Feeding the Starving Artist Soul

New blog! Visit over at “the wordpress!”

I know, I know. I’ve tumbled on over to Wordpress. ::moment of silence:: But the cool thing is you can subscribe to my new *same* blog via E(LECTRONIC) MAIL now! Hooray!

And I would be ever so pleased if you would! 

You can also connect via NetworkedBlogs too. If you know how to do that sort of thing… 

OR if you really don’t envision yourself making any of these changes but still might have an ounce of curiosity of things I might be writing, both now or in the future, you can follow me on Twitter (@AndreaKHowat). I shall tweet links to blog updates there, I’m sure! 

Thanks for caring at all. I hope you enjoy whatever musings you find yourselves musing on these days. 

Love, Andrea 

http://starvingartistsoul.wordpress.com 

Reading Between the Lines

I’m wrong and have been wrong about it all along.

I always thought that people’s actions always spoke for what they wanted. For the most part I think this is still true. People do what they want.

But it wasn’t until I, at the behest of dear Atticus Finch, looked at my own behavior from someone else’s shoes did I realize this doesn’t always apply. This fails to take into account the hierarchal and often tension-laden relationship between wants versus needs.

If you were to read my desire simply by the choices I’ve made, you would be vastly misinformed by your findings. Perhaps not in all areas but in a specific few. Sometimes what we want is diametrically opposed to what we need. 

What I want is not what I need. I can live without it (hence making it only a want) but life without it is not my true desire, no matter what my actions say. What I think need right now is not what I want. Not at all, in fact.  

But you wouldn’t know this.  

At least not without asking me. 

If you were to read my intentions simply by my actions, you wouldn’t know the whole story or even the half of it.  You wouldn’t truly know why I do what I choose to do.  My actions may appear definitive, calculated, and you wouldn’t be foolish to assume that this renders me some level of satisfaction.  But test the structure with the lightest touch and you will find it is a house of cards on a windy day.  This might be what I’ve chosen but it is not what I prefer.

Sometimes what we want and what we need do not know how to sing together harmoniously.  There remains this awkward, restless, tundra: the crux of will and desire, where we will find ourselves all at once both winning and losing.  Until what I want is also what I need, I will always lose.  Yes, the optimist will point out that at the same time I will always win, inching ever slowly toward the end goal. But for some reason the bitter stain of losing, in any measure, always feels so much more pronounced, that it hardly feels like winning at all.

The struggle is that I want to want what I need. And these things are never static but dynamic, circuitously informed by the ebb and flow of story and time.

When approaching a character analysis in acting, there are a series of common questions one starts with, and nearly all of them have to do with desire. What does this character want? What is their objective? More important than the character’s objective in the scene is their super-objective- what they want overall. You won’t understand a character’s behavior until you understand their super-objective, what makes them tick. You won’t know how a character feels until you understand who and what they value and to what degree. 

And in each scene in life, a character may chose any number of tactics to acquire what it is they most want, which may at any given time seem contradictory to what they want in an immediate circumstance.

To know a character, and to know each other, one must read between the lines.  There are strong reasons why we do the things we do, the choices we choose to make, the words we choose to say or not to say.  Actions do speak louder than words. But there’s a reason why words exist. Apart from one another, neither tells complete stories.  

I want to tell complete stories. And story lives in the nuance between words and deeds, as does valuable communication. I want the edge puzzle pieces and the middle ones too.   

I don’t want someone to think they know me solely because of what I choose to do or not do, when they don’t know why I do it.  Nor do I want someone to think they know how I feel because they’ve drawn conclusions that may seem black-and-white on the surface but underneath are very gray.  

All to say, in order to know someone, you have to look at the whole picture, suspend your assumptions, and be open to asking questions. I suppose that presupposes your desire to really know who someone is, and not settle for the illusion of who you have sketched them to be. Perception is not always reality, at least not in its entirety. We’d do well to revisit our assumptions and brave the question of what’s underneath. 

A Light That Feels Like Darkness

There’s something about darkness. At one moment it can feel anxious, menacing, lonely. At other moments it can feel quiet, intimate, and safe. Tonight I feel embraced by it, sheltered by the darkness draping my room. But some nights this isn’t always the case. Sometimes I remain that frightened four-year-old girl with an imagination so vivid she can’t sleep.  

And I wonder about this poetically paradoxical darkness- at one moment safe, the next moment scary- and I question how this translates to life.

I had a long talk with a friend today; both of us concerned about particular loved ones in our lives, friends of ours. Both of us felt discouraged and a bit dismayed at what we we’re seeing collectively. It seems an unmerry-go-round of unnamed and unhealed hurt is being perpetuated among people we care about deeply. Instead of seeing steps toward life, we’re seeing temporary splints and insufficient bandages for very deep and unmistakably bleeding wounds. (These are the things one thinks of while eating popsicles.) 

And neither of us knew exactly what to do or say.  (We both have our own issues too.) But we sat there in her car, genuinely trying to trace the roots of the havoc around us.  Because if there’s havoc in the life of someone you love, it becomes your havoc too. Just as their joy also becomes your joy. And no one likes to see people they love in pain- especially if their “pain-solution” is really creating additional pain than the mere source itself. 

