Even In Death Art & Illustration

Hey everyone!  My blog has moved.  You can now catch up on my blog at my new site, www.evenindeathart.com.  Also, be sure to check out my illustrations and other artwork.  Thanks!

-Dave

One Race

Every time you turn your head to look at the person running next to you your Best Time becomes more difficult to attain.  When you concern yourself with someone else’s race you take you eyes off your own and begin to veer off course.  This is hack-running.

The Amateur Runner sees others a competition.  Not enough room for everyone in the field, others become a threat.  Too much at stake, too much to loose, excuses become part of the vocabulary as self-preservation is the name-of-the-game.

Keep running this way and you will never hit your stride.

The Experienced Runner is motivated by a different standard.  It’s not the race of others but their own race that really gets them going.  Here they are driven to give all they’ve got, holding nothing back and taking nothing away from others.

The field is big enough, plenty of room for other runners.  It’s One Community.  No threat, just fellow participants with whom you can find encouragement and inspiration.

Eyes straight ahead, keep running.

Something New

What are you interested in?  What do you want to try?  Don’t worry about the others.

Go ahead…step out. 

Discover something new.  Taste and see that It indeed “is good”.  Let your heart be filled, unleash your soul with the Joyful Dance.

It’s okay.  You are safe here.  Your identity is secure.  No one to please, no one to impress, you are already a part of the family.

Pain In the Ass

You are twistedly creative and have been given a mind few can navigate.  You are beautiful, witty and a pain-in-the-ass.  You are My pain-in-the-ass and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Wrestling Match

Procrastination and Distraction are clever adversaries.  This one-two-punch-tag-team-duo will wrestle your creativity to the ground, pin it to the mat and leave it begging for mercy.

Scroll through your Facebook convincing yourself that links to “The Seven Things Everyone Should Do…” is empowering.  Flip through Instagram telling yourself that viewing other people’s dinner is fulfilling.  Keep checking (and re-checking) your inbox just in case something “new and important” arrives.

Keep doing this and your Artist won’t stand a chance in this fight.

These outlets are fine, but they are not your work.  Don’t engage your social media because you are searching for something to say.  Search yourself and discover you actually have something you have to express.  Don’t envy another ‘Friend’s’ latest carefully filtered picture; envision the place you want to go and, by all means, start moving towards it.

Procrastination and Distraction can only levy the strength you give them.

Don’t give in.  Don’t surrender.  You've only got one fight…come out of your corner swinging.

A Classroom Full of Voices

Is your head full of voices?

Yeah, mine too.

Each voice trying to get your attention, trying to tell you what you should do and who you should be.

Sifting through these voices is difficult, maddening really.  Like bumping your way through the halls of high school during passing period, these voices are reflecting back insecurities and an unattainable image.

Each voice seems so confident their way is the way and they want you to join their clique.  But we know from experience that not all of the voices are the True Voice.  We have listened to them before, tried on their style and felt “not quite right”.  Each experience leaves us uncomfortable in our own skin, an awkward teenager. 

We feel like a phony, a counterfeit.  Like we’ve done something wrong and we will soon by found out.

Yet there is another voice trying to get our attention.  This voice, completely uninterested with popularity, does not use the tactics of the others.  No bullhorns, no fear mongering, no promises of popularity, no inflated hubris or wallowing self-defeat.

This voice is steady and still.

We know this voice but we over-ride it with second-guessing and “reasonable thinking”.

The other voices will talk until they are blue in the face while the True Voice waits patiently.  The trick is not to silence all of the competing voices (this will only make them shout louder) but, instead, to acknowledge them.  These voices are a part of the class and a piece of you.

Like a seasoned teacher who acknowledges the misguided and disruptive statements of a student, “Thank you for sharing, you’ve been heard, you can put your hand down now.”

“I’d like to hear from the others.”

In this case the teacher is not caught up in her pupil’s musings (which carry the potential to derail the day’s instruction).  Yet at the same time, the student is not viewed as a threat.  Instead, this vetted instructor is able to honor and affirm the truth; this voice is a part of the class and, once it has been heard, can go back to silence. 

This silence creates space.

In this space the True Voice, the Quiet One (like the shy kid in the back corner) can be invited to share Her unique brilliance, that the entire class might grow, learn and discover.

It's Probably No Good

It could fall on deaf ears.  It might not be any good.  People may think it was a waste of time, a “fool’s endeavor ”.

There may not be any reward ceremony upon its completion.  It may never be remembered because there was never a time when it was known.  Others may not see its significance.  It might even be a huge disappointment. 

There will likely be frustration along the way.  Set-backs may be on the travel itinerary.  Fear will most likely serve as your co-pilot while Responsibility, Shame, and Guilt will shout from the back seat.

But so what?  What else is new?

Get over it and do it regardless. 

Create, make, and contribute not because you need people to accept it but because you can’t imagine doing anything else.

The Show

You are not responsible for the Show.  You do not have to make sure everyone knows their lines or hits their cue.  The outcome is not yours to produce and certainly it is not your task to make good for the Critic.  Relax.

