Third week of Advent: we could use a little joy

23
Dec

We’re falling a little behind now, but I think it’s still worth it to write about each of the weeks of Advent rather than skipping one in order to catch up. Plus I like joy — who doesn’t like joy?? [Note: if you want to read posts on joy from previous years you can read one here, and another one here. If you’re behind on the Advent posts from this year, you can read Hope here and Love here.]

The thing is, in the past I’ve been taught that joy is a long-lasting dispositional quality, as contrasted with happiness, which is situational. I don’t disagree with that, and we all know people who are almost never positive about anything, regardless of the circumstances good or bad. So what does it matter if someone is joyous or happy, if someone is filled with joy or with happiness? I mean, are these cows joyful, or just happy (or on the verge of a stampede) and ultimately does it matter?

I suppose one could argue that they’re happy, because they’ve been released into the spring grass and they will acclimate and probably won’t continue bouncing around with glee. All I’m trying to suggest is that we don’t need to have disdain for their happiness. It’s not “less than” because it’s circumstantial. I feel much the same way as these cows when it comes to springtime sun and fresh air. Or this dog who learns to be a dog…

Again, is it happiness, is it cultivating joy, and aside from being in a healthy safe place, how important is that distinction?

I only watched like the first 5 minutes of the Paul McCartney video above, and it made my heart all warm and fuzzy, so I hope you feel the same way after watching some of it. There’s an aspect of gratitude in it that seems conducive to joy. In my experience, more grateful one is, the easier it is to find joy.

I’ve been working on an art page for a while, and I think it’s done enough to share now. I was trying to capture that feeling of joy and elation, while also using specific materials that I felt were important but challenging. There’s something about the childhood joy of getting a choice swing all to yourself without anyone pressuring you to give them a turn, when you can go as high as you want, day dreaming and imagining all sorts of adventures. If you notice something unusual about the chains on the swing, it’s because they’re made from insulin pump tubing. 🙂

|||

The coming of Jesus is an event of gratitude and joy, especially when Jesus is viewed as the great healer, the reconciler, the one who calls all people unto himself. In the United States the white evangelical church focuses so heavily on humanity’s fallen-ness, God’s wrath, and the idea of Jesus as a blood sacrifice to atone for people’s sins, there’s not much room to pay attention to how Jesus lived his life…we’re too focused on his death.

There are other positions, such as the role of Jesus as example of how to live a life, how to treat people unlike ourselves, and even as a great unifier of all things. Richard Rohr has some interesting things to share on this concept — Jesus as the Cosmic Christ. [He’s also written about the idea of the first half of our lives being all about building containers for meaning, and the second half of our lives being a process of dismantling those containers. That’s a wonderful head scratcher for anyone over 35!] But again, the evangelical church in the United States doesn’t talk much about that, since the going theology is the exclusivity of Christianity.

However, how much more joyous is it to think of Jesus as making all things new, including humanity? Definitely something to think about.

What’s bringing you joy this season?

Second week of Advent: Love for all peoples

11
Dec

Love is the theme of the second week of Advent and Advent seems a good time to deal with some theological concepts that have troubled me. (That might not be your first inclination when you think about love but stick with me here.) I’m interested to hear your perspective on this, so consider this an invitation to a conversation over the next couple weeks.

An original peekaboo page about love.

Here’s what’s peeking through the top layer.

The concept of Christmas is that we celebrate the coming to earth and infant birth of Jesus ( we can get into the immaculate conception another time). Good stuff right? I mean, a baby is a snuggly addition and the Bible was certainly due for a redemption story after the way many babies were treated in its pages, including Herod killing all the infant boys in an attempt to protect his throne from the one who’d been prophesied to overthrow it.

That little fleecy diapered baby didn’t happen in a vacuum; he was born into a Jewish family in the Middle East.

Read that again more slowly: a Jewish family in a country in the Middle East.

We might try to acknowledge this, but we only really think about it at Christmas time, and after that, in just about every single church I’ve ever been to, Jesus grows up into a hockey playing, lutefisk eating descendent of Vikings.

