exhale

It has been quite a week. Definitely the most stressful of this semester. My papers are done. I'm very proud of my Beauty and the Christian Life paper so maybe I'll put an excerpt at the end. (I just loved writing it, I'm sorry! haha) And my human sexuality paper... well it's done. I'm just proud of myself for miraculously finishing it at 5am on Thursday morning. Relationships are moving and evolving, and it's strange. Thanksgiving is next week, I can't wait to drive home at 4am Wed. morning. I'm graduating in 4 weeks! I'll be done with college! Well undergraduate at least. And I think I might put off my entrance into grad school until mid-late summer. Having a plan and just jumping right in seems to be something I'm doing to keep myself safe. I need room for transitioning and to hear God speak into my life, as much as his voice, especially when he talks about me to me, scares the hell out of me.

I'm starting to feel much better. I realized some things. First of all, I need a better sense of humor, I can be so uptight! Second, stress is useless. And last, life is too short to always be worried about the next thing because then you're distracted from the present thing. Bill Dogterom reminded me that the only thing I need to be concerned with is becoming Jenny, the rest will get taken care of. I looked in the mirror and thought yeah, I'm getting old from all this anxiety.

God is in control and I feel peace in that. He has really been speaking to me today. Mostly about his amazing sovereignty and his faithfulness. I don't need contigency plans. Anxiety about relationships and where I will live.... He has it taken care of it, I just need to wait and see. Relinquishment has been on my mind. I need to just breathe out the breath I'm always holding and declare in my words and actions, "I will follow you."



Beauty to consider:





















Excerpt from my paper, "Beauty, kitsch, the Imago Dei, and me: theology of aesthetics paper":

" The world is often characterized as an ugly, immoral place by most Protestant Christians. Churches bemoan the evil and depravity of society on Sunday mornings in earnest appeals to congregations to turn from their sins and cry out to God in repentance. Tracy Chapman sings, “leave us innocent of the things some do in the dark”—Christians are afraid of the dark. The darkness that strikes fear in the hearts of Christians manifests itself in many forms, whether it is hate, sinful human nature, social ills, or forces of evil.

Images of death, starvation, poverty, victimization, and violence confront the modern mind when one thinks about the human condition. Beauty seems to be of little concern in the midst of such misery. During the Holocaust of World War II, Anne Frank’s words are mystifying, “Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.” The human heart longs for beauty even in the face of hopelessness and seemingly ubiquitous ugliness. The desire for beauty is so strong that it becomes a need. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick,” and where there is beauty there is hope.

Beauty is not salvation, but it is a form of grace. Beauty is a reminder of the love and presence of God. Beauty is not the point of Christian faith, just as simple gestures of love are not the point in romantic relationships. When a relationship exists between two people, the flowers, gifts, kind words, and other acts of love do not create the relationship, rather they are created by the love that preceded those gestures. God created beauty to romance the human heart; his desire is that beauty will inspire his beloved to draw near to him. Through creation, he shares divine beauty.

God demonstrates his love by his interaction with the material world, first with creation and then with the incarnation. In his creation, he gave human beings the Imago Dei because he values his creation and wants to indwell it...

...Worshipping God in the darkness is powerful because it seems to symbolize our outcry in the darkness of the world and our sins to a God that is so other than the all too familiar darkness. Yet, we are aware of his presence in the midst of our darkness. There is darkness and there is ugliness, but beauty still finds us.

I want to apply my theological aesthetic to the world with an appreciation for the ordinary beauty that confronts me daily, and with love for the people around me who have value and dignity because of the Imago Dei. By viewing people in light of the Imago Dei they become beautiful and important, and it is a step toward seeing people through the eyes of Christ. And as my sole aim in life is to become Jenny and to live as a disciple of Christ, it is important for my theological aesthetic to inform my view of myself. The Imago Dei and God’s value of the physical world should not only affect the view I have of others, it should affect my own self-image. My hope is that my theological aesthetic will allow me to affirm my beauty and the art in me."