I was asked to represent, on paper, what was most valuable in a friend. A few people came to mind, and they had this in common: someone who, though coming from a different sphere, is able to see your gifts and helps you recognise them when you can’t.
It’s a friendship that’s mutually compassionate, unpossessive, and life-giving.
Marker doodle
Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities.
– Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning
It is so, or it ought to be, with the love of a true friend, a partner, a parent, a teacher… After all, it is so with the love of God.
I briefly emerge from my indefinite hiatus to share these two drawings.
My friend and I were talking about how different the effect of these drawings would be had I drawn adults instead of children. It’s almost impossible to walk away from a suffering child; our instinctual response to their pain tends to be unbridled. Perhaps that’s what it means that God sees us as his little children.
This is quite a departure from my usual “doodles”. I drew this today as my heart ached from the latest news about the desecration of the purest, most innocent of all human life. It is but the icing on top of many other abominable practices to which our culture has become desensitized. I’ve said much about this on other channels, and I don’t intend to elaborate in this space.
For now let’s pause to simply behold the miracle, the self-evident beauty that is every human being.
The human being is single, unique, and unrepeatable, someone thought of and chosen from eternity, someone called and identified by name.
The phrase “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” never sat right with me. I was never sure why, until recently.
It brings to mind a kind of strength that is callous toward pain and indifferent to weakness. Or a cold strength of ambition that propels you forward, faster, higher, while paying no heed to what you leave behind. Maybe I’m reading too much into a quip, or maybe I’ve come to desire a radically different kind of strength.
The strength I desire could be mistaken for weakness. You could say that what hasn’t killed me has made me weaker. Weaker in that I feel pain more acutely, mine as well as others’. Weaker in that I am aware of my own shortcomings, and more forgiving of others’. And weaker in that I relinquish all desire to live life in pursuit of self-glory, instead accepting whatever God places before me, determined to find the graces God has prepared in any given time and place. In accepting weakness we become spiritually stronger.
I love the above quote by St. Vincent de Paul — it is an invitation to learn the art of suffering well. It’s easy to recognize the value of suffering in hindsight, but let’s aspire to lovingly receive and carry our crosses.
Again and again I discover why the saints insist that suffering is medicine for the soul. Suffering teaches me the most important lessons, purges the most stubborn of bad habits, inspires my highest aspirations, and turns my eyes toward eternity.
Not feeling particularly useful or valuable these days. But I’ll take a leaf out of St Therese’s book: “Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, or even at their difficulty, as at the love with which we do them.”
Faith enables us to know that there’s grace to be found everywhere, even in seeming emptiness and nothingness. Perhaps this is the season to be a child, and in doing so allowing Jesus to carry me like a little child too feeble to walk.
Round Two began about six months ago. The fog of a long depressive episode was beginning to dissipate, and my mind and soul glimpsed a new horizon. At the time, I wrote the following:
I wish it was as easy as “picking up where I left off”. But the damage and hurt I have inflicted on myself and the people who love me are all very real. There’s a lot of rubble to sift through, a lot of re-examination, mending, and rebuilding to be done. With God’s grace and guidance I will find healing. Not just restoration, but transformation. I have faith. I am reminded once again of why I named this blog “Under Reconstruction”. From this point on I will let God rebuild me, my life, and my relationships in whatever way He deems best. My Creator knows best.
In the months that have gone by, I have learned and grown a lot — this blog catalogs that journey — so I didn’t think there’d be a Round Three. Yet here I am! The above words are eerily relevant. Except this time, I’m emerging not from a depressive episode, but a hypomanic episode. If being depressed meant being in darkness, being hypomanic meant playing with fire. The initial spark was very much welcomed. A spike in energy was nice, a boost of creativity was fun, a healthy self-esteem was thrilling… But I made the mistake of not watching the flames, and I allowed them to get too big. I was enraptured, hypnotized by an illusion of grandiosity and invincibility. I made mistake after mistake, I got burned, but what I regret most is that the people closest to me got burned as well.
But I know there is mercy and healing to be found in Christ. For my mind and my soul, for those I’ve hurt, for the relationships I’ve damaged. That I know full well. It will take time, but a broken spirit and a contrite heart He will not refuse.
And this time I’m learning that I’m never “done”. There is always more to learn. More weaknesses to be unearthed and weeded out. More calls to repentance. More forgiveness to seek and grant. And in every fall is a reminder of my weak, sinful nature, and a call to continually surrender my will to the Eternal and Unchanging. And always, always a call to love better, serve better, sacrifice better.
“Surely, I wait for the Lord; who bends down to me and hears my cry, draws me up from the pit of destruction, out of the muddy clay, sets my feet upon rock, steadied my steps, and puts a new song in my mouth, a hymn to our God.” (Ps 40:2-4)
I may not be writing as much as I attempt to sort things out internally. But you’ll probably see more doodles — where words fail me, I’ll let them fill the void. Thank you, again, for accompanying me on this never-ending journey! Peace be with you. 🙂
“I’ll be back! I always come back!” (That’s a quote from Bride of Chucky, but no, that’s not relevant.)
I haven’t written anything new over the last few days (though there are many thoughts I’m itching to get on paper), because I’ve been…doodling. A lot.
Apparently, this type of detail-oriented (or should I say “obsessed”?) and geometric doodling has a name — it’s called a “zentangle”. I would not have known this if my colleague hadn’t passed me a Zentangle workbook to pass to Omari, my student who’s currently in the hospital.
Annie the Antisocial AnteaterCamille the Capricious CamelMalcolm the Maladjusted Meerkat
I am hooked, and think I may have figured out the appeal of zengtangling. It’s a lot like life — you can’t erase any of the strokes you’ve made, but you can adapt and build off from those accidents, misfortunes, and mistakes. In the moment, every detail seems random and incongruous with everything else, but at the end of the day you find yourself with a final tapestry much more complex and beautiful than what you could have dreamed up at the beginning.
And it reminds me very much of God’s continuing work in my life and yours. In the words of a very wise priest, God is a skillful impressionist painter — his work can make little to no sense up close, but when you step back you see a masterpiece.
This has been fun and therapeutic for me, but I also connect deeply to the idea of characters who are so fixated with a certain trait that they forget there’s so much more beauty and complexity to them. I’ve seen it in myself, in people struggling with mental illnesses, in my students, and in how people view those who have special needs.
I’m now thinking of putting them on sale as prints/T-shirts/tote bags/iPhone skins on Society6. What do you think?
Under Reconstruction 