My RedBubble Folio Cull

I am currently going through the surprisingly emotionally painful process of going through my art and t-shirt designs on RedBubble and deleting the least viewed / least favourited / least purchased designs. Hopefully the end result will be a higher quality folio.

I warned my redbubble contacts that I would be doing an art cull, asking them to favourite any of my designs they particularly like to stop me from deleting those particular designs. You don’t have to be an artist to have a redbubble account, by the way – if you like to look at good art, I encourage you to consider signing up for an account so you can see what different artists and designers are up to!

Dressing For The Inner Me

Here’s a brief excerpt from comments I made during a facebook conversation today. It happened on my current profile photo. The conversation amused me so much that I thought I should share it:

(On the topic of what clothes to wear to church) “I should just turn up one day dressed as the inner me…which will presumably be barefoot, wearing spiritual wanderer pilgrim style clothes crossed with sci-fi sensibilities with my hair down to my waist carrying the Bible printed on a papyrus scroll or something…”

I can just imagine turning up to church looking like that. I think it would very quickly divide people – there’d be those who encourage the whole free spirit attitude; the rest who desperately want to be all-embracing but would feel somewhat uncomfortable. As I also mentioned in the conversation, the current dress trend among fellow 20-something year old members of our church seems to be skinny jeans, tight bicep-revealing shirts (for the guys) and loose shirts with lots of necklaces for the girls. Then there’s me – flared or boot cut jeans, skate shoes and novelty t-shirts. That’s my safe mode of dressing. Believe me when I say that if my budget could handle it I would be dressing more like some pseudo-Goth-Jedi Knight(ess)-greenie-forest dweller-spiritual wanderer. Funny that what I perceive as more “natural” (or just more me) is potentially more expensive! And let’s face it, jeans and t-shirt isn’t a particularly confronting.

And, in random news, recently I’ve been taking a lot more interest in lingerie and clothes. What’s happening to me!?

Beauty

If I can’t be beautiful, can I at least have the capacity to create something beautiful?

All right, I know, that comment alone goes against everything I believe philosophically, rationally, sociologically, historically, spiritually and scripturally about the true definition of beauty… but sometimes, looking at beautiful photographs of beautiful women in my general forays into art/photography land leaves me feeling a little bit crushed and hollowed out. Why can’t I look like that?

Sometimes I feel a bit redundant

Yeah, what the heading said.

So, I’m in this weird state of mind where I look at what the people in my husband’s family do (career wise, spiritually, educationally, etcetera) and I wonder what on Earth I’m doing there. I don’t belong there. Everything that I have considered unique about me, or specific to my self identity, has already been taken up by other people there. Strange that it should bother me so much, but here we are!

I used to be an obsessive musician. Granted, I was never a virtuoso, but many people remarked on my innate gift for music. I was even the inaugural music captain at my high school (13 years ago, that was!). Then I moved to the suburbs, joined a brilliant mega-church, and discovered that good musicians are a dime-a-dozen. So, I gave up my music. Oh, I occasionally strum the guitar and I can help my kids with their own piano studies, but I feel like a part of me has died a very painful death in giving up music. Listening to the Karnivool album ‘Sound Awake’ this afternoon, I had to admit that putting my beloved 5-string bass guitar in its case and stuffing it away behind the chest-of-drawers in my bedroom was a terrible, terrible thing. I really should dust the poor neglected guitars off and play, even if just for my own sanity.

Perhaps I’m just in a low point in my life. I look at the high-flying, high-achieving 20-somethings around me and compare myself to them. I’m in my late 20s and what do I have to show for it? A still as-yet-incomplete uni course on the go, no job, no music. I struggle with the things I love, art and writing. I just have to keep reminding myself that other Australian women my age often aren’t married with children like I am, and it feels good thinking that my youngest will be finishing high school when I’m 40 years old!

In all the self-loathing and moaning and carrying on, I have neglected my Bible study. So, in order to combat this, today I spent an hour scouring a Bible study website to begin a word study on the “elements”: earth, wind, fire, and water. Talk about a massive topic! It should keep me occupied for some time.

Hopefully, as I pour myself into God and into the bigger picture, I will begin to regain my confidence and strength. I hope that one day I can create something beautiful and worthwhile.

Blogging…

Howdy all, faithful readers and new visitors,

I haven’t been drawing much recently – thanks to an overload of uni work and the unpleasantness that is cold and flu season.

However, I hope to get some new work up here in the coming month.

In the meantime, I’ve been pondering the many various social networking media. I am connected to WordPress, Blogger, Yahoo, Lomography, Blurb, Flickr, RedBubble, YouTube, MySpace and Facebook, to name a few. Perhaps surprisingly, I have resisted the urge to join Twitter.

One thing I like about blogging is that it requires more effort than some of the other similar forms of expression. It requires full and complete sentences. Regular involvement. Thought and consideration.

