He didn’t give the address
I am lost in the neighborhood
With just a mapquest
Which doesn’t always tell the truth about
The whereabouts of anyone else
You leave your info uploaded on your iphone
I reoriented again, I remember when
There wasn’t any distance
And I phone beneath the tree lined streets
Everybody’s out
My front door is unlocked so
Another son can dry his clothes at the house
He meets me on the front step instead
wants a hug
while a new blond friend tells her mom we’ve bonded
I watch her carefully through the lens
While all the pretty girls faces hurt from smiling
I slip into my place and still am out of place
But trying
Still this pain inside
While all the pretty girl’s faces hurt from smiling
Still this pain inside
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Fasting Today
I am doing shorter fasts because I have been at this awhile, since January and my body I think needs me to pull back. So I have shortened the time. I think also the time for fasting may be at an end. When you seek guidance and God speaks, then you know what to do, you just do it, not seek for more guidance.
Knowing what to do doesn’t necessarily mean having answers. Daily we chose between living for God or for our own comfort. When I was relieved of my ministry and asked to step down the temptation to live for self increased. When I was not allowed to serve, I prayed instead. When I was asked to leave I stopped praying for my church. My focus became to love those around me the best I could. I accepted that serving in a church was not appropriate for a time.
My flesh would love to just concern myself with myself, to find a job where I could be comfortable, to get through school and use my spare time on my interests. As an artist there is always the temptation to self promote, really if one chooses to live by your art, self promotion is essential. As long as doors remain closed for me I have no choice but to live a life of minimal involvement, little service. I have been seen as unusable by God for whatever reason, and that assessment of me is the one I have rebelled against. It is the one thing I long for God to change.
It would be so easy, so easy to seek comfort and success artistically. In doing so it doesn’t even matter if I succeed, there is satisfaction in the seeking. But if I choose to seek to serve then there are certain things I need to let go of in order to do so. The first thing is the assessment of me as unusable by God. Also I need to let go of the mindset that I should hold back because I am a liability to people. I need to ask, am I a liability to God and to his kingdom work? And if I am, what can I do to change that. I need to ask Him, what can I do for you?
Knowing what to do doesn’t necessarily mean having answers. Daily we chose between living for God or for our own comfort. When I was relieved of my ministry and asked to step down the temptation to live for self increased. When I was not allowed to serve, I prayed instead. When I was asked to leave I stopped praying for my church. My focus became to love those around me the best I could. I accepted that serving in a church was not appropriate for a time.
My flesh would love to just concern myself with myself, to find a job where I could be comfortable, to get through school and use my spare time on my interests. As an artist there is always the temptation to self promote, really if one chooses to live by your art, self promotion is essential. As long as doors remain closed for me I have no choice but to live a life of minimal involvement, little service. I have been seen as unusable by God for whatever reason, and that assessment of me is the one I have rebelled against. It is the one thing I long for God to change.
It would be so easy, so easy to seek comfort and success artistically. In doing so it doesn’t even matter if I succeed, there is satisfaction in the seeking. But if I choose to seek to serve then there are certain things I need to let go of in order to do so. The first thing is the assessment of me as unusable by God. Also I need to let go of the mindset that I should hold back because I am a liability to people. I need to ask, am I a liability to God and to his kingdom work? And if I am, what can I do to change that. I need to ask Him, what can I do for you?
Friday, October 17, 2008
Reflections on Mentoring and Being Mentored
I have been thinking about mentoring a lot this week. There are several reasons for this. First I am writing two papers; overviews of articles about research done on the effectiveness of mentoring. Secondly, I am in a mentoring relationship and I would like to be more deliberate in what I do.
There was some good news for me; I am intuitively doing what the researchers suggest. One of the big factors in successful mentoring is enjoying the relationship. Another is having things in common. So my love of art and my mentee's desire to have an art teacher makes us a mentor/ mentee relationship positioned for success. The fact that we have continued for over 3 months and have committed to continue is another mark of success. We have done some goal setting, portfolio work to help my mentee apply to the Arts Magnet school. Having the deadline pass and having to wait until next year, we have drifted into another focus. It is one that Tara identified for me. Since art class is so structured she wants to explore and experiment with different processes and medium. That leads to another measure of success, the mentor enabling the mentee to be exposed to experiences that they would not have available to them expect through the mentor. Another objective which I have not acted on but have considered is helping Tara connect to the arts community in Dallas. That would mean going to shows and exhibits. I would like to plan an outing outside the center sometime next month and plan to seek permission to do that. It may not be allowed. I don’t know. So reading this week has been very encouraging to me, but also challenging to me. It helps me see that what I am doing has the potential to shape Tara’s view of her world to one where she sees there are people who care for her and want to see her succeed. She tends to pull away because the people she comes into contact are so transient. She fears attachment. That makes me want to take care to be faithful to the relationship by being consistent and communicating her worth as a person. I want to continue to take an interest in her art and its development because it is important to her. Really examining this relationship this week makes me kind of amazed at how God brought us together and hopeful in what He can accomplish thought it. I know that I am equally blessed by the relationship.
