I mull this over in the wake of five shootings. Four of them just blocks from our Space. The fifth not much further. Alberta Avenue drags along a history of injustice. Prostitution. Drugs. Vandalism. At times, violence. I do not feel unsafe. But I do feel compelled to respond.
I wonder, sometimes, if art is the right response. There is poverty of the body and the spirit. There is hunger of every sort. I believe in a God who satisfies hunger and need. Is art, then, a waste of my energy? Is there not some more important business to be about?
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What if there is some other explanation to our lack of justice? Our inaction? Our fall-short love and too-dim light?
I sat in St.Faith’s Anglican and listened to Reverend Travis Enright tell about a homeless man. A man who feels ousted by people of faith. Feels unloved. I thought about the people I work with or rather, work near at Hope Mission. I thought about our reading from the book of James, telling us to show no favouritism to the rich. Telling us there is no faith in a faith without works.
Hypocrisy is an easy label.
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I am thinking about how relationships work. How time spent together plus proximity equals intimacy.
I am thinking about friends, just back in town. How easy it is to slide back into a groove. How time apart presses pause, except for the milestones. This person had a baby. That person moved. This job now. That death. I am thinking about how little the milestones matter when it comes to intimacy. How important the details are.
I am wondering whether the same rules apply to my relationship with God.
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I’m asking myself how faith affects my life. My art. The Bleeding Heart project. I’m asking myself if faith still matters, and if so, how.
It would all be easier if it did not. At least it feels that way at times. If the Bleeding Heart were a project about "art, hope and love” rather than “art, faith, hope and love”, so many conversations would get less awkward. I feel, at least, like different doors might open. After all, we’re talking about a very old and rather unpopular Christian faith in this case.
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A week in pictures, and not too many words.
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Re-entry used to be the worst.
At home, you’ll be going to bed too late and waking up too early to work again too soon, seeing as how you squeezed every last moment of sweetness out of this vacation.
This used to be my story. I used to feel a hollow terror in my chest as I headed backward to home. But not lately. Not this time.
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I tell her about a walk I remember where she and her husband confided in me and my wife about their doubts. Their open wounds. Their very human selves. I tell her it was the first time I had heard this vulnerability from older people I respected. People I viewed as impenetrable. A viel was lifted that day. If I remember right, we were literally crossing a bridge at the time. Stopped in the middle, watching water trickle over rocks below.
It is just then, as we share little stories we’ve both heard before, that the real loss hits me.
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Becoming your authentic self seems to be the work of a lifetime. Every once an a while someone comes along to speed up that process. Brené Brown researches shame, fear and vulnerability, so she has a lot to say about authentic living. That is the focus of her book, The Gifts of Imperfection
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I walk over, following Russ' curious gaze to the ground. When someone watches something this intently, it’s hard not to join in. Now I’m looking down, too. Watching water trickle over brittle earth. Iced tea, to be accurate. The overflow of a church picnic.
Brown on brown, the liquid spreads. Like a virus across continents in some summer blockbuster virus-visualization. We wonder aloud at how far this small amount of liquid is spreading. We place bets as to where it will stop. In the end we leave, responsibilities calling us elsewhere. The drink is still spilling out.
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There are protests about time. The lack of time for pursuits of passion. I persist. You make time for the things that matter, I say. I talk about someone I read about online recently and how she works her creativity for at least an hour every single day. How if you just give your creativity an hour every day you will grow like you wouldn’t believe. You may even master it. You will at least keep it thriving.
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