Sunflowers

It’s sort of a toss-up to say whether tulips or sunflowers are my very favorites. I do love them both. And neither lend themselves to having bouquets of them around the house. Although I told myself, yesterday, I just had to do something useful like scrub the refrigerator or clean drawers or vacuum or even write a sermon, I found it difficult to keep moving yesterday. I suspect the heat got to me. I turned on the air and that helped some, but I was still uncomfortable. Must have been a great day for the beach-goers!

I did manage to finish my ironing (I had let it go for months), while I watched a couple of movies. So that was at least productive. I re-read a book I love “Scent of Water” while listening to Diane Krall jazz with Mia cuddled on my lap. That was wonderful. I also painted. That finally brings me around to Sunflowers. I did a painting of Sunflowers from a book called “Acrylic Painting for Beginners”.  I found, however,  that I couldn’t stand to follow his suggestions and went off working on my own. I realized that all the practice mixing colors had made it possible for me to do my own color work without following his suggestions. I liked the final result. So much so that I put it in a frame and hung in on the wall. I just happened to have a frame for that size of canvas, so I wanted to see how it looked and then I just stuck it up on the wall. I like it. It’s small, so it wasn’t ambitious, and not all that hard.

In just a while João will arrive home together with his parents who are coming for a visit. A couple of people reacted with horror when they heard I was spending carnival alone. I was looking forward to it, for basically I am an introvert. When, however, everyone was finally gone on Friday morning (João left on Thursday) I had a brief sinking moment of “what will I do with myself?” That didn’t last long. I did whatever I wanted and it was a wonderful respite for me. I just did what I wanted when I wanted. It’s not like I was out of contact with people, as I talked on the cell phone, Skype and other chat groups every single day. But I especially liked my mornings, just sitting out on the veranda, reading and meditating with my cup of coffee. I thought I would do so many things, and the days rushed by while I crawled around. Now suddenly my alone time has evaporated and soon I will have a full house. It’s amazing how we adapt to our circumstances, isn’t it?

The Oscars

Were you shocked by the tone of the speeches at the Oscars last night? I felt deeply uncomfortable, almost sickened, with a sense of “wrongness”.  It was such a feeling of “no” as I heard those who would justify sin by pointing to God’s love and acceptance. God’s love does not imply acceptance of sin. He does not wink at wrongdoings, thinking they are kind of cute, like some cuddly little grandfather. I know we all long to be right, to be accepted just as we are. It just doesn’t work that way. God’s love does not cancel out his righteousness and as such all sin is disgustingly filthy to Him. Because I think we instinctively know that, we seek to “downgrade” sin and say the times have changed and what we thought was sin isn’t sin. Or we try to justify sin, saying that we were just made that way and there is nothing we can do about it. I see a consistent trend in our times to blame it all on DNA. I overeat because I have a thrifty gene. I am promiscuous because I have too many hormones. I drink too much because of my genetic structure and so forth and so on. The truth be told, all of us would like to be reassured we are basically good and in God’s eyes no matter how we are, we are “all okay”.

That just doesn’t match up with what I read in the Bible. Even if we have a proclivity to sin because of our physical make-up (we do live in a fallen world after all), that does not excuse us. Does that make the world seem unfair? Well welcome to a sinful world. Those are the consequences. Easy for me to say, right?

Wrong! Was I sickened by looking at the public display and self-seeking justification for their sins last night? I was. But the harder question is, am I equally sickened by my own sin and consequent justifications? Are not my sins in the same category? When I read Galatians 5:19-21 I feel sick when I see that sexual immorality is listed right next to idolatry (read my post on anger) and just shortlly before things like jealousy, selfishness, and envy. So while debauchery is condemned, so is hatred.

If I do not repent of my “pet” sins and yet find it easy to condemn others for those sins that don’t tempt me, there is something wrong. So, yes, the speeches at the Oscars bothered me a lot, not just because of the effort to make a wrong a right, but because I saw a reflection of myself in their attitudes. Strange that their darkness shone a light on my own sin. My prayer is that my disgust, nausea, sickness over sin, will continue to grow and lead me to constant repentance. 

