The Heart of Man is A Cold, Dead Place- Yet We are Not Dead, But Born

I.

October 2007

"What is in the heart of man?" I ask.

I'm young, dead, and smoking, coiled up sideways in a wiry black chair, my shaved head on one arm and bruised knees over the other. I stare through big black sunglasses at that electric kind of overcast as a hot, dusty wind comes and goes. It violently ruffles myself, the flowers, and two others.

"What do you think it is?" asks the girl sitting next to me.

She's texting, so this is an auto-response. I swing my feet madly off the side of my chair. The boy with us is not listening, but is rather, performing. He is doing barefooted pirouettes on the tall brick wall surrounding the garden. I study him as the archetypal man, and wonder as he turns and leaps with graceful arrogance: what in the world is within that?

"What do you think it is???" I reply. It's all I've got.

I don't know that in a year and a half I will confess to congregation great that Jesus is my Lord and Savior. I don't know that the light will manifest what is in darkness, and the two leading me to Christ at this moment will in time deny that some things are clear.

The girl shrugs, and smiles. I despise her for knowing something I don't.

"Evil" I declare, half-guessing.

The boy suddenly jumps between us and onto our cement table. He stares down at me, his face in front of the sun.

"Now we're getting somewhere!" he exclaims, and disappears again with one giant, pompous leap.

I light another cigarette and forget about these two, or the rest of the world, and begin to believe that I believe.

"Yes," I agree, and demand with all sincerity: "Where?!"

The girl laughs. I close my eyes. And though I hear it not, from my darkened, deadpan heart: a beat.

__

Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man. John 2:23-25

II.
July 2009

"What does it mean to be born again?" a small, fierce native American woman asks me. She is as wide as she is tall; this is not an insult, or an exaggeration, but her true dimensions, which through our art class together, has attracted me to her. We continue working, making no eye contact.

"What do you think it means?" I ask. This, my standard response, gives me a few moments to ponder. It is months past conversion now; I am fully, and truly, Christian.

"I don't know, that's why I'm askin'!" she chuckles sweetly; this giggle sends her jewelry into a windswept vibration. I smile. The class listens.

"Well, to be born implies the beginning, right?" I ask, and think of what the other students, and teacher, are thinking. A song of charcoal, pencil, and exacto-knife-scratching hums about us. My voice is too loud, and the lights, they are (always) too fluorescent.

"So it means to start all over?" she asks. She is bent at a perfect 90 degrees, gluing pieces to a construction paper precipice.

"I think it's best described in terms of a state change," I offer, "where one goes from a state of not knowing God, to a state of knowing God. Does that make sense?" I say, trying my best to sound kind, or nice, however successfully.

"Hm." she exhales. Her eyelashes blink profusely over her big, darkest black eyes. She has no idea what I mean. I wonder what she's wondering, if anything.

The door swings open and some sunlight sweeps us, interrupting our conversation and allowing it to end. Sara Mahoney walks in, her class just beginning.

"Hey sweet" she says, with her ultimate, resolute kindness. I positively beam at her.

"Hi" I say. She spots me looking at her with a focused fondness, scrunches up her nose quick and inquires:

"Everything ok?" in her I-take-care-of-you-just-because sort of way.

"Uh huh" I say, trailing off in a giggle, and walk to her. Amidst this barren tundra, she is an awful, startling, daisy.

In this moment, there is a yet-unnamed baby in her belly. I greet her with a hug, and receive the light pouring out of her bright grey eyes. We chit chat of church, showers, babies, Jason, projects, cooking, love.

I stare past her sternum and know that beneath it is the wellspring of our mutual Lord. I look over her shoulder at the native woman, and think... nothing. Just a subtle, soft, nothing. My eyes back to Sara, I smile with a mixture of sorrow and surging elation; amongst the walking dead, together in this space, we live.

__


Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” John 3:1-8

It's Not Sprints: a Dialogue of Unspoken Understanding

for Kellee

"It's not sprints!" she exclaims, half-laughing.

I smile.

"Not sprints?" I ask. Though I know what she means, I ask with the sort of child-like meekness that a 7 year old friendship allows.

