Hi, All!
Eric and I are back from our road-trippy experience and still in the recovery mode of unpacking and moving back in. I woke up with a start an hour ago wondering which hotel I was at, or whose house I might be sleeping in. Oh -- my own. Which does come with the wonderful advantage of being able to get up and turn lights on (illuminate?) without waking people up.
While this trip to Seattle was fairly unstructured (in contrast to the first time we went, which was built around an emergent church conference) and randomly toddlerized, I came back home with new ideas and a sense of renewed direction. Here are some elements that built together to create this:
The day we arrived in Seattle, I was sitting on a stone bench outside our favorite market (fresh soup all the time... mmmm) in the cool weather while Eric took a walk with Ashton when an older woman came by to discuss my newly acquired baby dreadlocks. She escalated from seeming curiosity at the beginning to outright disgust at the end of our brief interaction, walking away with "Well it looks like hell. If just looks like hell. It really does."
Having my appearance insulted on the first day of a trip to one of my all-time favorite places where I thought I might actually blend in more than I have lately really threw me for a loop. I thought all day about what I should have said to this nasty person instead of the "Thank you... have a nice day" that I loudly tossed at her back as she left. But I knew from the start that what wounded me from it, besides the everyday rudeness of the incident, was the lie it triggered in my head. It seemed to confirm my belief that if I look like crap, I am worthless. And here I've gone and done something to myself that makes me that way permanently.
On Saturday, as you may know from Eric's blog, I was to sing during the communion time at Church of the Apostles, a little Episcopal church plant we've connected up with in Fremont. Long story short, I was so nervous that it didn't go well. I kept hitting chords at the wrong time and was totally out of breath by the end of the song. As Eric said, people probably didn't notice how badly it had gone. But it was just another of those exposing moments for me, much like open mic time at the Boston conference last year where I took the risk and was so nervous I could hardly sing or play. (It's not like singing in front of people is something I never do).
This all lead, however, into a good conversation with Eric about facing the fear in my life. I guess the best way to sum it up here is to say that another lie I tend to believe is that I have nothing good to offer. I respond to this by ashamedly holding myself and my thoughts back. This pattern shows up all over the place in my life. We talked about how the best way to overcome it with the truth that "I do have good things to offer that people want or even need" is to start putting myself forward with far more frequency than I have, in many more ways than I have.
Eric and I met with Paul Mossbarger on Saturday and then with he and his wife Janece Clement on Monday. We were delighted to see that we may have something good to offer him by way of the feedback and discussion he's requested for his next musical adventure. He's already offered us so much in good music writing and in his development of philosophical underpinnings for the writing of music to be used in worship.
Paul's wife, Janece, started painting a couple of years ago and has been putting her art work out there online and communicating with people about it in newsletters and other formats. This was inspiring -- it may be another way for me to step out of fear and shame into life. It was fun for me to find your blog, in fact, Derek, presenting the projects you're working on. That's the same idea... telling people what you're about and giving them the opportunity to care and to enjoy you. I'm thinking about starting a web gallery for Village artists to utilize.
So these are some highlights from the trip. I had a sense of God's hand setting things in place to create a very personalized workshop experience for me. Also enjoyed idyllic weather and lots of time with my little family. |
