Painting the book of Joel

When I first heard we were going to paint I was a little worried. But then when professor Corrigan said we do not have to be good at painting I was kind of excited to do something different in class…..I am not artistic at all. So when I was thinking of something to paint I figured I better go more the abstract route.

I decided to pick colors to represent what was happening in the book of Joel. I reread through Joel and was trying to narrow down what I wanted my painting to represent.

As I began to paint I realized my paints were not normal paints. They were oils and the paper brushes I bought were for Acrylic. So the paint was not spreading to easily the paint was more like a clay. I then resorted to finger painting, using my finger to spread the colors since the brushes were not working.  But I actually kind of liked that my paints weren’t normal paints. I feel it gave my picture some added texture to it.

The top corner of my painting starts off with a bright yellow and a little of green mixed in there. This was suppose to represent a prosperous time for Israel then it moves into the darker colors and the black which represents the thick darkness; the drought, war, famine, starvation, fire that devoured the pastures, tress, and fields,  people in anguish,… then it moves back to the yellow/ bright colors which represent the deliverance. 

The two lines from Joel that I decided to focus on were.

“But the Lord is a refuge for His people

And a stronghold to the sons of Israel”

If you were to look closely at the picture you would see that there is a yellow undertone that you can see even through the dark colors. So the yellow covers the whole page. Just because there is black paint on a part of the page it does not mean that the yellow color is not there… It is suppose to represent how Gods is always there with his people even through the dark times. Even though it may have been a time of war, famine, or judgment… He never left them.   

The Book of Joel

Poetry is used alot through out the bible. and imagery is used to help capture the image of God. I think it is important to view some scripture as literature as you might miss something if you don't.
I actually never read the book of Joel before. In class on Tuesday we were asked to reread parts of the book aloud outside. This at first i thought was going to be very strange. But I did like sitting outside and reading. I felt it was a lil more power being able to read it peacefully and take time to pause. Although i do not like reading aloud i still enjoyed the peacefulness of reading outside by the lake.

Instead of writing a min of 300 words i think pictures can say 1000 words so i decided to take sections of the book of Joel and post pictures that may represent it...

THE DEVASTATION OF LOCUSTS

Joel talks about how locust destroy the nation devouring everything in their path, leaving nothing behind.

I think the description of locust swarming in can be compared to a time of war. ..

Starvation and Drought

Deliverance Promised

   "For the pastures of the wilderness have turned green
For the tree has borne its fruit
The fig tree and the vine have yielded in full."

 

Darkness, Questions, Poetry and Spiritual Hope

I liked the quote in Darkness, Questions, Poetry and Spiritual Hope that said "One can never understand what hope is really about unless one wrestles with despair. The same is ture with faith. There has to be some serious doubt, otherwise faith becomes merely a dogmatic formula, an orthodoxy, a way of evading the complexity of life rather than engaging honestly with life." I think reading the book A Grief Observed really brings this statement to life. I think reading this statement before i read and discussed "A Grief Observed" would not of had as much effect or meaning. But after reading about C.S. Lewis' struggles, it really brings a deeper understanding. "Darkness complicates our comfortable Sunday school answers..." It causes us to ask questions that we may not be able to answer. Darkness causes us to question things we might of been so sure of before.
I also like the point of he made about the question of "Where is God?" is much different from "Where is God in the Darkness?". Its would be easy to answer the question "where is God?" when things in our life are going great. But hard to answer when we are going through "darkness" in our lives...
I also have learned as Professor Corrigan has pointed out that important questions create silence. Important questions need thought and meditation. you can not quickly come up with an answer for these questions. We need to pause, listen to the question, repeat the question, and live the question as a process. Its ok not to have an immediate answer to questions.
Jesus promises us "I will never leave you. The presence of God with us in the dark makes it possible for us to sit with the question of darkness without being destroyed by madness."
"Unless we face the darkness, we have nothing to offer those who are hurting and we have no resources for ourselves when we get our own turn at pain"

A Grief Observed

 In class we talked about how a house of cards is fragile, carefully constructed, and protected. Now after doing that demonstration rereading through certain parts of the book it gives me a little more of a vivid picture of what the situation was really like...

