Shading

In writing and drawing, shading is my favorite thing.

Currently I am entrenched in having to make broad, sweeping strokes (outlining a story for a script I'm working on), and I'm having trouble with it.

That's okay, though. Drawings that I don't like at a first pass, normally find their feet while I'm shading. I just have to grit my teeth until then.

All right. I'm going back to it. Just thought I'd share that.

This is what my desktop looks like now...

And I think it's sweet.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

post-Christmas

I am very grateful for my new Sam Phillips album. Thank you, Mama and Papa.

I had a great Christmas.

I cried over one present. It was a vest.

I plan on watching my favorite Christmas/noir movie tonight.

I love my cousins. All of them.

I love Over the Rhine. I'm grateful for Jeffery Overstreet.

I don't know how to spell the name "Jeffery".

I feel the sadness a soul feels when it is flying over a large body of water.

Dear God, I'm so grateful for what you did. More to the point: For what's your doing. It's got to be in the present tense with me, doesn't it?

Emanuel, take me. I need home and your arms.

Advent

I know it's a little late, but, if you're interested, Slacktivist has put up a great Christmas meditation by Anne Lamott.

Enjoy and Merry Christmas. And thank God for Emmanuel.

My Favorite Movies of the Year

I haven't seen that many movies this year, but, well, here it goes:

WALL-E

The Dark Knight

Iron Man

Was Juno released this year? There Will Be Blood? The New World? I like those movies.

I still want to see:

Ballast
Man on Wire
Synecdoche, New York

Does anyone else have any recommendations from this year's movies?

Yay!

Understated, but it'll get you excited.

Q's preview of U2's No Line On The Horizon:

here.

I found this on Jeff Overstreet's blog and thought it was enjoyable.

"Whoever brought me here/ is gonna have to take me home."

Father, Dad, Creator, Guy Who Knows What’s Going On Here,

I give you the messy sea of who I am. I give you my tangled desires, my unwanted wants.

I give you my needs and my neediness. I give you my soul and my spirit. Whatever those are, the essence of me, whatever that might be.

I give you this beating heart. It’s led me wrong before. I give you analytical mind; it’s a crazy loop of best guesses and what-ifs.

Lord, you made me. You know what’s going all here.

Dear Heavenly Father, maker of the stars. I give you my sleepy eyes. My they see you, for they are starved otherwise.

My bare feet feel the fake carpet.

Jesus take my all, take all of who I am. It occurs to me that maybe there are people who ask this from a place of surrender. Of a kind of spiritual, die-to-yourself nirvana. Asking for it because they’re holy and they’ve got it all put together. I ask because I don’t have it all put together, because everything’s falling apart. Not dramatically, but in slow motion, like a house in an Andrei Tarkovsky film.

I ask it for purely selfish reasons. I’ve had this soul long enough and really don’t want it anymore. I trust you. You’re strong. And I thank you for taking me into your hands.

Thank you. And Love,

Grateful Tuesdays # 26

Dear Heavenly Father,

Thank you for the feel of the keys typing underneath my fingers. For the pressure and give and the creating of words.

Thank you for giving us the ability to create. To populate the white page. Thanks for wanting this.

You know, that’s hard for me to believe. It was hard for me to write “wanting” instead of “being okay with.” I wonder why that is?

Creating is your thing, God. You commissioned Adam and Eve to fill the Earth. To populate the white page.

You want us to work with our hands. To express ourselves. This seems selfish to me when I think about it (the idea of me sitting off, in my own little corner, essentially creating self-portrait after self-portrait). But, somehow — and I’m not saying I fully under stand this, this is a part of your plan. Me expressing myself somehow factors into the War of Heaven and Judgment and Hell and Heaven and Earth and everything in between. And even the business of Heaven long before. Which, I suppose that, if I have you in me, me expressing myself works out pretty well for you in the long run. And me.

Thank you for that.

Thank you for the concert last night. The beautiful music and the beauty of music. Thank you for the soaring, crying guitar, the words written in blood, the voice with so much fullness. Thank you for the fun of it all too, God. The interaction between the band members on stage and with the crowd.

Above all these elements of the evening, God, thank you for the people I went with. The joy that each one of them brings into my life. Thank you for the fun of getting dressed up and going to an event. The anticipation.

Thank you for these wood animals on my desk.

Thank you for the film in these canisters.

===

Thank you for this evening. For leading and guiding.

Amen.

I thought this was very creative...