Another relationship that has come to the forefront this week is my relationship to Suzy, my Spiritual mentor from California. She contacted me about her daughter. Christy had surgery this week to have a tumor remove from her female organs. We still do not know the lab results but the doctors do not think it is cancerous. Also she did not have to have a hysterectomy. That is a praise, because Christy is only 30.
Suzy and I have walked through so many crisises together. I love that she is still very much in my life after all these years. My boys were young when she was my neighbor. She really took me under her wing and helped me with parenting skills. She loves Sean and Scott and it was very apparent in her interaction with them. (Lots of pop cycles, there is a story with that.) When I was reading this week about mentoring I also thought of Suzy. I want to address this because of what my ex said about her. He told his counselor and others that I never allowed him to be the spiritual leader. He cited Suzy among other as people whom I depended on instead of him. Like my doing so robbed him of something. The truth is my consistent prayer was for him to lead. My relationship with Suzy enhanced my ability to communicate and love him in practical ways. That was the nature of her response when I got up the courage to share just a little of my struggles with her when we spent time together as friends and neighbors. She used to encourage me to talk to my ex about the problems we were having. She was a Titus 2 woman for sure. It bothers me that my ex would twist that relationship when in truth he benefited from it. I wanted to write this publically because she has been spoken about publically and it is a shame.
What transpired in our relationship was this. I was strong in Bible study, she was strong in prayer. I learned to really pray. She was encouraged to use God’s word to discern truth. She had numerous family member involved in Christian cults and things they taught she rejected but they were very confusing to her. I was able to help her. She was the first person besides my parents to really love me unconditionally. It made a huge impact on me. It still does.
There was some good news for me; I am intuitively doing what the researchers suggest. One of the big factors in successful mentoring is enjoying the relationship. Another is having things in common. So my love of art and my mentee's desire to have an art teacher makes us a mentor/ mentee relationship positioned for success. The fact that we have continued for over 3 months and have committed to continue is another mark of success. We have done some goal setting, portfolio work to help my mentee apply to the Arts Magnet school. Having the deadline pass and having to wait until next year, we have drifted into another focus. It is one that Tara identified for me. Since art class is so structured she wants to explore and experiment with different processes and medium. That leads to another measure of success, the mentor enabling the mentee to be exposed to experiences that they would not have available to them expect through the mentor. Another objective which I have not acted on but have considered is helping Tara connect to the arts community in Dallas. That would mean going to shows and exhibits. I would like to plan an outing outside the center sometime next month and plan to seek permission to do that. It may not be allowed. I don’t know. So reading this week has been very encouraging to me, but also challenging to me. It helps me see that what I am doing has the potential to shape Tara’s view of her world to one where she sees there are people who care for her and want to see her succeed. She tends to pull away because the people she comes into contact are so transient. She fears attachment. That makes me want to take care to be faithful to the relationship by being consistent and communicating her worth as a person. I want to continue to take an interest in her art and its development because it is important to her. Really examining this relationship this week makes me kind of amazed at how God brought us together and hopeful in what He can accomplish thought it. I know that I am equally blessed by the relationship.
Another relationship that has come to the forefront this week is my relationship to Suzy, my Spiritual mentor from California. She contacted me about her daughter. Christy had surgery this week to have a tumor remove from her female organs. We still do not know the lab results but the doctors do not think it is cancerous. Also she did not have to have a hysterectomy. That is a praise, because Christy is only 30.
Suzy and I have walked through so many crisises together. I love that she is still very much in my life after all these years. My boys were young when she was my neighbor. She really took me under her wing and helped me with parenting skills. She loves Sean and Scott and it was very apparent in her interaction with them. (Lots of pop cycles, there is a story with that.) When I was reading this week about mentoring I also thought of Suzy. I want to address this because of what my ex said about her. He told his counselor and others that I never allowed him to be the spiritual leader. He cited Suzy among other as people whom I depended on instead of him. Like my doing so robbed him of something. The truth is my consistent prayer was for him to lead. My relationship with Suzy enhanced my ability to communicate and love him in practical ways. That was the nature of her response when I got up the courage to share just a little of my struggles with her when we spent time together as friends and neighbors. She used to encourage me to talk to my ex about the problems we were having. She was a Titus 2 woman for sure. It bothers me that my ex would twist that relationship when in truth he benefited from it. I wanted to write this publically because she has been spoken about publically and it is a shame.
