Sensitivity to Beauty
I had a dream a couple nights ago that I went back to Russia. I wasn't ready for it for some reason; I was already there before I decided if I even wanted to go. I remember thinking it was too expensive, but I was having a hard time stopping the whole thing.
Traveling was normal and quick, since that particular itinerary is somewhat normal to me now, but I began to realize it was TOO normal. I was going to Russia, but I wasn't leaving home. When I got there, Russia was in my living room, in my house in Spring Hill. Tanya was there. I saw Tima. I held Karina's hand. But the person I was really looking for was Nadya.
I walked down the stairs into the bottom level of our house and found her, and we were so happy to see each other we could hardly talk. I asked her where my baby girl was, and she brought her to me so I could hold her - baby Tanya, wrapped in a wad of pink blankets. She wasn't a newborn anymore, and that made me sad, because I realized I won't ever get to watch her grow up in the everyday ways growing up happens. And really, thinking about it after I woke up, I realized I won't even get to see Tanya as a baby at all. She'll be turning 1 next summer, if I even get to go then.
But anyway, I was standing there in the bonus room of my house, holding Tanya and talking to Nadya, and I realized something: we were speaking English. Everyone was speaking English. And even though I flew on a plane and stayed up for 40 hours to get there, it was all too normal. It was kinda like my everyday life in America.
For some reason when I woke up I felt really sad. I don't know what my dream meant, or if it means anything at all, but it left me with a weird sense of discontent, like I didn't want to speak English and I didn't want to miss Tanya's baby stage. In my waking life I don't think about those things at all, but that dream was full of emotion for me.
I have been having vivid dreams lately. Weird. And I hate when they seem so real that real life changes for you afterward.
Anyway, I would so much rather have uncomfortable dreams about Russia than none at all.
To me, dreams are like art. They're like music. You can't really control or manipulate them, but they take on lives of their own and somehow create themselves. And you can learn from a dream the way you can learn from a painting, because they both say something about the depths of the human soul.
If I was reading this four years ago, I wouldn't think it was me who wrote it. I used to think of art as a separate world from the black and white reality of life. That was back when I thought the reality of life was black and white. Ha! I guess although I've always had an appreciation for art, especially when I played music, I assumed it was too subjective to speak on matters of everyday life. But I don't really see that distinction anymore.
I'm in a season right now of incredible sensitivity to beauty. I've never been this way before, but now I cry when I hear a beautiful song, I stop breathing when I see a beautiful painting on the wall, and I sometimes smile uncontrollably when it smells like fall outside and I can drive with my windows down.
It's new for me. I kinda hate people like that, actually. Sentimentality annoys me. But I'm not really being sentimental, it's just an overwhelming feeling of being overpowered by something I can't control. It's like God is stretching my heart to hold more than it used to. A sweetly painful sensation. I don't know how to describe it. It's that thing that happens in you when you see a ballet, smell a flower, eat a ripe tomato, put on a really soft sweater.
Seriously, this is how bad it is: I was running down Belmont Blvd today and my eyes literally welled up with tears because I ran past a tree with the most flaming red-orange fall leaves I'd ever seen. It had to be the most intense color possible on a tree, and it just swam up to my eyes and wrapped around them and I jogged by, wishing I could uproot it and take it home with me.
I know this is all very strange, but I suppose the way God works inside of me usually is very strange. I'm an observer, really. He's calling all these new and wonderful and beautiful things to my attention and showing me who He is. What grace. An undeserved invasion of my heart. If I, realistic and practical to a fault, can be overwhelmed by the beauty of chords on a piano, there's got to be something Divine in them. There's got to be a message for us in every beautiful thing, some message about God and love and who we are. Otherwise I don't see where in the world its power would come from.
Traveling was normal and quick, since that particular itinerary is somewhat normal to me now, but I began to realize it was TOO normal. I was going to Russia, but I wasn't leaving home. When I got there, Russia was in my living room, in my house in Spring Hill. Tanya was there. I saw Tima. I held Karina's hand. But the person I was really looking for was Nadya.
