Popping on to share a little of what’s on my heart lately.
A few weeks ago as I was going about my morning routine, a dear friend texted me saying that she was listening to an album by Rita Springer and thought of me. Here it is if you’d like to check it out.
In the days that followed, as I played it during my prayer time and while I washed the dishes, I was so captured by her lyrics. I was taken by the way her voice and the music made me feel. I experienced this strange juxtaposition of strong waves of anger and sorrow, and then I’d feel sparks of hope rise up within me.
Deep down I knew there was something so real here. I don’t know her story - at all, but I was immediately convinced that I was listening to a woman who knew firsthand what it feels like to hold grief and hope all at once. And I went on a journey with her. She could lay it all on the table, she didn’t have to have answers or platitudes for her suffering. She certainly didn’t wrap it all in a pretty bow. She was simultaneously completely disgusted with her situation but also… could claim (sometimes confidently and sometimes not) “God is good, yes I know he is.” And her cries to God gave words to mine. They became mine. They had also somehow been mine all along.
There was a moment somewhere in the mess of this that I felt this desire (?) well up within me. An invitation (?) to do the same with my art.
What does that look like, I’m not entirely sure.
But right now I think it has to do with some healthy acceptance of this season of life that I find myself in. When everything within me just wants to bypass the discomfort, I am invited to go through it, not around. And choosing to engage in the hard seasons, doesn’t mean that I can’t embrace the moments of hope as well.
And maybe…hopefully…I can communicate a glimpse of that in my art.
And maybe…hopefully…you will also feel seen.
(Sped up for your enjoyment!) ^ ^ ^
“Lovely Lady dressed in blue
Teach me how to pray!
God was just your little boy,
Tell me what to say!…”
(you can search the full prayer by Mary Dixon Thayer, popularized by Archbishop Fulton Sheen)
Sincerely,
Kristina
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