Your role…

Show up.  Participate.  Play.

This is not a scripted play but a free-form improv.  So don’t worry if there are flubs, missteps and forgotten lines.  This is what the Real is made of.  The Show will keep going.

The burden then is lifted.  You do not have to be the Director.  Simply deliver the best you can.  With your whole self, hold nothing back.  You have lines only you can deliver and your character has been invited to move the Story along.

Take joy in the performance…

This moment won’t come again.

Advocate vs. Accuser

We need advocates not accusers.  People who believe in us instead of believing we should be something, or someone, else.

The voice of the Accuser reminds us of all of our inadequacies; all of the ways we will never be a “fit” for the Remarkable Life.  The voice of the the Accuser sets us on a path of lonely self-loathing.

In stark contrast…

The voice of the Advocate reminds us that the Remarkable Life is already with us.  Walking, journeying with us towards the Greater, we are ever reminded that the only person we need to be is the one we see in the mirror.

Claiming the Unfinished

To claim your life as unfinished is not a sign of imperfection.  The powerful will say otherwise.  With their own blind-spot clouding their vision, the powerful will project perfection and voice their arrival.

Don’t believe them.  The Perfect are lying through their teeth, and deep in their bones, they know it.

Don’t think for a minute that the “unfinished life” is less-than.

To claim a life unfinished means we have acknowledged our life is still in process; still growing, moving, learning, discovering.  Accepting our life as unfinished opens us up to the Creative Source that is always eager to dance with the undone.

The powerful can have their “perfection”… you have a life to live.

Roadblocks & Barricades

What gets in your way?  What is standing between you and your Art?

“I don’t have time.”

“No one will like it.”

“I’m too old.”

“I’m too young.”

“It didn’t work last time.”

“What if I can’t do it?”
“I don’t have anything to say.”

These are powerful words.

Words that block and suppress the True Artist within.  These words gain their strength as they feast on our fear, and we offer them plenty to chew on.

But the truth?

These words are a phantom.  A smoke screen, trying to divert our attention from contributing to this life, only what we have been designed to contribute.  These words are hell-bent on sidelining us and keeping us busy with all of the self-made drama this life has to offer.  So, the best way to silence these detractors?

Keep going.

Wake up.

Participate each day.

When the blockade pops up and the barriers close in don’t slow down.  You’re going somewhere no one has ever been.  Pay no attention to their “Road Closed” signs because, you’ve got work to do.

Hit the gas.

A Death Not Meant For Us To Know

There is a pain in this life we were not meant to know.  A death that we were not designed for.  Our process unable to compute the loss and our container unable to hold the brokenness.  It may be our own, the shrapnel from another, or what we observe “safely” from afar.  But the effect is the same:

“How could this be?”

“Is this really happening?”

“Please make it stop.”

“I want to go back to the beginning.”

A pain too deep for words.  A location far below the depths any of us were meant to travel.  So we keep descending.  Like a diver that has traveled far below the threshold, we begin to suffocate.  Our world: disorienting, dark, dizzying and cold.  For many, this is the location where what has become of our life is now lived.

But there is news.

The Finite Place is not the end.

There is more.

While dark, these depths are the dirt, soil, and earth from which new life will find a way.  And Life always finds away. 

In your unexpected turn, in your pain, in the losing of your life, you are being re-worked and re-invented, and re-made.  A shedding of the Old Self, so your True Nature might come alive.

The Beauty Purchase

The Shadow tries to convince that beauty can be marketed for consumption.  We believe this for a while and we make its purchase.  Our insecurity is hungry and cannot seem to be quenched, so we guzzle down empty promises and inhale each offering.  We latch on to something that can redeem, fulfill, and make sense of our longing.  We sell ourselves to the “Latest and Greatest”.

Yet the magic pill doesn’t work.  Positive thinking, workout routines, and the religion of our youth is not enough.  Still hungry.  Still yearning.

What will this cost?

“I will gladly spend it all for a taste of what will truly satisfy.”

“Just show me ‘Where’ and ‘How’ and I’ll buy it!”

But this is the first lie we must see through if we are to move forward.

Beauty cannot be contained or manufactured.  It has always been here, waiting and moving… hovering.  Bursting all around us, Beauty is not asking or requiring anything of you, for it operates via a generous grace that the Market does not know.  Beauty will not be sold to the highest bidder or sold cheaply as the next fad. 

Instead, it is an odd thing.

When we begin to let go of our addiction to solve, cure, fix, engineer and save…it happens.

Beauty arrives. 

This Day

There is too much beauty in this life to rush so quickly.

Too much pain to pretend all is “fine”.

To stay awake to the moment, in all of its incarnations, is the Real Life.

No more hiding, no more pretending…

A New Day is here.

Be of Good Heart

“Is this all there is?”

This is the question when life feels stuck and unmoving.  Its search must surely be rhetorical because we already know the answer and it aches our cracking bones.