Foreigners, immigrants, migrants, asylum seekers, peoples who were in North America before western explorers “discovered” it, people of different faith traditions — all those people are somehow different, in many people’s view, than a teenage middle eastern couple looking for a place where they can find shelter and deliver a baby. We’re so quick to cast people as “other” and so quick to develop convenient amnesia about the roots of Christian faith. We shouldn’t forget the lessons of love for all peoples that we learn at Christmas time just because a couple months have passed and the remnants of pine needles have finally been picked out of the carpet.

|||

When we talk about love, or the idea of Jesus being “love come down” it’s way too easy to whitewash Jesus’s heritage and background. He could have been put into any family in the entire world. But he was placed into a middle eastern family that had no trouble blending into African surroundings when they were on the run. White/Caucasian churches tend to overlook that information, if not deliberately then passively, and then discover it strikes them as surprising (or even offensive) when anyone suggests Jesus could be anything other than Caucasian. Even though much Western art has portrayed Jesus as a white man with blue eyes above his flowing beard, the Bible is quite specific about the lineage of Jesus. This Jewish/MiddleEastern/African Jesus should not come as a shock for people who spend so much time insisting on a literal reading of the Bible.

If it ruffles our feathers to think about God choosing to send Jesus in the form of a person with a brown body, people who are caucasian (like me — specifically Scandinavian and European descent) need to take a look at our own biases. One of the best checks of my own implicit bias is a little self reflection when I see imagery that agitates me or seems quite different than what I’ve always seen. Why does it strike me as unusual? Is the usual way I see it an accurate portrayal? What do I think is the “right” way for something to be portrayed?

The counter argument to acknowledging Jesus’ lineage is usually something along the lines of saying, “Well, I don’t see color,” or “Why does it matter where he was born since he’s God and is now all spirit and doesn’t have a body anyway,” or to lean heavily on the Middle Eastern but definitely not African delineation. If it’s so unimportant, then why get discombobulated by the idea that he wasn’t a fair skinned person? If it’s so unimportant, why make sure to point out he wasn’t from Africa? Might I take the liberty of pointing out that Egypt is in Africa and when they were on the run Jesus’ family took off to Egypt?

|||

If love has come in the person of a non-white person, what does that say about my position as a white female or my action and advocacy regarding the treatment of our brothers and sisters of color? If love has come in the person of a Jewish man, what does it say about people’s tolerance of anti-semitic rhetoric, even in the form of old jokes, or hate-filled actions?

What does it say about us white folks if we can only follow someone with the same skin color as us?

It’s something we should stop and consider, and Advent is an appropriate time for such reflection.

Are you used to the idea of God as a white dude with a long flowing beard? Or Jesus as a blond-haired, blue-eyed Norwegian?

Want to read Advent posts from previous years? Here’s my post on Love from last year and then here’s one from two years ago. And if you missed last week’s post on Hope, you can read it here.

Advent and the first week: Hope

8
Dec

Advent is the anticipation of Christmas, a time of preparation. Different traditions have slightly different liturgical themes for each week, but it has deep historical roots which you can read about here

Wreaths and colored candles

The Advent wreath is a circle (are there wreaths that are NOT circles, and wouldn’t a straight wreath count as a swag?) and has five candles. Each of these candles is symbolic and each week, one more candle is lit.

But did you know circular Advent wreaths date back to the time of Luther, and they represent God’s endlessness and eternity? Well there ya go. Although I must say it feels ironic to use something like pine boughs to represent something without end, since when we’ve taken down our live trees they’ve left at least half their needles on the floor where even after I’ve swept multiple times they lurk like little booby traps until spring.

The candles of an Advent wreath are usually purple or royal blue, with one being pink or rose (we’ll talk about that in a future post) and the final one being white to symbolize the purity of Jesus.

Reality

While I like the idea of Advent, (and appreciated being pregnant with all three of my children during Advent — it was an especially poignant time) many times it feels like another commitment within an already busy time. And as much as I want to focus in the whole reason why we’re celebrating in the first place…sometimes it just doesn’t come together.

So here my tree sits, cut at the tree farm and decorated with white lights… and nothing more.

That’s just the reality of it.

[Note: the tree just got fully decorated last night but there are still not many other decorations up yet.]

Hope

This first week of Advent is Hope, and I hoped to get this post up earlier this week but it’s taken me this long! That’s again where the idealized (fantastical) reality and the actual reality meet.

