getting Beauty straight

Here are some notes I took at the 24-7 Prayer Gathering in Minneapolis in May. The talk was by an artist, Linea Spransy, and I rediscovered these notes in my journal on Sunday. They're worth sharing:
We are people who should be blazing with hope!
We can turn around and bless God with a unique language that we have.
Beuty-outside of God's will takes the form of seduction.
The downfall of many artists is egoism. Lucifer was the most beutiful. Beauty is not always good.
Beauty: the love language of God.
Our little plans get lost in the spaciousness of God's creation.
Crime goes down when there's beauty around-think of city sections.
People, when they wear beautiful things, their behavior changes.
Beauty pulls beauty out, light attracts light.
Egoism ends in a withdrawal from the spiritual community. The antidote to that: we belong to a family, seeing value in other people.
Egoism has become a virtue, a very false virtue.
Imagination is inexorably linked to compassion.
Selfishness reomoves us from reality.
Our culture has cut us off from reality-can't you see it everywhere?
We see ourselves as a whole, not a part of a whole.
Our culture is connected to comfort insted of heroicism.
Laying down the art itself...take your life, your lifestyle & live it the way God says to live it, creatively, deeply creatively, and with virtue. Virtue is a really exciting idea and it's hard.
Oh! For a church that is virtuous!
Oh! For artists who are virtuous and not self indulgent!
Constantly check our ego at the door, constantly check our desire to do what's easiest at the door.
The bass note of gravity of this is the sacrifice it requires.
So we lay our lives down as living sacrifices.

wilder

finished reading Laura Ingalls Wilder
my thoughts linger in the simplicity of life
back then

of chores, of "good mornings", of warm quilts,
long walks, hard work, hearty food,
winter evenings, simple Christmases
and shy love

the men then were wilder
(not only Almanzo)
the curse of Adam burdening
forcing sweat, work, toil
limping too

but joy comes, and singing,
and the playing of the fiddle,
beautiful horses,
big dreams

Big Dreams
Beautiful Dreams

shattered

Here is the scene that awaited us as we arrived to open the church this morning (minus the orange things we added after discovering the scene):

Yup. Someone threw a rock through the glass door. Shards were strewn all over the floor. It was a really impressive sight, with the shiny glass catching the light, like jewels. It was beautiful. What had happened was serious, though. Someone didn't like the door the way it was and decided a gaping jagged hole would suffice better than your average glass door. Did it have to do with the fact that the door opened into a church? Hmm. Maybe.

Something our pastor said about the event during our service hit me in a right way, too. He led us in prayer for the person who did the damage & said it's not okay for someone to feel like they have that on their record, that the bad guy (yes, the devil, and he is bad) wants people to feel burdened by things like that, to make them feel unworthy or guilty, and THAT'S NOT OKAY.

Got me thinking that I'm glad I go to a church where there's a disturbance like this. The shattered glass door reminds me that the faith I hold to is a threat to some people, like I wrote in my journal, the gospel & Jesus are not the fragrance of life to everyone; to some it's the smell of death (I stole that from brother Paul). Perhaps it's because the church is making a difference & people are being set free from addictions, from bad relationships, from mediocre, and our church was due for some sort of disturbance. However that works, anyway, after discovering the shards & brokenness, my morning was so GOOD. Worshipping with a bit of the tension of the morning's discovery hanging in the air was the missing ingredient for an offering for a King who often gets mediocre praises from me. I was so inspired during the sermon & afterwards & had to write ideas down so I wouldn't forget them.

And then it struck. Like a Rock breaking into the church. Who's our Rock? The Lord is our Rock & our Salvation. And when that thought dropped into my head, I saw that morning's events as a prophetic statement that God (our Rock) is bringing breakthrough into the Church.

Yes! Take it, take it! Not just for the congregation I attend, see it for yours too! We're family! A gift for you!

May we be shattered, our protective doors be shattered, into a beautiful mess to welcome in the risky King who has life and wind and breath and grace in Him.

And an end to guilt, for sinners. Like the taxcollector in Luke 18, praying, "Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner."