5.09.2012
5.04.2012
Utopian Mom Moment
I made a couple of very simple little paintings about being a mom in light of Mothers day, (Mother's day?) How did I teach college english classes, I will forever struggle with the apostrophe. I know it is a simple concept, I know, but forgive my not knowing 15% of the time. I have a few other paintings in mind that I will post when they are done. I know that there are all sorts of moms: working moms, going-to-school moms, single moms, moms who don't wear aprons with ruffles or ever want pink sinks, but I started with these paintings because I wanted to indulge myself in a little vision of perfection. Not that my painting is perfect, but the feeling of the moment I wanted to create, is. Since so much of my real life is not me wearing ruffles and a crown, and there is almost never a sink empty of dishes or a vase of flowers on the counter, I wanted create a little bit of a utopia mom moment, because I think those happen a lot too. I also have been thinking a lot about the joy of being able to stay home, i.e. stay-at-home-mom. You know, that phrase that we so often shy away from, or feel the need to put "just" in front of. I've never been one for being able to hold down a "real" job, with schedules and time cards and rules, but I have been working a lot lately. Like I think I'm getting carpal tunnel from painting 8 hours a day (most of which is while Remy is sleeping), lest you were wondering if he is just tearing up the house while I work. But sometimes, he actually is, and sometimes I'm too tired to play when he is awake, and sometimes he dumps whole bags of onions and garlic and flour on the kitchen floor, then poos in it and smears it around, (don't worry, this last event only happened once). Anyway, I've thought and felt for so long that I needed to work work work in the world to prove myself. I still have no problem with moms who do work, by choice or necessity. I'm impressed at their dexterity and determination. I know I am really lucky to be in a situation where it is mostly a choice, and my job is by no means as difficult or taxing as many other people in the world. I don't have to prove anything to anybody. Remy and Carl are the ones who need me most, and I am sometimes wont to forget as I get whirl-winded into social media, art-making and selling, making connections and working. I don't want to complain because I love what I do, and in so many ways it is ideal. In fact, a dream coming true, so I will still work (some weeks I only work a few hours too), but not at the expense of these precious years while Remy is just a little tater-tot who is indulging himself in every bit of loveliness the world has to offer. I want to be there to show him. So, these next two paintings are a tribute to being at home, and wearing dresses and crowns and feeling awesome about doing what I am doing, no matter how insignificant to anyone else.
Both paintings are available for purchase on my etsy shop or at the Beehive Bazaar this next week.
4.23.2012
John 20:27
Here's the story in a sentence: I was prideful, even said my pride aloud, lost something, was humbled, prayed, ate my words, found the thing I lost.
Saturday night Carl and I prepared for our primary lesson. The lesson book is rife with stories that are black and white, miraculous and testament to a God who listens, always. I said to Carl, "Why do all stories for teaching prayer have to involve someone losing something, then praying to God and finding it right after?" It bothered me because it seemed so simple, so childish in a way, and I sometimes like to pretend that I am so much more complex than merely a child who is lost or who has lost. I even said to Carl that I just didn't like those stories and plus, they never ever happen to me. I think I even said that I didn't think that God cared so much about dumb little things we lose. Little did I know that at the moment I spoke my critical words, my wedding ring was sitting alone at the bottom of the YMCA swimming pool.
I am not a "things" person. I let possessions come into my life and go away without too much strife. My wedding ring, however, is dear to me. My dad made it along with the matching band he made for Carl. Over the past three years we have worn our rings down together. The insides have become smoother. The gold on mine more shiny, while Carl's has worn to a dull yellow. I love my wedding ring. It is one of the few things that I never lose because I only take it off at the end of the day, and I only put it in my special, tiny glass bowl that Brooke brought me from Jerusalem, that sits on my dresser.
Saturday afternoon we took Remy swimming because he'd been sick for days and was finally feeling better. After swimming I played in a softball game, so when we got home that night and I noticed that my ring wasn't on, I assumed that I'd taken it off and left it upstairs when I had changed for softball in a hurry.