It also feeds into my other social networking sites, anyway.

In the absence of my artistic efforts, I am likely to start posting more “status update” style items on my blog. All this pent up creativity has to come out somewhere!

Why Twilight Makes Me Want to Quit My Job (via Existential Angst)

I think I had a similar experience when I read these novels!

However, for me, they reminded me of some of the key aspects of the Christian Gospel; in particular, the promise of a perfected immortal bodily resurrection and eternal life. 🙂

It was on my honeymoon that I realized a career change was in order.  My catalyst: the Twilight saga.   I wish I were joking — this is how it happened: It began on our flight to Dubai, the first stop on our honeymoon itinerary.  The flight from JFK to Dubai is long — I had 10+ hours of flight time ahead of me, after dinner.  Luckily, Emirates has dozens of in-flight movies, available at your seat, on command.  After a long year of late work nig … Read More

via Existential Angst

Article: “An Equal-Opportunity Destroyer”

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/september/24.71.html

Extract:

“If you’ve heard the word porn in church recently, in a small group or from the pulpit, chances are you hardly blinked. Thanks to ministries like Promise Keepers and Operation Integrity, the research of sex addiction expert Patrick Carnes and neuroscientist William Struthers, and individuals courageous enough to admit they have a problem, American churches have squarely faced porn’s destructive and tragic effects. We know porn is highly addictive, and we have more tools than ever to break its stranglehold. Praise God.” Read More.

Stuff

The week of attempted veganism is failing miserably (keeping in mind that I am a lacto-ovo vegetarian who has been successfully vegetarian since 1995). Yesterday alone I consumed dairy chocolate, fried egg and possibly inadvertently even ate a caterpillar or two after I found one in my Chinese mixed vegetables with tofu!

Today I also had two squares of chocolate and cheese in my dinner. And egg in last night’s leftovers. My gurgling stomach is, perhaps, my due punishment!

Oh well, there’s always tomorrow.

For a simple introduction to what on Earth I’m on about, have a look at the free downloadable PCRM Veg Starter Kit.

(I am studying vegetarianism, animal rights and environment for my upcoming dissertation, hence the sudden overflow of blog posts about the topic.)

Captivating

Today I picked up an “old friend” of a book – John Eldredge and Stasi Eldredge’s Captivating (2005). I simply can’t recommend it enough. It is one of the (sadly) very few Christian women’s books that I have read, and re-read, and been transformed by.

Veganism, joint facebook accounts and dress shopping

Yes, more musings. It’s probably a sign I’ve been reading too much. Or not socialising enough.

Day 2 of attempted vegan eating and, whoops, I ate honey. And egg pasta. Oh well. I am a lacto-ovo vegetarian to be precise (though that doesn’t necessarily entail a particularly large intake of either dairy or eggs). Dairy usually makes me sick. I maintain my position (as I have for 15 years) that I will not deliberately consume something that causes the direct death of another sentient creature… but after my first foray into veganism I discovered that, honestly, I found cheese and free range eggs too hard to resist. I could go on and on, but I won’t. As it is, my honours dissertation is revolving around these topics. So it’s moved from “personal interest” to “homework”; therefore, I will desire to avoid it in my free time.

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Things I find weird? People who have a joint facebook account with their spouse. E.g. “JohnAndJane Jones” (made that up, not referring to a specific individual.) Why do people do that? They then have to sign every post with a clarifier: “Oh, by the way, it’s John here.”

What’s the deal with it? Is it because they have only one email address? Hmm… it can’t be money concerns, can it? Tried hotmail, gmail, yahoo mail or any of the free mail services out there? Is your Internet Service Provider so darn tight that they won’t give you more than one email account if you prefer that style of thing? Is it because they are so emotionally fused (to borrow a concept from Dr Schnarch) that they can’t possibly give each other free rein?

My husband and I have separate accounts. It’s great. I can write all over his facebook wall while he’s at work. That, and I’d like to think that, even though we are “one flesh” and all that, we do carry ourselves as individuals… That, and he’s clicking the Like button on bands and stuff that I definitely don’t like. I don’t want to be mistaken for “liking” the same sort of music.

*And for goodness’ sake, don’t assume that just because most people on the Internet are grumpy / angry that I am somehow in an accusative or vindictive mood right now. I am amused by it, more than anything. Though I will add that out of well over 300 facebook ‘friends’ (most of whom I do count as real life friends… the joys of being from a large extended family and a megachurch), I don’t have one that is living a fused social networking life with their spouse.

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Bought a new dress today. Very happy with it. It’s black, it’s covered in hot pink cat shapes, and it was roughly 60% off the original price. Yay for end-of-season fashions!

418. Young Woman In The Flowers

August and September 2010 – hand drawn on paper, edited in Photoshop Elements 6 on a Wacom Bamboo Tablet.

