Cairns : i

Today's is a tricky idea, so I'm going to pull it apart and discuss it in two pieces. 

Waking this morning there was a shadow hovering nearby, like a cloud of junk that was stopping me feeling excited about the day ahead. I work part-time with young folk as a photography lecturer and have chosen to preserve a couple of days in the week for my own freelance projects, of which I feel terribly protective. Today is one of my lizzie-days, and I would usually jump up and get out and about, writing, photographing, plotting. It is a real privilege to have the time and resources to do this, and I do not want to waste a second. This morning it took ages to come round and figure out where to start.

'Boof. A punchbag morning. I am the punchbag; work is the boxer and he's on a roll.'

I come to see most of what I do not as work, but as calling, blessing, gifting, and opportunity – that is a real treasure. Somewhere along the way of having a vision and making a plan, setting objectives and mapping the route, I forgot that the car needs servicing, my students would like their grades, an invoice needs chasing, and that buying some food items coloured other than easy-access brown or orange varieties will stop me getting heart disease. I forgot to 'be aware'* ready to tweak things in the plan as life occurs and alters the twists in this road. I like to forget about the backstage function that allows the show to go on, because it pulls me away from being immersed in the making and doing. 

The problem with not wanting to waste a second is two-fold: first, this forgets the 'elbow a little clearing' idea mentioned in Making Contact, and second it is about striving in my own strength to realise the vision, according to my limited understanding of what today is all about, which ignores the Grains of Sand phenomenon. Yes we need a strategy, and we need to see that strategy in action*. But we need to be humble enough to accept events come and go which affect our trajectory, because what we do is not just about us. We need patience. If it's a good vision, it involves lots of people, so we need to go steady enough to let all those people and ideas and lives dovetail. The backroom is a busy place.

So here I am on a lizzie-day, not wanting to waste a second but occupied backstage. 

Why a picture of B emptying stones onto the beach? I'll tell you tomorrow. x

*For inspiration about being aware in the middle of an A to B vision, thank you Jane Northcote. For Strategy in Action, thank you Jimmy P for being an accomplice. 

{Today's Soundtrack: Doves - Lost Souls}

The Encouraged

Just before Christmas, I went to have a chat with my Pastor about a few things. Not sure I wanted resolution on my musings so much as a wise soul to share them with. There are some ideas about life and what's brewing which are very interesting but to be really honest, I wanted those ideas to go away. I want things to change, but I don't want things to change. 

Get me? No?

Let's try again.

There's stuff that we live with all the time, and it becomes the fabric of us. Some of this stuff is not what you would have described at the dawn of time if the Angel Of Everything You Ever Longed For asked you to describe what you longed for back then. But all the same, it is our stuff, stuff of living, and even if it looks pretty shabby it does honestly describe where we have been and what has shaped us in our lives. By definition, therefore, it comes to inform what we long for. Every day, anew. And some of this stuff is just too wonderful to have imagined in the first place. What I carry now I am amazed by, and would never have thought I would get to carry it. 

I really want to see new iterations of creation and blessing unfold in all sorts of ways, both in my life and other's. I want to get to the end of a windward slog, push the rudder away and breeze downwind with sails wide and full. I do want to see the turning of a corner. But it is not without apprehension too.

Apprehension is to do with fear of leaving the status quo. This is the time to not be afraid. This is the time to remember hearts on the floor, and their being 'scuffed and grubby', full of love and life, with a shimmer and a glint. Everything you carry has tremendous value. Everything you are equipped with is everything you need to pick up and plane when you get around that corner.

Go on, push the rudder away... 

{Today's Soundtrack: Ryan Bingham - The Weary Kind}

The Encourager

One thousand pinpricks in a cloud that hovered too low over a garden of roses and forgot about the thorns.

(Il pleu.)

If you are an encourager, verve occasionally meets its nemesis too large and natural vigour drains from you like rain from a cloud. Why might this happen? You are built and equipped to encourage, surely in all things? The encourager naturally sees possibility where others do not. A fierce grip on all that could be keeps something sparking inside, sometimes long after you should have sensibly backed off. 

I think people who burn with this insatiable, relentless pioneering spirit for the possibility of good in the world are amazing, unbelievable, brave beings. I think to be an encourager—the light in the darkness—is one of the most uncomfortable calls a person can be handed. To shine in darkness you have to go to darkness. It is not so much something you choose, as something you find is happening to you. But this role is also one of excitement, because it means coming in really close to people when they are right on the brink and urging them to keep going, there when the corner is turned. The encourager somehow sees the sense in persevering. There is a glint in their eye; you know it when you see it.