This is a slippery topic because I’m an optimist. There’s almost always a bright side, a silver lining to find. And I’ve found that tendency can venture dangerously close to delusion. But here’s a small reflection on Hope.

Hope

It’s a hearty, determined tree, that’s lived through many storms, the kind that seems ready to topple but each spring it leafs out, its branches lusty for the sun and warm breeze.

It’s a fragile, resilient fiddle head fern pushing up through the brown leaf clutter, sure there’s something brighter on the other side.

It’s power creates a well-meaning denial, a befuddlement in the face of facts,

a moving violation – hit broadside from blind alley, totaling the car and leaving you with a limp.

It’s one more try, one more tactic, one more appointment, one more meeting, one more new year’s resolution, once more into the breech because

This time

This time might be the one,

And we just need one.

We’d take more, but we just need one.

Do you take much time for Advent? How do you set the tone for your holiday season? I’d love to hear about your traditions!

End of summer and changing seasons

25
Aug

We’re in the last weeks of summer, trying to ignore the drumbeat of fall and school starting up again.

We can only ignore it for so long, and this coming week is a major reality check for us, with three different school orientations (one of them being for our very first HIGH SCHOOL student. Hold me.).

We’ve been trying to squeeze out every last drop of summer so of course we had to incorporate a couple excursions.

One was a trip to the zoo, where they had a big art installment of sculptures, all made from materials that had washed up on the Pacific Ocean shore. It might have been depressing, except that the sculptures were so playful. Here’s just one to give you an idea…

I mean, come on! How great is that??

We took one other excursion recently…

The State Fair. (View from the Skyride.) We HAD to do the State Fair.

We’ll head to the cabin again and also probably do some more swimming since the children don’t even care if it’s hot enough to swim. They’re die-hards. They also don’t care if there’s a breeze to break up the humidity that makes their mother’s skin prickle and hair poof. It’s good that we’re coming to the end of summer because I’m running low on sunscreen and the kids’ swimsuits are starting to lose their elasticity.

|||

With Get Messy, my very favorite art journaling community, the last three weeks have been kicking off the Season of Seasons. The challenge is to use a found journal, which is what you call it when you use for a journal something which is not a journal. Here’s what I came up with:

(I couldn’t resist working on that front one before I thought to take this pic.)

I’ve had these appliance manuals sitting in a drawer in the laundry room. They’ve moved with us from other houses, some going back almost 20 years, and never once have I referenced any of them. Why the heck do I still have them in the first place??? Apparently it’s so I can use them as found journals this season.

Recently I got a pad of this crazy material called Duralar. It’s similar to a plastic transparency from back in the day when teachers used overhead projectors rather than smart boards. Each sheet is really thin and apparently they can accept wet media? What is this magic?? It’s especially good for alcohol inks and markers, or so they say. I’m still figuring it out, but in the meantime I’m having so much fun allowing water and watercolors or inks to play and interact.

See what I mean?!

So besides ignoring the start of school, that’s what’s been going on here. As always, a big thanks for letting me share with you.

Fill me in on YOUR end-of-summer; how’s it feel to shift into fall?

So this’ll come around every year, huh?

25
Jun

Here we are, getting to the end of June. It’s a great time of year, people are past those initial sunburns and more dutiful with that sunscreen application. We’ve found the beach towels and swim toys, the lake water is finally starting to warm up, and the trees are stretching all the way to their fingertips with leaves. Birds frantically feed their peeping chicks, young squirrels are ripping around the yard playing tag, and dogs are finding more cooling comfort on the kitchen tiles.

Ain’t summer great?

I’d mostly answer with a resounding yes, but I’d keep one silent popsicle of ‘no’ stashed in the back of the freezer because I know this month holds a difficult anniversary. Today is that day.

Anniversary isn’t quite right, but what do you call the date of a loved one’s passing?

We’re long past the funeral, and we had a ceremony to commit my dad’s ashes, so now what do we do on this date?

I got curious if other countries mark the date of someone’s passing. I came across some things that would have been difficult four years ago, so if your grief is new you might not want to read how other countries do funerals (or you might find it fascinating. For me it would have depended on the day. Take care of yourself). Also, as makes sense in our abbreviated culture, people have morphed death and anniversary into, you guessed it, deathiversary. I can’t decide if it’s clever and useful, or just dumb and trite.

