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I want to say thank you to all who have journeyed with me, supported me with prayer and finances and in general loved and cared for my heart.
This last couple of weeks we've been talking about just that, our hearts and what it will look like to go back home. I'm dedicating two posts this week to that. This one will focus on saying goodbye to South Africa and a special project that we are doing to express what that means for us. The next post will focus on what I'm looking forward to in coming home and what's on my horizon.
We had a big bash to say goodbye to our friends that we've made here in South Africa. People we've ministered to, ministered with and everyone around and in between. There are pictures of some of our boys who showed up. Unfortunately I just realized that since I was the one taking the pictures there were none of me. Don't worry though, those of you back home will get to see plenty of me really soon!
At one point in the evening we gave the guests a chance to get up and tell stories about their experiences with us. It brought me to tears to hear how our community had impacted the lives of people in this country. I especially had to choke tears back when a couple of our friends from Zimbabwe and one of my friends from a local township spoke about how Jodys and my life had impacted theirs. Sometimes when you're really out in a different culture, especially one as foreign to my culture as South Africa, you feel like you can never make an impact. Sometimes you feel like you could spend 10 years in a place and not make the kind of impact you or others would expect. So it really means the world when you hear that you did make even the slightest impact in someones life.
So, like I said, this past few weeks have been really focused on our hearts, our re-entry into our home culture and all the emotions and realities we are going to face when we get home. One way in which we explore the impact this year has had on our lives is through the Heart Project. The Heart Project is just that, an expression of your heart specifically related to our year here in South Africa. In order to prep for that we spent two days with a local artist that runs a shop and has experience in the area of Art Therapy. She really helped us to learn to express ourselves using any medium we would choose and allowing the art to come intuitively. The reality is that not everyone is an artist in the way we were practicing it, but everyone can create from within themselves. God created us with the ability to create and this was just one way of expressing that.
My Heart Project is still underway and will be finished this week but I figured that I could show you what I created in those two days. Now I feel compelled to give a little disclaimer to the fact that this is not something I normally do. I had fun and in some of these I quite surprised myself while others might not exactly get the best review from an art critic. In the end these were all expressions of what was and is happening inside of me and around me at the moment. I'll give a bit of an explanation of each piece; what was the inspiration, what do the colours and shapes represent, etc. So, here we go.
Day One
This was the first piece. It's called Dawn Breaks Through. We were just given the assignment to paint something just to get into the mood and feel of doing art. I've always had this image in my mind when reading Psalm 57 where is says "I will awaken the dawn" of a beautiful sunny sky meeting and meshing with a starry night sky and so I kind of abstractly threw paint on the paper and this is what came out.
This second one is called This Town is Dead. It's based off of lyrics from a song called Phages from the band The Most Serene Republic. The specific line says "This town is dead from too much living/We'll make our endings from new beginnings". They repeat that multiple times in the song and it was stuck in my head that morning. The colours at the top represent life that seems to be hovering above this dead town.
This one is called Broken Heart (I Wish You Were Here). This one is a bit more personal. An instruction that was given to us before we came to the workshop was to bring an object that had some sort of meaning or value to us. I brought a journal that was given to me by a close friend. In this journal they went through and randomly wrote notes of encouragement, verses, funny quotes, story reminders and just all sorts of stuff that was collected from years of journeying together. I decided I needed some inspiration and just kind of opened it up to a random page and it said this "Tell your dad about what you're doing in South Africa...", and then when you turn the page you see "He is proud of you!". For those of you who don't know, my father passed away tragically when I was 15 and I'm sure you realize that changed my life forever. So I began to think about that and went to get another piece of paper. When I went to pull it out the paper tore a bit on the top. The teacher said not to worry and just grab another one. Still not knowing what I was going to paint I just decided to keep that one. I began with the different colours as a representation of the spirit of Africa, it's bright, vibrant, full of life. Then came the black marks representing the hard times, uncertainty, emotional trials, hard lessons and bad experiences. I wasn't sure where to go from there and I painted the heart in the middle and I realized something. I don't want to just speak into the air to my dad, I want to tell him face to face. I want him to be here. I realized that I will always want that and I will never have that in this life. That's when I finished the rip and it went straight through my heart.
This was my last piece for the first day. It's simply titled Desire. It's a little bit of mixed media (really just a couple of pieces of paper pasted on with some writing on them, the rest is paint). We were asked to think about a question, idea, or anything that we were struggling with or trying to work out and then create something about that with any medium of our choice. I had recently read the book Journey of Desire by John Eldridge and had been struggling with the idea of desire. We get taught so many things in the church about desire that span the whole spectrum, from the idea that all our desires our evil to the thought that God grants all our desires. Those are two extremes, I know, but sometimes it's hard to find where to land. I have so many desires that I'm so afraid to express because I don't know that it's ok to do so. I'm beginning to learn how to dream again, how to imagine. So my desire is in the center here, surrounded by this dark blue that to me represents the unknown. Then there are all these compartments that represent a desire. Somehow they are all being held back by there barriers and I know that only God can help me to really understand and express them.
Day Two
We started the day with a little check-in, the idea being to use any medium to express how you were feeling at the beginning of the day. I'll be honest, I was feeling a little blank and distracted, so when she began to talk about this assignment the first thing that cam to my mind was this green dinosaur. I don't know why, I still can't explain it, but I couldn't get rid of it. So I had to make him. I felt a little silly and then decided to make him a little friend, that's how the little blue guy came about (He was later attacked by a three year old and made into a little ball. Luckily he was saved and I revived him, though you can tell he's still a little mangled!). Then I had some sort of realization. When we wake up, for the most part, we are an emotional blank slate. The first thing that happens to us, be it a memory from the day before, the first greeting from a spouse, whoever (or whatever) lives in your house, or the song on the alarm clock that wakes you up. Sometimes, however, nothing significant happens and you get the rare chance to make a choice about what you get to feel. That day was one of those days for me. So that day, I chose to feel dinosaur. My hope was that focusing on something fun and a little silly would cause me to feel joy. It worked.
Our final assignment was focused on the heart project. At that time I really had no idea what I wanted to do for mine. So I sat for a while and though, and then the last stanza of the Robert Frost poem The Road Not Taken came to mind. It says this:| I shall be telling this with a sigh | |
| Somewhere ages and ages hence: | |
| Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— | |
| I took the one less traveled by, | |
| And that has made all the difference. |
So that was the inspiration of this painting. I know that there are lots of places I could be right now, other countries, states, communities, but I chose this one. The same will be for my heart project. I can choose any medium, any style, any experience to pull from, but I will choose one, and that will make all the difference.
I hope you enjoyed those and they helped you to understand just a bit of what this year has meant for me. In my next blog, as I said, I will be looking forward to what it will mean to be home and what the future holds for me.
