And here’s the thing, I stood close to it, leaning on the window pane. But I wanted to sit down. If I turned around there was the square of light, reflected on the sloped ceiling next to our kitchen table. And so I straightened up, and the sun was not on me anymore, and it was dark. But then I went and sat down on a kitchen chair and there it was again, bright and golden, filling up my whole field of vision even when I closed my eyes. And it was so stupid, I thought, to think that the sun would be less bright here. Maybe the sun is so bright in itself that it will still be quite bright, even if you move ten meters further away. And I think I do that all the time with God, feel like I’m moving further away, but truth is that I just need to sit down in the light and it won’t matter that much whether I’m ten meters further away or closer. Maybe I just need to stop worrying about the darkness and come to the light in the first place.
Tag Archives: writing
Following nature
Through one of our apartment windows fell a square of golden light. There were rain drops on the window, and a dark grey sky overhead, but at the edge of the horizon there was a sliver of bright sky, and in the midst of it the sun shone brightly into the hooded windows of our loft. I had to take the trash out, so I did, but halfway down the stairs the sun didn’t shine in through the windows anymore, having already dipped too close to the horizon and our neighbouring building hid it, and so I was scared that I would not be able to see it again and stand there and look at it while it set like I’d planned. And so I think that’s what it’s like with nature, you can’t see a beautiful evening sky and think that you’re gonna paint it later, you have to drop everything you’re holding and do it right now. There is no procrastination in nature, only time for different things. Right now the grey has lifted, and even though the sun has set the sky is still bright blue, and the lines of clouds golden.
(Also I did make it, when I walked upstairs again the sun waited for me on the fourth floor, and on our fifth it still shone through the kitchen window.)
Photos from the library, wednesday
(And evening notes, from my notebook:
One thing I know: this always helps, even if I forget about it when I stand alone above the clouds, millions of miles from the closest star. Eons between me and the closest physical object. A chair, a window. Writing like this always helps. Now I sit for real in this couch, big notebook leaned against my knees and teacup against my stomach. It doesn’t necessarily make me understand, but one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,)
From a sunny balcony, writing with friends
(I’ve been in a flow lately with writing on a story, but now I have to really make an effort to keep going with it instead of starting to think.)
Germany
So, I moved to Germany to volounteer work at The White Rabbit Arts. It’s pretty nice here. Very german. Like really, I think I’ve only ever lived in really international communities, even when I’ve been abroad. So just being in a new country, in an apartment full of people who mainly speak german, is different. It’s like actually moving.
And so far I think that Germany is:
1. Warmer than Sweden. Not by much, but a little warmer.
2. Bigger. Obviously. Nürnberg is a pretty big city, and there’s just more people here in general, which means that you can walk down the street and find a random four story book store with a little café hidden inside. In Sweden that would go into bankruptcy within a week if it wasn’t in Stockholm or something.
3. More social. Slightly, at least? Once again, I quite like it.
So, here’s a collection of pictures, from the train station (interesting), my apartment and writing out my letters to the people who support my volounteer work.
Hugs in german to you✽
Sunday thoughts (5)
Sometimes we make God into what we are. But sometimes, possibly more unaware, we make God into what we’re not. He’s my flaws, areas I lack in, often: logic and reason. I see myself as the romantic one in this relationship. The emotional one. I turn to him with thoughts and ideas, problems and decision. Rarely heart. Rarely in my moods and to hang out a second. Idea: if you have something you need to pray about, pray about it. But if the time you’ll take for that is in a few days, there’s nothing stopping you from hanging out with God now. Just to chill. Just to be with him.
Snapshot of Nürnberg
It was raining softly. A girl with a lip piercing and two rolled up sleeping mats sticking out of her backpack stepped out from under the cover of the station and into the grey sky. A young man rolled a suitcase next to her and an elderly couple stood waiting on the other side of the road, decked out in umbrellas and plastic ponchos over their functional jackets. A bus whizzed by. Birds flew high. And for a second the rain took a breather – letting only mist cover us – as we stepped out from the overhang we had covered under. The sky was open. Grey but bright and warm with dots of birds covering it, rainwater dripping down the spires of old church towers. Slow and eternal as the traffic lights turned green.
(3 Quotes that hit me and got written down in my notebook)
- “Every time you wrestle with your doubts, every time you dismantle your intellect to use a tool instead of analysing it, every time you choose to practice instead of theorize your creativity, you will move forward.”
- “Art is a field that’s defined by your actions, not by your qualifications.”
- “The 21st century is an aesthetic century. In history there are ages of reason and there are ages of spectacle, and it’s important to know which you’re in. Our America, our internet, is not ancient Athens. it’s Rome. And your problem is you think you’re in the forum when you’re really in the circus.”
(+1
- “Trust yourself. