27 things (365 days, holidays, a new year, etc)

Oh by the way,  I had the pleasure of writing up a little bit for the 27 Good Things blog, here's my contribution (three things to read, three things to watch, three things to use.) If you are ever, ever sitting around wondering what to do with yourself, GO PERUSE THAT BLOG. It's a wealth of really cool, entertaining, and useful ideas of just really great stuff (plus, some of my dear friends Andrew Romine, Wendy N. Wagner, and Paul Weimer have also contributed and they are the coolest folk ever, put their suggestions on your list for next year and all will be well with you. I promise.)

Ah, and it's last day of 2013. There's some impulse in me to encapsulate the year neatly (one year it was 365 days of drawing) but then this morning I woke up and read my friend Gerry's post about trees breathing and now I just want to go for a hike and find beautiful trees.

tree, on top of mt lemmon

However, here, a few personal highlights from 2013 (in no real order): I have run almost 900 miles this year, including a marathon with my partner and friend. One of my illustrations was accepted into the Spectrum 20 art annual. I won the Hugo in the Fan Artist category. I've made huge strides in getting a handle on record keeping and budgeting as a freelancer. As a family we have gotten a much better handle on record keeping and budgeting. In fact, for the first time in, well, quite a long time, December, usually our leanest and most difficult months, has been kind and gentle and we still have a savings.  My kid turned 10. I turned 39. A few relationships that were on the brink have made strides towards healing. I read not as many books as I was hoping, nor did I finish any personal art projects this year (2013 was the year of the client, and that has been just fine by me.) I'll keep those on the to-do list for 2014.

There's more, I'm sure, but I'll leave it at that for now, I have a few illustrations I was hoping to have finished by year's end so, yes, ducking out now to get to work.

But here, I stumbled on this by Tim Minchin yesterday and it was just what I needed. (I've struggled to like the holidays lately, this helped. Quite a bit. And all proceeds from downloads of this song for the next two months are currently being donated to the National Autism Society. Very Worthy.):



Okay, that's all. See you next year.

valuing time off

Oh. My. July was a beast of a month.  But it's August now and my kid is back in school and i'm scrambling to pick up the pieces of stuff strewn back through the summer that I had hoped to have wrapped up by now but aren't quite yet.

And so these three recent posts really got me thinking.

 Being Okay With Where You Are. by Wendy N. Wagner:

"A few weeks ago, the very wonderful John Anealio wrote a great blog post about getting out of the success grind. What he said made a lot of sense. Sometimes your ego makes the artistic experience painful and miserable, and it’s stupid to turn the joy of our lives into torment. Sometimes you have to change your relationship with your ego to make good art.... Sometimes I absolutely loathe myself for writing so slowly–after all, if I was a “real writer,” I’d be cranking out the words.... But only sometimes. Mostly I remember that holding a Hugo award in my hand can’t possibly feel as good as that moment when I’m lost in a story and there’s no time or space except the stuff I’m unfolding in my head."  ~read more

Taking Time Off From Social Media. by Amy Sundberg: 

"I hadn’t unplugged myself so thoroughly for quite some time, and I found quite a lot of value in it. Space to just be. Time to think about whatever I wanted to think about. Permission to be in my own present moment, whatever that happened to look like. And perhaps most refreshing, a break from most external stress.... When we hate a thing or secretly resent it, we aren’t going to be doing our best work. A grudging connection has a different quality to it than one that is celebrated." ~read more

(For a totally different angle, but related,) Periodization Traning. By Sandra Wickham:

"Periodization is a principle used in may sports. It involves planning your workout year into smaller segments to avoid overtraining while consistently making improvements.... A week of active rest will gives your body time to recover, and helps you refresh mentally. Take it easy that week. If you’re lifting weights, lift at about 50% of what you normally do. If you’re swimming six days a week, back it off for two or three easy swims that week. Whatever your activity, you can apply the 50% per cent rule to give your body a rest, or take the entire week off."  ~read more

All that stuff I'm trying to pick up, the pieces of projects left trailing behind me? It's the stuff I'm thinking about. And my family. And my friends. And my active life. And my private creative life. 

