Holes in my T-shirt

Recently I read a blog about what the writer calls ‘quirky’ and what I call ‘ingenious’ idea of giving people ‘soul’ T-shirts, with inscriptions that capture that person’s personality trait or life situation. Of course, unlike the kindhearted author most of us wouldn’t even dream of posting on a public blog some of the things spelled out on the soul T-shirts we give out to other people (and this - not sharing it - is a good thing!) . The idea of giving away the soul T-shirts, practiced by many whether we acknowledge it or not, jump-started me into thinking about what kind of soul T-shirt do I wear. In my characteristically modest way, I would say that on the front of my shirt, in bold ALL CAPS cool font, a single word is spelled out:

HUMBLE

The back of the shirt would sport all lowercase, less conspicuous:

brag

The Humble Brag.

I’ve stolen the nifty descriptive phrase from the Urban Dictionary. The reason why it caught my attention was that I was seeing the wide-spread epidemic of the defined behavior all around me – on FB, on blogs, in the paper… Finally, in the spirit of the speck and the log (check out Matthew 7:3) it dawned on me that the whole world couldn’t be going crazy – it must be ME! And, sure enough, so it was! What a relief!

I was quite amazed by how easy it was for me to spell out what my soul T-shirt says on the outside. But, then, I sensed that there was a message on the inside of my soul T-shirt, written with the invisible ink, that nobody can see…. So, as is my habit, I started a dialogue with the Nobody….

So, whatcha think…. What does the INSIDE of my soul T-shirt say?

You know it…

I do???

A-ha…

Really? You kiddin’ me… I have no clue…

Sure you do. It’s scribbled all over, right next to those moth-eaten holes that Nobody sees….

Moth-eaten holes… this is going too far! My soul doesn’t have any moth-eaten holes!!!

….

Or… does it?

So, while Nobody is looking, I flip my soul T-shirt inside out and to my amazement, I see, with my own handwriting, messages that Nobody can see.

You are not enough… You are not enough… You are not enough… You are not enough….

I am not sure if the ‘You’  refers to  me... or Nobody.

Next to the words, for the first time in my life I see some huge, some tiny holes… each one bearing the shape of particular discontentment with life and circumstances, my family and myself… The times when my situation seemed either too big or too small for God to care about and consequently just having Him in my life simply wasn’t good enough… Having Him wasn’t quite sufficient, for it was OBVIOUS that I MUST have this thing or that, approval from this one, and a FB like from another, a perfectly harmonious marriage, and equally perfectly respectful kids ALL THE TIME. The times when my intense desire for something notably beautiful, and good, and right - like being a model representative of 'Thy Kingdom Come' - punctured a hole on the inside of my soul’s T-shirt and made me forget who it is that made me, who counts the bones in my body, the freckles on my face and the hairs on my head.

A single peek on the inside and I am awaked to the fact that what really matters about my soul’s T-shirt is what Nobody sees.


And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. Hebrews 4:13

The Ugly Painting

I am currently taking Find Your Joy taster course by British abstract artist, Louise Fletcher and 'just happened' to come across this post in my drafts folder written a couple of years ago. It still resonates with me, so I decided to go ahead and make it available to the readers.

Many would agree that one of the biggest barriers to creativity is pressure - whether internal or external - to be perfect. 

To make beautiful paintings every day, every single time.

To write meaningful well-crafted poems, or stories, or blog entries... every single time. 

To produce a jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring masterpiece day in day out. 

This mindset is so destructive to creative process that it must be addressed. Faced head-on. And eventually... brushed off and ignored.  

Nobody - I mean nobody - can sustain that kind of superior creative productivity over any respectable length of time. 

I am not saying that taming the dragon of perfectionism is easy, that there would be no backsliding or injuries to our ego or anything like that. But the outcome is well-worth it!

It may not work for everyone but I found that being very intentional about making something ugly can get us well along the way of enjoying unencumbered creativity.

Today, we are not making anything pretty, or beautiful, or fine. 

Today we are making... an ugly painting. 

Ugly poem. Ugly story. Ugly blog post.

I know, it's totally counter-intuitive, but as evidenced by countless artists, it truly works. 

Vast majority of my writing is largely garbage. As I continue to practice this craft, every once in a long while something surprisingly good comes out of my pen. 

In the similar way, I have an entire stack of ugly paintings cluttering our home. They are always handy when I feel like I just want to push some paint around and see what happens. This is fun! I am learning! Wow, this is neat... or cool... or crappy. 

