Monthly Archives: April 2011

We don’t get the right answers without the right questions.

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29

I’ve been hanging out with Anne Lamott and Madeleine L’Engle and Rainer Maria Rilke and Emily Dickinson lately. And we’ve been having some interesting conversations.

L’Engle is telling me to take time for “being” in order to truly listen to God and myself, and Wilke urges me to ask in the deepest moment of my night if I can live without being an artist. Dickinson wrote for no one, which bleeds through in her beautiful honesty, and invites me to live that way as well. And Lamott? Well, Lamott is giving me permission to be comfortable in my own faith-skin–daring me to, in fact.

But, more than anything, these mentors are challenging me to ask deep and purposed questions of myself–questions that will call out the building blocks of my own words and lyrics. Problem is, I’m still not sure what questions I need to ask.

So, once again, I draw from the most vastly renewable resource among internet: you.

What soul-mining questions draw out the deepest treasures in a person? If you ask, I’ll go digging.

Ok. So. Raise your hand if you have dreams and you’re aware that you’re dreaming during the dream.

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That’s not a confusing post title, is it?

I’m learning about this situation called “Lucid Dreaming” and how it can really be an interesting tool for creative types like moi. Or vous, if you are like moi. But not like Drew, who seems a bit skeptical about the whole thing.

And I was skeptical at first as well, until I remembered that when I’m having really really bad dreams my brain will go “you’re dreaming!” and then my eyes just pop open. Just like that: POP! And it’s the middle of the night and there’s Drew’s head and the alarm clock and and the window and everything is still and quiet and peaceful. Well, everything but my heart, which is pounding.

Maybe we should call that “lucid waking.” I don’t know if it counts as lucid dreaming.

Except… Except that I recently took a nap. And in the nap there was a short scenario where I knew I was dreaming and I tried really hard to stay aware of the dream but then I woke up… Well, I didn’t actually wake up, I just dreamed that I did. In my 2nd dream I was now thoroughly awake and trying to write out all the details about the lucid dream:  who was there, and what the umbrella felt like in my hand, and why the men were taking my picture.

Except even that part was also a dream. Sort of like the layers in Inception: A dream within a dream.

That matters not. What matters is the brief moment in time, ever so subtle and slipping through my fingers, where my brain said “you’re dreaming” but my eyes didn’t pop open. That’s where the magic can happen.

But I’m not quite able to control that moment yet. And, I can already hear your brains asking if it has happened again.

No.

Sigh.

But that doesn’t mean it won’t. And when it does, I’ll be ready.

Now, the most important element of this post is you. All that rambling to set up what I really really want to say: Have if any of you out there have experienced lucid dreaming? And, if so, can you please describe the experience? Pleeeeeeeze. I promise I’ll believe you. I’m genuinely interested!

My top 5 Madeleine L’Engle quotes (so far)

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21

About a week ago I started reading “Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art” by Madeleine L’Engle. I’m telling you. It’s incredible.

Regarding “being:” intentional stillness, reflection, solitude, refreshment

“I’ve long since stopped feeling guilty about taking being time; it’s something we all need for our spiritual health, and often we don’t take enough of it.”

“When I am consciously running there is no time for being. When there is no time for being there is no time for listening.”

Regarding “Christian Art:”

“‘Christian Art’ is that to paint a picture or write a story or to compose a song is an incarnational activity. The artist is a servant who is willing to be a birth-giver.”

“If the work comes to the artist and says, ‘Here I am, serve me,’ then the job of the artist, great or small, is to serve. The amount of the artist’s talent is not what it is about.”

For artists who may not profess faith in Christ: “We may not like that, but we call the work of such artists un-Christian or non-Christian at our own peril. Christ has always worked in ways which have seemed peculiar to many men, even his closest followers. Frequently the disciples failed to understand him. So we need not feel that we have to understand how he works through artists who do not consciously recognize him. Neither should our lack of understanding cause us to assume that he cannot be present in their work.”

Soooo…. What do you think about that last quote? Can the work of unbelieving artists hold an element of divine presence, inspiration, and glorification? Or does their lack of faith negate any Creatorship within their work…?

It occurred to me that some of you might want some of these…

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Whenever I see an inspiring quote that I want to remember, I’ll make a desktop wallpaper out of it….usually dark, because I like dark wallpaper. Actually, I just like dark screens. But that’s neither here nor there, is it?

So anyway, I know some of y’all might want a bit of this inspiration that I’ve come across, I thought I might share.

Click the pic to download from flickr. (All images are 1280×800, sorry.)

From Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet

The glory of God is man fully alive. St. Irenaeus

A few of Elizabeth Gilbert's incredible thoughts on writing...

Creativity, like human life itself, begins in darkness. Julia Cameron

Do you dare to see things differently…?

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11

The artist, by nature of the creative imagination, often finds himself holding a view of the world that is not shared, nor popular. And, yet, the artist can only convey the world as he sees it.

Anything less than that would be fraud.

Do you dare to voice an opinion outside the norm?
Do you dare to paint a world in colors that only your dreams can see?
Do you dare to disagree?

…or, better: do I?