Anyhooo, in other news, That Amanda Palmer tarot deck that I created the 10 of Swords for several years ago... it is FINALLY BECOMING A REALITY! Go check it out!

Day Job

Over at the Inkpunks Wendy has distilled almost two weeks worth of us talking back and forth about day jobs and creative life into an excellent post, The Job Continuum.

It's timely, because I just turned in notice at my day job.

It’s something I have been thinking about doing for a while now as freelance work started trickling in more and more. But I always held off, valuing the tiny bit of independence the day job afforded me. It is not a well paying job, nor the source of dental, medical insurance, 401K, or otherwise essential for my family to be able to make ends meet. Me not having this job does not spell financial disaster for our family. But it is something and I held to it. (I attach a lot of emotional worth to the dollar value of ‘what I do’.)

It has just become time for something to give.

I was struggling to keep up with illustration deadlines, spending a good amount of time at my day job doing freelance work (it’s a slow job, I am usually able to get away with that), and constantly worried about how I was neglecting my partner and son to keep on top of it all. I’d hoped to wait till my freelance income matched my day job income. I’m not quite there yet. But still, it is time.

There’s this dreamy image of quitting the day job and suddenly having all this free time: I really do not see that happening for me. I have a son with special needs, a partner who puts in long hours in the medical profession, a list of illustrations I need to finish, oh, and we are moving again. It’s like standing on a wire: at any moment, something may happen to bring this all crashing down. A change in our family circumstances (death, divorce, loss of a job) will require me to go back into the workforce (and probably not one I can so easily multitask my freelance hours into). That does hang over my head. This is scary.

But, for right now, leaving my day job is the workable situation for our little family and my budding art career.

Here's snippet from some advice John Scalzi* wrote about writers/artist and money. On the subject of dayjobs, and being supported by a spouse:

"You better be working, and contributing to the household income. For us, that meant using a fair amount of my writing time doing consulting work (not romantic writing but pays well) as well as writing books. It also meant being the at-home parent, which saved us a bundle on day care (which kept our costs down, which counts as “contributing”).

Or to put it another way: Your spouse is giving you a gift by giving you security and flexibility. Make sure you’re making it worth their while, too. And make sure they know you know how much they’re doing for you....

It’s hard enough getting people to like you anyway; finding one who is fiscally responsible and willing to pitch in for you while you develop your writing career is a tall order. What I’m saying is that if such a person comes along, grab them with both hands, make snarly territorial noises at all the other writers hovering nearby, and then try really hard not to screw up the relationship. In addition to being likely to make you happy as a human, this person will also likely be an excellent economic complement as well. It’s nice when that happens."
~read more.

It was good advice, for me. I'm so very grateful for a supportive and understanding partner. This may seem like a no brainer, but it is a good reminder to take care of that relationship. For many many reasons.

Now, taking a deep breath, and a leap.

*Many thanks to John Remy, for the link to this article.

badass women.

(because I so love strong women of all types...)

You probably can't get more different than Sunstone magazine and Lightspeed magazine, but between the two of them I've had the chance to illustrate some awesome female power lately.

For the Sunstone magazine (my lingering connection with mormonism) I worked with Holly and Stephen to re-envision Heavenly Mother and the Creation of Eve and some additional Goddess imagery to boot.

THEN, I got a story from Lightspeed to work on: Ruminations in an Alien Tongue, which featured a most intriguing protagonist: Birha, a brilliant, aging scientist living on a far away planet in the distant future.

NOW, I'm illustrating another story for Lightspeed that will go up in May, featuring a handful of kick-ass-century-old-space-age-warrior-women, fighting for their life on Callisto. (Can't wait for you to read this one!)