With all the stress plaguing our world, we all need a safe place of exploration, messiness and ugly, that sometimes, surprisingly, produces something good. Actually, really good. 

Having a safe place like that doesn't only reduce stress. It also relieves the pressure from the creative process, allowing room for actual enjoyment of the moment, blissfully free from the need to 'deliver results'. 

Strangely enough, results many times follow, unexpected, usually at the time when we least expect it and when we couldn't care less.  

epilogue

It would be presumptuous to say that this is the end of the love story.

Of course it's not the end! It's just the beginning.

Of many strange things in this world, love might be the strangest of all.

Sometimes I think there is nothing easier...

and other times nothing harder than to love. 

It takes a lifetime of learning to love and be loved.

Or perhaps, more accurately, as Editor would say,

it will take an eternity plus one day. 

But we must not be discouraged by this. 

On the contrary!

We can begin to relax from our driven,

performance-oriented existence,

take a breath, or two or three,

and allow the vastness and the beauty of the universe around us

... and inside us...

to enlarge our vistas as we grow in the best adventure of all. 

a place of love revolution

In the spring of 2020. I worked on The Garden of the World
for Recycled Art Exhibit. The piece was made out of 
international newspapers my pre-COVID globe-trotting friends
kindly hauled clear across the globe for this very purpose.
The significance and value of this project has only increased
in my eyes over the past year.

The message of love is clear.  Every citizen of the country whose native language is love understands this message without a need for an interpreter.

However, when you live on the delicate intersection of two such vastly different worlds, trying to bring them together, trying to spell out with your life this strange bi-lingual, bi-cultural, bi-continental identity, you are bound to mix things up, break some rules, make some spelling mistakes. 

I sense the Editor on the inside, squirming a bit. He can't help himself, he is so well trained in spotting the mistakes, red-penning the mix-ups, enforcing the rules.

Strangely this time, perhaps for the first time ever, he appears disarmed, stripped off his red pen and correction fluid, taken in by something infinitely greater than immaculate sentence structure, purist grammar and perfectly followed syntax rules. 

She grins. 

My heart melts. 

No small feat has been accomplished here and I think she knows it. Satisfied, she trots off, hopping from cloud to cloud, sprawled endlessly along the beach.  I eventually catch up, take her by the hand and we walk back together.  It's getting late but I have to see the epic message just one more time.

What I discover when I go for that one last look takes me completely by surprise.

When she started spelling her heart out, hers were the only broken-shell-carved words marking the pristine blank page of the sand.

But now, everywhere I look, all around me, there are countless new messages of love, scribbled in the sand by strangers, turning this glistening heaven-on-earth beach into a giant love letter!

I chuckle, because I know she has no idea that she has started a love revolution. 

I hesitate, wondering if I should point it out, draw her attention to it, but something stops me. 

It's better to leave it this way.

It will be our little secret.

a place of vulnerability

During one of the workshops, an artist shared this cool alphabet idea which
I used to create a Serbian Cyrillic alphabet version. Creativity has infinite
ways of being expressed. I am always fascinated when I see what others
are doing with this God given gift. The variety of the markings in this work
represents the unrepeatable nature of organic creativity... even though it's
universal, it is also as unique to us as our fingerprints. 

I think she would rather be caught dead than admit that she is anywhere close to being like her mother. For better or for worse, her father's resemblance - his brilliant mind; his perfectionism; his methodical attention to details - follows her everywhere she goes. 

But, without a doubt, she is her own person. Independent. One of a kind. Adventurous. Carving her own way, making her own mark on this earth. She is frail and strong, cautious and brave, fun and serious.

She insists she is not a writer.

Her own essays begrudgingly submitted to the Language Arts teacher laugh in her face.

If she can't find a pen a stick will do. If there is no stick, she'll use a broken shell.

And the entire beach becomes her very own blank page.

One by one, she writes out the letters.  So focused.  So intent.

The birds swoop over and around her head, but she is undistracted by them.

I watch her curved back, as she moves sideways and backwards, stringing letters like beads on a necklace.

When she is done, she straightens up, turns around and looks at me beaming.

Her unfurled scroll now reveals a message for all to see although there might be just a few of us living on this planet who really understand it. 

See, she grew up on a delicate intersection of the worlds where her mother tongue is not her first language.  She is fluent in the language of the country where she is born and where she lives. But she knows that there is another country she also belongs to, her mother belongs to... where another language is spoken. The language she understands very well but she is still learning to speak, just learning to write.  