"It's not sprints..." We pause to consider; she's staring into the ground now, eyebrows up, blinking slowly. I follow her example in this and sigh.

"The race of faith is endurance training!" she declares. I jump.

She's in her element now; eyes squinted and ablaze, she dances out the description of muscles, and arteries, and blood, and whispers of that darkly sacred last repetition that everyone who exercises knows too well.

I am not one of them. I survey her with love and general amusement. Watching her, I imagine that if I didn't speak English, I would think that she was describing a war. She is describing a war. I haven't slept.

"Yeah, it's definitely not sprints- it's more like slow diligence." My voice is an emission which infects the air around us. Her familiar face turns to me with all sobriety and whispers through a smile:

"Perseverance of the saints."

This is love, the force which gently commands: "You are not free not to."

I Have Made Many Resolutions*

If you are anything like me (a sinner) the success rate of your resolutions (which turn out to be nothing more than declarations, or to the contrary, don’t turn out at all) is simply zero. Upon recognizing this, I myself can be known to make the resolution about my resolution, or the re-resolution. In light of my omission, I become wrought with shamefacedness about my general lack of such essential virtues as integrity and self-accountability, and seek to pump up the gusto in one way or another, seeking thoroughness, and production. Months (or years) go by and I, of course, fail again. My reaction to this reality usually ranges from indifference to penance; for the unbeliever, or the unwise Christian (me), the pursuit of my initial resolution can easily end there. However, for those brushed with the garment of mercy, there occurs a moment between the re-resolution failure (often more grand and consequential than the previous) and the final dramatic surrender, an experience that I won’t mind re- (and re-, and re-) experiencing for all of eternity: the realization of God’s grace.

As a visual artist (painter, photographer, tissue-paper-theater-prop-maker) I confront this wonderful moment often. There be I, creating from transcendental intuition in a soundless, timeless vacuum of a studio… Wait… No, there I am: in my studio (bedroom) trying to marry form and content to express the glory of God, holding out a pencil from a few feet back, one eye closed (and twitching), arms crossed, examining my 300^th-or-so attempt at an accurate line, on the verge of giving up completely, when I realize, “Oh yeah! Oh no! God!” This reaction is in no way ideal, though it is revealing. In seeking to do the work of God, I forget to ask God for his Spirit and grace first, the necessary and sufficient movers of any conquest, however personal or global. Though the efforts of my heart are sincere, sincerity is not integrity, is it?

It is in this context that I admit I have begun many blogs after conversion (Spring 2008). It is in the earlier confessed void of integrity that I also admit I have not continued one of them. Blogging has been a lifelong custom for me, probably rooted in the reality of the extrovert (or the neglected younger sister) which cries, “Hear me!” As mentioned, my structuring of this pursuit was doomed from the start as it began with any variety of beginnings other than prayer. Now I find myself in the position of beginning this blog asking for God’s grace for all things concerning it: firstly, that I would actually do it, and do so consistently; that it would serve as a means to the good for all eyes who endeavor upon it, and that through it I may glorify him in all that by which he makes himself known in all his works of creation and providence.

Thanks are definitely in order here.

To God, for all things, every thing, especially these things:

For Mr. G, who was the first to plant and water the Truth within me, and whose work is the building block upon which any work I do will humbly stand.

For Jennifer Bell, who through conversation at the 2009 Women’s Retreat and her almost-novella titled Goodbye, Madagascar, reminded me that I am a writer, and inspired me beyond measure.

For the book It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God (Revised and Expanded) without which I would not be able to make art (or articulate any ideas on it).

For WF’s ACG (Westminster Fellowship’s Arts and Christianity Group), founders, participants and discussion leaders, who are profoundly angelic to me.

For Nancy Wilson and Elizabeth Elliot, which I am honored to reference or mimic with license, as their indirect spiritual daughter.

For the girls, who are my very heart.

For Matt, who in merely knowing him, has shown me who I am.

To exploratory topical paroxysms! (and a thesaurus heartily embraced),

Anastasia

*originally written on the hot, grey night of July 26th