Just Gotta Share This

After days of doing exercises in mixing paints, doing color wheels, learning how to make the color of mud (when you mix incorrectly that’s what you get!), and reading and reading about paints, techniques and colors, I decided I just wanted to get my feet wet (or in this case, my fingers dirty) and do a painting with acrylics. It resembles watercolors, but yet is very different. The paint doesn’t flow on water. It’s sticky. It also dries quickly. Like pastels you can easily correct mistakes. In fact, it is closer to the process of pastels than watercolors. The true challenge is mixing colors to get the right tones. As always, the real problem comes in drawing the picture to be painted. I followed the process of a book on painting. It’s called ten easy lessons. HA! Nothing easy about it. This painting was just part of lesson two. At any rate, after two days, I have finished my first still life in acrylics. In fact it’s sort of my only still life. It didn’t turn out too badly and I wasn’t terribly frustrated in the process. I am just glad no one else was home to see the mess I made! Just so you can compare, the original I painted from is on the right. Yes my colors are brighter. That’s because the scan of the book on slick paper didn’t come out the same as a the scan of the painted picture. It was fun anyway.

The bad news is that I didn’t make it through the day today without complaining! As I walked through the school yard on the way to church today, I was shocked at all the trash thrown on the ground. Not just a little. I mean tons of coke cans, potato chip packages, etc. When I finally met up with someone, I commented on the little “pigs” at the school. Oops! As soon as it was out of my mouth, I remembered: “No complaining”. So the rubber band goes on the other hand. I start over tomorrow. How are you doing?

WYSIWYG

Don’t sweat if you don’t get those letters. Back in the “old” days when the web was getting started, doing a web page was a real pain in the neck. You had to understand html and that meant writing the codes for everything. Every font, color, formating had it’s own code. When you tried to read what you wrote it was so full of code it was hard to make sense of it. Then there were the “WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET” programs. You just typed things as you wished and the program put in the “hidden” code. My blogspot is like that. I see the underlines, photos, colors, etc. as I type. It’s great. So those programs are abbreviated with the first letter of that phrase, thus WYSIWYG. Clever, eh?

Over the past couple of days, I have been thinking that abbreviation would be a great description of our spiritual life, except with a slight twist. Same letters, just different words. WHAT YOU SAY IS WHAT YOU’VE GOT (INSIDE). Since I am always struggling with the issue of “tongue control” , when I read Luke 6:45 – “ Out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks” , I was stopped dead in my tracks. I mean, most of the time I can put on a veneer of “christianity” and play nice, but when things get hard, or irritating then what’s inside comes out!

I read a “ Webzine”  the other day (if you are interested the address is: http://www.boundless.org) and the article on anger hit home. It’s called “Anger: the Image of Satan” , where he deals with the problem of sinful anger that transforms us into the image of Satan. It really hit home when he talked about anger expressed as complaining,  grumpiness, cutting remarks and ranting. Oops! I remembered my loud complaining in the grocery store about how slow the line moved. I remembered my muttering under my breath about the guy who cut us off in traffic. I remember WAY too many things. I was convicted. The author, Jonathan Dodson, attributed that to idolatry. Yip. I just plain love good ole me. I want things to go my way, on my time schedule. Yes, I am a control freak. When I grumble about how hot it is, I am, in fact saying, that I want to be comfortable and that God doesn’t know what He is doing as he controls the weather. I don’t really want God to be sovereign, but I want to the boss of the world. And that makes me into the image of Satan who fell from heaven for that very same reason.

That is a very tough lesson. But true. What comes out of my mouth, reveals what’s really in my heart. It’s not a pretty site, nor is it pretty listening. I have repented, I am repenting of my murmurs, grumbling and general negative attitudes and asking God to deal with my idolatry of ME!

I am even going to try the complaint-free challenge. Have you heard of it? It’s one the site http://www.acomplaintfreeworld.org. The idea is to stay complaint-free for 21 days. They have a bracelet you wear on either wrist. When you catch yourself complaining, gossiping or criticizing, you move the bracelet to the other arm and begin again. I don’t have the bracelet, but I figure a rubber band will do the job. Wanna join me????

