catapult magazine

You have no idea how much your approval means to me. You really have no idea.

Thanks, BBC.

I didn’t find it uncaring at all, but corrective and encouraging. I needed to hear, perhaps that the way I live and some of the things I enjoy, are ok. Just keep painting and let it be beautiful. Keep loving, keep listening and be sensetive to what the Spirit speaks and be still in “i am what i am.” Stop judging my own soul and come to lie in green pastures.

Yeah, that is restful. Thank you again. :)

One of the things I discovered in my aesthetics course at Dordt is a new take on the “Consider the Lilies and Sparrows” lesson. Not only is this meant for us to understand that God is taking care of us, but also a response to God’s goodness. The job of the Lily and the Sparrow is to be beautiful as God created them to be. If we don’t cry out won’t even the rocks and trees? Because God watches over the sparrow, it frees the sparrow up to praise God in his own birdy little way. Because God watches over me, it should free me up to loosen my worries and be “beautiful” in his sight praising him in my teaching, my art and every other thing I do. (I often tell my students that one of my favorite ways to praise God is by climbing trees. It is a fun discussion).
Hope that doesn’t sound like I’m going off the deep end, I just thought it was a cool thought.

Norbert: I thought you’d like this….

Thomas Merton: Thoughts in Solitude

Let this be my only consolation, that wherever I am, You, my Lord, are loved and praised.

The trees indeed love You without knowing You. The tiger lilies and corn flowers are there, proclaiming that they love You, without being aware of Your presence. The beautiful dark clouds ride slowly across the sky musing on You like children who do not know what they are dreaming of, as they play.

But in the midst of them all, I know You, and I know of Your presence. In them and in me I know of the love which they do not know, and, what is greater, I am abashed by the presence of Your love in me.

Remembering that I have been a sinner, I will love You in spite of what I have been, knowing that my love is precious because it is Yours, rather than my own. Precious to You because it comes from Your own Son, but precious even more because it makes me Your son.