I have not been blogging a lot this summer, and for that I apologize. It is not that I've been too busy, and it's not that nothing's going on. It's that I've found myself in an odd transition period and cannot find a way to have everything settle enough to blog about it. Strangely enough, it's not really the transition out of college that's getting to me. I'm doing quite well with that, actually. It's moving towards the next stage in my faith journey. God reveals the least He can, just enough to know the very next steps, and these steps are leading places I never would have thought. Not that I know what those places are, even. The steps are just not what I was anticipating.
I am frustrated at proselytizing preachers who will tell people that coming to God will fix all their problems. I don't understand people who claim that your life gets easier once you have given it over to God. Hebrews is right… it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, because the living God will take you places you never anticipated or wanted, the living God will have to do more than you thought you could, which is both incredible and terrifying. The living God is a tricky one you can never, ever predict, and that uncertainty can be unsettling, so the lesson then becomes how to trust, and how to walk blindly.
It's funny that when I started this blog over two years ago, I named it after a verse entirely about this. John 3:8. "The wind blows where it wants to. You hear its sound, but you don't know where it comes from or where it is going. That's the way it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." It's that feeling of blowing in the wind, not knowing where the next gust will take you, and I have not hit the ground enough to blog regularly.
One of the questions of the summer is, "what is it you actually want to do?" The answer being, of course, "I want to serve God," but that's generally not the answer that people are looking for, especially the non-religious theatrical folk. In my first meeting with the third director to arrive, we were getting to know each other and she asked that question, and I didn't really give an answer. I avoided it, because the real answer was, "I don't know." Listing a career choice doesn't feel right for me (never has), and for a while I was just feeling lost as to what it was. How to answer that question.
The great thing about this summer is that, in the midst of this, I'm surrounded by other people, with similar interests, and completely different viewpoints. From backgrounds which are not mine. It is incredible, to be able to talk with these people and find my own mission starting to flesh out. And especially as I've met people I've collaboratively clicked with (the "we're going to make art together for the rest of our lives" people), even as the wind blows me places I'd never thought I'd go, something about it makes sense, and it becomes easier to trust.
A couple weeks ago, I was trying to answer that question, the "What do I actually want to do?" question, after getting to know people who have both made my life more confusing and more clear, and here is what I came up with.
I want to make music.
I want to make music using every sound and every voice in the world.
I want to turn daily life into music.
I want to sing praise.
I want to heal others.
I want to make people feel more emotion than their bodies can hold.
I want to confront people with life, so that they may be unafraid to live it.
I want to teach people that nothing is ordinary, least of all themselves.
I want to get the entire world--mountains, valleys, fields, deserts, lakes, oceans--resounding in praise.
I want to create art that is visceral, that gives a gift of release to the audience.
I want to love everyone, no longer passively, but passionately, genuinely, and generously--and use my life and my art to express that love.
Selfishly, I want to spent my life sitting in the palm of Your hand.
My Lord
My Love
My Light
My Life
So.
That's where I am. Life is terribly confusing but it is all God. All of it. So, I'm breathing and taking each step as it is given.
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