painting!

“ Blood, fire and columns of smoke.
    "The sun will be turned into darkness
         And the moon into blood
         Before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes.”

In class on Thursday we painted.  This was an interesting (that’s the best way I can think to describe it) activity.  I am horrible at taking what’s in my mind and putting it onto paper.  I was laughing the whole time at how horrible my painting was coming out.  A couple people at my table made their really abstract, and my mind does not work like that so I was a little intimidated when I looked at theirs compared to mine.  I overall like the idea of my painting though.  I started with the grass; I tried to make the earth look all old and dying.  The sky I had painted black to symbolize all of the darkness.  The big mess looking thing coming from the ground is supposed to be smoke and fire.  The biggest part of the painting I focused on was in the sky.  I did the moon turned red with the sun behind it turning dark.  Since the moon was blood I made it drip down to the earth.  The white part is a dove-like creature coming down as God’s promise from the light of heaven painted in the corner.  When I was finished my painting I decided to add something not from the book of Joel.  Doing this activity made me think of the destruction today as well in the future.  Therefore, I painted a symbol of hell opening up and releasing creatures.  The creatures represent false prophets and “anti-Christs” coming to the deceive people.  To show this I made them light colored with a streak of blue (blue is represented in the heaven corner) to signify their disguise.  After all of the laugher and astonishment at how ugly my paining was, I sort of liked it because of the ideas I put into it.

I am excited to shift the literature from doom and gloom to character.  The tea story was a little confusing but I like how it goes into detail about the character:  “I noticed that the silver of her hair was laced with an astonishing gold, like those threads woven so deftly throughout a tapestry  to trap the light.” 

Death and doom or gracious redemption? Joel

Going over the book of Joel in class on Tuesday really helped me understand it better.  Hearing things from another’s perspective is always beneficial. 

I like the fact that we get to do non-typical things in this class.  I thought that going outside and “reading to nature” was a little weird at first, but I enjoyed it.  I guess to me, it kind of felt like we were proclaiming to the earth what was going to happen.  Like we have dominion over if because we are children of God.  For some of the time I just looked out on the water and tried to picture in my mind how it’s going to be when the Lord does return.  How all of the things around us are just temporal and will all be destroyed one day.  It also gave me a chance to appreciate the creation God gave to us.  (Minus the thousand ant bites I got on my feet) 

Until we went back to class and discussed it again, I thought the book of Joel was a literal prophesy.  Though we don’t know for sure, it makes sense if it is taken metaphorically.  I mean, I would imagine that in the last days these things could happen such as starvation and drought and even the swarm of locust, but if it is taken metaphorically, I can see it as all of the hurt and the bad things in the world around us even today. 

Professor Corrigan liked the lines “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision.”  I think that this is talking about people deciding to accept and follow Christ or not.  The second like I think is saying that the time is drawing near and we can’t waiver in the “valley” of making that decision.

Joel

In class on Thursday we did what I have most when it comes to literature- poems.  For some reason, I cannot understand poems unless someone else explains them to me.  Especially the ones we did in class, which I still don’t fully get.  The whole concept of them though, was that in the midst of darkness there is still hope.  I guess you can look at it as while we are still on this earth there will always be some sort of bad mixed in with the good because nothing here can be perfect.  Everything we’ve been reading so far has had some kind of a dark under tones, I am hoping as the year goes on we get to read more light, uplifting things.  I like how the author, even though wasn’t a Christian acknowledged that hope comes from above (still there are creatures cautiously walking...green red, green red).

The book of Joel I think is one of the harder books of the bible to completely understand because of the fact that it is a poem.  It talks about the different plagues that will destroy the land, but then the redemption of God comes.  Even though it talks most about devastation, this book is about God’s redemption of his people.  Even though the world is thrown to chaos, God’s promises still remain.  It names it clear that the so call “war of the world” is God’s and not ours.  I guess a big idea of the book of Joel is trust.  Trust that through hard times where no hope is in sight, God is still making a way.  We as Christians should look at this book as light not dark.  For us none of these things shall stand, and for us God will avenge.

As a side: I am a little concerned for the painting project on Thursday because I cannot paint or draw or do anything artsy whatsoever, but it will be interesting.

Darkness

This essay on darkness and hope really opened up my eyes.  We always tend to look for concrete answers on why things happen, but what we really need to do is just sit and meditate on a situation.  Worrying and asking where is God will only cause chaos when just letting the moment of darkness sink in will reveal a higher hope.

It is one thing to talk about getting through a time of darkness, but it is not until we experience it ourselves that we can honestly understand how to get through it with that hope.  Sometimes when we are going through a time of darkness, we often try to hide it.  Like hiding it will make it go away or something.  I like how in the essay it quotes “one must die to an unreal life before he can be born into the real life.”  There is a so called “perfect life” we like to try and make others believe we live; instead of embracing our human nature and realizing we all suffer darkness.  In reality we all have some sort of our own personal darkness.  Things we struggle with, bad things that have happened in our life and things we’d be ashamed of if others knew of. 

Last year I was struggling with something, and if I would have just looked to the people God put around me, I would have not lost hope in the midst of darkness.  We are created to help one another, and therefore our darkness should not be our own, but in a way shared.  This is what gets us through darkness and develops that hope. 

Darkness and suffering are never good words to hear, but they really do allow you to grow in your walk with Christ. We are pretty much required to go through darkness to live the full life intended for us.