By Sunday morning, as we were getting ready for church, I couldn't find my ring. We looked all over the house, but in my heart, I knew it wasn't in the places we were looking. You know the feeling when you just know that something is gone?
After we got home from church, we prayed. Carl prayed that whoever found the ring would find it in their heart to return it.
We called the YMCA, but the ring wasn't in the lost and found. Carl went back to the softball field and searched in the grass during the halftime of a soccer game, but no ring. We drove over to the YMCA. I had a pair of goggles and a swimsuit and was going to scour the pool nonchalantly while dozens of families swam about. Awesome. My plans are so much less childish than anything God could have planned. When I walked into the swimming area, a lifeguard asked me if I needed help (I obviously looked a little frazzled). Before I could even finish my sentence about losing a gold wedding band, the young lifeguard went to his little tower and came back with the ring between his pointer and thumb finger. Is this it? "Yes, that's it." I said. "You're lucky, some guy named Nick just turned it in. Said he found it at the bottom of the pool."
Humbled? yes.
I guess maybe even more than that, I've been taught a lesson about being a skeptic. I can't quite pinpoint what it is, but lately I've been more of a skeptic than a believer. I've carried around the weight of unanswered questions. I've felt the burrowing burden of question in my own beliefs. I do feel the process is important, and even healthy, but I also am learning that there is a time to stop and simply believe, because sometimes that is the thing that saves us, that brings us back to who we are supposed to be.
I read a Stanford study about people who believe in God. The study reports that many people claim to talk to God all day long: have tea with Him, chat with Him, wake up to Him. The study goes on to say that those same people, while some of what they do may appear to be over zealous, do actually feel less lonely and less stressed out. I have also learned that we are all on a spectrum vacillating between absolute and almost blind faith, to total skepticism and doubt. Most of us are somewhere in the middle of that scale. The trick is to always stay on the side of faith, even if it's just 51% faith. There is power in believing, because the things we believe become our reality. I was the one who was wrong to say that the stories I grew up hearing about people who lost things and prayed to find them were too simple.
The author of the study, Tanya Luhrmann, concludes the article by saying, "...the prayer techniques – paying more attention to your inner thoughts – don't have to be limited to a religious context. These techniques involve attending to your imaginative experience and treating your imaginary experience as significant, meaningful and worthy," she said. "I think when that happens, your inner world springs alive."Now, I do believe in prayer, and I do believe in a God who attends to and cares about the things that are important to us, even when they are seemingly insignificant. I have witnessed that firsthand. I don't believe that God is simply in my imagination, but I do think that sometimes I let the skeptic in me quiet the things I think I feel in an attempt to be practical. I want to continue to learn and practice the value of following those feelings, wandering with them to see where they take me. Like our dear friend Joseph who does things like buy a cupcake for a complete stranger because he feels he should, then accidentally eat the cupcake and tell the stranger he ate their cupcake and please wait there while he goes to buy them another one. Joseph's life is magical because he lets it be, and in turn, he spreads magic all around him. I don't know what you believe. Or what you are trying or hoping to believe, but maybe let yourself do it a little more. Let things that seem impossible, or silly, or simple, be real.
Outer Space from Sander van den Berg on Vimeo.
Saturday night Carl and I prepared for our primary lesson. The lesson book is rife with stories that are black and white, miraculous and testament to a God who listens, always. I said to Carl, "Why do all stories for teaching prayer have to involve someone losing something, then praying to God and finding it right after?" It bothered me because it seemed so simple, so childish in a way, and I sometimes like to pretend that I am so much more complex than merely a child who is lost or who has lost. I even said to Carl that I just didn't like those stories and plus, they never ever happen to me. I think I even said that I didn't think that God cared so much about dumb little things we lose. Little did I know that at the moment I spoke my critical words, my wedding ring was sitting alone at the bottom of the YMCA swimming pool.