Here’s one site that had some ideas and very practical advice about marking the day, and yes, they use “deathiversary” fluently.

It was interesting to see how other cultures mark these dates, and how for some — but not all — it’s tied into ancestor worship. Is that really that different than Western cultures saying that someone is smiling down on you from heaven?

|||

For one of the first anniversaries of my dad’s passing, it fell during a very busy week. Luckily, at the time, I worked at a place where I ran into friends, and especially this week, two of my dearest friends would be accessible. I bought a few of the world’s best apple fritters because my dad loved them, picked up coffee (which he also loved), and my friends and I sat together in the grass for a few minutes. It wasn’t the only thing done to mark that day, but it felt good to do something with people from outside my own family, with friends who are family but in a different way. It was almost like an acknowledgment that this loss existed outside just my family. It was them seeing the realness of loss for us.

This year?

I’m just not sure.

|||

The expectation is sometimes more difficult than the actual date, because it’s just one more day he’s not here. Just like all the other days he’s not here. There’s really nothing that makes it any different than all the other days of the year, except if you focus on a calendar.

There are times when that calendar focus is not helpful, especially if you think you’re somehow supposed to feel something different, or there’s supposed to be some breakthrough. For a while, I know my mom diligently marked the time from dad’s passing, maybe as a reassurance to herself, maybe as a comfort to think she could be closer to it being easier to go on without him. Because there’s this prevailing idea that it gets better after a certain amount of time. It’s not inaccurate, but it also sets up the bereaved to put their hopes in a certain time frame, as if one day they’ll wake up and their grief will be magically lifted.

That sounds so much better than the reality of it being a slow shuffle towards mostly less-hard.

Lately, I’ve been watching Grey’s Anatomy, because apparently this is what I do. I watched it in the year after Dad died, and I think it was the permission I wanted to cry…on the surface it was about someone else’s fictional pain but it was really my own.

Last night I visited my mom on a beautiful evening. We sat outside with a glass of wine and a tasty tapas-type plate she had thoughtfully put together. And we talked.

This morning, I got coffee and donuts.

I wore special sandalwood beads that remind me of the travels Dad made and the beliefs he deeply held.

I’ve exchanged texts with my family and we’ve remembered sweet moments together.

I’m going to paint for a little while this afternoon.

Tonight we will have giant hot fudge and banana milkshakes (well, I will. The rest of my little fam will probably have something else. But there will be ice cream.)

Maybe I’ll feel sad. Maybe I’ll feel numb. But I will carve out space to remember and give myself grace to feel whatever comes.

Grace.

Love.

Friendship.

Family.

Good eats.

Yup, that sounds like my dad.

Thanksgiving and Connections

21
Nov

This week is Thanksgiving, and it’s a time when we often think about gratitude and connect with family.

Original art by TC Larson

For the past couple months I’ve been working in a journal I made myself, all with a focus on connections as part of an online art journal community called Get Messy. Perfect, isn’t it? I think I’ve mentioned it here before, but the Get Messy group is a lot of fun to be a part of, and the convenience of an international online community means there’s almost always someone else working in an art journal at any time of day or night.

With the focus on connections it seemed appropriate to share my journal here, especially since I was surprised by the way family emerged as a theme. I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised, but I began by approaching it from a much broader perspective so when the old photos kept calling to me (these were only replicas of random vintage photos, not originals) it was unexpected.

The other part that surprised me was the way I felt pushed to incorporate photos of myself as well. I almost never do this. So I’m sure you’ll understand when I say this journal ended up feeling pretty personal.

There are many reasons to be grateful this Thanksgiving, even in the midst of a year that for many has been quite challenging. I think when we choose to focus our attention on those beautiful things, those which call forth our best qualities and values, we can always find examples of these in real time. It’s a great week to do this!

Here are some of my favorite pages and a quick two-part video flip through.

Find me on Instagram: @tclmn

Original artwork by TC Larson

Find more of my pages on Instagram: @tclmn

Here’s wishing you a very happy Thanksgiving!

Renewed Shenanigans

21
Feb

Since it’s a strange weathered-February, it seems right to finally do an update here. I haven’t been trying to maintain radio silence; I’ve been moving into an expanded role in a job that’s been developing on the side for a bit. It’s exciting and I’m now part owner of a small business, which shows you how little screening they do of these sorts of things.