Happy Valentine’s Day

For some reason, I got a chuckle this morning out of the name of the program I use to do my blog entries. It’s called “Live Writer”. I thought to myself, how good it is not to be a dead writer… dumb I know, but then I think the name of the program is pretty lame.

That is neither here nor there. I just wanted to wish you a Happy Valentine’s Day and thank you for reading my blog. I know there are lot of legends associated with today, but one thing that is certain, it is a day for writing notes expressing your affection or love for friends and family. Although we have often turned the day into a time of expressions of “eros” or erotic love, I have the impression that the day was more a time of “philia”, or fraternal love. We seemed to have lost that connotation  and that’s too bad, for the eroticizing of our culture is sick. They have taken Abraham Lincoln’s beautiful correspondence with his friends and said it is proof he was a homosexual. We can no longer say we love our friends or express this affection physically without someone pointing a finger of suspicion. I wish we could still buy our little punch out valentine’s and innocently distribute them among those we care for, just to say you are special!

On Valentine’s Day, we think of people
who have cheered and encouraged us,
who go out of their way
to be kind and caring,
who have enriched our lives
just by being themselves.
You are such a person.
I’m so happy you’re my friend
Happy Valentine’s Day!

By Joanna Fuchs

Since our weather has cooled down some (I actually was able to turn off the air conditioning), I have felt more like working on the pastel portrait of my favorite valentine, who is taking me out to the Outback for lunch today. I made some progress over the last two days, but still have a long way to go. Man, is this time consuming. Whatever any artist charges is not enough, trust me. It’s hard work! Enduring the critics is hard too. My “model” says he looks too old, his nose is too big (is not – I measured), his eyes are wrong (which is true, but I give up after 4 attempts to get them right), and his hair is the wrong color (haven’t finished yet). He did like his beard. Wow! Fortunately I don’t have to make my living doing portraits. I need to finish him up, as soon we are starting painting lessons, with acrylics, so I need to put my pastel “studio” away. Who knows, some day I may have a room just to be my studio. Wouldn’t that be great?

Far From the Home I Love

One of my favorite musicals is Fiddler on the Roof. One very hauntingly sad song that has always spoken to my heart is “Far From the Home I Love”, when one of the daughters leaves home in order to be with her husband, who has been exiled to Siberia. The melody and lyrics echo the anguish of one who wanted to be physically home, but also wanted to be close to the one she chose to love. I first heard the song while in high school and it spoke to my heart. I cried the first time and in fact every time I hear the song, or even read the lyrics. When I was 16, I had no idea that the song would be my heart’s cry!

Sunday, during our worship, I was suddenly flooded with a sense of “belonging” like I have not felt in almost three years. I had the deafening realization that I felt like I was “physically” home at my church, in my town. I was happy. I was joyful. I was at peace. Since we are studying the fruit of the Spirit in my Sunday School class and I have been praying over the fruit of the Spirit, I was very keenly attuned to the sensations of joy and peace. Not in the ephemeral way of a temporary happiness and feeling of calmness, but in a deep down soul kind of way. It was in a deep down in my bones sense of being where I wanted to be. If anyone saw the tears on my face, I am sure they didn’t understand, but I couldn’t stop the tears of joy as I finally saw the completion of three years of prayer.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I didn’t want to leave Canada in 2006. I was as  happy as I have ever been in my life and was returning to the one place on planet earth where I had suffered the most and had the least desire to live – Rio de Janeiro. (God does have a good sense of humor, doesn’t He? I have lived in this city longer than anywhere else). I was rather like the little girl who told her daddy she would sit down since he told her to, but that she was still standing up in her “heart”. So I came out of obedience, and prayed for joy and peace in my surroundings to eventually follow.  I felt a lot like the lyrics to the Neil Diamond song: “The road is long with many a winding turn; That lead us to who knows where, But I'm strong”.