I am not a "things" person. I let possessions come into my life and go away without too much strife. My wedding ring, however, is dear to me. My dad made it along with the matching band he made for Carl. Over the past three years we have worn our rings down together. The insides have become smoother. The gold on mine more shiny, while Carl's has worn to a dull yellow. I love my wedding ring. It is one of the few things that I never lose because I only take it off at the end of the day, and I only put it in my special, tiny glass bowl that Brooke brought me from Jerusalem, that sits on my dresser.
Saturday afternoon we took Remy swimming because he'd been sick for days and was finally feeling better. After swimming I played in a softball game, so when we got home that night and I noticed that my ring wasn't on, I assumed that I'd taken it off and left it upstairs when I had changed for softball in a hurry.
By Sunday morning, as we were getting ready for church, I couldn't find my ring. We looked all over the house, but in my heart, I knew it wasn't in the places we were looking. You know the feeling when you just know that something is gone?
After we got home from church, we prayed. Carl prayed that whoever found the ring would find it in their heart to return it.
We called the YMCA, but the ring wasn't in the lost and found. Carl went back to the softball field and searched in the grass during the halftime of a soccer game, but no ring. We drove over to the YMCA. I had a pair of goggles and a swimsuit and was going to scour the pool nonchalantly while dozens of families swam about. Awesome. My plans are so much less childish than anything God could have planned. When I walked into the swimming area, a lifeguard asked me if I needed help (I obviously looked a little frazzled). Before I could even finish my sentence about losing a gold wedding band, the young lifeguard went to his little tower and came back with the ring between his pointer and thumb finger. Is this it? "Yes, that's it." I said. "You're lucky, some guy named Nick just turned it in. Said he found it at the bottom of the pool."
Humbled? yes.
I guess maybe even more than that, I've been taught a lesson about being a skeptic. I can't quite pinpoint what it is, but lately I've been more of a skeptic than a believer. I've carried around the weight of unanswered questions. I've felt the burrowing burden of question in my own beliefs. I do feel the process is important, and even healthy, but I also am learning that there is a time to stop and simply believe, because sometimes that is the thing that saves us, that brings us back to who we are supposed to be.
I read a Stanford study about people who believe in God. The study reports that many people claim to talk to God all day long: have tea with Him, chat with Him, wake up to Him. The study goes on to say that those same people, while some of what they do may appear to be over zealous, do actually feel less lonely and less stressed out. I have also learned that we are all on a spectrum vacillating between absolute and almost blind faith, to total skepticism and doubt. Most of us are somewhere in the middle of that scale. The trick is to always stay on the side of faith, even if it's just 51% faith. There is power in believing, because the things we believe become our reality. I was the one who was wrong to say that the stories I grew up hearing about people who lost things and prayed to find them were too simple.
The author of the study, Tanya Luhrmann, concludes the article by saying, "...the prayer techniques – paying more attention to your inner thoughts – don't have to be limited to a religious context. These techniques involve attending to your imaginative experience and treating your imaginary experience as significant, meaningful and worthy," she said. "I think when that happens, your inner world springs alive."Now, I do believe in prayer, and I do believe in a God who attends to and cares about the things that are important to us, even when they are seemingly insignificant. I have witnessed that firsthand. I don't believe that God is simply in my imagination, but I do think that sometimes I let the skeptic in me quiet the things I think I feel in an attempt to be practical. I want to continue to learn and practice the value of following those feelings, wandering with them to see where they take me. Like our dear friend Joseph who does things like buy a cupcake for a complete stranger because he feels he should, then accidentally eat the cupcake and tell the stranger he ate their cupcake and please wait there while he goes to buy them another one. Joseph's life is magical because he lets it be, and in turn, he spreads magic all around him. I don't know what you believe. Or what you are trying or hoping to believe, but maybe let yourself do it a little more. Let things that seem impossible, or silly, or simple, be real.
Outer Space from Sander van den Berg on Vimeo.