Sometimes—like the cloud—they become so smitten with the roses and forget to be on their guard against thorns. They have love in their gut, and are helpless with it, but that is good for the world.

Do you know someone like this? Be their encourager today.

{Today's Soundtrack: Jonny Kearney & Lucy Farrell}

Little Wings

People are quite good at grouping together based on what is the same about them, but when we say 'opposites attract', I think it might be because of this thought that duality actually does work to set things in motion. When dual elements unite around a central goal, their movement can be powerful even in tension.

In diverse communities where we live alongside radically different views to our own, so long as we seek common goals then why shouldn't our contrasting experiences serve to hold us together, fluttering with life and perpetually moving forward?

Here, in duality, everything comes together. The left and the right. The east and the west. The male and the female. Shade honours light. An idea that exists in a vacuum has no critical balance and will not grow because it has nothing else to move around. Alone, it will not find its flight-worthy motion when the wind comes. 

Little helicopters — flicker, flicker, flicker — carrying seeds into the places where they will grow. Two wings spread in opposite directions, joined in the centre, perfectly balanced to fly as they fall together.

The tension of duality gives the seed wing.

{Today's Soundtrack: Turin Brakes - Outbursts}

Forests

Forests full of words and thoughts; hopes and dreams and ambitions spread out like thick woodland. The distance is hidden by everything today holds.

I don't want to find a clearing in this forest, I love the shape of the trees too much.


{Today's Soundtrack: Jars of Clay - The Shelter}

Making Contact

When the table top becomes too cluttered with rubbish, sometimes the only thing for it is to elbow some space amongst the junk and create a little clearing, so the thing you thought you had lost might creep out to meet you.

This is what I did the other night, losing time in a darkroom whilst making some photograms. Beautiful old craft, watching the way light falls around objects, capturing the evidence on light-sensitive paper. Standing at the enlarger, gently arranging tiny beads and balancing big glass jars, shining light beams, patiently sloshing the paper through the trays, carefully wrapping washed and dried prints to bring home, sticking them on the wall. No paperwork to file.

Photograms are a form of contact print. Objects pressed onto paper more firmly present a clearer outcome. Punchy, strong true black and true white rely on full contact being made. It is what it is, or it will not be anything. What I hold in my hand is what actually happened, appearing out of nothing because things came together. This immediacy is immensely satisfying. Its clarity is refreshing.

Making direct contact is not complicated. It's all the guff around the edge that gets in the way.

I elbowed space, and it crept out to meet me. I love having made contact again.

Worried about having lost something?


{Today's Soundtrack: U2 - Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For}

Get Your Gumboots On!

Right then, what we need now is a little objective setting. There are ways and ways to approach the turn of new year, making battle plans to obtain the life we wish we lived. But really, the only way to obtain it is to do it.

The last few years, early in January me and some pals have helped each other set 'objectives' rather than 'resolutions'. Time to get your business lingo bingo cards out, I'm talking SMART objectives folks! 

Making resolutions such as 'get slimmer and be more positive' is about a state of mind. You can't induce this anymore than you can induce growing a prize marrow just by thinking about it. These are not good goals to set, and you are likely to end up demoralised because you have not identified how you will get slimmer, or practically what will change to help you with that positive thinking.

Alternatively, setting objectives such as 'cycle to work twice a week, and practice 2 new healthy recipes a week because reducing the amount of crap I eat will have a positive effect on my mood' is about physical, tangible, achievable actions that will naturally lead you to realise those hopes you have to be slimmer and a nicer person to be around. 

To obtain that life you want, you have to do it. Roll up those sleeves and get your work boots on!

What are your top three objectives for a good, practical working start to the year?

*

For more on this, pick up the wonderful Jane Northcote's 'Making Change Happen' for practical and no nonsense advice on identifying, setting and realising objectives. Jane is a business consultant, and commissioned me to illustrate her book with drawings, exercises and question/answer space to make it highly interactive. It is targeted at business people, but I think the advice has a universal appeal. I—an artist—loved it!

{Today's Soundtrack: a blast from the past, The Verve - Lucky Man}

Fire Up

Happy new year everyone! I hope your Christmas time was lush and you are solidly back in the groove – welcome back!

