the realm of possibility

This is more the log of a spiritual journey than anything else, and so I relate the daily goings-on to my internal growth and what God is teaching me. Hopefully we're learning every day, becoming more and more the people we're created to be, and finding the joy of that becoming.

Last weekend my daughter, Rebecca, had her "coming out" art show. She's participated in shows before, but this was a small group show in a public gallery, which she planned as a part of her high school senior project. The only thing I really helped her with was framing, which would have been prohibitively expensive had she gone to a framer. It took months of planning and preparation. Beck was clearly in charge and the driving force. Her other friends did good work, but seemed merely along for the ride. I could not help but be proud. She's grown up with art all around her, but this is the kid who used to yell at me for having nudes drying on our screened in porch. I would simply turn them around so her friends couldn't see them.

The world is a funny place and judges human beings and their worth in strange ways. I didn't go into art as a career until I was an adult because my brain is so conditioned by culture to only see the value in things that are "practical" and reap a physical reward. Now I know we have to eat, but a huge hurdle in my choice was understanding that I was created to create. I don't know at this point if I would encourage my daughter to make the arts a career even now. It's a tough road to hoe and I have had to rely on the inner knowledge that my path is what it is beyond any circumstantial evidence to the contrary.

I'm reading Eugene Peterson's book about the life of the Israeli king David. I don't think there is a person alive who does not know the story of David and Goliath, even if they have never opened a Bible. The interesting thing about that story is this-the skinny red-headed Opie tramping around in the Valley of Elah that day was not supposed to do what he did. He was supposed to be delivering cheese to his big brothers the soldiers and go back to the sheep. No one wanted him. When Samuel went to his father Jesse's house to anoint a new king, he went through seven brothers and then asked the man, "Are there any other boys?" The father didn't find his youngest son worthy of mention. His brothers got angry with him at the cheese delivery. Goliath laughed in his face when David challenged him. But the only person on that fateful day who was fulfilling his destiny was a young boy wearing no armor at all, picking 5 smooth stones out of a creek. When everyone told him he couldn't, David knew he could because he was born to be a king.