4.10.2012
Thank you, YMCA Locker Room
It's free month at the YMCA, so naturally, I found myself in the women's locker room on April 2nd. What I came upon there shouldn't have been surprising, but it was. What I saw there moved with the grace of sunrise and felt as old and real as the canyon I spent my childhood hiking into. Naked women walked across the green-tinted, wet, tiled floor around me and my navy-blue one-piece-swimsuit-clad body. The light was just so. White and beaming from long florescent bulbs above their heads so that they all glided around the foggied place like they didn't belong to the real world. I want to describe every single body I saw that night because in a way I wasn't expecting, they meant something to me. The woman with skin like a white elephant who spent so long putting her leg brace back on before she pulled up her socks. The black woman in the sauna with a plastic grocery bag tight over her hair, she rubbed vanilla scented body wash over her skin until she looked like a perfect batch of dark carmel heating on a stove. The woman stretched out below me who came in fully-clothed and while we talked about toes, of all things, undressed and lay down to read her book. Her belly-button ring, her rounded hip sticking up like a wide, rolling hill. The older asian woman with short hair who was incredibly flexible. She would step outside the sauna with her towel around her waist and put her head to her ankles.
What surprised me was not the nakedness, nor the candor of all of these women to be so perfectly at ease. What really got me thinking was the way their bodies were so imperfect, all of them. It was one of the more liberating hours I've experienced in a long time. I haven't seen too many naked bodies, and the ones I have seen live exclusively in T.V. or in magazines. Supposedly perfect bodies that curve in all the right places and are smoothed and tan all over. In my head, I knew this barbie-body-mantra wasn't reasonable and hardly realistic, but also, so easy to perpetuate and compare to, especially when I've been exposed to little else.
I don't know if a sense of comradery is simply assumed by everyone in a situation like the locker room at the YMCA, but that is what I felt. Many women had stomachs that had clearly housed children at some point, breasts that had served their purpose and now seemed like symbols of the feminine. Younger women who were round and glowing. Some skin was smooth, but not all. Flat feet, wide calves, skinny arms, rolly backs.
Why I hadn't supposed that all bodies are vastly different and not at all like what I've been cultured to believe, I can't quite figure out. I've seen many people clothed, and they clearly aren't going to be chosen for America's next top model, but still it was honestly such a surprise and also a delight to realize that I am a part of something much larger than a few photoshopped magazine spreads or flashes of women in bikinis on fancy shows. I, with my large-hipped body and less than flat stomach am on the inside of something important. I am already part of the tribe. More of us have VIP invitations to this club than we realize. The images that the media slaps in our faces are not on the inside, they are the minority, and in a room-full of women who have lived a lot of life, they must seem a little silly. I don't think that being slender, or having an "ideal" body is a fault, I think it is lovely, but it's also not the only way we are made.
I haven't been back to the YMCA because we are on vacation in Utah, but I plan on re-visiting, and I think I may be brave enough next time to take off that old, wet swimsuit and let myself be a part of something sacred.
What surprised me was not the nakedness, nor the candor of all of these women to be so perfectly at ease. What really got me thinking was the way their bodies were so imperfect, all of them. It was one of the more liberating hours I've experienced in a long time. I haven't seen too many naked bodies, and the ones I have seen live exclusively in T.V. or in magazines. Supposedly perfect bodies that curve in all the right places and are smoothed and tan all over. In my head, I knew this barbie-body-mantra wasn't reasonable and hardly realistic, but also, so easy to perpetuate and compare to, especially when I've been exposed to little else.
I don't know if a sense of comradery is simply assumed by everyone in a situation like the locker room at the YMCA, but that is what I felt. Many women had stomachs that had clearly housed children at some point, breasts that had served their purpose and now seemed like symbols of the feminine. Younger women who were round and glowing. Some skin was smooth, but not all. Flat feet, wide calves, skinny arms, rolly backs.
