faith moves,october 2006
spiritual consistency,spiritual change and everything in between



















i,
without confessional,
or months of confessionals,the structures of
a physical confessional transformed into
poems,artwork,messages we scrawled.
what pure times? we're not ready for
moments when we're clicked in.
we're not ready for inner prayer
melting into one sound forever,
we're not sure if we ever went close to there.
faith moves,sure i can run on
the steam of faithful locomotives,
famous atheists on the radio they say,
i'm sick of changing,now what is this moving? (matthew)

& & &

ii,
i've always felt a strong desire to feel & understand a deep connection to God. even the years i spent trying to ignore the pull, i still felt it; and still clung to it when life was too much or too beautiful. & i know i always thought, when i was younger, that with age would come this vast wisdom & understanding about God & my place in this Divine creation...

but.

i cannot claim to have a spiritual life or practice.
through the last fifteen years, my spiritual life has been anything But consistent. ive visited extremes & ive spent months in neglect & denial. ive been at peace & devoted & ive been an absolute mess.

and.

ive always prayed. prayed to a God who i connect with more like a Father, like the Father you could choose & not the one you are given. i pray to Him with simple language & in casual conversation & then i pray in rhythm & rounds & repetition. i take a deep breath & remember that every breath is a prayer. i whisper Jesus Prayers while i work, while i walk, while i rock my baby, while i sleep.

though my spiritual practice has rarely been consistent, my Desire has always been there. it never, ever leaves but rather changes in intensity. i have such a deep desire, most of the time, to KNOW ---- & im just now starting to realise that i may never Know.

& i may never feel a deep connection to a church or spiritual community... but im open to it. & i may never have answers to all my soul's questions... but i will still ask them.

& even though i spend a lot of time feeling frazzled about my spiritual life, i also tend to find peace just as easily. i Do take refuge in my breath, in prayer, in seeing God & seeking God, in the warmth of the sun & the stillness of snow.

i see the Divine even though im always wishing for more clarity, always trying to feel more comfortable.

((& its very possible the secret is i'll never feel comfortable.)) (amanda)

& & &

iii,
spiritual consistency,
who am i to say or try to point out
consistent moments. but i know them,
it's the same ones
that memory brings back with
certain sounds,smells,visions.
amateurs,boston afternoons and praying
off 20 rounds. here and there
days that i string together myself.
practice malas,sore hands,chanting
until exhausted
without visions but faithful.
keep a tally,does God keep a list
of what i don't know?

who's on pilgrimage. i never went,
but counted holy places around me.
there was holiness around us every second
and then all the carefulness with
spiritual paraphanelia.
tulsi twigs,scriptures,pictures of Krsna,
watercups,not enough fresh flowers,
tiny garlands and dust we didn't notice.

homage,an image junky
collapse in front of Deity form of
Radha-Gopivallabha
and then all the connections to brothers and
sisters,that place
the understanding of tired 4am,
japa walks,quiet prasadam breakfasts,
even the places we lived alone,
worshipped Krsna
in such a quiet way,wondered
if the walls listened to prayers
or just absorbed
the richness of sanskrit on tongues,
intonation of
"Lord,energy of the Lord,engage me in Your
devotional service."
i love the paramapara prayers
and always an opening prayer for
auspiciousness in my praying,
'jaya sri krsna caitanya..' (matthew)

& & &

iv,
an interview with chico fajardo
inthisquiet.com

how do you remember art/other creative activities in your early life and when did they become serious pursuits for you?

i cant really remember my early early years. but im told that my mom used to carry crayons and paper around with her everywhere we went. and when i grew bored, she would place a crayon in my hand and i would entertain myself by drawing and coloring. my mom will still sometimes show me an old plastic sandwich bag of dusty, wittled crayons i used to carry around. apparently, i raised the bag of broken crayons up to her and said, "can i have new ones, moma?"

i give a lot of credit to my parents for raising my sister and i in a way that cultivated our creative senses. being taught to create instead of consume as a child enabled me to resist being assimulated into american culture. even though i didnt know it at the time, creating became a way to protect myself from america and eventually prepare myself to join the Church--whose central task is being a people set apart from the nations.

even as a kid, creating has always a serious act for me. but its also a not-so-serious act. i dont think i could continue making art if i treated it as such a serious venture. its more like a play you put on as a kid. you take it seriously, but you also know that its dress up and its okay to fall over laughing.