What transpired in our relationship was this. I was strong in Bible study, she was strong in prayer. I learned to really pray. She was encouraged to use God’s word to discern truth. She had numerous family member involved in Christian cults and things they taught she rejected but they were very confusing to her. I was able to help her. She was the first person besides my parents to really love me unconditionally. It made a huge impact on me. It still does.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
What I did today
I took a day off today because I was feeling bad and was exhausted and there was no work for me to do at work and I had a lot of reading to do for school. It worked well for me; we call them personal days, not sick days anyway. The reading I did was for psychology. When you take a psychology class at UTD, in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, as it is called you have to either participate in 2 studies or read articles from a scientific journal on two studies and write a description on the study or a combination of participation and writing an article in order to pass the class. The work is handed into the school, not your teacher. It doesn’t matter what you get in class, if you don’t do it you don’t pass.
Because I do not have a lot of spare time and I like the idea of choosing what I read and write about I opted for the articles. I decided to look at studies on mentoring since I am in a mentoring relationship. I found about 10 studies and narrowed them down to four. I ended up reading all four because the first two were so general and just a good introduction to the topic. I got the articles approved by my professor a few weeks ago. She was very excited when she found out what I was doing at the shelter. That felt really good because she is a person who really loves kids and is excited about the work she does which is working with kids affected by a significant caregiver who has an alcohol problem. She does assessment and intervention.
What I found out from the articles which was of interest to me was there isn’t enough good research on mentoring. There are two kinds of mentoring, tradition or informal and formal or structured mentoring.
Traditional mentoring just kind of happens. The persons in the relationship don’t always have a name for it, they just know over time a significant relationship formed that is mutually beneficial based on likenesses. The name mentor/protégé may come later upon reflection of the benefits of the relationship. Researchers conducted interviews with people asking them who played pivotal roles in their development in becoming who they are.
Formal mentor/mentee relationship have a third party involved who pairs people together. There are set goals and agreements are made that define what the relationship entails.
The articles I read where on mentoring at risk youth, how to assess the benefits and mentoring in a community setting. One thing that was brought up was how little research has been done on faith based communities and mentoring. However their conclusion was mentoring in community was the best situation and mentors that came from faith based communities tended to stick with their commitment to the mentoring arrangement compared to people recruited from other situations. They also concluded that formal mentoring relationships have a 50 % chance of failing in the 1st 3 months and that traditional mentoring where one individual approaches another was more likely to last and bare results which include increased self confidence in the mentee, a greater exposures to resources that benefited the individual, and improved relationships outside of the mentee/mentor relationship. The authors felt that encouraging communities to make mentoring part of their culture and allowing it to happen naturally is more desirable that formal programs. They suggested that educating the communities about the mentoring process and they were enthusiastic to see more communities adopt this practice.
It always helps me to write you first, if I can explain it to you than.........
Because I do not have a lot of spare time and I like the idea of choosing what I read and write about I opted for the articles. I decided to look at studies on mentoring since I am in a mentoring relationship. I found about 10 studies and narrowed them down to four. I ended up reading all four because the first two were so general and just a good introduction to the topic. I got the articles approved by my professor a few weeks ago. She was very excited when she found out what I was doing at the shelter. That felt really good because she is a person who really loves kids and is excited about the work she does which is working with kids affected by a significant caregiver who has an alcohol problem. She does assessment and intervention.
What I found out from the articles which was of interest to me was there isn’t enough good research on mentoring. There are two kinds of mentoring, tradition or informal and formal or structured mentoring.
Traditional mentoring just kind of happens. The persons in the relationship don’t always have a name for it, they just know over time a significant relationship formed that is mutually beneficial based on likenesses. The name mentor/protégé may come later upon reflection of the benefits of the relationship. Researchers conducted interviews with people asking them who played pivotal roles in their development in becoming who they are.
Formal mentor/mentee relationship have a third party involved who pairs people together. There are set goals and agreements are made that define what the relationship entails.