It is with much joy that I have finally, after a long break, completed a new artwork. From beginning to end I worked for at least a month on this design, in between homework, essay writing and several nasty viruses.

The flowers in the image are inspired by examples of south-east Australian wildflowers that I found in a handbook to the Australian bush.

At the time of writing, I am selling t-shirts, postcards and greeting cards featuring this design. It can be found at my RedBubble Profile and Bubblesite Gallery.

More apologetics!

Useful resource for introductory Christian apologetics from CMI.

I have read both the books in this set and do recommend them to fellow Christ followers who want to learn more about how to defend their faith and explain it to the people around them. (I know I post a lot of links to this particular Christian ministry; I do not work for them, I simply appreciate the impact they’ve had on my own faith journey!)

417. Spring

30 August 2010 - Mobile Phone Photo

Flowering gum tree in a car park. The end of winter, start of spring, heralded by the arrival of pretty red gum blossoms.

Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Christian Apologetics Article on “BioLogos”

Another apologetics link – in this case, on the topic of BioLogos, one of the various alternative perspectives out there that tries to fit the Bible into science (in this case, it appears to be a form of “theistic evolution“).

http://creation.com/biologos-evolutionary-syncretism

Apologetics Links: Genesis 1 & 2 – contradictory?

A frequently asked apologetics question (and, admittedly, one that never really crossed my mind even in my most skeptical anti-Bible beliefs) is the perceived contradiction between the first two chapters of Genesis. My simplest preferred answer to this is that Genesis 2 is merely a fleshing out of the details of Genesis 1:24-31.

All links accessed 6 September 2010.

http://creation.com/genesis-contradictions

http://www.gotquestions.org/two-Creation-accounts.html

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2010/09/03/feedback-genesis-1-and-2#

http://www.tektonics.org/jedp/creationtwo.html

http://creation.com/whats-in-a-name

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-ordercreation.html

Read Genesis Chapter 1 at Bible Study Tools (New King James Version)

Read Genesis Chapter 2 at Bible Study Tools (New King James Version)

*This post is not dealing with the issue of whether or not Genesis should be taken literally, just whether or not the first two chapters of the Bible contradict each other. Further information on the issue of historicity of Genesis can be found at the websites linked above, and clarifying questions should be directed to those websites.

Article by Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Hipster Faith | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction.

Good article that I just read.

My questions of late have dealt with a lot of this stuff. Yes, I appreciate the sentiments expressed by what this article calls ‘hipster Christians,’ but as someone who travelled in the opposite direction: from outsider to following Christ: I am troubled by what I see as merely fashionable rebellion.

Do we need to be any of this? Do we need to be worldly tattooed conservative semi-rebels who pretend we’re cool because we swear in church and wear tight jeans? Do we need to be ultra-conservative somber perfect politically right-wing killjoys? Do we need to go hear shock jock preachers who purport to hold the real answers for a postmodern world and be manipulated into thinking that we are somehow less narrow minded and less judgemental and more like Jesus now?

Why can’t we just be ourselves and let Jesus shape us as He has intended?

Church and Christianity in general have been a source of significant disappointment for me in recent months. If it weren’t for the shining example of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, not to mention my love of the Bible and the close friends in whom I see Christ’s hands and feet, and the intelligent individuals with whom I’ve discussed theology and apologetics, it would be very difficult for me to remain in church.

I have so much more to say on this topic but haven’t yet worked out a way to articulate it, so I’ll leave it at that. This university essay won’t write itself. I will try to return to this issue after higher priority work is out of the way; though I suspect that it is an issue that won’t leave me in the first place.

Good article on microblogging

“But there’s an even bigger worry that’s been gnawing on my brain. Blogging, at least the way I’ve been doing it, represents a medium of writing. Microblogging more closely resembles chat, which in turn mimics a telephone conversation. It isn’t meant to be permanent, or more than vaguely memorable. The medium is the message, and the message is disposable.”

Quote from: http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2010/08/22/that-buzz-you-heard-was-google-zapping-your-posts/ (22 August 2010)

For the record, I’m not on Twitter. If you have suffered through my stream of consciousness facebook status updates, you will be aware that the last thing the world needs is me bombarding it with tweets!

10 Blogging Commandments?

Thought this constituted some good advice. What is it with angry “religious” blogs, anyway? (Speaking as a committed Christian who sees no need for vitriolic attacks on people with different opinions and perspectives – there’s room enough on the Internet for everyone, right?)

http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2008/10/03/church-leaders-draw-up-ten-blogging-commandments/

To my fellow wordpress users…

…please consider checking your Settings > Sharing and adding the “Press This” option. It is a really convenient way for bloggers to share their writing. If my many friends who blog enable this function, I will be able to cross-promote your blogs! 🙂