On  page 37 C.S. Lewis wrote "The case is too plain. If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards. The faith which 'took these things into account' was not faith but imagination. The taking them into account was not real sympathy. If i had really cared ,as i though i did, about the sorrows of the world, i should not have been so overwhelmed when my own sorrow came...." Then later on pg 38 he says "that if my house was a house of cards, the sooner it was  knocked down the better"... I believe that to be true if it were to be similar in something in my life.... If something in my life was not as i thought it to be, the sooner it is realized the better.  

On page 52 C.S Lewis talks about how God knew that his temple was a house of cards. And His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down. 

God already knows, he did not "knock it down" because He needed to know but God wanted to show him. And sometimes it takes something extreme for us to realize God is trying to get our attention. 

I have learned we may not always realize why things are happening at first. And we may not understand why God does certain things. And sometimes we may not see any possible good coming out of a situation… But I know I have to just continue to trust him and know that He has my best interest at hand. 

A visit to Lakeview, Roselawn and Tiger Flowers Cemetery

I went to the Lakeview, Roselawn and Tiger Flowers cemetery complex for this fieldtrip, and I stayed there for at least 40 minutes.

A visit to Roselawn

So I made two attempts to visit this cemetery. One was a success and one not so much. So I will begin with my first attempt. My roommate was going to go with me Sunday late afternoon but i ended up having to work so we decided to go Monday after she got off work. So on monday by the time we were able to leave it was getting close to sunset, which i was ok with. I thought, oh nice i will be able to watch the sunset, it will be nice... but on our way we get a little lost so by the time we got there it was already dark. But we decided to go in any way so that way i could complete my assignment.  So we drive in and leave our cars parked towards the back. Then we begin to walk around and try to read different tombstones and observe the grave sites (but it was kind of difficult as it was so dark). As we are walking around we notice a huge toe truck that drives in. So a little worried we walk back to our cars and now the toe truck is parked behind us because he can not get by. The big truck driver gets out and begins talking to us and gives us a weird story as to why he is there... So we decide that it probably isn't the best idea to stay in the dark cemetery with a random big truck driver. So we peace out and i decide i will have to complete the assignment in the morning.

So I wake up early the next morning and go to the cemetery and this is how my second visit goes....
It was a beautiful sunny morning. I could feel the light breeze blowing as I walked around. As I reread about the man caring for his dead mothers grave cite on page 21 in A Grief Observed it brings a vivid picture to my head. I could picture this man walking over to a grave cite of his beloved one and caring for it. I could imagine him caring for the grounds upon which she was buried and as he was doing this he would just talk to her. This was his way of “visiting” her and preserving a symbol of her. This might have been his way of dealing with the grief of his loss.

I walked through the cemetery reading different tombstones observing the names and dates. I noticed some lived very long lives almost reaching 100 and some only a few months. Each tombstone/ grave sight was unique in itself; being of all different shapes, sizes, and colors and different writing on each. Some had flowers some did not. Some were so old you could barely read the writing… I let my mind wonder as I observed the different grave cites. I couldn’t help but think of all different types of questions, like wondering what kind of life they lived. For those that lived to be almost 100yr did they feel that they lived life to their fullest or were things still incomplete… why were some lives cut so short?…. As I saw the tombstones of some that died that didn’t even reach the age 20 or some that were only yet a child. I would wonder what happened, did the death/loss hit their family abruptly and unexpected or was it anticipated such as them having an illness (similar to C.S. Lewis’s experience, in Grief Observed). I  also wondered are these grave cites still visited? Are they still remembered or forgotten? What are they remembered for? How long passed until someone stopped coming and replacing flowers?

Fortunately I have not lost anyone extremely close to me. But I could not imagine the feeling and grief I would go through if I were to. I think its hard to truly understand what it was like for C.S. Lewis and the man caring for his mothers grave cite until you have gone through similar things.

