Inside the Spin-Mosaic Studio

I'm not sure why my tried-and-true creative sequence isn't working this time. I don't know. Only God knows. And, now I'm stuck with a barely-started unfinished article. Here I am, writing the first few lines...again. 

Writing---writing helps to untangle my thoughts. Usually. Not this time. My words are wound up like a hot soft pretzel from the shopping mall.

Like the culvert that was built to flow beneath the asphalt of our county road to relieve massive drain water from the farm fields, writing and art (especially together) is like a natural down-hill path for the currents of my mind to trickle through.  I was created an artist. Creativity is my organic path of least resistance. Calming.

This week, it's not working for me. I don't know why. God knows.

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This very sweet photograph has triggered something in my emotions that I can't let go of in words alone...but, neither is it something I can hold on to without them.

Some pictures are like that.

Some memories are like that.

Whispered at the tip of my Micron #3 bleed-proof, smudge-proof, smear-proof ink pen; whispered at the tip of the squirrel-hair brush bristles that bend to the subtle movement of my wrist, is the fact that I created the illustration with ease, but cannot find the words to describe exactly what about this photo captivates my inspiration.

It just does. But, that doesn't make for a very good story, does it?

Usually, the sheer act of sitting down to write shakes the clarity out of me. This time, my words resist lining up like obedient tin soldiers today and I feel down about that.

Some call it "batter's slump". Some call it 'writer's block'. I call it neither. This predicament is as different as a mammal and a reptile. I don't have too little to say this time; I have too much to say. What of then? What of now?

This is my 4th attempt to write this article. After 4 or 5 paragraphs, thoughts jump down rabbit trails and then abruptly go stale into a dead-end thicket. I can't seem to focus on the essence of one quintessential idea.

If only I could filter my world, my day, my family, my responsibilities...with the same peaceful focus as this little boy studies the single severed grass blade in his hands.

My grandson is about this age right now. We forget that the simplicities of holding anything is still a mysterious complexity for untrained fingers that move randomly of their own accord. For him, it is not so much what is held in his hands, but that he can feel and control his own grasp...despite what he is grasping. For this reason, his possession is his treasure.

Maybe that's it.

Maybe I can't seem to finish this article because it's not about the peace that the photo exudes, or wistful memories of my own children when they were this age, or the focussed attention this little boy showers on the grass blade.

Maybe it's about the grasp.

Maybe I, too, am entering a new season of life where my grasp on what I love, or thought I have loved well, and my dreams (or what I thought were my dreams) are really...not mine to grasp onto so tightly after all.

Maybe it's less about the grip I have on things or people, and more about their presence, wherever they may be, wherever they may not be, or wherever they may be going.

And now, how do I conclude an article that speaks of nothing I intended to write? Only God knows.

That's a fact, by the way; not a feeling, a hunch, a hope, or a hypothesis. God knows. He does. I may feel stuck in my creative slump, but God is not. He does not inhabit my slumps with the same helplessness that I do.

God knows the past, present, and future, and that sometimes we are unsure about the combination of one or more, or all three at once.

God knows. Sometimes I am left to wrestle with what I don't know like how Jacob wrestled with God at Bethel (Genesis 28).

Jacob laid his head on a rock to sleep. He wasn't between a proverbial "rock and a hard place" that night. He was between a rock and a...stairway to heaven. God opened his eyes to see it! Maybe that should be my prayer.

Jacob is not the only one. Orbiting the smack-dab peripheral of many faith stories is terminology that spells out the fact that God is the One who extends the length of our vision, recharges the batteries of our hearts, amplifies the sound waves of our ears, and opens the door of our very souls to see, hear, or realize what we otherwise could not with our human senses alone.

When stuck between a rock and a hard place, some saw, heard or felt little...except for the harsh physicality and hopelessness of whatever present path living as a human lead them to. Yet, God was faithful. God is faithful.

Moses was shown a path through the Red Sea that the Israelites didn't know was there (Exodus 14).

An angel showed Mary an empty tomb that she didn't know was empty (Luke 24).  

Jesus told the disciples amazing things they did not understand...until they did...on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24).

Expecting to die in the desert, Hagar saw a well she had not noticed (Genesis 21).

We don't know what we don't know, right? We can't see our own blind spots or the routes of escape from our own stuck-ness, until we ask to be shown.

"Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known." -- Jeremiah 33:3

It is God who reaches towards us. It is I who stands aloof sometimes, confused and entangled, one "cool remove" away from clarity (songwriter, Shawn Colvin), even one stubborn and self-autonomous utter away from a much-needed expression of prayer.

The picture analogy of James 1:6 is stark. Neither the colors or the clouds are lost on the imagination of this artist's mind. I can see it well on a canvas. Thick grays and blues hang in dense blended puddles on the end of my waiting paintbrush.

"But when you ask for something, you must have faith and not doubt. Anyone who doubts is like an ocean wave tossed around in a storm."

Wether my prayer is whispered during the quiet moments of a sunrise, or shouted in a broken hallelujah at the keys of my piano when no one else is around to hear my tone, God hears. He knows.

He even knows the prayer we are thinking of praying before we pray, and the prayer we don't pray when we weakly choose not to. He knows our desperation and our fragility and our conditioning and our default coping methods.

“Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” -- Matthew 6:8

God knows the stirrings of our heart.

“...for the Lord searches all hearts, and understands every intent of the thoughts. If you seek Him, He will let you find Him; but if you forsake Him, He will reject you forever." --1 Choronicles 28:9

To get personal, God knows that this week, my life feels stuck in more ways than finding clarity for the words of this article. He knows why the art-part of the illustration came together as easy as a summer breeze, but why my sentences couldn't unfold their own pretzel twist to form a story that makes sense.

He knows what is going on with the world. He knows my anxieties, my loves, and where and why I fall quiet in thought like this little boy studying his simple surroundings.

God knows what I treasure and how my heart aches in the absence of sharing those treasures with a receiving heart. He knows what I put up with, who puts up with me, what delights my soul, and what spice I like in my Mexican food. He knows why my stream of thoughts ran as stale as the chaff-filled floodwaters that skim their way across the cornfields next to our house.

Maybe this present winding and helter-skelter imperfect article is what is needed? -- showing a vulnerability on my part to not have it all figured out. These words will stop abruptly in a few lines and I am planning to post them without a firm conviction that the story comes full circle. Maybe it's not meant to. Maybe that's my faith for today. Maybe these words will touch someone else...despite me.

I just glanced away from my keyboard, closed my eyes and prayed, "God, only you know. Show me how to bring closure to this article?" 

I am reminded that at this little boy's age, everything that his unsteady hand grasps is a treasure.

"Where your treasure is; there your heart will be also." --Matthew 6:21

A child of this age finds treasure in everything he is able to grasp...because he is able to grasp it! He picks anything up, insignificant as it may be, but significant because it is within the new grasp of his own hand. Here is his treasure. He carries them along. Neither does he let them go easily. We mother's know.

"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand."  -- John 10:27-29

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*Photo of little "Roo" submitted by Betsy Barber Hess.