A Visible Result

Image by KayVee.INC via Flickr

A rose is the visible result of an infinitude of complicated goings on in the bosom of the earth and in the air above, and similarly a work of art is the product of strange activities in the human mind.
-- Clive Bell 

I found this quote last week, thinking about reviving the Roses and Thorns. It was almost a random choosing, but things have been happening in the last two weeks which make it exactly right. You wouldn't know it by my blog or my real-life, but there are an infinitude of goings on within me right now. However the result is not yet visible. Even to me

Though very little came this week in the way of happenings, I rediscovered classical music. Earlier this week, I was looking through the genre stations available on Pandora and began listening to Symphonic Radio. It was great because the flowing music help soothe my mind which is a blessing at work lately. I have been overly distracted which means not much work gets done. Last night, I was kept up once again with racing thoughts which I really frustrating when you know that there is nothing to be done about any of them. I tried reading but it wasn't helping. I was tired so it was hard to concentrate on the words. I thought maybe listening to some music would clear my mind a bit. I wanted classical because there are no words so it is easier to just lose yourself in the sound and let your unconscious go where it will. I knew there was a classical station from ages ago when I last surveyed the radio offerings with my clock radio. Wouldn't you know it...the radio was already tuned to the classical station when I turned it on. So I fell asleep to violins and pianos.

As far as sleeping goes, it was less effective than I'd hoped. But the music has made an impression on me in other ways - and so has some reading I've had lately. Between the Mozart, Bach and Madeleine L'Engle (I finished The Summer of the Great-Grandmother yesterday and I am rereading A Circle of Quiet), I can feel something changing within. I can feel myself opening up again to the mystical and mysterious. I can tell my mind is opening up to things which are best felt with your soul. Like music, metaphoric language. It seems to confirm what I have been considering for the past week - a fast.

Not a fast of food, but a fast of my life. In the last few weeks, I have found: I do not want to go to Bible study. I do not want to rejoin the choir after their summer hiatus. I do not want to go to church. These are things I used to love and eagerly wait for every week. Now I don't. After so much change and upheaval, I do not get the same enjoyment or edification that I once did. So I wonder what difference it would make to not do those things anymore.

Its strange to stop going to church. Especially now that I know its importance. But I don't enter into worship like I once did. So I want some time alone with my Comforter. Just Him and me. Like it was for so long before I made a family for myself.I have some thinking and soul-searching to do. I need one of Bonnie's Whitespaces, but since I can't go to the beach or a European villa for two weeks, I am going to have to make my own whitespace, my own circle of quiet away from people. Because I need to learn how to feel again after being numbed by the monotony of my life. Learn to listen again after hearing all the harsh sounds of a fallen world. To dream again after doubting and losing mine. To see what's really there again after closing my eyes to what I don't want to see.

The problem will come when everyone starts badgering me about why I became a hermit. I just don't know how to explain my self-isolation in terms people will understand. Especially since I trip over my tongue when I try to speak about those complicated goings on. Less so (but only slightly) when I try to type it out for you...