“Yes”

It feels so true, yet do not be fooled.  This is the myth perpetuated by the Resistance.  No creative imagination to envision beyond the “life” set before us, and no container to hold something greater than what is predicted.  Inescapable and Unavoidable serve as our companions in our dutifully-obliging-life.

Monotony transfixes us in a hypnotic state and overruns our unique identity with a colonized and civilized auto-pilot.  The work is never ending, the days never changing.  Rocks from this pile to the next and back again.  “Keep up the good work”, “Don’t let anyone down”, “You can try something new tomorrow” are just a few of the thin sentiments we try and feast on.

Yet we are starving.  A thin shadow of who we are to be.

Our identity molded and formed not by Free Spirit, but by this sly never-ending-production-to-please.  We are a stranger to ourselves.  What began in us in our youth has been weathered, eroded, and tamed.  Waking up is difficult when you’ve been lulled to sleep.

“Flavor” is a word exiled from our vocabulary and upon its reflection our forgetful-self strains to come up with even a few morsels of something palatable.  Pointless, meaningless, and apathy become the only colors in our existence.  Each one of them of the same shadow-like hue.

Until…

Something breaks in.

A Voice, a Word, a Breath.

Too much for even the Magnificent’s lungs to hold, this Wind penetrates an air-tight existence and unlocks its breathless captives from the inside.

Our flat world suddenly takes shape.

No longer must we waste our breath trying to convince the self-made-king of the truth welling up within us.  There is more.  There has always been more.  Today is a fresh existence that has not and will never be copied, cloned, or industrialized.

This is the day.

And the rulers of this dying age?  The Light has removed their shadow, revealed their nakedness, and left them blind to what is real.  Yet they keep on going, jawing about this and that (the way they always do) as they try to mend their delusion.  Fear and visions of impending enemies, all meant to solidify our tribalism, will not work us up in a frenzy any longer.  The spell they once held has been broken.

Broken by the sound of trumpets.  Shattered by the height of cheer.  Overturned by the tide of mercy.

Be of good heart; Love has found us.

Crushed

There is a deep beauty that runs through this life.
So intrinsically woven even Death cannot remove its brilliant color.
The Fool of Death believes in only the finite-end and cannot see what Death has unknowingly ushered.
Such a force and violent quake; the veil separating the Shadow from the True is torn with power.

An in-breaking finds us and blinds with what earthly eyes are not conditioned to see.
A potency of rich beauty released, so strong, so pure, it can no longer be contained.
Tasting such fullness from the Source brings the knowledge that what was before was a thin diluted true.
Bearing witness to such power I erupt with confession:
"Even now, even here, it is good".

What's in My Journal

Odd things, like a button drawer. Mean
things, fishhooks, barbs in your hand.
But marbles too. A genius for being agreeable.
Junkyard crucifixes, voluptuous
discards. Space for knickknacks, and for
Alaska. Evidence to hang me, or to beatify.
Clues that lead nowhere, that never connected
anyway. Deliberate obfuscation, the kind
that takes genius. Chasms in character.
Loud omissions. Mornings that yawn above
a new grave. Pages you know exist
but you can't find them. Someone's terribly
inevitable life story, maybe mine.

                                                   - William Stafford

Compelled to Confess

I was compelled to confess this week.  Not my sin but my affirmation.  This confession was not given as if to convince myself, rather it welled up within me until I burst with belief.

I believe God is who he says he is; and he is good.

I believe my children are who he says they are; his beloved.

I believe my wife and I are who he says we are; his children.

I believe the power of death is great and certain; but there is a power still greater.

I believe the resurrection has the last word and it will be spoken forever.

God's Absence

I have often been told that when one first turns to God, one is greeted with brilliant 'Yes' answers to prayers.  For a long time that was true for me.  But then, when he has you hooked, he starts to say 'No'.  This has been, indeed, my experience.  But it has been more than a 'No' answer lately; after all, 'No' is an answer.  It is the silence, the withdrawal, which is so devastating.  the world is difficult enough with God; without him it is a hideous joke.

Madeleine L'Engle, The Irrational Season

We have been fooled to believe that following after God always brings clarity and dispels any confusion.  In this instance Religion is exceedingly helpful; an answer for everything and everything in order.  Yet somewhere along life's path the construct of Religion (whether it be our religious fervour for politics, god, or human ingenuity) is tested by the weight of the unpredictable mess-of-life.  We work diligently to ensure that the structure of our Religion can withstand the pressure.  We double our efforts, deepen our convictions, and attack out of our own survival.

There is so much at stake; there is too much to lose.

Our self-preservational instincts to double our efforts around our ideologies will only shroud us from the depth and vastness of God.  We will live small lives if we hold on too tightly for fear that our life may actually be lost.

This is the descriptive of a grown-up-mature faith.  One that no longer is seduced by an answer for everything and can instead, in the stillness of God's absence, continue the journey in faith.

"Anxious Hope"

22x30 Watercolor