I truly believed that the day would come when I would at peace again, but somehow I thought that would not delay so very long. I won’t linger on the details, but confess that the wait was long and not easy for me. I knew all would be okay someday, but was anxious for the day to come when waking up in the morning, feeling tropical heat,  knowing I was in Rio, wouldn’t be quite so painful. That pain of being “far from home” is what little “Hodel” sings about:

Once I was happily content to be
As I was, where I was,
Close to the people who are close to me,
Here in the home I love. …
Oh, what a melancholy choice this is,
Wanting home, wanting him,
Closing my heart to ev'ry hope but his,
Leaving the home I love,
There where my heart has settled long ago
I must go, I must go, I must go,
Who could imagine I'd be wand'ring so
Far from the home I love

So now you understand the tears of joy on Sunday morning when I realized that I AM home, as completely home as I will ever be in this lifetime. It has never taken me so long to adjust to a new home before. I realize some of that is my age, some of it is stubbornness, and some of it is circumstance. It’s been exciting to see how God has worked in my heart, giving me the faith to wait and the hope of knowing the day would come when everything would be all right. It has always been well with my soul, just hasn’t been so good with my heart. It is wonderful to feel my soul reunited with my heart and be at peace. I am still far from the ones I love. I still live in a very hot place. I still am part of a very large church community. I still have to speak my non-fluent Portuguese. None of that has changed. It just doesn’t matter anymore. I love where I am and what I do. I am not just being obedient, but I am joyful in where I am and what I am doing. That is victory!

Finished!

Just wanted to quickly post the photo of the pastel of Degas’ “Green Dancers”. I finished it tonight. I enjoyed working on the picture a lot, but I realized somewhere along the way that I bit off a little more than I wanted to chew. Surprisingly there were a lot more details than I realized. The tiny orange ballerinas were a lot harder to do and took a lot more time than the two skirts and the dancer in the foreground. The little details on the tutu were murderous as well.

We had a lovely day off today, entertaining Dione e Fausto (the pastor and his wife who preceeded us at First Baptist. They work at the Baptist World Alliance in DC, but were here for a wedding) for a brunch. It was nice to talk and share. So much to talk about!!!

I decided totally take the rest of the day off and finish the picture, so that’s just what a did. Some four hours later I was able to finish it.

Now I am reading “COLORS”, a book on color theory, in order to prepare myself for mixing colors and working in acrylic paints. That will come in March and I am excited about learning something new. My task for the rest of this month is finishing João’s portrait. I do love pastels. They just feel wonderful in your hands and the colors come off on the paper just like they look in your hand. It is such a sensation to see those vibrant, luminous colors flowing onto the paper. They are very forgiving as well, as you can just paint right over any mistake.

While I feel confident that I am learning to deal with pastels and watercolors, I realize more and more that my drawing skills are very limited and I need to concentrate on improving in that area. There are only so many hours available for art, so I’ll just have to be patient and take any small improvements that I can.

FEVER!

I didn’t abandon you, but for two days I was kind of punk, with a fever. It has been really hot here in Rio, but my fever was from the inside not outside. I don’t know what it was, but I was miserable on Monday and recovering on Tuesday, and fine on Wednesday. One of those 24 hour virus’, I guess. It surely laid me low, as I didn’t even feel like lifting my head to drink water. My two favorite nurses took care of me. Mia stayed by my side for 8 hours straight and João waited on me hand and foot.

Today, Thursday, I took some time to work on my copy of Degas’ “Green Dancers”. It’s one of my favorites (which is saying something since I love most all of his work) and thought it would be interesting to see if I could reproduce a pastel. Well it’s been fun, but the short answer is that I can’t reproduce someone else’s art. I can imitate or make my own version of his work. I seem unable to bend my will to someone else, and I just have to interpret things my way.

I can tell you it is hot under that mask when it’s over 90 degrees, but it does cut down on the coughing and breathing difficulties. There comes a time, however, when I just have to take it off. It has been SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO hot. Even I, of the unlimited appetite, just don’t feel like eating. Yesterday I cooked a full lunch, but I ignored most of it to eat salad and fruit. I see the midwest caught up in snow and ice and I am not sure if I should feel sorry for them or envy them. Ah the ambivalence!

While I was drawing (or is the correct term painting) with the pastels today, João videoed me and I have put in the video link to you tube if you want to see the video. Thought you might want to see some live action.