A Splendid Adventure

Welcome to a Splendid Adventure

This writing came from "A Sacred Journey" by Frederick Buechner. As I was reading it, I realized it stated better than I could the reason I began my blog. "What I propose to do now is to try listening to my life as a whole, or at least to certain key moments of the first half of my life thus far, for whatever of meaning, of holiness, of God, there may be in it to hear. My assumption is that the story of any one of us is in some measure the story of us all. For the reader, I suppose, it is like looking through someone else's photograph album. What holds you, if nothing else, is the possibility that somewhere among all those shots of people you never knew and places you never saw, you may come across something or someone you recognize. In fact - for more curious things have happened - even in a stranger's album, there is always the possibility that as the pages flip by, on one of them you may even catch a glimpse of yourself. Even if both of those fail, there is still a third possibility which is perhaps the happiest of them all, and that is that once I have put away my album for good, you may in the privacy of the heart take out the album of your own life and search it for the people and places you have loved and learned from yourself, and for those moments in the past - many of them half forgotten - through which you glimpsed, however dimly and fleetingly, the sacredness of your own journey."

Monday, February 8, 2010

Today's journal page

Created from Monday's Abiding post. (see below)

Abiding Monday

I read this a few days ago in "Listening To Your Life" by Frederick Buechner.

"What I began to see was that the Bible is not essentially, as I had always more or less supposed, a book of ethical principles, of moral exhortations, of cautionary tales about exemplary people, of uplifting thoughts - in fact, not really a religious book at all in the sense that most of the books you would be apt to find in a minister's study or reviewed in a special religion issue of the New York Times book section are religious. I saw it instead as a great, tattered compendium of writings, the underlying and unifying purpose of all of which is to show how God works through the Jacobs and Jabboks of history to make himself known to the world and to draw the world back to himself.

For all its vast diversity and unevenness, it is a book with a plot and a plot that can be readily stated. God makes the world in love. For one reason or another the world chooses to reject God. God will not reject the world but continues his mysterious and relentless pursuit of it to the end of time. That is what he is doing by choosing Israel to be his special people. That is what he is doing through all the passion and poetry and invective of the prophets. That is why history plays such a crucial part in the Old Testament - all those kings and renegades and battles and invasions and apostasies - because it was precisely through people like that and events like those that God was a work, as, later, in the New Testament, he was supremely at work in the person and event of Jesus Christ. Only "is at work" would be the more accurate way of putting it because......his work goes on still, of course, and at one and the same time the biblical past not only illumines the present but becomes itself part of that present, part of our own individual pasts. Until you can read the story of Adam and Eve, of Abraham and Sarah, of David and Bathsheba, as your own story, Muilenburg (one of Frederick's teachers) said, you have not really understood it. The Bible, as he presented it, is a book finally about ourselves, our own apostasies, our own battles and blessings........"

It is a love story!
A story of God's pursuit of us,
of me,
of you!
We are a people
broken,
flawed,
hardhearted,
searching,
yearning,
desiring,
tender,
hurting,
confused,
as well as,
compassionate,
giving,
loving (as best as we can)
creative,
as Brennan Manning says, "A glorious ruin."

God continues to pursue.
I am thankful!

Blessings!

Saturday, February 6, 2010

more journal playing

A few more journal pages, some have a few words - but all are awaiting more.
I have been out of sorts the past few days!
Thank you for you kind affirming words, they have blessed me more than you can know!

Friday, February 5, 2010

A few journal backgrounds

Monday, February 1, 2010

Graffiti

Why do I love graffiti???
Just playing, but I think I really like it! :)

Abiding Monday

Last week was a restless week for me - it continues. I seem to do everything else, but quiet my heart long enough to spend any quality time with my Lord. I wrote in my journal Thursday, "Why do I hide from you? Why do I jump to do anything other than spend time with you?" I wonder if there is a heart attitude I do not want to face.

Does anyone else ever feel this way??

I was spending some time in Psalm 63 last week. Verse 8 says, "My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me."

Cling.

To adhere closely
stick to
hold tight
grasping
embracing
cleave
remain close
to remain attached

Similar to abide.

What do I cling to? Is it a list of rules, is it man made traditions?

Verse 5 says, "My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips."

Satisfy.

To put an end to a desire, want, need by sufficient or ample provision.

Jesus says, "I am sufficient enough for you."

I cling to Jesus!

So, where does that leave me. You know I don't have any specific answer to my restlessness, but I do have clues. I have been here enough times that I know usually it means there is something I need to address with my Lord. Or he is wanting to take me a little deeper into my heart. I am learning to not fight or ignore the restlessness. It is uncomfortable, but it is necessary.

I fear this entry is as disjointed, as I feel, but it is what I have for today.
Sometimes our hearts are messy.

Blessings!

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Something New

It is interesting how the majority of the paintings I like start out something entirely different. I think in part, it is all the layers that I end of with. Also, I like to just begin the painting and letting it just evolve on it's own.