Life is awesome right now.

losing my horcrux

"A Horcrux is a powerful object in which a Dark wizard or witch has hidden a fragment of his or her soul for the purpose of attaining immortality." ~wiki

It has been over three weeks since I last saw my book. I have no idea where it is. I'm still holding out hope, (small small hope).... but reality is setting in.

I feel like I made a horcrux. And then lost it.

I strung out my heart, multiple times through that book.
Performed open heart surgery.
Braced for literal surgery.
Processed the stuff that came to me as I sat in silence.
Gave flight to flocks of birds and released branches from their roots.

I had letters from dear friends in there. A note from Lessie on Wonder Woman stationary, the recipe for my signature drInkPunk Cocktail from Andy, a card FULL of tentacle-y doodles from Bear is in there. And so many more. The number bib from every race I've finished during this time is taped in there, becoming part of the art/life-documentation. Mementos from travels and conventions, midnight brain vomits, poems and quotes and song lyrics. Pain (seems the book got the most use during hard times) but happiness too. The book was almost full (almost two years full) only a small handful of pages left.

It feels like I've lost those two years of my life. Like I put my soul into something too easy to disappear. Yeah Yeah, okay, that's getting a bit melodramatic.

To be honest, the past two years have been rough. A part of me sees this as a message from the universe to just let all the toxic ink go. Some dear friends just sent me a care package, to help ease the loss of the book: the most amazing assortment of "things" (old postcards, foreign money, tiny illustrations on paper, photos of friends, a ribbon). The kind of stuff to lend good mojo to my new book. Which, incidentally, was also a gift from those friends.

<3

So, yes. For your viewing pleasure, a few glimpses into the horcrux that got lost:

hard working animal

I got paid an exceptional complement the other day. Someone said they were impressed with my work ethic, and that I was an animal.

The individual paying the complement went on to ponder exactly what sort of work ethic an animal hath...

As the owner of an Australian Shepherd... I know a bit about working animals.
Psycho dog is not happy unless she has some job to throw her heart and soul and energies into. Even if that job is just catching a frisbee out of the air again and again and again and again. (Though, she'd be much happier with a herd of sheep, or something.)

The thing about psycho dog... she doesn't know how to just hang out with others. At the park, when other dogs come up to say "hi, wanna play" she has no idea what to do with them and prefers to throw herself into her 'job' (ie, catching said frisbee out of the air again and again and again and again.)

Anyhow, it just got me thinking, because I have not been a very good friend lately. That impressive work ethic, me throwing myself into a quick succession of deadlines, etc... There are times when I wonder that I do that as avoidance. As coping mechanism to survive the difficulties of human interaction.

Pay this no mind. This is just post-midnight ramblings from a brain that is refusing to wind down for the day.

Anyhow... Random, but I have now cut several throats in a recent project. For your entertainment, a glimpse at the bloodshed:

why I'm not around much right now

I'm not dead! I swear.

Though I have had a few near misses this past month.

see... I had to battle a mecha-octopod in a japanese bathhouse:
Finally was able to blow the darn thing to pieces.
THEN... I had to wade my way though a hoard of zombies in an abandoned temple:

Finally got them put to rest.
THEN... I had a traitor's throat that needed cutting:

I'm still working on that one, but almost there. Very lucky to have such a good comrade-in-arms helping me through all of this slayage.

Anyhow, aside from that mess I have also put a few new Art Nerd posts up at the Functional Nerds, wrote a post for SF Signal, was able to finagle my schedule to make it to World Con, where, incidentally... I was inducted as the newest member of the InkPunks!!!! (Hard at work on my first post there.)

So, you see, I'm not dead...yet!

looking back: coincidental beginings in March 2009

Last month, I stumbled upon the sketchbook I purchased back in March of 2009 to start drawing again.

Shortly after purchasing that sketchbook, I noted about how sore my unused art muscles were from all the drawing.

~~~~~~

This past weekened I ran my second half-marathon (part of preparing for my first full length marathon) and remembered a doodle I did for inspiration back when I just starting to run again; come to find out that was back in March of '09 as well.

