Seeing new colors

I didn’t grow restless during our eight hour final inservice for teachers. I usually have an incontrollable urge to get up and do pushups to stave off atrophy, paint portraits of my colleagues who are so perfectly poised, or write some grand pie-in-the-sky curricullum plan.

 

Not so today.

 

The teachers opened up their wisdom, confessed their shortcomings and prayed for each other in ways that didn’t leave a dry eye in the classroom. We confessed that we hadn’t prayed enough – we let busyness take over our schedule. Rookie move!

 

Many other good things though were shared that helped me see why God wanted me to teach at Heritage. Faith has a face now. One matronly math teacher confessed of her worry she had struggled with for years over trusting in God’s provision. She’s now stepping out in faith for a job, and credited the work the Holy Spirit did in her heart as allowing her to walk. I wish I could remember her exact words – she said something about God working to change her character for His glory, and He did.

 

That’s the miracle of this year. Not that millions of dollars were found buried on the property and all our money problems were solved. It’s that so many teachers and kids’ lives changed to glorify God in shining new ways. In ways that money could never buy. Sure, money can change a teacher’s hairdo or remodel her kitchen. But it can’t melt a heart into restful repose next to its Savior.

 

Support update: $525/mo raised out of $1900/month needed 

God’s word blesses me in such a seemingly serrendipitous way. This morning I read through Proverbs 11, and it was full and vibrant with words that answered my previous rant. So thank you to those that prayed for an answer.

Prayer seems to be so important. I’m worried for one student who stopped praying in class, and now wants to complain that his grade is my fault. He’s so creative (KR8IV would be his liscense plate) and it’s like the devil wants to see all that creativity used to complain, disrupt and not produce fruitfullness. Wow, I never thought of teaching things creative as being a battlefield for spiritual struggles, but I am becoming more convinced that it is. When I tried to encourage creativity in yearbook, ceramics, creative writing or drama, it either met with a receptive heart or a hardened one. There are so many things that try to keep a creative believer from producing great art, not the least of which is our own fear of failure. Please pray that I will never grow weary in encouraging believers with creative gifts.

Set like figurines on a newborn green porcelin landscape were several couples enjoying the twilight down at Taku Park this evening. Ah, twitterpated bliss. For them. Littlest brother Nolan and I just threw the stick for the dog into the otherwise smooth lake and were very non-mushy.

 

What gets me down is thinking about how many of those couples aren’t living according to God’s plan. Are “living in sin,” as my grandpa used to call it. It’s like I have to work so hard to fight against the way most everybody seems to be doing it now, including my family. I would have been there too, if it wasn’t for God’s grace and His Word that doggedly stuck in my head. It’s like no one calls them on the sin because  we’re all supposed to be loving and accepting. The thinking seems to be that it’s mean to scorn someone for making ungodly living choices. John MacArthur’s current sermons on the prodigal son and even more prodigal father are confusing me about how one should react to sin. I understand the total forgiveness for the repentant one, but what about the other one?

 

Perhaps when school is out in FOUR more days, I will write more bubbly blogs. My apologies until then.  

Student’s spelling word of the day: “Enfississ.” As in, “Today was spirchul enfississ day.” Well, I guess they don’t call the class creative writing for nothing. Only five more days, and I feel like there’s so much more work to be done.

 The work that I really need to focus on write rite wryt now however is support raising. Please pray that I will have the courage and poise to visit people one on one and share with them my need.

 In other news:
 My baby blue-eyed brother is twenty-one today. He’s excited because now he can work as a server. He’s chipper and resislient enough, it should be a good match. I’m so tempted to work at a restaraunt again just for the money. Isn’t that a sellout statement? The thing about working as a server that got to me was how servers would act nice infront of the people for good tips, then cuss them out in the back of the house. It just played with my head how I started thinking that being nice was a way of getting bank. Starts to sound like a much older profession than waitressing, but perhaps not quite as old as teaching.

Speaking of teaching, maybe someone can teach me how to get that horrid red of the last blog entry.

 

What was missing from Alaskan art? Why didn’t it seem to be, well, Great Art like the kind that I drool over in museums around the country? A recent debate in the local arts scene is starting to illuminate what I could never exactly put my finger on. It’s missing a noble soul.

A few editors of a local humanities independent newsletter put out a survey that rocked several art organizations in town. It asked what their objective standards were for “high” art, for morally and spiritually good art. The few answers they got back stuttered with objections to even being asked such a question. The Anchorage Daily News reported on their reaction May 7 in “Artists, presenters bristle at idea of ‘objective standards.’ They also grilled the editors on why they would even want to give out such a survey. Like who died and made them Judge of Good Art, was the attitude I got from the piece. Anyways, look at this moral relativism quoted in the article:

“Trying to create objective standards is not about morality,” added Jay Brause, Dugan’s partner in life and Out North. “There’s a word for it, and it’s called ‘fascism.’ It’s the idea we should be of one body and one mind.”

This attitude was sung out by a singer/songwriter I saw last night, on a free ticket thank goodness. Cheryl Wheeler came out on stage, making no effort to say beautiful things, or to look feminine, or healthy. She sang some pretty lines but the rung hollow to my ears after she started to berate the Religious Right as if it were an evil monster. She spent a large part of the concert defending her lesbian relationship. I couldn’t trust that she was trying to strike a chord (ha, sorry) with something hopeful in the human soul. To my shame, I simply lowered my eyes when she asked supporters of the president and the relgious right to make themselves known. I flunked that test of bravery and am determined to do otherwise next time.

