an artist running amuck

12.28.2011

and here's why i do what i do

incredible email i received a couple of days after our annual Christmas concert, for which i provided visuals....

Kim,

As we awaited the concert last Sunday afternoon it warmed my heart to see you sitting the "video" seat. I knew we were in for something very special...and so pleased as we brought six of our neighbors with us.

Again, I want to thank you for your exquisite art work on the screen accompanying the choir. I was amazed how you unobtrusively put in the English words so we could follow with the calligraphy words and pictures the deeper meaning of the exhilarating songs.

The concert had a very special meaning to me...and you had a significant part.

I had just been given word that my oldest brother was in hospice in North Carolina having battled leukemia for the past two years, so that was on my mind.

As I sat throughout Glorious Sounds I was being ushered right up into a tiny Glimpse of what I knew my brother was soon to experience~ in going Home to the Splendor and Majesty and All Embracing Love and Joy of seeing and feeling his Lord Face to Face...Jesus Christ~ The King of Kings, The Lion of Judah, The Anointed One....! He was the central focus...not just His humanity as a Baby...but His Resurrected Reign.

On Monday evening., my brother's pastor was reading to him the 23rd Psalm and as he finished reading the last verse "And I will dwell in the House of the Lord Forever" my brother's heart stopped and at that moment he experienced the REAL THING...what amazing joy!

Thank you for being His instrument for me in that experience.

the pup and i wish all a merry christmas....

12.10.2011

we miss you, jack....

last of 54 images shot for my friends, tim, anna, jack and margaret, for their Christmas card last year. this past september, we lost jack in virginia's floods. you are in my thoughts, today, jack....

12.01.2011

christmas 2011...the letter

For thou hast been a strength to the poor,
a strength to the needy in his distress,
a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat,
when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall.
Isaiah 25.4 KJV

This year finds me in a reflective mood especially due to the places that found their way under my feet and the events that unfolded before my eyes. I witnessed pain and suffering...some in the distant past, some in the too-close present. But all involved the loss of something...life, innocence, faith, joy, understanding, security.

one never holds (death). death always comes unexpectedly.
rwandan proverb

There is a saying in Rwanda that goes something like this: the first time you visit, you are a stranger. The second time, a friend. The third time, family. In June, at the invitation of the gang at Land of a Thousand Hills Coffee, I returned to Rwanda for my second visit. I found that with friendship, comes an invitation. And with that invitation comes the happiness of sharing the Rwandans’ joy and the burden of sharing their suffering. Like last year, we visited a genocide memorial...this time, a Catholic church whose priest turned over to the extremist Hutus those seeking sanctuary there. What you see here is a cross placed on a fraction of the clothes of the 10,000 who were killed within its walls. Those lost represent a hundredth of those killed between April and June 1994. For the Rwandans, though it has been 17 years, this tragedy remains as fresh as if it all happened yesterday. The agony has not ended...the people just keep persevering...marking each day as it comes, taking each step as it approaches, working their fields as did their forebears, trying not to forget yet trying to continue. Nowhere was this more evident than the pain etched on the face of the female security guard when she let us in...as we toured the grounds we would see her with her head in her hands, tears streaming down her face.

Being my second trip to the land of a million hills, I think I felt more this time than the last...more thankfulness, more tranquility, more understanding, more anguish. I am thankful for all of these emotions because they remind me to remember those 1,000,000 souls who were lost, and the 800,000 genocide and AIDS orphans left behind.

it is not length of life, but depth of life. ralph waldo emerson

The sheer numbers we are talking in Rwanda can make it difficult to consider individual loss...the impact on individual families...the impact on individual communities. In September, the tragic and untimely death of my dear friends’ 12 year old son in Virginia’s floods brought it all home. How deep and far-reaching and life-long-lasting the loss of one person can be. And yet, as we struggle to make sense of all this – whether it be the loss of one person or a million – I hold ever more tightly to the promises of God, as prophesied by Isaiah...fulfilled and made perfect in the life, death, and resurrection of his Son. And not just for those of us who have lost a loved one.

all i have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all i have not seen.
ralph waldo emerson

This year I also bore witness to news that a former employee of my church sexually abused students under his care. I walked alongside several of the parents. I also walked alongside several adult friends who were abused as children. All of this, coupled with the recent news of sexual abuse at universities, reminds me again and again of the brokenness of our planet and all who walk upon it. Some days it feels like the best and easiest thing to do would be to chuck it all and beg God to start over. But then I am reminded that God is alive and well and at work redeeming and restoring our world...as the people of Rwanda have shown whenever a genocide perpetrator tells the truth and asks for forgiveness. Whenever a genocide survivor gracefully and mercifully gives it. Whenever a perpetrator and survivor live and work peacefully side by side. I believe it because I have seen it. I have met these people. Life and wholeness can be restored. If not in this world, than in the next. God will not rest until it is so. It is what I hope for and have faith in and believe.

all the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word:

freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope. winston churchill

Along with deep sadness was abundant joy: amazing projects, a return trip to Bulgaria, moving and gathering most of my belongings under one roof, an incredible trip to Tanzania with OneVoice, a non-profit that uses music to connect kids around the world, and the addition of a rescue pup, Jax, who has, in turn, rescued me and cracked my heart wide open. Oh, and I got to ride a camel. :]

May your holiday season and coming year be filled with the greatest, and simplest, of things. All my love to you, kim