Why I hadn't supposed that all bodies are vastly different and not at all like what I've been cultured to believe, I can't quite figure out. I've seen many people clothed, and they clearly aren't going to be chosen for America's next top model, but still it was honestly such a surprise and also a delight to realize that I am a part of something much larger than a few photoshopped magazine spreads or flashes of women in bikinis on fancy shows. I, with my large-hipped body and less than flat stomach am on the inside of something important. I am already part of the tribe. More of us have VIP invitations to this club than we realize. The images that the media slaps in our faces are not on the inside, they are the minority, and in a room-full of women who have lived a lot of life, they must seem a little silly. I don't think that being slender, or having an "ideal" body is a fault, I think it is lovely, but it's also not the only way we are made.
I haven't been back to the YMCA because we are on vacation in Utah, but I plan on re-visiting, and I think I may be brave enough next time to take off that old, wet swimsuit and let myself be a part of something sacred.
4.06.2012
A Little Celebration
I wanted to celebrate a little this weekend. I wanted to celebrate in what is mine, because although it is little, to me, it means much. One of my poetry professors always said that no one cares about the writer's life, they care about what they write. I believe that is true, and so no one is ever obligated to care about my life or what I do. The video that I posted before this is far more important, so if you do watch something, watch that. In the meantime, take a little time to celebrate what is yours, even if it's a little or a lot. The song on here is from a dear friend who sends a playlist every month, this song is called April Showers by ProleteR. Happy Easter!
4.02.2012
Coming Back
Yesterday I had a moment in which I proclaimed to Carl, "The only thing I'm good at is cleaning! It's all I do!" The exclamation marks weren't out of excitement. So I think today I am on strike to myself and I am writing this while a bit of a mess abounds in my wee house. In the flurry of cleaning that proceeded my exaggerations yesterday however, I dropped a bottle of vinegar, which consequently knocked three eggs off the counter and wuffed them all over the floor. Wuff is not a verb that I actually know, it just seems so appropriate for the way those dumb eggs spread their yellow and white skirts all over my kitchen floor.
Carl said, "I think you need to go on a bike ride." Boy, was he right. In somewhat of a defeatist slouch, I unlocked my white Townie and rode away. I believe that wherever we find ourselves on this earth, there are special places for us. Places that are as perfect as the northern lights. For me, my place here in California are the forests surrounding Stanford's campus. Trails wind through the trees and even though I am not far from a city, I feel like I am in a sacred space. As I rode away from the broken eggs still spreading on my floor, I felt better. I don't ever want to leave behind what home is to me, but sometimes I am more full of spirit there when I take a few minutes to remember that trees are strong and tall, that dirt reminds me of being small, the a cold wind clears out my lungs and that out in the world, my difficulties are like grains of sand, and I can handle that. I can handle messes and babies who don't take naps, and dinners that all have the commonality of burnt flavoring. I can even handle the fact that I don't know what I'll do next in terms of art and writing, and I don't know if I will ever do anything markedly significant for the world, even when I want to.
Just as I was about to turn my bike around and ride back, my eye caught something through the trees: a Great Blue Heron. I recognized it immediately because I've painted them before, and although I've never actually seen one in real life, the soft S-curve in the neck, the purpley-blue feathers, the slender beak and spindly legs, were familiar to me. I stopped and watched him walk across a clearing, and then he stopped. And I stopped. And we stayed there stopped for probably ten minutes. It was like I drank in his stillness with my eyes, and he was kind enough to let me. I wonder what he got from me? I hope something.
I knew I needed to get back, so I sturdied my feet on the pedals and rode away. I looked behind and was surprised to see that the Heron had turned his head in my direction. I'm sure it was the crunching of leaves, but I take things as I can get them, and so to me, it was a sign.
