Making Memories

One of the things I've been particularly bad about in the past is finding creative things to do with pictures we take or videos of our lives.  I end up with gigabites of unused media, although it is fun to look back every now and again.  Tracy and I were walking the streets a couple of weeks ago and I saw what looked like the perfect canvas.  It's just particle board on a wooden frame, which almost looks like a stretched canvas.  I thought it would be a perfect surface to decoupage and hang on the wall.  

The hard part was figuring out what to put on it.  For the past 2 weeks, it's been used as a barrier to keep Kitty out of certain areas of the apartment, then Tracy challenged me to put some photography to work.  

I started with a copy of La Vanguardia that I purchase for 1,20€ and covered the whole surface.

Then I combed through our pictures and printed photos of our time in Barcelona.  I printed until I ran out of ink. 

Here is the final product…so far.  

We intend to continue adding photos as we make more memories and buy more ink. 

A Texas-Shaped Table

We took a walk two weeks ago at trash night.  As we were contemplating turning back towards home, we ran across this odd, Texas-shaped table.  Tracy could immediately see potential in it, but I was completely against taking it home.  As soon as we turned to walk away, I changed my mind and we picked it up.  We managed to get it home and not do any damage to it on the way.  We toyed with different ideas on how to utilize it and what to do with it, but after careful analysis, we decided to decoupage it.  Of course, Tracy was completely right about this table's potential. Here is the process.

The Original felt covers, or what was left over after I started taking it apart.  There were 3 layers of felt (2 maroon and one mustardy yellow), full of dust, each individually stapled to the table.  I had to pull hundreds of staples out of every surface of the table, with pliers.  

The Table with the felt cover removed.

After all the staples were removed, the surface of the table was largely destroyed.  There were also half staple sticking up out of the wood, which I could not remove with pliers, so I hammered them back into the table to avoid tetanus scratches. 

Me looking at pictures and pages to cut out.  A couple of the legs had Carcoma (wood worm), so I had to do some injections of Matacarcoma (a clear chemical used to treat wood) before I could start on resurfacing.

What to use, what to use.  So many fun pictorial history books I found late one night while Sadie was going potty.

Getting started

It's always hard to decide where to put my favorite images.

An hour in.

A different angle.

Getting close to finishing...Sadie is bored.

Almost done...just missing a couple edges.

The Final Project

Another Angle of the table.

Thanks to Tracy for taking the great pictures of me hard at work.

Identity…what's that?

Identity. It's who I am.  But who am I?  Over that last two years I have entrenched myself in fundraising and moving to Europe, but I only conceptually knew what that meant.  Now that we're here, the support raising has wound down, we have our residency handled, and an apartment, I don't know what to do.  I wake up in the morning and I don't have that one thing in my day that will make me feel like I've accomplished something.  We have been meeting new friends, and building other relationships and getting into a rhythm.  I personally just feel a need to make something happen, to get down and dirty, to create.
I was speaking with someone the other day about restorative art and all I could think of was making new art out of old, thrown away, street stuff.  We found a chest of drawers and I worked to inject each little woodworm hole with a syringe to kill the infestation.  I did the same with some chairs that we bought cheaply.
The most recent project, though, is taking a very basic IKEA bookshelf that we found on the street and making a sort of collage out of it.  I used pages from books from the 50's - 70's that no longer had covers, just pages (and were destined for the recycle bin), and newspapers from the late 70's. Here is how the project panned out.  I'm not going to do captions because it's self explanatory.  The best part about it, though, is due to the time period of the papers I was using, the bookshelf took a conspiratorial theme.  Good times.

The Art of Listening

I was having a conversation with a couple friends at work.  Somehow we were talking about marriage and kids and relationships, a subject that I happen to be an expert on… or at least I think I know a lot about.  One guy was talking about being a single father and some other stuff, and a brilliant thought came to my head about how relationships work when you live together before marriage and the success rate of those relationships and I was eager to prove my point.  I interjected and began sharing my thoughts.  At some point, I saw his face drop, but because I was riding my high horse into the sunset, I figured it was because my perspectives had shattered his worldview.  After what seemed like a college lectures worth (actually about 2 minutes), I stopped to ask a question about why he and his partner had split up.

The answer was like a kick in the pants, it caught me off guard and I immediately wanted to curl up in a ball and disappear.  He shared the story about his wife suffering through depression and bipolar disorder tragically dying.  While it had been several years past, he spoke in a serious and hushed tone.  I realized that I had crossed over a line which I wasn't invited to cross. Whatever credibility I had earned with my superior knowledge of relationships was shattered and I was returned to my lowly status.  Fortunately, our relationship was such that I was able to apologize profusely and we moved on.  It was a rare moment of grace in that he had grounds to close off the relationship, but he allowed me to stay as a friend.

While this story happened a few years ago, it remains in my memory as an example of how not to do relationship.  We all have these moments from time to time where we make assumptions that are completely wrong and offensive.  What I realized, though, is that I need to be listening more.  If I'd stopped for a second and just listened to what my friend was saying and asked some more questions, he probably would have openly shared about his wife in a way that was safe for him and for me.  What I did instead was to assert my assumptions about his behavior and beliefs and beat him down with it.

I wonder if that's the reason modern day evangelism has done so poorly.  Could it be that we're just shouting blanket answers or beliefs in people's faces, but not taking the time to listen or be in a meaningful relationship?  Jesus was relational and took the time to get to know people's hearts, and I think those around him could sense that he really deeply cared about them.  I've found the most effective way of doing relationship in general is a mutual authenticity where both parties lower their shields and share intimately about themselves.  When one party makes assumptions and starts providing undue input, the shields come right back up.

I think that this is a good reminder for me to be listening more, to be asking questions, and to quell my assumptions.

 

To Break the Silence

Tracy and I have been so nomadic over the last several months that I have found it hard to sit down and have creative thoughts. We are housesitting at a beautiful house in the country which has afforded me time to read and think and finally to take some pictures.  There are many thoughts swirling around in my head from the reading, but I wanted to share some of the photos taken on this serene land which are helping to calm my mind.

Too random for a title

Wow, it's certainly been awhile since I posted anything.  Part of the problem has been constant movement.  When we move around so much from place to place, I am unable to gather my thoughts in any coherent fashion.  This is going to basically be freeform writing to get myself back into practice.  I hope it's not too random or offensive to follow.

I was reading through the book of Mark this morning - just the first 3 chapters - and had several thoughts.  I'm reading the NASB version and seeing words I didn't know before.  I read the word 'impel' or 'impelled' this morning and had to look it up.  After reading about the differences, I realize that I should probably be using impel more often than compel due to the strength of the force doing the suggesting.

In Mark 1:12 it says that the angels were 'ministering' to John the Baptist.  It struck me completely differently today as I read it that to minister to something isn't all high and mighty like it's a crazy sacred mission from God.  It simply means to take care of something or someone.  The angels took care of John the Baptist, they weren't trying to evangelize him or whatever.  I know that I completely overuse the word ministry to have some divine backbone, but I rather like the simplicity of the word.  It's quite a simple and powerful word that has picked up a lot of muscle along the way.

In the early chapters of Mark, Jesus pulled demons out of folks and wouldn't let them speak because they knew who he was.  I'm not going to really touch that one yet because I'm not ready for it.  There were a lot of demon possessed people back in those days…a lot.  So, what happened to all these demon possessed people in our day?  I have a friend, one friend, that has encountered it but the rest I've only seen in movies.  Are people still possessed and we just use different language now to describe it?  This may be offensive, but the closest I see to people that match the possession in the Bible are often the homeless.

I know this may get me in trouble, but we've all encountered different levels of homelessness.  There are those who are down on their luck and are genuinely seeking help, or those whose addictions may have gotten the best of them, but then there are those that seem to be in another world completely.  Maybe we have gotten so good at putting a name to everything, to every illness, to every departure from the norm that we've simply rationalized this away.

Wow, I think that's enough for today.  If you happen to read this, I'm very sorry, but please weigh in on some of the topics if you have time.

Creative Wasteland

I feel like I've been sort of a creative wasteland for the past few weeks.  I have a lot of creative thoughts, but can't seem to muster up anything of worth or value.  As the days push on, I seem to get further away from it.  I wrote this to a friend the other day:


I live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, one of the
most desirable places to live in Europe.  I live in a city of
beautiful art, Picasso, Gaudi, Dali, and so many others I have yet to
discover.  I live in one of the best preserved Gothic quarters in all
the world.  I am constantly surrounded by beauty, by true individuals,
by people genuinely pursuing happiness and community.  I live amongst
these things, but I cannot seem to muster any original thought, any
art, any beauty.  I am small.  I am insignificant.


These are the words he wrote back to me:


Your perception of where and what you are in the world is fantastic.  I disagree, mostly about your insignificance, but I still find it fantastic.  Most people don't stop to ask, "where am I?" and the ones that do, usually just BS their way to feeling like they are "on top of it."  An individual like you senses the enormity of the situation... the grandeur of it all.. and realizes that one voice raised in the "cooshy" society of suburban America has a lot to learn before he can leave a mark on the beauty all around him.  At least, this is what I sense from your letter.


To me, Jeff, this is beautiful.  This is significance.  This is Frodo meekly saying at the council of Elrond, "I will take it.  I will take the ring... but I do not know the way."


You are doing something I have never dared to do.  You are carefully trotting along the fence of American "church" and European "??".  I can't help but think your soul right now is not speechless because it has nothing to say, but silent because it realizes how much it is taking in.


These are very comforting words.  We are in a tough place right now.  I place of constant learning and being fairly unsettled.  I look for normalcy in the day to day, but the reality is that for the foreseeable future, there is only more uncertainty.  Over the past 10 months, we have traveled thousands of miles, visited countless people, and lived in at least 4 different locations.  Our stuff is never quite unpacked.

I'm not saying this to produce a sort of sympathy or express how difficult my life is or anything.  It's more of an acceptance that this is the place I am in, this is my reality.  This is a marker of time and I will look back on this thankful for where we have come and the journey we have been on.

I'm thankful for the people in my life who are constantly encouraging me and forcing me to look a things from another perspective.  You know who you are.

On an unrelated note, I read this from one of my favorite bloggers today and thought that this was an incredible description of depression and the grip it has on people.