Angel Esther

Today, Esther and I decided to have a portrait session. The last time she and I did this, she was modelling as an Angel for the benefit of a certain public art project, and for a couple of years now has been standing on the walls of our city, in a praying pose. We walked down to see the mosaics together soon after they were installed, and I asked her how she felt seeing herself on the wall. 

"It's such a privilege, praying for the city," she said.

In January, Esther was diagnosed with cancer. For six months, she had to sit through many gruesome rounds of chemotherapy, but she didn't stop praying, and neither did all the people around her. After the first two treatments, her hair started falling out, she began losing weight, and would be asleep for days at a time on heavy duty anti-sickness pills because the chemo drugs made her feel so foul. She kept praying, even when she shivered her way through summer having no hair or body fat left. After she first received the diagnosis, she wanted it announced at church so people knew, but wouldn't ask too many questions when her appearance started changing. While friends went over and said some prayers, I had to lead the congregation singing songs with my guitar. I watched Esther sit quietly, being prayed for, tears falling out of her eyes. It was about all any of us could do to hold it together and keep singing.

And then a few weeks ago, Esther was given the all clear – no remission, nothing, just clear. She's completely healed of cancer in 6 months flat. And because her hair is growing back ridiculously fast, we fixed a date as quickly as we could for these pictures, because we want to mark this.

This is a remarkably strong, generous, faith-filled woman. She knows what it means to shelter under the heavenly wing. She really knows, and looking at these images, something has changed. A new serenity has settled in. Just being around her, you feel it.

This is the day we chose to make pictures which say 'thanks' that our Angel Esther is healed. 

"Thanks."

{Another Soundtrack for Today: The Delays - Find A Home}

Honesty, Honestly

For the sake of transparency, let's just get one thing straight. Sorry if banging on about projects I'm doing is ever annoying and comes across as self-righteous. It's not meant to, and if it does it's only because it's taken a lot of years to stop being lazy and apathetic about things outside my own navel and get involved. It will always seems like a miracle if anything good ever happens, so being part of that feels pretty exciting, and it's something I want my friends to feel too.

If 'first person' is your clearest perspective, if your story-telling is about your own experience, then some chapters will describe being pummelled to the ground, or there will be silence because of that pummelling. Sometimes, when the redemption kicks in, a chapter or two about the buzz seems reasonable. But sometimes, in at last letting off steam, it may sound more like a rant than a celebration*. And sometimes, when it points more to yourself than the thing you're excited by, it can appear that you're more excited by yourself than it!

Truly, I'm sorry if that has happened. I'm just constantly amazed if anything I ever touch can come to good. That is redemption. And drawing trees for a little girl in China? It's really easy, costs nothing practically, and isn't about me. And doing it made me cry, again, because it matters and I wanted you to be involved too.

The left hand is not meant to know what the right hand is doing, apparently, meaning just get on with loving but don't broadcast it. It's easy to forget that the messy side of life isn't the part we generally publish online, so the buzz can appear self-centred. If it does, it's only in amazement it happens at all.

It's because the mess exists that the good parts seem so worth talking about.

Honestly? This wouldn't exist without there being mess, honest to God.


* A friend of mine affectionately refers to these kind of words as 'the little darlings', with a gracious 'everything belongs' kind of humility, as Fr Richard Rohr teaches.


{Today's Soundtrack: Embrace - Gravity}

Rules of Attraction

"Arf!"

*

Are you happy now,

Can you breathe again?

Did you toss away your demons

And lighten up?

Did you close your eyes,

Did you see my face?

Did you walk along that beach

You've been dreaming of?

{Today's soundtrack: Dylan LeBlanc - Emma Hartley}

what do you want me to say?

{Today's Soundtrack: Voice Of The Beehive - I Say Nothing}

Places

How do you find anchor when your words have become a sea?

Pondering these images helps me think on this as they show the place where my current writing project began. Here, some words came, and were recorded with a pencil on paper, by oil lamp. There was a simplicity here which allowed something to start happening, and particular words came into sharp focus. Place seems important.

Today, listening to Josh Garrells, I feel stirred about this sense of place again, feel connected to three specific places around the planet, and three clear, simple things come onto focus: the start of things, the essence in things, and the fruit from things. The oil lamp place signifies all three, but separate, they go like this:

Bristol, where I was when this music discovered me. The start of things in many ways, as Bristol is a constant, and the place where I return to again and again. In the time I have lived here, it has been a home of continual renewal and redemption. It remains the same, and repeats its themes. After all this time, it is still a symbol of new beginnings. The start of things.

North Island, New Zealand with my friend Shirl, where we listened to this music on a road trip and talked through the essence of expression and how to walk out your own with integrity. We talked about fruit, and seemed to be referring to fruit yet to grow, but which we hoped for. Josh provided a catalyst for this conversation as we wound down into Raglan. As Shirl and I live on opposite sides of the planet, wherever we are on our spiritual journeys, these rare times of being physically together necessarily entail talk which goes straight to the middle of things. The essence in things.

And Portland, Oregon, where this music comes from, and where I spent some time a couple of years ago. Portland, more than most other places I have been, exists with a spaciousness entirely comfortable with the progression of things. It is a place which homes people happy to ask questions, and for that reason it was a precious place for me to go with mine. It has a gentleness about it, and if you are not letting your heart run free a little with possibility, you can get the sense that you're missing something brilliant. Portland is full of things growing, and I treasure it deeply as a place – a nourishing harbour. During my stay there, some tiny, tiny shoots appeared. They bear fruit today. The fruit from things.

Today's soundtrack connects me to important places, and the physical, solid ground truth of those places describes the start of things, the essence in those things, and the fruit from things. This, today, is how I find anchor when I have started to go adrift in a sea of words.

{Today's Soundtrack: Josh Garrells}

Some Advice for SPL from The Girls

"SPL honey, the girls have been talking. You need to get out of that garden. Those frogs ain't been treatin' you right, and your pretty little head's a mess. We know it's fun to go staring into space at big ol' rockstar lizards to take your mind off things, but so long as you know that those fancy lookin' boys don't solve all your problems. Sure as anything they may create a few! That handsome Duke's still just a lizard, and you aint to go puttin' heavy expectation on him. You have to seize the here and now, or you might just miss what's right under your cute nose. You're coming with us tonight, and no arguing. We have just the place. It looks like a dump, but the boys are nice, not showy, and they don't mind making a fool of themselves to tell a honey she's a honey. Straightforward fellas, and that makes it so much more real because they have nothing to hide behind. Mimosa on tap. Grab your purse."

{Today's Soundtrack: Best Coast - Wish He Was My Boyfriend}