~~~~~~

I like coincidences, so I had to make a note of this convergence. It's satisfying to feel the different muscles flex, muscles that I did not have back in the spring of '09; down my torso and legs, through the pathways of my creative hand & eye tissues.

~~~~~~

I do have muscle soreness: hamstrings and knees that groan and complain after long runs, occasional "I'm-not-good-enough" spasms as I draw. I take these as givens in both fields. These aches and pains are more pleasing to me than the dull safe void of not trying at all.

~~~~~~

That is all.

writing and drawing

21 of 365, originally uploaded by galendara.

an experiment...

At the beginning of this year I changed how I used this book. I stopped doing individual little drawings tucked into available space and began instead to turn these pages into work-in-progress art pieces.

And when that happened, I found I stopped writing on them.

But the fact remains that I very much depend upon these pages to be a place where I can write it all out too.

So I'm going to try writing the things I need to write on the pieces of the tracing paper I keep a stashed in the little pouch at the back of the book, [[i love you moleskin]] and then folding and gluing them into the pages here.

To become part of the larger piece of the whole page while remaining accessible for when my need to go back and obsess crops up.

We'll see.
Next month, I may totally change it up again.

365 days.

[also posted at The Exponent]

365 days ago, I started a project where I did a drawing every day.

It is startling to look back and see how much just that little project has changed me over the course of this handful of days. I am a much more experienced artist now than I was 365 days ago.

Also this year I think I have put more miles on my legs than any other year of my life since high school.

These are just two little accomplishments that help me to gauge what I have done this year. I guess, being able to put a number to it helps me see the progress easier.

Even when there isn't an easy number one can use to assess progress, it is happening anyways. I've learned and grown in many ways this year, in areas where numerical statistics don't really apply.

What I am really trying to say here is that Time happens. Days pass.
What things sort of things did you do these past 365 days? What do you have planned for the next 365?

if given the time.....

DH and offspring have gone on a road-trip to visit family. I, however, have several little obligations scattered through the week plus an art deadline fast-approaching so I opted to stay here at home. Alone. For almost the whole week.

This is my chance, my opportunity to see just how productive I can be when I have the house to myself for a duration of more than just a few hours. (Especially as I have no car and will be mostly home-bound except for what I can do on my bike. )

for starters:
~Art deadline: I have some serious work to do to get a comic submission finalized by the end of this week. Plus I gotta tighten up our Monsters and Mormons comic (that was just accepted!) AND I have inSitu illustrations to get to work on and 20spec illustrations to prep for. Etc. Plenty to keep my hands busy with.

~This week I start training for my first full length marathon.

~I am curious how much of a dent I can make in the stack of books by my bedside: That stack that has grown dusty waiting for me to free up enough time to open a book and read just for leisure. Yep.

~Yah, okay, I may also see how much of a dent I can make in my Netflix queue. But I really need to watch out... I could easily get myself totally caught up in Dr Who or something and emerge on the other side, the whole week gone, and none of that other stuff to show for it. (Yes I have done that before.)

So that's my plan.
(Meanwhile, safe journeys to my loved ones <3)

#AmDrawing!!!

sensitivity, insecurity, thick/thin skinned...

Today Sean wrote a bit about insecurity, being thin skinned, and avoiding rejection. (Random coincidence, so did Wendy.)
He basically just took the words out of my mouth.

As an interesting joiner to that revelation; I'm meeting with an old friend tonight; he is convinced that if we do a brainstorming session on the subject, I will come away from it knowing how I can make at least as much off of my art, as I could off some run-of-the-mill day job (a prospect I am considering as money gets increasingly tight for us.)