That’s only part of it, and I could use your input with another part.

As you know, I’ve got a bee in my bonnet for creative experiences. Painting has been at the forefront for longer than I anticipated. My dad getting sick and then losing him made it virtually impossible to tap into the writing that I had identified with for so long. I’ve (mostly) accepted that.

[Shhh…I’ll tell you something extra true: there are moments when I wonder about lost-time or opportunities I might have missed. That’s my first impulse. Once I notice that impulse, I remind myself that’s coming from a place of scarcity and a place of worry that there are a finite number of opportunities available, a.k.a. if I don’t get one of these opportunities they’ll run out before my turn comes round again. I don’t have to accept that mentality, and I don’t. There’s more than enough to go around, for me and for you too.]

I’ve allowed myself to explore and develop other ways of expressing the roiling thoughts and feelings that have come in these years of wrestling. Paints, scribbling, ripping paper, smearing color – these have become a language without words.

Original mixed media art by TC Larson (that’s me!)

This is good; it’s good to have tools with which you approach the world. It gave me new ways to work through difficult situations and was useful then when, about six months after losing my dad, my daughter (I call her Princess Teacup here) was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes.

The diagnoses is permanent and it has impacted, well, everything. It’s not that you don’t get used to it – you do. It’s that by necessity, it changes so much of the rhythm of your life.

Okay back to you, Dear Reader. You can see that I’m a little all over the place. I could really use your input.

Painting, writing, creativity.
Type 1 Diabetes
Family, friends, silliness, and motherhood.
Encouragement, faith, spirituality, crabby wrestling with the Church.

These are all things that flow through my life. Does it make you crazy to hear about ALL of them? Do you wish this space was more focused? Do you wish you knew you could come here and get a daily pep talk? Do you get tired of hearing about grief and loss? Would you like to read snippets of stories I’m working on, now that I’m writing again?

This is when I turn to you, Dear Reader, and I’d really value what you have to say. Speak freely now, friends. I want to hear it. Your input can help shape the direction I go. I plan revamp things in order to better make this space reflect some of the shifts that have happened, and hearing from you would really help me.

Even though it’s been a while, I want you to know I appreciate you and the opportunity (there’s that word again) to share here with you.

Now get outside and enjoy this bizarre February heat wave. We’re all suspicious of it and are pretty sure it can’t last. Remember, the high school winter sports finals haven’t happened yet, and that’s when we here in Minnesota almost always get hit with a blizzard (click here for proof!). Don’t put away those snow shovels yet.

Since I’m already being “that person” and asking for things, I’m just gonna go for all the bananas and put this here: Donate and support us at the JDRF One Walk Fundraiser.

United in Loss

22
Apr

Prince passed away yesterday. My husband texted me and asked if I had heard the news.

His joke landed flat.

I told him to quit joking because it wasn’t funny.

Especially because it wasn’t a joke.

I grew up in the height of Prince’s celebrity, and followed his evolution as an artist. I lived in Minneapolis and in Chanhassen during his rise to stardom, so I’ve absorbed exposure to him through the air, through the water. A couple friends and I used to try and discover his Paisley Palace in the backwoods of Chanhassen, thinking we could catch a glimpse of the mysterious rock star.

You can’t live here, especially having been through the 80’s, and not feel some kind of hometown pride about him. He changed his name to a unpronouncable symbol as an act of defiance, people. You don’t just do that without earning props. His talent was legendary and his dedication to Minneapolis was undeniable.

These are my people y’all.

People come out to honor Prince with singing.

Death comes to us all, doesn’t it.

Too soon, too soon.

Sending the kids Alone

27
Aug

In the last few weeks of summer, we finally got to the peak of summer experiences: camp. We had already gone biking, played basketball, soccer, and foursquare, read books in the hammock, stargazed, gotten bites from mosquitos, gone to the zoo, spent time at the cabin, and pretty much worn out our swim suits. We had saved the pinnacle of summer for the last portion, and the build-up had reached a fevered pitch.

We sent out oldest to his first full week at overnight summer camp. For the first time we sent our youngest to spend each day at a day camp. And our middle child got to have a few special activities since he was put on a waiting list for overnight camp but didn’t get in, poor guy.

