…this word has never sounded more liberating to me than in this moment. It’s strange because although ‘forgiveness’ is a central part of faith and love, I’ve rarely felt the conscious desire for it as I do now. I may not have control of the future, but I know I can at least make things right on my part, and being forgiven is as freeing as knowing you are loved.
What we often consider to be the concerns of religion- ideas, truths, prayers, promises, beliefs- are never permitted to have a life of their own apart from particular persons and actual places. Biblical religion has a low tolerance for “great ideas” or “sublime truths” or “inspirational thoughts” apart from the places in which they occur. God’s great love and purposes for us are worked out in the messes in our kitchens and backyards, in storms and sins, blue skies, daily work, working with us as we are and not as we should be.
— Foreword by Eugene Peterson, in Sidewalks in the Kingdom by Eric O. Jacobsen
Forgiveness
A Candid Reflection (Protest)
The truth is I am fragile. You say I always seem confident but I hide things well, and even that isn’t true because I really don’t hide things well, I just don’t want to talk about them. You say I always seem social and outgoing, but the truth is I find comfort in being alone and often times I choose to be.
You say I always seem to have such strong faith, but the truth is, “Faith cannot exist without its shadow, doubt,” and indeed my shadow is a reality. For “faith without doubt is not stronger, but merely more ideological,” and Christ did not come to give us an ideology, but He gave us Himself so wholly and completely hanging upon that Cross. Therefore, faith must “struggle for the clarity of its cause,” (-Dorothee Soelle, Thinking About God)
Group of Seven. Lawren Harris is one of my favourite Canadian artists, although I love all of the Group of Seven, I particularly love the simplicity, contrast, and boldness of his style.
—Lately I’ve been posting a lot of pictures and photos. I guess I’m in a phase of contemplation and impression, and I figure the right images can express so much more than the right words.
Music// Of Monsters & Men- "Six Weeks"
♪ ♪ My new favourite indie folk band from Iceland.
Konstantin Somov (1869-1939) Lady in Blue. Portrait of his friend and fellow artist Yelizaveta Martynova (1868-1904)
I first saw this painting in my friend’s book on Russian 19th-20th century art while I was living in Krakow, Poland. I was immediately drawn in. In some ways it reminds me of my dear friend in Poland whom I shared a marvelous friendship with. This painting strikes me because it captures the woman’s emotions and locks it in time, it’s more than expression, but rather it’s as if I feel exactly what she was feeling. She gives herself away so easily, and that ‘self’ is both vulnerable and resilient, emptying and mysterious. Maybe that’s why I named this blog after the painting.
Music// Thao & Mirah- "Little Cup"
♪ ♪ “And when you see me cry
You ask me but I think that
You already know why
I’m staring up at the sky”
Strange Loops.
Relativity, by M.C. Escher (1953)
Layers of Stability in Visual Perception
“It is particularly interesting in the case of understanding drawings by Escher, such as Relativity, in which there occur blatantly impossible images… We sit there amused and puzzled by staircases which go every which way, and by people going in inconsistent directions on a single staircase. Those staircases are “islands of certainty” upon which we based our interpretation of the overall picture. Having once identified them, we try to extend our understanding, by seeking to establish the relationship which they bear to one another. At that stage, we encounter trouble. But if we attempted to backtrack- that is, to question the “islands of certainty” - we would also encounter trouble, of another sort. There’s no way of backtracking and “undeciding” that they are staircases.”
“So we are forced, by the hierarchical nature of our perceptive processes, to see either a crazy world or just a bunch of pointless lines. A similar analysis could be made of dozens of Escher pictures, which rely heavily upon the recognition of certain basic forms, which are then put together in nonstandard ways; and by the time the observer sees the paradox on a high level, it is too late- he can’t go back and change his mind about how to interpret the lower-level objects.”
-Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
Music// The Weight of Us.
“The time has come, let us be brave.”