And we talked about vulnerability. We talked about how so much of the problem comes from our fear of being known- to others and to ourselves. We are terrified of being truly known, and we’re terrified of being accountable.

We talked about community- a tired, old, religious, PTA-reminiscent word- and how we don’t see authentic community really happening.  (Let’s swap the word “community” for the word “knowing.”) There can be no real “knowing” without a brave level of self-disclosure and its bedfellow, trust. Where there is community without transparency, without honesty, there’s no community at all. Only proximity.  

My guess is that we run from authentic relationships- even friendships- because we don’t want anyone to see who we are.  This is a definite red flag that scares me.  If we’re afraid of being known, we have to ask ourselves why.

It could be we are too closely identifying with our demons- our shadow self, our baggage, or whathaveyou. But we cannot live our lives crippled by layers of shame.  

Or perhaps we evade being fully known because we can’t embrace our own glory. Either we cannot see it or we cannot understand it. Or we’re afraid to embrace it or even to try. Perhaps we have traded our hopes for who we want to be, who we could be, and don’t believe it’s possible for us. Perhaps we have given up on change. We call this fatalism.

But we were meant to live in truth telling, authentic, trusting, honest relationships - yes, ones that deal with messes of the soul - because we were meant to live in glory.  We’re meant to experience relationships that heal, not acquiesce. We need friends who will walk alongside us in the messes, offering the courage to face them and the reassurance that this is the good work. There is more than the unhealth we’ve settled for; there is life on the other side. 

If the truth is the light, then the paradox returns. Light can be inviting and it can be too much for our dilated eyes to take in.  Our eyes adjust to the darkness, and we call it safe. We put on sunglasses and masks, and everybody does that same thing- and nobody is okay. Nobody is well. But the darkness feels safe.

We need a light that feels like darkness. We need friends to speak the illuminating truth in the dark safety of love. We need relationships that are not merely entertaining but also life-giving. That’s the difference between acquaintances and friendships, affinity and love: one seeks happiness as its true end, the other seeks wholeness- knowing it brings true joy along with it.  

Let us love one another fully, seeking one another’s good. Growing may involve looking at roots of death in order to bring about life, but love won’t let you face it alone.  

Love, Fire, & Salty Puddle Pools.

It just doesn’t make any sense to me.

Why would God love someone who doesn’t know how to love him back?  Why would he fall in love with people who would inevitably leave and betray him?  Not once but time and time again. Why would he love someone who can’t love him back in the way he deserves?  Why would he subject himself to the imperfect love of a prodigal?

Why would he choose to be the fool?  Is his delight so strong?

It’s true: the love of God is folly. All lovers are fools. Any of us who are lovers will fall into that same category at one time or another. God’s love is absolutely foolish.  A stunningly, bewildering act of brave vulnerability. To invite intimacy is also to welcome rejection. To want someone like that… fearful, apathetic, broken, wayward. To want be in communion with someone like that… It confounds all reason.  

(“The heart knows reasons that reason knows not.” -Pascal) 

Why would God love us who have made it so terribly difficult just to receive it? Why would he lavish his love on us, pouring out goodness and unwarranted grace on us like a rainstorm when our hearts are just like cement sidewalks unable to receive? Why does his love wait for us when we’re so ready to run and hide? 

Why are we so scared of love?  Why are we so scared of being open to it? I’m not afraid of being foolish; I’m afraid of not recovering. I am afraid of the beating in my chest that haunts me seemingly without my consent. I am tired of being interrupted by feeling.  I’m just trying to keep the waters calm, and at a moment’s notice I’m ambushed by this pulse inside my chest. I wish I wanted less! I wish I could hardwire my desire to God and God alone.

I wake up every morning with a heart of ice and everyday God has to melt it. I wish my heart could remain ice-like all the time. It’s the intermittent melting that gets me in trouble. I know it’s God’s goal for me to live with a heart completely thawed. But to do that well requires a measure of courage, strength, wisdom (and perhaps foolishness) that I’m not sure I possess. 

There’s no getting around it. Love begets love. Love feels like fire; which sounds romantic and poetic until you actually experience touching a flame. It’s painful and unmistakably interruptive, like the best art. Its presence will always change something. Its presence, and its absence, matters. And love means suffering. If not, it’s just affinity. It’s not a fire, it’s a breeze. 

And now I understand- I understand the appeal of an unfeeling, selfish existence. I understand not wanting to be touchable. I understand feeling threatened by anything that really makes you feel, anything that gets too close and melts your defenses. Because in the end there’s nothing more terrifying than being truly vulnerable.  Care about anyone and you give them the power to hurt you. 

But there’s no way around it.  

So where’s the resolve? Somewhere down by my shoes in salty puddle pools. Someone much wiser than me once said that our tears are our best prayers. (Even the ones we wish we didn’t have.) There’s no resolve for feeling. We were made to feel. 

So as much as I have, of late, bemoaned feeling how I do, I have to open my hands and offer it up to the God who created the heart He gave me.  And until a resolve comes, God can catch my prayers in his salt-stained hands. I hope he will.