We had already expanded our “trust circle” this summer to include people caring for our kids all day one day since I took my first outside job in 10 years. That was challenging enough. But sending two out of three to be in the care of someone else (and one of them for night time to be in the care of someone we had not screened and who was probably someone with no children of his own! What does he know about looking out for our child?! What are his qualifications — that he tells a good campfire story or roasts a good marshmallow?!) required some serious trust work.

I didn’t intend to become a protective parent. There are probably some who think I’m not protective enough. I mean, I let the kids climb trees and hammer nails and walk the dog outside alone. My husband and I are very choosey about the kids’ media intake, and some of that was informed by the kids’ own sensitivities. Have you ever tried turning down the sound for intense parts of kids shows/movies? We couldn’t understand why the kids didn’t like certain kids shows when they were younger and it turned out that the music used to “heighten the scene” made the kids stressed out — shows are way less intense without the soundtrack.

As they get older, there are things they’re going to have to do alone. I get that, I truly do. And I trust them (mostly) to make good choices and think before they act (mostly).

Two of the three went away for at least a day at a time. It went smoothly and they had a great time. They were able to make new friendships and create memories that they’ll have into the future. They expanded their base of experience and see the world just a bit larger now than they did before. These are good things.

So as we prepare for school to start, why does it feel like I’m sending them out to battle giants with only plastic swords?

This is a post for Five Minute Friday, hosted by Kate Motaung, which I’m only getting to today. Five Minute Sunday? Doesn’t have the same ring to it. Search Five Minute Friday or go to Kate Motaung’s blog for the collection of everyone’s links, which are a variety of perspectives on the word “alone”. Thanks for reading today!

What will today Hold?

25
Jun

http://mrg.bz/L2hAsB

Today is an important day.

Today is a significant milestone, not of accomplishment but of loss.

In the past there were times when my family (of origin) would get together and there was a sense of having an itinerary. On the whole, we were people accustomed to creating The Plan for a gathering of people — when you’ve grown up in a family of program directors, meeting runners and conversationalists, there’s a certain pressure to create a Big Moment of sharing and bonding. It was always a special occasion to get four kids, their spouses and their babies all in a room at the same time, there was a kind of pragmatic, making-the-most-of-our-time-together agenda.

That’s a tricky habit to break.

As I’ve anticipated the one year anniversary of my dad’s passing, which is today, it’s been hard to know how to prepare. It seems like I ought to have some big plan, a programmed itinerary of activities and neatly scheduled breaks to feel feelings. One thing I’ve learned this year, though, is that grief rarely behaves the way I expect it to. I’ve been blindsided by things that have brought me to tears in the middle of a store, for example, when I didn’t even know I have an association to something and it almost knocks the wind out of me.

Then again, I’ve gone into certain times braced for tears and heartache, and ended up feeling cold as stone.

There’s almost no use in anticipating or preparing for what to feel. Maybe there was never any use for that strategy.

Honestly, I feel a little queasy about today. I’m trying to listen to my body and honor what it’s telling me, but I also don’t want to be bossed around by my body, because if right now it would tell me the best idea is to crawl into bed and doze away for the day. That doesn’t seem like the way I want to spend today…or at least not all of it.

I’m trying to carve out space to feel what I feel, and mark the day as seems right to my heart. So I’m going to eat an apple fritter and drink coffee this morning, with my dad’s fancy red silk handkerchief in my pocket, the one he wore for special occasions and was probably the only one he owned (I’ll give it back, Mom, don’t worry). I’ll wear my prayer beads around my neck. I’m going to take a walk. I’ll try to have the courage to tell people the significance of this day. I won’t make light of my feelings, but I won’t pressure myself to manufacture them because of the date on the calendar.

Today, I want to be with my family and laugh even if we also cry. Music, Jesus, chocolate, stories, discussion, books, family — all these things should be a part of today.

And if I can find a way, airplanes should be in there too. Dad always loved airplanes and flying.

It can be a good day even if it’s also a hard day.

How do you mark significant days in your life? Have you created rhythms or rituals that work for you? I think it would be helpful to hear about them. not only for me but for any others who might be listening in. Will you share your experience with us?