Jesus, lover of my soul

I had every intention to form the frustrations of the day into words. Instead I was offered a time and space God where you worked in me, held me and offered me peace. "Record my lament, list my tears on your scroll are they not on your scroll?" - Psalm 55:8 How caught up I get in scrutinizing myself, how often I forget to enjoy you God. Take me on a journey these coming weeks and if grief is a part of it let it be. Teach me how to enjoy you, to know you as the lover of my soul.

Culture

Lovely coffee. Real stuff. I’m going to be up late tonight. An interesting day. Got thrown in the deep-end of what we call ‘culture’ and came up for air in the National Art Gallery. The Dutch Masters. Entirely worth it, if only for the Rembrandts. I was minorly disappointed that the first memorable (I may have seen one when I was younger) Rembrandt original was that of an old man with white hair. Impressive, but not stunning. They improved from then on, and in the expansive exhibition I found my favourite of the day in amongst the Van Ecks and such – a small self portrait, a Rembrandt. There was so much more in the way of beautiful, detailed, realistic, artistic, carefully composed paintings and I found the best (subjective) in simplicity and light. Ha, you wonder why he’s famous. After lunch, I made my way upstairs to explore the photography. Only a small amount there, a collection called, “Skin”. And here I entirely recant what I was thinking when I placed myself on the ‘without pictures of naked people the world would be a better place’ side during Ethics (class) as there was no middle ground. The human body is beautiful. “No longer in the nude, I was now naked, and I could see the contempt in the lip lines of the assembled constabulary…” (Malachy McCourt – A Monk Swimming) Strangely enough the differentiation of a word creates a chasm. We may abuse bodies visually in this (in any) society, but not always. To have another ‘best’, there was a photo at the end of the room, a little out of character with the rest of the work, a portrait, a face of a girl. Amazing. Thanks God for culture and beauty, for the human body. Thanks for being a creative God. You are good.

Dear Blog Reader

I’ve been thinking for quite a while about getting this started back. Haha, “It's never all said and done”. Here I am again. I do enjoy blogging and so have been racking my brains about how not to lose face in retracting ‘the semi absolute ending’ of the previous post. Who cares. I have been on an interesting journey this past month, some very difficult ‘lessons’ to learn, some very important experiences to, um experience. By continuing this, I need you to keep me accountable, which means if you see me: ‘loosing the plot’, getting self absorbed, sidelining the more important ‘time with God’, or just generally being obsessive like last time, talk to me (and quite strongly). Embarrassing to admit but, When I take a lot of photos for an extended period of time, my mind will focus pictures in my brain (it’s really a weird sensation)… likewise, When I post too much, my mind begins to constantly write bloggings in my head. Sad sad girl. If you don’t know what I’m blabbing on about, tell me to take time off if I get a bit too wrapped up in all. It is way too easy to talk about yourself. Introspective is good until it turns ugly and selfish. Motives for blogging always confuse me and I’ve explored them and worried about them possibly too much. I would like my life to be ‘Open Book’ with well defined boundries. Whatever that means. Transparency is such a vague word. I was ho-humming about whether to fill you in on some of the stuff that has happened. I have decided I definitely need to mention something about our YITS midyear camp as I think that I’ll allude to it a fair bit later on. Other than that, be patient, I’ll get there, and if I don’t, you’ll never know what you are missing. Backlogging posts = lots of typing. It’s all recorded, but on paper. That’ll do. Hello again :)