Romans 5:3-5 “only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”

Cemetery

I went to the Lakeview, Roselawn and Tiger Flowers cemetery complex for this fieldtrip, and I stayed there for at least 40 minutes.

I noticed that there were a lot of babies and young children in this cemetary. It made me think of how today there are so many babies killed because of abortion, yet there are children not even a day old who have a nice headstone and plot just for them.  It seems like people had a higher regard for life back then.
 That and just being in the cemetary really makes you realize about how precious and short life is. 

Grief

Reading CS Lewis ‘A Grief Observed’ was a little difficult for me. One because of the way he wrote and also because I have never had to deal with grief like that. The whole time I was reading I kept asking myself “is this the CS Lewis everyone talks about to be a great Christian writer?” We had talked about how questioning God is healthy and even biblical, but I think there is a difference between questioning God’s work and questioning God’s existence. This book seemed to me a little on the side of him doubting God. I can relate with his roller-coaster mood though about how he feels completely distraught one moment, then as he goes back and reads what he wrote he questions himself as to why he would say such things. Towards the end of the book, he shows his faith in God as he continues this sort of grieving process.


I liked how he wrote “Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not in imagination” because that is where I am in my mind. Fortunately, I have never experienced the death of someone close to me, so I can sympathize for someone, but I know it will be different when I am the one grieving.  Another thing that stuck out to me was when he was talking about revisiting the grave site of lost loved ones.  Does this cause more hurt and pain or is it okay for us to go "see" them? 

Being at the cemetery reading this book made death seem so…real. As we were looking at the gravestones the people I was with were asking things like where we want to be buried and if our husbands died before us would we place a headstone for us on the plot beside them so we can be buried next to them when we die, things I wouldn’t normally think or ask myself. It really puts things into perspective that death is real and we need to live our life to the fullest while we still have the chance.

Field Trip

On Tuesday we had class in the cafeteria. I liked being able to do class outside the actual classroom for a change. I thought that the idea of being able to have lunch with our groups gave it more of a relaxed and comfortable setting. I did though, think it was pretty hard to talk about literature for at least an hour, it was hard (especially since we were in the loud restaurant) to get side tracked and talk about things that didn’t have to do with literature.


At first I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to bring to class because I really don’t have any non school-related books here. After reading Little Red Riding Hood in the textbook, I decided to bring in a fairy tale. I brought in Goldilocks and the Three Bears. There was no real reason behind that particular one, just that people sometimes call me goldilocks, and it’s one that everyone knows. I figured that we, like in the text, could find the moral to the story and relate it to society today like in the questions we were supposed to answer. Shockingly, this was much much harder than I thought it would be. I had to re-read the story a couple times and still may not know what the actual moral or theme is to it. The idea my group came down to was that it’s saying to not be so mean to people? Or on the other side, it’s like a story of forgiveness on the bear’s part that he still wanted to be friends with the girl even though she broke into their house and was mean to him before that day.

The piece of literature most talked about in our group was the Chronicles of Narnia. We discussed how this relates metaphorically to the bible, especially about creation. Overall, I enjoyed this “field trip” we had.

Theme and Moral

Chapter three of the Literary Experience talks about theme. It points out that usually if you are specifically looking for a theme; it takes away from the rest of the piece of literature. This is true for me. Whenever I am assign certain tasks such as looking for a theme I focus only on that and not even notice the other elements. It is important to realize though, that those other things such as emotion helps you to understand what the text actually means. Looking at those things helps find the inner themes like in the songwe listened to in class, every detail had to be looked at the the the meaning(s) of the song.
Reading the different versions of Little Red Riding Hood made me look at fairytales a completely new way. When we were little, we didn’t look for what the theme or the moral of the story is, it was just simply entertainment. When you look back on the story, it is kind of a shocking idea to instill in little kids- like in this story, using a wolf eating a grandmother and little girl to symbolize kidnappings or even the work of pedophile. Yes, the problems that the morals present do exist, but it seems a little crazy to be in a children’s fairy tale. Aren’t those supposed to be happy nice stories? On the other hand, I think this is a great example of how the moral of a story goes deeper than the literature itself and leads to questioning and application to life.

The Note to Student Writers section was helpful and on point with the way we think. One thing I really like about Corrigan’s classes is that he does give us the opportunity to take the right approach to something rather than making sure we have the exactly right answers.

Love

This world revolves around love. The song, play, and story we read for class, sadly, does show how love is today. Both the song and the story talk about how people do crazy things for love. I think though, that people who go to measures like that might want to be loved more than they really do love the person. People are insecure (not excluding myself) with themselves and define themselves in their love or acceptance of other people.


As Christians, we are supposed to love as God loves. God’s love is unconditional, unlike in this story when Mel thinks that you can love (a deep love) anyone solely based on if they are in a relationship with that person This is nearly impossible though because for us, it is imperfect loving imperfect, and therefore the love itself cannot be perfect. We can try our best, but our love is always going to have faults. And in return, the greatest love is to love someone despite their faults. Love to me is willingness to do anything for the other person to prove how much you care for them.

This world’s view of love is so distorted. Love today is sex, ownership, and self-seeking pleasure. Love should be a conjoined effort and attraction between both people. It is always a work in process, and won’t work if one loves more than the other. People want to bail out when things get rough. But is that really love? Do you really truly, deeply love someone if you leave the PERSON because of the SITUAION?



If only it were really that easy to go back and start over like in the play, whenever things got awkward or a little shaky. How easy this little thing called “love” could be!