Today, for some inexplicable reason, she decides to take a leap, she chooses to take a huge risk of expressing herself, of exposing herself in that other language.

She must consider this risk worth taking, because she wants her mom to know... perhaps she wants the whole world 

- the heaven and the earth -

to know... that the language of that country is the language of love.

a place of encouragement

 

I created this piece during an exceedingly frustrating abstract art lesson that
kept going from bad to worse with each layer. In an exasperated attempt
to 'erase' my 'horrible mistakes' I literally washed the paint off the page in
my kitchen sink! What appeared was this beautifully textured background
which now I wish I could re-create😊 . As Miles Davis said,
'Fear no mistakes. There are none.'

These heaven-above-heaven-below, walking-on-clouds endless shallows are so mesmerizing, so inviting, so beautiful and safe and welcoming, my soul suddenly pops out, all cramped and wrinkled, from the confinement of its inland button-hole. 

It wants to park and live right here, sprawled out, naked and unashamed, on this endless beach. 

Forever.

Not a single argument comes to my mind to shut down the fantastic idea.

"Mom! MOM!!"  The Mom-Hat lands on my head bringing me back to earth.

"What?  WHAT???" I always think that M-O-M is a code word for some kind of dire emergency, not unlike the Morse S-O-S. 

"What happened??" I yell without even trying. 

"Nothing happened. Everything is just fine. Look, there is a snowman!"

I look up, and sure enough, there is a snowman, hat, 'broom', baseball bat and all, perched on the beach ahead of us.  

It most certainly is the ugliest Snowman I've ever seen, but somehow that doesn't matter, because as we approach to inspect it, we are surrounded by a joyful crowd of thawed-out Canadians, who are so pleased that somebody - ANYBODY- showed interest in their masterpiece.  

They laugh and point out all its special features as I take pictures. Then, we give them thumbs up and they wave enthusiastically as we continue on our way.  Their happiness is quite contagious and trails behind us long after we can't see either them or their creation.  I know we must be kindred spirits, our hearts set on building a Snowman on the beach. The only difference is that they got to build theirs and I didn't get to build mine. 

Surprisingly, in this moment, such 'unfairness' doesn't bother me. Doesn't bother me at all.   

In fact, as I reflected on their contentment and joy - which became OUR joy -a thought crosses my mind that... 

... sometimes...

it might be as - or, perhaps, even more - important 

to encourage other artists in their creative attempts, 

no matter how quirky, small and seemingly insignificant they may appear, 

than building and showing off my own perfect snowman.

a place of reflection

I can't think of a better time than New Year's Eve to reflect. 
For some of us the end of 2020 can't come fast enough. We all 
have changed, we all have something to learn, something to take 
to heart and care for it, like one cares for a seed... May those seeds
grow, blossom and bring good fruit in our lives in 2021.

I am always keenly aware that the ocean has depths. Those who know the ocean have profound respect for its depths. Some people may call it fear, but I think that reverence is a better word. 

The depths can be both exhilarating and terrifying. I discovered that even when my feet can't reach the bottom, and I am in way over my head, the ocean somehow never fails to support my full weight - effortlessly! And it does the same thing for the guy next to me, three times my size!

I am not the type who lingers long in the shallows. If I go to the ocean, I mean business. I don't mess around with petty stuff.  Within minutes, I am off into the deep end.

But, today, the little hand guides me along the shallows, tiptoeing on the edge of the glistening robe, chasing lazy birds that have no fear of humans and no end to their greedy appetites. I watch her skipping over the sea of glass sprawled endlessly in front of us.

"Wow, I never realized how BIG the shallow end is!" A thought strikes me.  "It looks... it looks like a giant... mirror!"

Indeed it does. The water is barely covering a large shoulder of the sandy beach, turning the entire thing into an enormous mirror - reflecting a million shades of the blue sky dotted with wispy and puffy clouds, with perfect veracity.

I look behind me, and it's there too - sprawled endlessly behind me as well. 

I've been walking on the clouds and I didn't even know it! 

I can't peel my eyes away from the sight even if I wanted to... 

There is unspeakable glory and unspeakable sadness in this strange union on the edge of the ocean... this unlikely marriage of heaven above and the earth below.

The familiar words bubble up... a promise and a taunt, a prayer and a longing... 

"Your will be done...

...on earth...

... as it is in heaven..."