A sign to be more still. I've been thinking since then about the things in my life that interrupt my stillness, not to be conflated with silence and inactivity. There are so many things that enrich, but frankly, there are things that do less than that. I don't know quite how to do the inventory, but I know that I am at least thinking about what I can let go. I took notes during conference and I put a few stars by this sentence, I'm not sure if a speaker said it, or if I just wrote it: "We need to re-prioritize in order for the sacred things to come back." So good of either my former self to write that down, or for someone wise to say it.
By the time I walked through the front door, the eggs had been cleaned up.
Carl said, "I think you need to go on a bike ride." Boy, was he right. In somewhat of a defeatist slouch, I unlocked my white Townie and rode away. I believe that wherever we find ourselves on this earth, there are special places for us. Places that are as perfect as the northern lights. For me, my place here in California are the forests surrounding Stanford's campus. Trails wind through the trees and even though I am not far from a city, I feel like I am in a sacred space. As I rode away from the broken eggs still spreading on my floor, I felt better. I don't ever want to leave behind what home is to me, but sometimes I am more full of spirit there when I take a few minutes to remember that trees are strong and tall, that dirt reminds me of being small, the a cold wind clears out my lungs and that out in the world, my difficulties are like grains of sand, and I can handle that. I can handle messes and babies who don't take naps, and dinners that all have the commonality of burnt flavoring. I can even handle the fact that I don't know what I'll do next in terms of art and writing, and I don't know if I will ever do anything markedly significant for the world, even when I want to.
Just as I was about to turn my bike around and ride back, my eye caught something through the trees: a Great Blue Heron. I recognized it immediately because I've painted them before, and although I've never actually seen one in real life, the soft S-curve in the neck, the purpley-blue feathers, the slender beak and spindly legs, were familiar to me. I stopped and watched him walk across a clearing, and then he stopped. And I stopped. And we stayed there stopped for probably ten minutes. It was like I drank in his stillness with my eyes, and he was kind enough to let me. I wonder what he got from me? I hope something.
I knew I needed to get back, so I sturdied my feet on the pedals and rode away. I looked behind and was surprised to see that the Heron had turned his head in my direction. I'm sure it was the crunching of leaves, but I take things as I can get them, and so to me, it was a sign.
A sign to be more still. I've been thinking since then about the things in my life that interrupt my stillness, not to be conflated with silence and inactivity. There are so many things that enrich, but frankly, there are things that do less than that. I don't know quite how to do the inventory, but I know that I am at least thinking about what I can let go. I took notes during conference and I put a few stars by this sentence, I'm not sure if a speaker said it, or if I just wrote it: "We need to re-prioritize in order for the sacred things to come back." So good of either my former self to write that down, or for someone wise to say it.
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3.28.2012
This quote kind of floored me. And by floored, I mean burrowed, deep into the very bottom of my heart. How much of this is true for me? Probably more than I'd like to admit. What do I need to do to shed off selfishness? What do any of us need to do? I have a constant inner battle going on about the best way to give meaningful service. Sometimes I feel like it is only motherhood that I can do right now, and other times I feel that if I were to want it, I could do so much more. How do you find balance? How do you do meaningful service? How do you teach yourself to not "prefer yourself to our Father's other children?" These are real questions I'd love to hear your answers to.Isn’t it a singular thing that what the world has struggled for from the beginning, wealth, power, all those things that make men comfortable, are to be had in abundance today—better and more clothing than ever before, more food than can be consumed, more wealth of all kinds than the world has ever had before. Our homes are more comfortable. The conveniences of life have been multiplied marvelously since the Gospel came upon the earth, and today everything that we have struggled for, we have. Education has arrived at its highest point. More knowledge of the things of this earth is possessed by men than ever before. Everything mankind has struggled for from the beginning of time that is considered most desirable is upon the earth today; and notwithstanding that, there is doubt and dread of what the future has in store. What is our trouble? It is that we have sought the creature comforts, we have sought the honors of men, we have sought those things that selfishness puts into our souls. We have sought to set ourselves up and have preferred ourselves to our Father’s other children.—George Albert Smith
In the meantime, here are some photos of the apple of my eye.
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