The articles I read where on mentoring at risk youth, how to assess the benefits and mentoring in a community setting. One thing that was brought up was how little research has been done on faith based communities and mentoring. However their conclusion was mentoring in community was the best situation and mentors that came from faith based communities tended to stick with their commitment to the mentoring arrangement compared to people recruited from other situations. They also concluded that formal mentoring relationships have a 50 % chance of failing in the 1st 3 months and that traditional mentoring where one individual approaches another was more likely to last and bare results which include increased self confidence in the mentee, a greater exposures to resources that benefited the individual, and improved relationships outside of the mentee/mentor relationship. The authors felt that encouraging communities to make mentoring part of their culture and allowing it to happen naturally is more desirable that formal programs. They suggested that educating the communities about the mentoring process and they were enthusiastic to see more communities adopt this practice.
It always helps me to write you first, if I can explain it to you than.........
Saturday, October 11, 2008
The Chair
My grandmother owned a set of wicker chairs that we used to play with, my cousins and I. We filled the chairs with hydrangea from an enormous group of plants that grew year to year. The huge flowers from the plant transformed the chairs into thrones and we took turns being royalty. The bushed themselves were a place to hide between, but the bugs and spider that hid there too quickly made us abandon any idea of occupation. We then dared each other to run through the bushes as tests of courage and skill before we bored and went on to other explorations and challenges. Indian Lakes was an enchanted place I discovered as a child. So when Scott brought me a wicker chair last week for my patio I was more than pleased with his treasure, I was transformed.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Copier art
My College. Next time I will start again.
Tara and I did copier art on Sat. She loved it so we will be exploring this process for the next few months. The first set is a college that a lady did last time. She did not return, so Tara took it over. She worked on it along with her own college. Tara will be doing a realistic rendering from a photo she will be bringing to the next session. I will scan it when it is done and PhotoShop it into her backgrounds and then it will be copied again. Both in color and black and white. We are using oil pastels. We found they work well in the process. We will be doing watercolor pencil, prisma color and chalk too.
This is Tara's college and copies.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Look Unto Jesus
I remember it vividly, the bitter tears the realization my life had taken a horrible turn for the worse. I was ill beyond belief. My active lifestyle had screeched to halt and I was clueless as to what was wrong. So were my doctors. Gripped with fear of the unknown, I was unable to sleep, unable to walk further than from the bed to my kitchen without pain and exhaustion. I lay in bed and sobbed. This couldn’t be me. This couldn’t be my life. Not me. Please. That was twelve years ago and many days of crying out to the Lord and the prayers of others and shear determination and most of all being lead step by step by Jesus I have over come. Over the years that followed Jesus has become increasing real to me, his guidance increasingly clear. The story of my healing is too long to share in the relatively short writing. In the dark night of my soul, I learned to look unto Jesus and the faithful witness of his saints.
Within the first year of my health crisis, before I would be diagnosed with an unspecified autoimmune disease and Fibromyalia, I was blessed to become part of on off campus Sunday School class that was studying Lord, I Want to Know You, Kay Arthur’s study of the names of God. A very powerful study, it will rock your world. It did mine.
Adonai was the name we studied that morning. (Genesis 15:2) The LORD, your Lord and Master. I learned I “could never know the refuge of His arms without first bowing my knees and acknowledging His right to rule over me.” (p. 55)
Genesis 15: 1-6
God's Covenant With Abram
1 After this, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision:
"Do not be afraid, Abram.
I am your shield, your very great reward. "
2 But Abram said, "O Sovereign LORD, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?" 3 And Abram said, "You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir."
4 Then the word of the LORD came to him: "This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir." 5 He took him outside and said, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be."
6 Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
Once we see Abram’s acknowledgement of God as Lord and Master, his acts of faith are more comprehensible. Knowing Adonia is the beginning of a servant’s heart, the key to faith, not faith in our faith, but faith in the Lord. Abram understood there were benefits as well as responsibilities in the Master servant relationship. (p. 59-58) ”Because Abram has the Lord as his master, he need not fear, for the master acts as his shield. The master rewards his servant.” (p. 58)
I came that morning with a heavy heart, a weary soul and a body that did not allow me to express my true self. I was a shadow of the person he had created me to be. I came hungry for any word, any sense of hope or inspiration I might find. A beautiful white haired woman sat across from me, a former missionary to South Africa. She spoke those words I came to hear; words that pierced by heart and opened for me a new conversation with the Lord.
Psalm 123
A song of ascents.
1 I lift up my eyes to you,
to you whose throne is in heaven.
2 As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maid look to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the LORD our God,
till he shows us his mercy.