It just makes me desire all the more to keep playing guitar, and writing songs, and shout to everyone (in a pretty, feminine way of course) that there is something good enough that it’s worth dying for. It’s worth having hope in right and wrong, and waiting for true love. That art can show a glimpse of God’s goodness and that good and noble things should be meditated on (phillipians 4?.)

The humanity editors thought likewise.

Davidson: One of the things that was apparent as we went to these art houses is that most of the people involved in art are sensitive, caring people who have an acute sense of the aesthetic. But the irony is that there would be reluctance or outright failure or resistance to apply spiritual values to a process of evaluating or choosing art. It was as if it were a taboo, an unspoken line that was not to be crossed; these kind of moral, spiritual, ethical values were not to be used in the evaluation process.

 

So now the lines of the fight on delinated. Beauty’s beast seems to be those who would have no one reign in their impulses.

Fundraising update: $240/month pledged out of my goal of $2200/month. Please pray I’ll be faithful to share the need with more people! Do you think there’s a correlation to the amount of money raised and the number of times K-Love plays “The Cartoon Song?” Hopefully not!

Whew, I took this spiritual gift test (don’t laugh; it’s not something that would be in a teenybopper magazine, but maybe should be) and my top scores were in teaching and administration. After everything that has happened in the past few years – challenges to my teaching ability and mishaps when I organize things – it’s reassuring that I’m on the right track with this BFA position.

 

Another whew happened when I found out that I got my first monthly support check – $1200 for the year! Praises to the Father of everything in heaven and earth. All the treasure in the world. That’s my first creep forward towards raising at least $2000/month.

 

Pun of the day: Jesus was wholey. Yes, that slipped out in creative writing class. My students didn’t walk out, so I guess I survived that one.

 

 

 

*Prayer letter Zwei*

Dear family and friends,

Waiting for the green buds to brush lightly over the hillsides is proving trying. You could say I got spoiled in Juneau’s rainforest. So here in Anchorage I’m waiting for some spring to paint and trying to stay focused on my goal of raising support to teach at Black Forest Academy. I’ve let my current job distract me. The school is enduring worrisome things – would I see God’s blessing in it all?

I teach creative writing and drama, as well as design school publications. I’m running a school cafe to help pay my wages. It’s funny, in some ways I feel just as close to the student workers at the café as my own students. Whew – all those years of waitressing have finally come in handy for His work. Needless to say, just about every person at school would need to be a caffeine addict that slavishly pledged allegiance to our café for it make good money. That hasn’t happened. So when our administrators shared that paychecks would be iffy as they balanced the budget until the next fiscal year, my spirit sank.

Sure, support raising can give unsure results, but I have always been able to count on a paycheck. Bills loomed – what was I to do if I didn’t get a check? Feelings of loserness crept in: you couldn’t even get a different job, blah blah blah, all those negative kind of thoughts. The next two weeks was like waiting for a fire alarm to go off. Would we get paid? “If you’re where God wants you, then He’ll provide,” I was told by a fellow motherly teacher. When we got paychecks three days late, it was because several staff members had donated their paycheck. All of their wages until the end of the year were now not a payable in the budget. Wow.

 I tried to put myself in their shoes, and found it difficult. Then again, I’m a single girl just out of school. But these people had kids, repairs, dreams to pay for; yet they trusted God with all that. What business do I have to doubt Him at all, ever, even in the least little bit? Even if I must live a very simple life, I can totally trust God that He will fill my spirit with wonderful things money can’t buy. I still fall into my worried habits when I think of how to pay health costs, car repairs or art supplies.

So God thought it would be funny to have a fellow teacher let me borrow her car for free. Or to give me chances to sell art at three galleries and do two shows. A tax refund. Or give me grace to move in once again with the family. On the outside, it looks like I haven’t come that far since graduating from high school. Inside my heart, thought, I know that God has purposed it to change more into His likeness.
 

 

Spring is always the time when I feel most inspired. So here’s another rant on the subject. Early spring here in Anchorage proper comes like a developing polaroid image appears. The blank white color of the compressed snow melts to reveal the city’s original textures and colors. The novelty of the newly revealed colors then wears off, as the one out on an evening walk only sees shades of mousey gray grit and taupe, still asleep bare trees. Fastforward twenty years and have the picture’s colors fade to tints of gray and brown.

I imagine the St. Petersburg of Dosteovsky to be the same. Too bad Anchorage doesn’t have a Hermitage. I listened to a Lonely Planet podcast on St.Petersburg and was just about ready to book my ticket. Insufficent funds issue aside, I would like to go there because while Alaska has great natural beauty, I long to see fantastic works done by people. I don’t quite get why so many people come on cruises here, just like I don’t get why so many people are satisfied seeing a great work of art for a few seconds, as they migrate through the megalithic museums nations have amassed and built.

Is my desire to go see the art at the Hermitage hypocritical then? As an artist and teacher, I don’t think so. I need first hand observation to be able to study the art, and to do this a superficial look is pretty much all I can realistic do. Still, there are some paintings that would do my life more good if I studied them carefully, I have to believe that, or my labors at painting are null.

Imagine having the snow white icing on your wedding cake start melting before the eyes of your guests. It evaporates to reveal an ashen layer of grit spread over your cake. Your guests notice a smell, and it’s not the rose petals scattered around. It is made up an assorted bouquet of decaying things. Ick. That’s what breakup is to me. My winterwonderland is no more.