"I like the fact that in ancient Chinese art the great painters always included a deliberate flaw in their work: human creation is never perfect."
Madelein L'Engle (A Circle of Quiet)
Dandelion in the Desert
This site was originally titled Dandelion in the Desert because I want to be that dandelion in the desert. Dandelions can flourish despite the most amazing trials- you may poison them, strangle them, pull them by the roots, stomp on them, kick them, chop their heads off with the lawnmower...and yet, they grow back. They are happy little yellow spots of sunshine in areas where no other things can grow.
This world can feel so much like a desert, I want to be the dandelion that thrives in the midst of it. I want to survive and keep my joy despite the things that try to kill me, despite the fact there may be nothing around me to encourage life. I have a different source, a better source. I will continue to grow despite the hard things.
Name:Katrina Country:United States State:Ohio Metro:Dayton Birthday:10/11/1983 Gender:Female
Interests:Coffee, tea, cooking, ethnic food, nature, hiking, reading, history, other cultures, music (especially really good jazz), missions work, media, martial arts, worshipping God with art and writing, Youth With A Mission, travelling, Scotland, living for God with all that you have. Expertise:Making lattes & other cafe-type drinks, being random, giving hugs and/or backrubs, anything creative, random trivia knowledge (due to years of my almost-sister Jacqui), playing Babble & RISK... oh and my secret ambition is to be a National Geographic Photographer (but not sure how that will actually happen)... Occupation:Student
Yikes...has it really been December since I posted last?
Well...here I am..married, in the midst of spring and a million art projects, including my first actual exhibition...and I wrote a little something today about art.
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As many people who know me have found out by spending any length of time around me, I am an artist. But what most people don't know or understand is how I struggle with creating art and living my faith. I think the two are not mutually exclusive, yet I have definitely encountered Christians who believe otherwise. As a result, sometimes I have been met with disgust, misunderstanding, and perhaps even some venhemence by my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ because of what I am pursuing as my career. Somehow being an artist makes me more prone to be a "heathen"...
However, not all of my acquaintences feel this way, as I have had some great encouragement from the church as well. I have met a few other Christian artists who struggle along the same path as me, and some great friends who have come alongside me to support the work I do.
Today, I was reading an articles at the online webzine, Boundless, and encountered something that gave me some comfort and assurance that I would like to share with anyone who is interested...here is the excerpt that I found particularily interesting...
Struggling with Art
The Christian Church has had a love-hate relationship with the arts, oscillating between using the arts for liturgical and educational purposes and dismissing the arts as merely decorative and even offensive and idolatrous. But today there is a growing trend in the use of the arts in congregational life and in the study of the arts in religious educational programs.
Many Christians, however, still wonder what role the arts can play in forming our spiritual lives. The visual arts are still too often relegated as indulgent with little to offer in Christian discipleship. But on the contrary, art reminds us that we are made in the image of a Creator and pulls us into the presence of God while calling us to live as we have been created to live, given the gift of joining in God's creative activity.
Christ, as the new Adam, reconfigures our relationship to the Triune God, making the divine visible in a completely new way, one that forces us into relationship with that which has been incarnated. A God made flesh redeems the act of human creativity and the possibility of making our human grasping and glimpsing of God more tangible.
Because of the incarnation our confession and worship of God requires that it be more than intellectual. It requires corporeal practices. The sons and daughters of Adam are invited anew to join in God's creative activity through imaginatively naming new realities of all that has already been given. Poetry, literature, visual art, sculpture, dance and music are all ways of creatively expressing the human condition and creation's interaction with the Divine.
Artistic expression is a striving for more, a visual hunger for transcendental realities that can only be shaped out of what has already been given to us, unlike God who creates out of nothing. But like our Creator, such creative shaping can also lead to new realities we can live into.
If he were tame, predictable, always the same, boring, dull, and always giving in to what I want instead of what is best for me...things would be bad. How do I know what is best for me? A finite small creature with selfish tendencies and only so much comprehension of the world?
