Kingdom thoughts.

I'm realizing that I've posted to the Faith & Art blog more recently than I have here. It's not that I'm trying to avoid this. It's just that it's becoming harder for me to separate the art from the rest of me anymore. I'm sure this is a big reason why I have identified so strongly with Madeleine L'Engle over the last few years. She says:

And as I listen to the silence, I learn that my feelings about art and my feelings about the Creator of the Universe are inseparable. To try to talk about art and about Christianity is for me one and the same thing, and it means attempting to share the meaning of my life, what gives it, for me, its tragedy and its glory.

It's true. I feel such an honor to be able to connect with the one true Creator, why would I want to separate that aspect of my personality from my day-today self?

On the Faith & Art blog I've posted about some things Rusty and I have been talking about and some decisions we may be making in the not-terribly-distant future. At church this past Sunday both of us were floored by the sermon and its relevance to what we're thinking about. The message was essentially that "wisdom" is not a way of thinking. It's an action. You can think all you want about ways to do things, ways to respond to things, ways to improve things. But unless you act on them? It's pretty much not worth anything unless you take that thinking and do something about it. Which comes back around to the decisions Rusty and I will be making in the next fews weeks and months.

When Rusty and I were talking about yesterday's fabulous Superbowl message greatness (complete with a half-time show by Moeller high school's marching band and some guy in a pink fur coat), I found myself saying, "I don't want to come to the end of my life and have to face God with the knowledge that I could have done more." I don't want to thank God for the salary Rusty gets because it helped pay for our house or helped us get more stuff. A house and stuff aren't "bad." But there's more. And we want to be part of that "more." So please pray for us. And feel free to go browse the other stuff over at the Faith & Art blog.

I'm not sure about the future of this blog or how to merge the two together or whether to keep them separate. I guess the next few months will answer that on its own. Either way, thanks for thinking and reading and praying through this with us. I know there are going to be some people who think we're nuts for wanting to leave a nice house in the nice school district in the nice neighborhood we're in. I think Madeleine L'Engle said it best for me, again, when she said:

It is a frightening thing to open oneself to this strange and dark side of the divine; it means letting go our sane self-control, that control which gives us the illusion of safety. But safety is only an illusion, and letting it go is part of listening to the silence, and to the Spirit.

Amen, sister.