...

artists(of any form)who inspired you early on and ones who inspire you now?

all through grade school and jr. high, shigeru miyamoto was my greatest influence and inspiration. shigeru is the creative mind behind the mario bros. games and alot of other nintendo worlds. i would spend hours drawing mario bros. characters and inventing new ones. i had a trapper keeper full of mario bros. landscapes and maps. flying turtles and underground pipe worlds and snapping flower plants and smiling clouds...the way he made the natural world come alive and burst with color and life took hold of me. even though its been years since ive played any mario or nintendo games, i can still see his influence in my paintings.

i went to art school for two years before dropping out. i left for a lot of reasons, one of them being that i was paying alot of money for very little in return. i learned very little at the institution. i must say, however, that my time there wasnt wasted. not because of any of the teachers or exhibits, but because i met and became friends with eileen muza.

eileen was my age and we lived down the hall from each other. she would walk into my room at midnight and ask me if i wanted to go drawing in the underground tunnels of chicago. i would spend many nights like this, following her around watching as she would trace the outlines of shadows on sidewalks, draw yellow oil pastel fish on bridges and sit by the lake listening to the boats clink against each other in the stillness of the night.

she would tell me to hush and just listen to the boats knock against each other and then we would get up and walk five miles across the city, stopping to collect fallen tree branches. she would later fashion a suitcase out of them. she would would photocopy her drawings, pack them in an envelope and mail them out to people she didnt know.

eileen left art school after our first year. she didnt have enough money to pay tution. its been three years since ive seen or spoken to her, though i think of her often. eileen grew up in a poor family and taught me money should never get in the way of creating. she would draw on scrap pieces of paper and with pencils she found on the floor. she spent very little time in class, and alot of it in dumpsters and on bridges and on the trains.

she always kept a sketchbook with her and spent all of her free time drawing. i have aquired her habit of always keeping a sketchbook with me, though i yet to aquire her time devotion to her work. eileen muza is the most influential artist in my life and hands down, the most inspiring.

...

how does your spiritual life figure into what you create and vice versa?

the hebrew prophets were poets. and with their dancing, lyrical, haunting words they painted visions of life free of exploitation and empire. a people unable to envision whats not yet reality, are a people incapable of resistance. to be able to imagine another way of life is the first step towards enacting that life. as a artist belonging to the Church, my role is to inspire my people to faithfulness. my role is to help remind my people of what life ought to look like. and my role is to do this without violence.

i paint on wood found in alleyways. that garbage would otherwise end up in landfills, which are often located near poor neighborhoods. i paint on found wood because stamped on every canvas is "made in china." i dont set prices for my art, hoping to encourage those with much to give much and those with little to give little. i find paint in dumpsters because i dont know how to both "love my neighbor as myself" and spend thousands of dollars on art supplies when my neighbor eats doritos for dinner.

to be a christian and an artist is to have the task of deconstructing the illusion of the empire without using the empire's tools.

...

you've lived in intentional communities for a while, what have you learned about it and what misconceptions did you have about it?

i am a part of a community of christians that live together. all 50 of us live within a five-minute walking distance of each other. we tend to a garden, ride our bikes, dump our money into a common purse, share our cars with each other, send people to iraq to be peacemakers, go without health insurance and invite friends and strangers into our homes to eat. its a little bustling village-in-the-city of sorts. some folks call this "intentional community" which is technically accurate i suppose. we call it the kingdom of God.*

living in this way has taught me that im a very arrogant, selfish, ungraceful person. when a bunch of broken people try to follow jesus with a bunch of other broken people, you discover very quickly how sick you are. living in God's kingdom makes you realize how in need of grace you are, how in need of forgiveness, and how in need of love you are. you realize that you are as much a part of the problem as "the system." and when we realize this, we are then far more open to being graceful with others.

living in this way also teaches you that you can do without things, but not without people. alot of us come from priviledged backgrounds where we are used to air-conditioning, eating out and rarely being uncomfortable. living in this way teaches us that we often have to go without so that others can simply go on. and we learn that the more we let go of our cars, bank accounts, personal space and time, the more we need and want each other--which is a refreshing thing in a society that glorifies personal freedom and independence.

i dont think ive had many misconceptions about living this way. i went into it knowing that it was going to be a lot of hard work. and it has been. if i did have any misconceptions, it was that i thought this life was going to be more miserable. but its been far more abundant and joyous than i anticipated. i had expected a more ascetic, dreary way of life. its turned out to be very hard, but also very life-giving.

*for those who are interested, a handful of us living in these small christian communities have put together a book articulating the marks of our life together. its called "school(s) for conversion: 12 marks of a new monasticism." "the irresistable revolution" by shane claiborne also provides a glimpse of our community life and why we live this way.



& & &

v,
me sectioned up
among religious traditions
known and unknown. more unknown,
wounds. what did i inflict
on converts to vacation faiths
of my memory?
someone,me,
holding a postcard without address,
how do you send it home?

slip-ons forever,stride into
eternity,robes or no robes,
eyes or beads
prayer cards on behalf
of friendship,icons in letters,
apples,flowers,
everything offered first to
opulent Lord,
poetry for our freedom,loose
mold of spiritual life.
i insist i lay it out on the floor,
let's pick through all these pieces. (matthew)


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