This new year I spent a lovely time with close friends as we wrapped up the year and let the promise inherent in Christmas fire us up for a fresh 2011 start. Curled up around the fire, feasting, chatting, we challenged each other to confront face on what was so hard in 2010, and really, some parts of it were dire. We walked through these experiences to a place of gratitude – gratitude for the fact we faced tough turns in our lives but lived to tell the tale, and are stronger for making it. Further, our faith is deeper that whatever happens God's hand is at work to see us through. So we said some prayers too, unconventionally for a night that supposedly wears the Biggest Party of the Year crown.

What seemed so new about this new year was a resolve that we will not take 'no' for an answer, even after all this. New year is our cultural moment to choose reignition and spark into new adventures, putting the past into positive light and holding torches up for the future. We talked—me and my friends—about what we will remember about making it, and how we will remember, and how these memories will inspire us to grasp all the things we dream of for 2011. 

It's not just the 'what', it's the 'how' too.

It becomes the new year tradition for many, to fill these lanterns with light and float them off into the air. We have gratitude for what has gone before and we have hope for what lies ahead.

Have a wonderful, adventure-filled 2011.

{Today's Soundtrack: Fanfarlo - Reservoir}

Happy Christmas People!

Dear friends, I wanted to take a moment to say thank you for gathering around the Lightbox with me this year, and I hope you have enjoyed the words and pictures over recent months.

For me, it is a real joy to post here and I would still do so even if no one was watching, but if it brings you some joy and comfort too then that's a huge bonus. I'm going to take a break for the holiday and will resume Lightbox again in due course, just in case you're wondering where I've gone. (Actually, if you really want to know where I've gone, I am under a duvet on my sofa full of cold, stuffing hot tea and Benylin into my pie-hole. Ugh! Pass me the tissues!)

Here's wishing you a rich, friendly and warm Christmas - wrap up, give each other bear hugs, and have a beautiful holiday season.

Blessings to you, until next year.

lizzie x


{Today's Soundtrack: Sufjan Stevens - Christmas Songs}

Lighthouse

What light are you shining? Is it a short-fused spark where hedonism flints against boredom, or a careful, steady flame that burns constantly through all weathers?

Consider what would happen if that light went out.

To suffer a gale against your flame is to burn vulnerably amidst the turbulent elements between you and your horizon. In this respect, suffering serves to pull focus on what you are trying—and unable—to grasp. Out of arm's reach, the lack of grip can make the desire for that vision more acute, or it pares everything back until only simple, straightforward, life-giving priorities exist.

Here is precisely the moment where your smouldering wick starts to ignite again, when you realise what you are living for and choose to stand your ground. When you do this, you not only shine in the face of your own enemy, you give light to other lost vessels whether you know it or not.

Now consider again – what must you do to make your light burn brighter?

Find your lighthouse, and take your position.

[Victor Frankl is an authoritative voice on the topic of meaning in suffering. In his current series of posts, Donald Miller offers a very accessible and sensitive introduction to Frankl's writing. Another one for the reading list!]




{Today's Sountrack: M.Ward - Hold Time}

Grains of Sand

Sand sticks. Tiny particles of ground rock and coral cling to the palm of your sweaty, salty hands. Try brushing it off but it won't leave, pressed in to your skin. Go down to the water's edge and hold your hands where a wave is about to wash up the beach, soaking your hands clean whilst more, other, numerous grains swill between your toes and get stuck there. Run backwards and fall back tripping, and now elbows are like sandpaper and grains are caught in pockets of clothing.

Lie down, head on the sand, to discover later the grains will be hidden in your scalp too, and ears, and brushed across your face. Lick salt-water off your lips; sand there also. 

Sand in every single place.

      "How precious to me are your thoughts... 

       Were I to count them, they would 

       outnumber the grains of sand."

Look up at hot sky, not hearing the sound that sand underneath you makes because it has nothing to say, except that there are thoughts about your life too many to imagine and whilst you were never meant to carry them yourself, they cannot resist you. 

No, there are many good thoughts for your life that cannot resist you.

{Today's Soundtrack: Bill Withers - Ain't No Sunshine}

Cardboard Cut-out

          My love for you is no
          cardboard cut-out,
          but I'll throw a pin-up
          at your feet so
          you don't forget me.



{Scott Matthews - Eyes Wider That Before}