earl grey would make my day

lately i have been quite torn between the concreteness of absolutes and the wonderment of relativity. oh to be so certainly self-assured of the black and whiteness of life. but it is the grey that allows for poetry. i am up and down and floating in between. i most certainly know where my hand ends and where my arm begins, but heaven forbid i should claim to know the difference between an handful and an armful. in this case, i teetered on recieving an earful for my greyish ways.

i am most certainly and forever thankful for the poignant wisdom of my sweet love in this case -- without his wisdom i might've given up the fight for all that is lovely and honorable and upright and pure... he said: (insert 'we' for 'you')

The bottom line is this: you are set apart by nature. You couldn't blend in even if you wanted to! You have the Father, and because of that, His love is lavished upon you, and because of that, His Strength compels you to follow in His footsteps. If you are loving Him and loving those around you ... everything else falls into place. That is the beauty of the good news. That is the message of freedom that the blood gives us. We are no longer bound by the laws of this world; WE ARE FREE PEOPLE in every way that matters! ... we are finally free to love, both those around us, and the Father! Who else can boast this?!?!?

who the #$&% is jackson pollock?

i just finished watching what might become my all-time favorite movie of 2007...a little film about a long-haul truck driver woman named teri horton, narrated by 60 minutes' don hewitt, chronicling the challenge of this 73 year old's attempts to prove a painting she picked up fom a local thrift shop for $5 is truly a creation of jackson pollock.

for starters it is a sweetly compiled story paralleling commentaries from art connoiseurs, forensic scientists, art forgers, fraudulent art dealers, lawyers, gallery owners and the local friends and family of teri. i found myself easily smiling at the shameless and overt contrasts developed between a non-academic taking on the convoluted politics of the highly mysterious art connoisseurship. (teri says: 'everybody knows that a fairytale starts out "once upon a time," but a truck driver's tale starts out "you ain't gonna belive this shit") a woman who didn't know the difference between jackson pollock and michael jackson is told this ugly painting stacked amid piles of other less interesting treasures at her garage sale might be worth millions and now she is determined to prove its authorship...though being offered first, two million, and later, nine-million dollars for her un-authenticated painting, she turns down both offers demanding that a true pollock is worth more!


perhaps i resonate most with this charming film because i too wonder at the politics that drive our culture. how is it that a high brow suite-clad art connoisseur can definitively claim that because the painting does not 'sing' of pollock to him that he refuses to believe finger-print matches and paint samples would ever hold a candle to his credentialed eye? (at one point a this top notch art connosseiur responds to the fingerrpint matches by saying: 'scientists are very interesing, but they come after the true connoisuers. so fingerprints, all this stuff, kinda come after. that lovely "what-if." its not essential to the heart, and the artistic soul of that thing) and yet so contractictory to my inclination -- i would most often sway toward the side of intuition before institution, yet in this case i am rooting for the 'cold-hard facts' of course, these cold-hard facts are being sought after by an eccentric trucker woman who believes in the depth of her being that this is a pollock for no other reason than because she simply knows it to be true. pollock, a name she had never known before this discovery. i suppose there is some intuition in that.

of course, i was fascinated by the measures these indivduals took to discover the authenticity of the painting...soon lori had enlisted the help of her car-salesman son and then the assistance of an art dealer, who had recently been released from prison for fraud, in addition to a gentle forensic scientist who specialized in fingprint analysis.

i was mostly disappointed that there was no mention of fractal analysis -- which is why i picked up the movie to begin with -- and then i discovered this article which sadly seems to unravel the great tidbit of knowledge i most loved about dear sweet j.p.

so fractal anaylsis might have no bearing on pollock's work, nonetheless there is something undeniably rivetting about his creations and even a sweet old truck driver from california found herself beguiled. the story ends with her country-western guitarist son playing a song her wrote about his mother's adventures in the art world singing 'i know she's finally found it //been on a ten year rush // to find a home for the painting // whose canvas never felt a brush.' if anything, the journey of teri horton infused a community with a passion and a knowledge of a brilliant man whose name may have never been known to them before her fortuitous discovery.

i hope i might live with even a fraction of such passion for life and such conviction of where my calling has lead me.

re: llename... for a friend (i have more to add, but this is a start)

recently i have been terribly compelled to understand the meaning of one's interactions with their little world -- their own personal universe with (proverbial) constellations of beauty and the defining pull of certain significant moons and planets and what-not (i'm not really very good with astrophysics). admittedly, when i say 'one's' i really mean my own...here in seattle, back home in colorado and abroad...so completely confounded by the meaning of finding one's 'soul-mate' and wondering if it is even possible -- or necessary. the homeopaths tell me i am a hopelessly wavering pulsatilla (which makes it seem unlikely that my floating-like-a-feather heart will ever completely settle). the astrologists tell me i need some stability for my watery, emotional pisces self...but i guess i'd like to think i am more than a little flower tossing in the wind or a wiggling fish in the sea...

an excerpt from hebrews 4 has been a central theme in my thoughts lately...

'for the word of God is living and active. sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow...' (vs 12)

what exactly is there to divide in soul from spirit? being a soulful person always seemed like a spiritual thing for me to be. but i am learning otherwise. Thomas Moore writes 'the soul has a strong desire and need for intimacy...the soul doesn't thrive on grand schemes of salvation or on smooth, uncluttered principles, nor does it thrive on theories and creeds...' the apostle paul said 'the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.' (I corinthians 2:10)

i am beginning to think there is something to this discrete division the Word brings to one's existence. it is often difficult to imagine my life in Christ apart from my soul's experiences -- but maybe its not so much a divorce as a distinction that must be made. perhaps its a life-long journey of differentiating soul from spirit that comes from time spent in scripture.

according to the amplified version: God's Word serves to carve out 'the dividing line of the breath of life (soul) and [the immortal] spirit, and of joints and marrow [of the deepest parts of our nature], exposing and sifting and analyzing and judging the very thoughts and purposes of the heart....' hmmm. that is a lot of entities to sort out.

we are without life if we lose our souls, but we are without hope if we lose our spirit.

i suppose i am most encouraged to know:
'the high and lofty One says— 
 he who lives forever, whose name is holy: 
 "I live in a high and holy place, 
 but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, 
 to revive the spirit of the lowly 
 and to revive the heart of the contrite.' isaiah 57

an interesting side note: i discovered 569 references to 'spirit' in the NIV contrasted with 136 mentions of 'soul.' hmmmmm.

‘the Spirit helps us in our weakness. we do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. and he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.’ (romans 8:26-27)