I agreed to this brainstorming session with outward enthusiasm, but feel I should confess a good deal of... nervousness? Just how to I explain to this enthusiastic friend all of my insecurities, my fears, my lack of experience and knowledge and my low self-esteem, my inadequacy... Already pinging around in the back of my head are all the usual excuses I feed myself about lack of time, means, business savvy... Plus the usual line that I may be better off doing this 'thing' I do on the sidelines as a 'hobby' (hate hate hate that word)...

I've written about my insecurities on this topic before.

Nevertheless, I am curious about what we will come up with during this brainstorming session.

creating gods

(this post also at Feminist Mormon Housewives)

So that's me, at the back of the church, hiding out in the last pew. The atheist mommy with a sketchbook.

Lisa, Moriah and I got talking about the act of creating, of making art, and how it related to our religious beliefs. It was interesting, our different approaches. Me: I'm the naval gazer: having thought and read my way out of all belief in any literal Gods, I still find myself as an artist, obsessed with the symbols and icons and language of religion (in particular, my native religion: Mormon). God has been pivotal to my art for years: here's a piece I did a while back as I worked thought my issues/concerns/etc about approaching God.

Nowadays, I find myself obsessed with taking the stories and re-working them, twisting them, turning them, doing a bit of re-arranging (for example, I am currently hard at work re-telling the story of Eve). In my mind what I am doing is scraping away the white-washing; trying to get down to the raw, messy stuff that is at the root of all of our belief systems. My tools are pretty simple: pencil, pen, paint, a bit of ink and other odds and ends. With them I go sifting through all the shards of my broken belief.

Art is my therapy.
Art is also one of the only forms of worship that I practice at the moment. I guess you could say it is my homage to the reasons we humans make our Gods (see here and here) and also, to the way we make our monsters. (Sometimes I think those are the same thing.)


(In case you are wondering, one of the reasons I hide way at the back during church is because, quite frequently, what comes out of my pen while listening to the talks/lessons is either quite disturbing, or rather blasphemous. WARNING. Those links are disturbing and blasphemous.)

$$$ (or, career-fail insecurity)

one cause of significant insecurity and occasional bouts of panic/frustration/sense-of-failure: i attach huge emotional value to the dollar worth of 'what I do'.

and 'what I do' has no practical dollar value (ie, brings no money to our coffers).

i feel it like a chain, my little creative 'hobbies' that i, as a pampered housewife, indulge in. (god that almost made me sick to write it. but that is how it feels sometimes)

for added weight of guilt/failure; the fact that other people, DO get practical dollar value for those same indulgent creative 'hobbies'.

(NOT GOOD ENOUGH NOT GOOD ENOUGH NOT GOOD ENOUGH NOT GOOD ENOUGH NOT GOOD ENOUGH NOT GOOD ENOUGH.)

as a related segue... i sabotage all opportunities to get practical dollar value for my creative hobbies.

does this even make sense?
(pay this post no mind, it has merely been a bad day, requiring a rant and an outlet)
(i will most likely delete this. it's pretty humiliating.)

women making art [or not]

Because so many thought Eva Hesse was just "Tom's wife".

Because so many thought Esther Broner was just "Bob's wife".

Because Sister Butterfly felt the impact of LDS women who can only introduce themselves by their husband's and children's accomplishments and Mraynes discussed the issues of wives giving up their own ambitions to support their husbands.

Because I just spent two hours cleaning the kitchen, and holiday preparations have kept me from my work for almost a whole month. Which isn't the same thing as being identified as merely DH's wife, but seems to fit as I currently feel my identity being absorbed by housework. And it also triggers all my own insecurities about even claiming I have "my work" (who the hell do I think I am?)

(Perhaps also exacerbated by an approaching birthday and a sense of having accomplished not much.)

So I'm just feeling kinda lousy lately. But it might also just be the weather.

Invitation to 18 hr Comic Day!!

Please Join Us!!!! On Saturday October 24 2009, Me, John Remy, Catgirl, and a goodly handful of other friends are going to do our own version of Scott McCloud's 24 hour Comic Challenge. Here's a quick rundown of McCLoud's "official" rules but for the purposes of our comic challenge we're being flexible. (Hell, we already decided that we are just too old for the 24 hour version.)

YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE A COMIC ARTIST!!
Or even able to draw for that matter: comics are diversifying in very cool ways, for example: consider storytelling with Legos, or cookies, or paper cut-outs, or photo snapshots, or stick figures. One of my favorite artists sometimes just takes his iPhone for a walk (just turn it into a 'story' of some sort, and voila!). You can PAINT a comic. You can Sew a comic. There doesn't even need to be words (wow, SO in love with that last link...!!)

More info will be forthcoming, but part of the idea is to foster the community aspect of it by sharing, discussing, tweeting, (etc) both heading up to the 24th and also posting real-time updates, panels, (etc) on 24th.
(if tweeting, consider using hashtag #18hrComic for easy searching)

If interested please leave a comment on john's post, or send an email.

We understand if you need to tweek the day/duration a bit to fit your own circumstances, THAT'S OKAY!! It will still be awesome to have you and we'll find ways of including your work throughout the 24th.

Pleeeeaaaase say yes :)

meet Eve

Okay, so BiV beat me too writing about this (and OF COURSE, she did it way better than I could), but anyways; I'm drawing a story about Eve. Yes, drawing, because really, I'm better at images than words... though we shall see if I can jump into the sequential nature of graphic novels with any success. Now I'm still working out the particulars, but the general run down goes something like this: After the fall, Eve returns to the garden to have it out with that angel who was placed as guardian. Whether she beheads him or just beats him to a bloody pulp I'm not real sure, but as with Virginia Wolf, she has to kill this angel to get on with what she needs to do. She also takes on the apple (see above, inspired by Brooke's delightful poem on eating the apple). Now I'm still not sure the exact outcome of all this, but Eve's bottom line here is to have a deadly serious conversation with God (who, of course, is also her husband Adam, because Brigham said so. Oh, and Adam is also Michael who helped create the earth. Yah, serious schizophrenic identity crisis here. Utterly fascinating.)

So here's the thing, several people have asked me why this isn't a story about Lilith (the usual suspect for uppity aggressive garden of eden variety femaleness).

It's because I was endowed in the temple and, as a woman, was a stand in for Eve. I was dressed in her name, said things in her name, did things in her name, I was her and she was me.

And she was this silent and passive thing, created to please Adam. (Absolutely LOVE Lynnette's take on the subject. Wow.)

So instead of despising her (a strong tendency, especially at the end of the temple movie when Adam is pontificating and her role is to hang insipidly on him like eye candy) I wanted to re-invent her. To give her a quest. Give her a sword (she takes that flaming one from the angel). Give her a mind of her own and the grit to do what she needs to do which is different than what the 'authorities' are telling her to do.

I guess feel I owe it to her. And to me.

So that's why it's about Eve and not Lilith.

Oh, and btw, I've written before about my artist's block and my neglected studio...
Well lately I'm back in the paint again! and it feels good. Just had to share :)

to cover their nakedness....

Cabaret sensation Amanda Palmer last week took a bunch of pics of herself nekkid and put them out for folks to appropriate for artistic purposes.

Last week I went to the gym but forgot my workout t-shirt. I decided to not let it stop me and worked out in my sports bra and shorts. And felt so completely exposed.

I have several years worth of life drawing experience under my belt (yah, very punny,) including (but not limited to) a few years at BYU where the models wear bathing suits and students and teachers can get in trouble for going to undraped sessions off-camps (what a joke. Seriously)

Recently I have been considering applying to be a model for the local drawing studio.

In the privacy of my home, I walk around practically naked all the time. Always have.

When I first took off my garments I didn't really notice a difference until I went to a family dinner and fully clothed in modest clothing, felt so very very vulnerable.

