An Invitation to Practical Matters

Dry erase markers, a mirror & scripture

Hi folks!

I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for reading, for allowing me to build the back story as best I could and as the Lord led, and for understanding I have no clue what I am doing. Thank you also for your patience as I settle into a rhythm for writing that is comfortable and not sacrificial to the ever present needs of my little family, particularly as I grow and learn to become a more active rather than passive parent. 

I never intended for this to turn into anything but me trying to make sense of what is now my everyday existence -- because trust me -- I could have never come up with this material on my own.  I'm not even a writer.



And if you are skeptical, thank you too for visiting and reading the words I never -- listen -- in my wildest dreams ever thought I would write.  If you have been judged and mistreated by those who call themselves Christians, I am sorry for that, I truly am.  The one thing that has stuck out to me the most is how even as a non Christian, I always knew -- I knew -- just like you might know-- that the people who treat you that way and use God, just know they are trying to fill the same hole you have.  No one likes to feel empty. Depeche Mode said it best: People Are People, and people are broken. Some people use people.  Some people become self righteous.  Some folks use drugs.  Become enslaved to online gaming or porn.  But in that there's one thing in common:  neither camp has ever experienced Grace -- God's riches at Christ's expense-- because if you have, by golly, you can share it.

 

It is encouraging to see the traffic to this site and to hear the stories of how this blog speaks to you.  I would like to encourage comments and feedback.  Please, feel free to send me an email with any questions, comments, or suggestions.

It is evident lots of people  are reading this blog, and I encourage you also to either become a fan/follower or to sign up via email.  Some people have asked how to do this and since I myself am not the best with computers, I am sensitive to your questions -- both of those options are available to you in the column on the right.  Also, if you feel led to share this blog, please do. Use your social media, Facebook, Twitter, your email contacts, whomever -- what I have learned in this as the story of the Russian at Wal Mart demonstrates:  You never know who this will touch.

If you choose to remain anonymous that's cool too. You can do that by signing up via email.  I have no idea who registers.  And if there's a way, I haven't  figured it out yet.


Again, thank you for following, for reading these sometimes long sentences and even longer entries.  Apparently, as someone recently told me, it is worth taking the time to read.  She said she gets so caught up in the everyday, these stories somehow bring her back, and in each one she told me there has been something that applies to her own life, either via the story or the links or videos, and she thanked me for doing this.

God's timing is perfect -- perfect -- and today I heard something in my study of Ruth I shall share for those of you who have ears to hear:  You may be in church, in your bible study, but perhaps your heart is in Moab. But Naomi went back to Bethlehem, where the famine had ended, bringing with her a Moabite woman.  As Driscoll points out, that is like an African American woman in the Jim Crow south finding herself a real nice church filled with white folk.  Risky.  Scary.  People may even fight you, resist you, hurt you -- but all are welcome.  I don't know if you are Naomi and left God's blessing or Ruth, who never knew God, but dropped all in blind faith to know Him.  In that risk, she met Boaz, and was placed in the lineage of Jesus, as the great grandmother of King David.

 For those of you who don't think you deserve a love like this -- let me share this with you. 

Today's Godwink?  Even before I knew Him, even when I HATED him -- I HATED him -- I probably would have spit on Jesus at some point if ever I saw him in the flesh -- he protected me in ways I am just coming to understand.  Why?  He had already picked me and get this -- loved me enough to  guard my mind and my heart when I was unable.

I also want to thank you for this opportunity because through it God is teaching me so much.  I thank Him for the opportunity to grow in humility, first and foremost, because as Cate Blanchett said in my other favorite movie Elizabeth, "This is the Lord's doing."

Amelie's learning with me

There's so much more to come.  Everyday since July 14th 2011 has been like being on a never ending roller coaster and happily I can barely hold onto my seat.  It has been elating, scary, threatening, calm, tender, lonely, dark, risky, so bright I'm blinded, I've cried, exhausting, busy, a whirlwind, circular, did I say scary?numbing, hurtful, beautiful, weighty, and even grave.  But most of all -- its been the best ride of my life.




And in the next entry, I will be strapped in, respectfully, right next to the Professor, James.  The one after that -- well, you'll see.

The Letter of Goodbye

Written on July 13,2011.


Dear Florence,

It has been a decade since I left your beautiful streets, smoggy air, and the sound of mosquitoes whizzing past my ears JUST as I drift to sleep during a hot summer night.  It has been 10 years since I have laid eyes on all things I found most precious and perfect -- your history I breathed, the art that made me sink, swollen with Envy, your people - as they walk nameless in the crowded streets on their way to somewhere else in your beautiful belly.

