the silliness and random things are not quite captured and definitely not shared, so while I have tended to write deepish stuff, now I'm just going to put whatever up here.
The new rule is that there are no rules. So maybe there will be pictures of adventures and stories of funny airport interactions. Maybe there will be stuff I'm learning through books and articles. Maybe there will be culinary adventures or even pictures I've taken. Some art might show up. And there just might be some depth too.
I was told that setting goals have to be quantifiable in order to find success, so my goal is to write a new post once a week. Beginning the week of June 5, because I'm about to board a plane to a place where I won't have Internet for two weeks.

So no blog the next two weeks, but also no high heels and lipstick :)

check out these blogs :)

I’m posting this to enter a contest offered by MeridaHome at Design For Mankind! I want to win the iPad 2! (and I love Erin’s shoes!)

erin's blog is amazing, if you love any kind of design, you'll love it!
i always feel inspired after checking out the beauty on her site :)
and erin is fantastic, just as a person.

anticipation

Isn't it interesting, sometimes the anticipation of a great event can be more important than the event itself. Even that this event itself can feel somewhat of a let down. Is that why the ideas of eternity are so elusive? Is that why the idea of the intangible becoming tangible is exhilarating and at the same time terrifying?

I have read and know in the bottom of my being that eternity will be overwhelmingly wonderful, but there is, of course, fear. What if it is not as lovely as one hopes? I do believe and hope in the Hebrews 11 sense, that it will be as CS Lewis writes in "The Great Divorce" not less real than this world, but somehow more real. The word picture that stands out most, is the idea that the very grass is so real that it will cut your feet. I often think of eternity as a ghostly place, ethereal and weird, but somehow wonderful. But I love the idea that CS Lewis perpetrates that this life is in fact less real than the realness of true life experienced in eternity, where there is no hindrance between the true, unfettered glory of God and me. It seems that it must be this way, because there will no longer be me and my sin to get in the way, but the whole ness of life, how it was meant to be, forever, into eternity.

Thinking about eternity in these terms makes me long for it, but somehow I still do fear that I will be let down, but surely it cannot be because my shallow finite mind can only think of so much greatness and eternity will be filled with the unfathomable greatness of the Glory of God Himself.

have we been inoculated with the Gospel?

We have just enough exposure of the Christian narrative that the truth of Christ just doesn't change our lives. It doesn't seem radical, because we have "heard" it so many times, but are we really listening? We cannot see the radical nature of life change, because we have been so lightly exposed to the water down "moralistic" ideology of the Christian nation ethic. But merely setting up a society that acknowledges some idea of a monotheistic deity does not make a Christian nation, it cannot bring the reality of who Jesus is. It cannot radically change everything. Legislating morality will only continue to confuse the issue. We keep telling the lie that you can create some good enough version of heaven on earth. Many people have a really hard time answering the question,"if you could go to heaven without Jesus being there, would you be happy to be there?" There is no heaven apart from Christ. Jesus says "and this is eternal life, that you may know God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent." we mustn't cling to a good life, an easy life, a moral life, but a radical life. A life that calls us to die for the sake of our enemies and to lay everything down so that we might walk closely with Jesus. That our lives would overflow the full scale onset of the Gospel. That you couldn't interact with the Gospel with out it killing you, your flesh, and making you TRULY alive in the only way we can be truly aIive, in Him, in Jesus.

real life is only found in one place. as counter intuitive as it may seem, that place is in death. in the death of Jesus and even more in the resurrection. but it has to change you...not because we have to change to get "in" with God, but because once we are "in" with God, by His great mercy, change happens. "it is for freedom that Christ has set you free"