3 Have mercy on us, O LORD, have mercy on us,
for we have endured much contempt.
4 We have endured much ridicule from the proud,
much contempt from the arrogant.
She softly explained. “We are to keep our eyes on Jesus; our hearts acknowledging him as Lord and Master, our eyes upon his as a servant watches in anticipation for his master to call him into service. We wait expectantly. When he beckons we respond. We do this until he has mercy upon us. We endure.” This would become if you will, my recipe for healing. As he called me first to pray for those who were like myself chronically ill; he gave me strength. Not yet fully recovered he led me into Women’s Ministry where I began to teach his word, into missions, into leadership and as always to prayer. Slowly over the years I regained my strength and except in times of prolonged stress I am relatively symptom free. She is one of those who sits among my great cloud of witnesses who points and says, “Look unto Jesus.”
Written Jan. 2006. I was looking for something else and I found this. I had just returned to church for the first time.
The reasons I came back were simple I wanted to be dealt with Biblically, I did not want to run away from my problems. I came back to clear my name and make people deal with me, not things said about me, but me. If they had a problem with me, I was there and it could be worked out. That is what the Bible says, not leave and go to another church and pretend nothing happened.
People have assigned many motives to me and my actions. But I was simply silently defending myself by being present among you. I wanted to be with my support group, I wanted to be with my church family. I served you 14 years.
Within the first year of my health crisis, before I would be diagnosed with an unspecified autoimmune disease and Fibromyalia, I was blessed to become part of on off campus Sunday School class that was studying Lord, I Want to Know You, Kay Arthur’s study of the names of God. A very powerful study, it will rock your world. It did mine.
Adonai was the name we studied that morning. (Genesis 15:2) The LORD, your Lord and Master. I learned I “could never know the refuge of His arms without first bowing my knees and acknowledging His right to rule over me.” (p. 55)
Genesis 15: 1-6
God's Covenant With Abram
1 After this, the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision:
"Do not be afraid, Abram.
I am your shield, your very great reward. "
2 But Abram said, "O Sovereign LORD, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?" 3 And Abram said, "You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir."
4 Then the word of the LORD came to him: "This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir." 5 He took him outside and said, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be."
6 Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
Once we see Abram’s acknowledgement of God as Lord and Master, his acts of faith are more comprehensible. Knowing Adonia is the beginning of a servant’s heart, the key to faith, not faith in our faith, but faith in the Lord. Abram understood there were benefits as well as responsibilities in the Master servant relationship. (p. 59-58) ”Because Abram has the Lord as his master, he need not fear, for the master acts as his shield. The master rewards his servant.” (p. 58)
I came that morning with a heavy heart, a weary soul and a body that did not allow me to express my true self. I was a shadow of the person he had created me to be. I came hungry for any word, any sense of hope or inspiration I might find. A beautiful white haired woman sat across from me, a former missionary to South Africa. She spoke those words I came to hear; words that pierced by heart and opened for me a new conversation with the Lord.
Psalm 123
A song of ascents.
1 I lift up my eyes to you,
to you whose throne is in heaven.
2 As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maid look to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the LORD our God,
till he shows us his mercy.
3 Have mercy on us, O LORD, have mercy on us,
for we have endured much contempt.
4 We have endured much ridicule from the proud,
much contempt from the arrogant.
She softly explained. “We are to keep our eyes on Jesus; our hearts acknowledging him as Lord and Master, our eyes upon his as a servant watches in anticipation for his master to call him into service. We wait expectantly. When he beckons we respond. We do this until he has mercy upon us. We endure.” This would become if you will, my recipe for healing. As he called me first to pray for those who were like myself chronically ill; he gave me strength. Not yet fully recovered he led me into Women’s Ministry where I began to teach his word, into missions, into leadership and as always to prayer. Slowly over the years I regained my strength and except in times of prolonged stress I am relatively symptom free. She is one of those who sits among my great cloud of witnesses who points and says, “Look unto Jesus.”
Written Jan. 2006. I was looking for something else and I found this. I had just returned to church for the first time.
The reasons I came back were simple I wanted to be dealt with Biblically, I did not want to run away from my problems. I came back to clear my name and make people deal with me, not things said about me, but me. If they had a problem with me, I was there and it could be worked out. That is what the Bible says, not leave and go to another church and pretend nothing happened.
People have assigned many motives to me and my actions. But I was simply silently defending myself by being present among you. I wanted to be with my support group, I wanted to be with my church family. I served you 14 years.
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