He's the God who made the tallest and most formidable mountain in the world, yet gently and softly sculpts the smallest flower. He can't fit into the boxes we try to build around him- and he laughs at our ultimatums.
He's infuritating, and deafening, and silent, and marvelous, and all of those things rolled up into one. He isn't human, and I'm glad I can't control or predict what will come up next.
And despite all of these things, and all of the things that we are...he loves us. Becuase He can and because He wants to. And because He is good. Everything that is good comes from Him. Not because we earned it.
Maybe all that stuff we think is important all the time really isn't.
Job 38: 4-19
"Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone- while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?
"Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, 'This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt'?
"Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place, that it might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it? The earth takes shape like clay under a seal; its features stand out like those of a garment. The wicked are denied their light, and their upraised arm is broken.
"Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been shown to you? Have you seen the gates of the shadow of death? Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? Tell me, if you know all this.
"What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside?"
Job really didn't stand a chance to all of that. All that stuff that was so important to him and "unjust" just fell away at the amazingness of God.
I am finally being hit by the amount of changes that being married will bring to my life. It's not a bad thing, by far....just different. I feel as if another chapter in my life is getting ready to end and a new one is just beginning.
I am so used to being an independent woman who everyone relies on for things...one of the hardest adjustments will be learning to rely on Mike for things instead of just myself and God. It will be an adjustment in learning to be vulnerable to him, moving to a new house, learning how to act and react in a new family, and learning how to put someone else's needs over my own. Finances will be handled differently, as will relationships with other people (even my parents). My relationship with God will even change, not as a bad or a negative thing, but just....different.
Sometimes change is hard for me. It's not that the unknown isn't exciting, it's just that it can be..dangerous. That part of me which clings to security screams, "But so much could possibly go wrong!" But if I listened to that voice all the time, I would have never of done the things that mean the most to me in my life so far. I would have never gone to Scotland. I would have never started missions works. I would have never moved here to Dayton when God made it apparent that was what he wanted....
Both loving and living requires risks. It requires stepping out of your comfort zone and trusting God with whatever may come. Change brings growth- it keeps you from trying to control everything around you, risk brings greater growth in trusting God over yourself.
Although I am twenty-three, I feel like I am still growing up...becoming more of an adult and less of the little girl that I was not so long ago...
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 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. " ~1 Corinthians 13:4-12
Yesterday Mike took me to Hocking Hills to see the most Scottish-looking place I've seen outside of Scotland. It made me miss it so much, I definitely teared up. But it was an awesome day. The leaves were perfect, the hills looked so much like "home"..it just amazed me once again to be hit by God's creativity and love. To see the gnarled trees, and the cliffs, and the caves...and to experience it all with Mike- was just the perfect gift from God.
But even more perfect than that was Ash Cave. We walked along a path- surrounded by trees hundreds of feet tall- and rocky cliffs and moss all around us. The yellow leaves shone brightly in the waning sun. It was almost like a crescendo of beauty when we got to the cave. It was 700 feet long and 90 feet tall, nestled into a cliff with a waterfall gracefully flowing from the middle into a small sandy perfect pool. It took my breath away. Mike lead me to the pool and we held hands in perfect silence and awe. He said it was even better than he remembered it to be.
But what was even better was him kneeling down and asking me to be his wife, there in that perfect spot. It just amazes me to think of how much God loves me and has done in both of our lives. To be in that Scottish-feeling wild place with the man I love, declaring his love for me....
I couldn't have asked for a more perfect day. And even though there were times I was impatient with God's plan...I am so glad it is unfolding in His perfect timing instead of my own.
God has taken me from the bitterness of sorrow to an amazing and better place. He has brought so much healing in my life and my heart. He has turned my weeping into dancing and my despair into so much joy. Blessed be the name of the Lord, may my amazement at his grace never cease....
"In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps." ~Proverbs 16:9
"No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate. But you will be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah ; for the LORD will take delight in you, and your land will be married." ~Isaiah 62:4
This last verse was a promise given to me by God 3 years ago, when I despaired of the past and of my lost life beyond ever hoping to see something else...it's amazing to see it coming to fruition....
