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via Dear god, < Killing the Buddha.

Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, an impassioned UCC minister, potently shares his frustrations with God. The entire letter is long, but very worth reading. The bit that hit me most deeply is quoted below:

Dear god,

I have not written you in some time. I have been busy cleaning up your shit down here. I believe the last time I wrote you it was from New Orleans. Now, I write from a little further south—Haiti.

…

I know you like numbers because you dedicated an entire book to them in what is purported to be your word. So let me give you a few:

1.5 million homeless
30,000 died in Leogane
250,000 total dead
6,500 tent cities

Evidently you shared your version of the earthquake’s cause with your envoy, Pat Robertson. (By the way, a deal with the Devil for my freedom is a deal I am willing to make.) If the recent tone of my sermons and this letter have not made it clear, let me say in no uncertain terms—I am angry with you, god. If you did this, you did very, very wrong.

However, I will not give you the pleasure or satisfaction of me quitting. Haiti is not a test of my faith, or the faith of the people of Haiti, for that matter. Our faith is shaken but steady. We are rebuilding in the shit and filth, but you are hiding. Haiti is not a test of our faith but a test of your grace. Show yourself.

Sincerely,

Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, Senior Minister
Lemuel Haynes Congregational Church
South Jamiaca Queens, NY

via Dear god, < Killing the Buddha.

It’s easy for me to say this from my comfy chair here in Louisville, but in a very real way I think God just did show Herself – through Rev. Sekou’s letter.

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RESPECT.

I’ve spent most of my life
letting my demons convince me
I don’t deserve it.

So I’ve seldom expected it.
Rarely asked for it.
Never demanded it.

That must change.
And my first demand is
that I demand respect from

MYSELF.

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It ended up taking a while for me to get back to the project because, honestly, I think I might be trying to do too many different things at once with my creativity quest. But that’s another post for later. Back to the mask-making…

To summarize, I used an instant paper-mache product called Celluclay and formed it over a cheap plastic masquerade mask that I bought at Michael’s. I followed the instructions pretty rigorously, except that I went ahead and added the Celluclay right over the mask instead of putting a layer of cling-wrap over the plastic first. I did this on purpose because I intended to leave the clay on the plastic permanently. Well, Celluclay is supposed to dry in a day or two, but after a week of waiting, there were several parts of the mask that were not dry. I realized it was because 1. I put the Celluclay on really thick – too thick, and 2. I realized that Celluclay sitting up against solid plastic will take ridiculously long to dry because no air is getting to it. Oops.

What I decided to do was to try to get the Celluclay off the plastic form while keeping my mask as intact as possible, so that the non-dry parts could get air.

That was a mistake. Imagine if you will what happens when you try to rip something that is partially dry and partially wet off of a form that – when dry – it is designed to stick to. No matter how carefully you try to do it, what you get is something like this …

Yeah, oops.

But I’m sooo glad this happened. Best creative thing to happen all week. Because 1. screwing this up really taught me a lot about how to work with Celluclay, and 2. Frankly, in its own way, those broken shards of mask actually look pretty kick-ass. Imagine those pieces painted up to look like old distressed crimson-colored metal and partially buried in some rocky sand or dirt.

Do you see it? That’s a thematic provocation right there. It’s a story. I’ve accidentally gone from making a bit of wall decor to creating a visual story-hook for The Scarlet Masque. Maybe even the cover of the rpg, should it ever come to that.

So, this ‘failed’ first attempt is sitting on my work counter waiting to be further transformed into an accidental masterpiece.

Meanwhile, I’ve got a second (and currently intact) mask drying on the work counter, too. I’ll share more about that one in future posts. I’m also itching to try to make one out of leather, and I’ve got some cool ideas about decorating the cheap plastic mask as well.

See what I mean about working on too much stuff at once? If you’re counting, that’s FOUR mask projects at one time. And that’s just masks, it doesn’t count the paintings, mandalas, and digital work I’m trying to do as well. Clearly I’m taking too much on at once and not focusing properly on any of it. But like I wrote earlier, that really ought to be its own post.

More Adventures in Snobbery via Blisscovery

Especially this part:

In Sarah’s latest series about online rockstar-dom, she wrote:

The point, after all, isn’t to change yourself so that people will like you. The point is to gauge how accurately you are voicing your truths.

Ahhh, yes. That’s where 16 year old me got things very wrong. I’m pretty sure I was all about changing myself to get people to like me.

The only difference is, I’m way past 16 years old and STILL, at this very moment, trying to navigate the difference between getting people to like me and trying to gauge how to accurately voice my truths.

Oh, and Fred Hicks is just adding two gallons of fuel to this whole thing in terms of me pondering how my online persona (which I’m trying to make authentic to my everyday person) walks the very same labyrinth.

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I especially love the part where she mentions the Christian church “bedding down” with Emperor Constantine.

Corporations and the Corpus Verum « Intersections: Thoughts on Religion, Culture, and Politics.

I suspect a lot of my Christian friends – and my pro-capitalist friends – will get a bit bothered by reading this – or maybe they’ll just blow it off and ignore it. We LOOOVE to whitewash over the simple fact that both Jesus and the early Church were  advocates of what many people today like to call “socialism” and “communism”.  As Debra points out, Western Christianity is fond of doing the interpretive dance to try to get passages like Acts 2:37-46 to mean anything but what they actually say.