Grief Observed

I started reading the first chapter (of A Grief Observed) and for some reason I was kind of lost . I was not making any connection with the literature at all. It felt like I was just reading the words on the page so I could then flip the page and eventually get to the end of the chapter. Instead of continuing in this manner I decided to go back and read the introduction…After reading the introduction I had more an understanding of what this book would be about. It set me up to get into to the book and I feel I will be more connected with what the literature is trying to convey. I now have a little bit of background of the characters… It kind of painted a picture for me… and now I can begin the book, and begin at ch.1 again… (I probably would of known to read the introduction if I was an avid reader. But unfortunately I have not been such, so at least now I know that introductions to books can be helpful.)

I think everyone deals with grief in their own type of way. No matter how similar a situation no one else besides that person can fully understand the emotions and what they are going through.
Extreme Grief is not something that I have had to personally go through. Some minor things along the road but nothing major. As I have all my immediate family still living. Except my grandfather who passed away when I was a young child.
Its hard to say how I would react to a situation that has not come yet. I know I would greatly grieve for those that i love dearly. But I think I may deal with grief differently if I loose a loved one that I know is a Christian vs. a loved one that is not a Christian.

A quote from the introduction stuck out to me “… for the greater the love the greater the grief and the stronger the faith the more savagely will satan storm its fortress.”. I think this is so true.

Theme: A Work of Artifice

A Work of Artifice
By: Marge Piercy
After generally reading the poem I think we could agree that the poem is about the oppression of women. But if you go back and read and consider how meaning is embodied by the text…. then a deeper level of insight and appreciation can be revealed. Piercy describes the “natural self” as being restrained and held back from the full potential possible. And she describes how culture praises the artificial construct...
I do think our culture has come a long way since this poem was written. But Piercy was expressing a culture conflict of her time. She described a bonsai tree that had the potential to grow eighty feet tall but instead it was put into an attractive pot and was taken care of and it was expected to produce certain things and never given the chance to reach its full potential. But was told this is your “purpose/ nature”; this is your full potential. This compared to the oppression of women how they were expected to be housewives and raise children and nothing more. They were just expected to look pretty, having a family and taking care of the children was more important than, pursing an education and possibly reaching her full potential.
The author carefully uses selected words to enrich the readers sense of the theme.
I think it is sometimes easy to read through something and not fully embrace a deeper level of insight of the authors message/theme. Careful thinking upon the meanings of words can enrich the readers sense of what constitutes theme.
Considering both the literal meaning of a word and what the word implies emotionally can enrich the reading of the literature. Also consider what it signifies and what they suggest….

The approach to texts matters as much as the texts themselves.
I agree with the book (page 182) that when we read exclusively for a particular kind of instuction, we’re not really reading literature.

What is Love?

Does everyone have a different opinion of love?

Can love make you crazy?

Is love an absolute?

Love seems to be the theme of a lot of stories.  I feel like Love is the most used/ talked about theme in Literature, movies, drama’s, TV shows, and music.  I believe we talked about in class how love and death are the main tensions in literature. I feel like most movies produced today has some kind of story line in at that involves Love. I think the same thing for music. I would say a majority of songs on my playlist involve Love or the tensions that go along with love. But without love our lives would be empty. And we would be lost without love.

I  did not understand the ending of “What we talk about when we talk about Love” . But I do think Terri had a distorted picture of what love is. As her previous husband was described as beating her and putting fear into her life and others. This is not love.  I think some people get manipulated into thinking that is what love is; that they are abusive because they “love” so much they cant control their anger. Or that “love” drove them to do whatever they did…Some also might fall for this because that is the type of “love” they are exposed to… such as an abusive parent. Their parent is supposed to be the one that “loves” them and that is how they show it….  Love wants the best for the other person and cares for them.( I Corinthians 13 describes what true love is the best...)

Now there is the question can love make you crazy? Has “love” ever driven you or someone you know to do something that you normally would not do (whether it be “good” or “bad”)?