I'm trying to find a way to draw this all together in a cohesive way, thoughts about my body image, nakedness (particularly female nakedness), LDS moral standards, the temple, garments, etc... But cohesion and witty examinations will have to wait for another day (how's that for optimism?) For now I will just leave you with my rendition of Amanda's nekkidness, which worked it's way out of my brush as a sort of a tribute (rebuttal?) to The Garden of Eden and the root of all ashamedness at being found naked.

producing, creating, and parenting

(posted at the exponent)


I've had the most interesting time lately make art with my son. It started at his insistence and I was merely humoring him. But as we went along, drawing and painting on the same sheet of paper, I got really really into it. He was making these complex structures (he calls them forts) and I found myself completely absorbed in working around his images.

Here's the thing, I've been slugging through a bit of an artist's block not finding much inspiration in my own images and to suddenly be caught up in the innovative lines and shapes made by this five year old was intensely satisfying. Inspiring. And the thought I had was this: I'm a real selfish bitch sometimes. I can get all sorts of resentful about the enormous amount of time and energy demanded by caring for a child and sometimes blame him for my own inability to get any studio time. But when I am honest with myself I have to recognize that the labor intensive experience of being his mother has also been a tremendous source of creative impetus.
I need to give him his due.
And keep making these forts, those are really fun.

thoughts on Christ

(thank you, Faithful Dissident for the wonderful post that got me thinking about this again.)

[Jan 2009 update, this post is now being discussed at The Exponent.]
being empowered, being cleaned because of this mortal god who bled in a sacred grove of trees under the weight of my pain was a powerful notion for me, because I had a lot of pain and felt chronically filthy.
It was about a year and a half ago that I sat with the Teach My Gospel manual in my lap, and realized that I was in serious trouble in regards to my relationship to the church. I was a ward missionary preparing a new member discussion for a recent convert. Lesson number 3, "The Gospel of Jesus Christ."

For several years I had been struggling to hold together a crumbling belief in The Church. Usually called to teaching positions I found myself having to edit and adapt the lessons more and more to be true to my own beliefs, it was disconcerting to keep being faced with more and more topics and doctrines that I could no longer toe the line for. But there was one doctrine that I clung to with a riveting obsession and that was the healing power of the atonement of Jesus Christ. I had a gripping hope in and affinity for a savior who would be with me in the deepest pit, lending me strength beyond my own to help me up. The concept of being empowered, being cleaned because of this mortal god who bled in a sacred grove of trees under the weight of my pain was a powerful notion for me, because I had a lot of pain and felt chronically filthy.
And so I held to the church out of the strength of that belief.

But the beliefs that were changing for me had unavoidable repercussions: I was losing my belief in the literally defined precisely explained thoroughly cross referenced version of the Life and Gospel of Jesus Christ. And I was losing belief in the claims of The Church as the only organization with the real authority to speak for Christ and the only organization with the real priesthood to perform all the ordinances that make us one with Christ. And so when I opened that teacher's manual to prepare a lesson about Jesus Christ, and realized that I didn't believe a single thing that the manual taught.... Well it was a bit devastating. As a short term remedy I cancelled the appointment for the lesson and got released from my calling (citing 'personal
reasons'). Then I continued to attend church and find non-doctrinal ways to participate... but I think that was the beginning of the end for me. I no longer believed what The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints taught about Jesus Christ (finally added to that list of everything else I didn't believe).

I still find myself riveted by the story of Jesus, this social agitator who stood for the poor and downtrodden, pissed off religious leaders, and shared meals with sinners and women. And I still have a longing for a healing presence during my low times. But I no longer hold to The Church as a way to connect to those concepts.

So, perhaps, for me as with the faithful dissident, it all boils down to Jesus. Just with different results. For her, He is the reason that she continues to pursue an uncomfortable participation in The Church. For me, He is (a good part of) the reason that I made the uncomfortable decision to take a break from The Church.

I have written about this painting in a previous post, but thought I'd put it up again here because I painted it while working through my feelings about Christianity.