And I have come back to say Goodbye to you, finally after so long of trying to keep you locked in my heart so that I could never forget you.  In my love for you I have crippled the very thing that brought me to your gates -- my creativity.  In holding onto you, Ive kept all I learned and have learned nothing more, resulting in the stagnant, ugly waters in which I now stand and have been trying to get out of.  Now I know why.  You have been my Mistress for too long.

I know that by trying to hold onto you, I tried to keep you close so I would never forget you.  Now my dreams -- my very lucid dreams I've had for years and are the only repeating dream I've ever had in my life make sense.  In every dream I am close to Florence.  Or in it -- at times, I can smell it.  But I can see nothing, not even the people I went to see.  Cant go where I want to go.  I may get very close, but then something or someone whisks me away.  Sometimes I yell in Italian -- so loud  I wake myself up.

For years I have been plagued with these dreams -- and I thought they were there to remind me of what I love -- but now I see their purpose was to tell me to let go.

These dreams are much like my attempts at painting.  I get a taste, an itch, and when I go to scratch it, with a specific purpose or technique in mind -- the end result is nothing more than the same color palette from school -- and the same kind of disappointment in myself and my artwork that I have at the close of these dreams.

Florence, your Golden Age of which I so identified is long past -- your people have moved forward.  They found automobiles, electricity, computers and planes, without minding the rules of your Renaissance.  Each addition took creativity, new thought, built upon the rules before them.  Each modern creation is, in and of itself, a Renaissance.

I am kidding no one -- my memories of you are fading.  The truth is I am not a better person than other people because I got to live there -- having lived there is not what makes me special, creative, and it does not define my ability to live with purpose.

You are my longest lover.  I have lingered in your light too long, though I dream of the day you will touch me again.  I want nothing more.

I've spent a decade saying I left my Soul in your city -- and now I am aghast at how foolish I have been.

My Lover, I let you go, here on this paper from your very land.  Perhaps now I can find myself, and one day find my way back to you -- not in shackles -- but in gratitude.

Blessedly Free for my Golden Age,  Hollie


After writing that, I simply fell into a puddle, overwhelmed with tears, grief, and a great relief.  That was the night I gave up Italy. My two years there ended abruptly, for three reasons:  9/11, we ran out of borrowed money, and my Italian boyfriend and I had to end our year and a half together in twenty minutes, due to a family emergency in Naples, just two days before I left the country for good.  I placed him on a pedestal he had no place sitting on.  It is sad that quite frankly, I didn't remove him from that pedestal where he sat like an untouchable God until about five years ago.  That was the nature of my codependency.

It was wrong of me, and still is wrong of me to exepect him or anyone else to bring to me the happiness and joy that is only found by looking up, to the maker of all things.  But as Calvin said, the human heart is a factory of idols.

 I hate to say it, but his family emergency may have been a lie.  Its possible.  Who knows.  But there I was, late afternoon, standing in my living room, crying my eyes out feeling as if I had been punched in the gut.  Writing this, I recall standing with my hands at my sides, palms up, desperately just sad and empty.  The large square window was open to the small courtyard without a view, and the afternoon sun just poured into that room (the sun does not shine anywhere in the world like it does in Italy).  I felt as if I had been bathed in it -- yet -- there he went.   My tall, strong, and handsome, curly haired and milk skinned Piero disappeared into the dark, meandering hallway I hated, that led to the very door I would exit myself in two days time, on my way "home."

When I wrote this letter, I let go of my most Precious Thing.  Whats amazing is I just realized is the night I wrote about in my last post is the night that forged the very artistic style I lament in this letter, the one I am still stuck in.  Now that has all come together, I look forward to what healing will bring.

When I realized what I had written in this letter, I made this envelope and cut a section out of my art journal so it could house this letter.  The happiest accident of all?  Closure came all at once.

That is a picture of the Pazzi Chapel, an early Renaissance chapel built by Brunelleschi. If you've ever seen the movie Hannibal, that is the building of the Opera scene.  As it happens, Hannibal Lector is my favorite villain of all time.  Another happy accident:  I was there when the movie was filmed. The chapel is attached to my favorite structure in all of Florence, the church of Santa Croce, where my favorite artist of all time, Michelangelo is buried.

And,

My last apartment was literally one block to the right on Borgo Santa Croce.