I walked down the stairs into the bottom level of our house and found her, and we were so happy to see each other we could hardly talk. I asked her where my baby girl was, and she brought her to me so I could hold her - baby Tanya, wrapped in a wad of pink blankets. She wasn't a newborn anymore, and that made me sad, because I realized I won't ever get to watch her grow up in the everyday ways growing up happens. And really, thinking about it after I woke up, I realized I won't even get to see Tanya as a baby at all. She'll be turning 1 next summer, if I even get to go then.
But anyway, I was standing there in the bonus room of my house, holding Tanya and talking to Nadya, and I realized something: we were speaking English. Everyone was speaking English. And even though I flew on a plane and stayed up for 40 hours to get there, it was all too normal. It was kinda like my everyday life in America.
For some reason when I woke up I felt really sad. I don't know what my dream meant, or if it means anything at all, but it left me with a weird sense of discontent, like I didn't want to speak English and I didn't want to miss Tanya's baby stage. In my waking life I don't think about those things at all, but that dream was full of emotion for me.
I have been having vivid dreams lately. Weird. And I hate when they seem so real that real life changes for you afterward.
Anyway, I would so much rather have uncomfortable dreams about Russia than none at all.
To me, dreams are like art. They're like music. You can't really control or manipulate them, but they take on lives of their own and somehow create themselves. And you can learn from a dream the way you can learn from a painting, because they both say something about the depths of the human soul.
If I was reading this four years ago, I wouldn't think it was me who wrote it. I used to think of art as a separate world from the black and white reality of life. That was back when I thought the reality of life was black and white. Ha! I guess although I've always had an appreciation for art, especially when I played music, I assumed it was too subjective to speak on matters of everyday life. But I don't really see that distinction anymore.
I'm in a season right now of incredible sensitivity to beauty. I've never been this way before, but now I cry when I hear a beautiful song, I stop breathing when I see a beautiful painting on the wall, and I sometimes smile uncontrollably when it smells like fall outside and I can drive with my windows down.
It's new for me. I kinda hate people like that, actually. Sentimentality annoys me. But I'm not really being sentimental, it's just an overwhelming feeling of being overpowered by something I can't control. It's like God is stretching my heart to hold more than it used to. A sweetly painful sensation. I don't know how to describe it. It's that thing that happens in you when you see a ballet, smell a flower, eat a ripe tomato, put on a really soft sweater.
Seriously, this is how bad it is: I was running down Belmont Blvd today and my eyes literally welled up with tears because I ran past a tree with the most flaming red-orange fall leaves I'd ever seen. It had to be the most intense color possible on a tree, and it just swam up to my eyes and wrapped around them and I jogged by, wishing I could uproot it and take it home with me.
I know this is all very strange, but I suppose the way God works inside of me usually is very strange. I'm an observer, really. He's calling all these new and wonderful and beautiful things to my attention and showing me who He is. What grace. An undeserved invasion of my heart. If I, realistic and practical to a fault, can be overwhelmed by the beauty of chords on a piano, there's got to be something Divine in them. There's got to be a message for us in every beautiful thing, some message about God and love and who we are. Otherwise I don't see where in the world its power would come from.
I'm just now getting around to reading your blogs. This one is especially cool because it shows me a piece of your heart and where you are with God. And it delights me. I know that I annoy you and other people too when I tear up about things. But maybe now you understand that it's something uncontrollable God puts inside me that has to come out. I too smile without restraint in the woods when it's a bit cool in the early morning. And when I see turkeys with their babies on the side of the road, and baby cows running. And as you know that when I even think about my babies, I can't even breathe. When I speak about my Savior, well...
ReplyDeleteI love what is going on inside you.
It's not as important to get where God wants you to be, as it is to BE who God wants you to be.
Mom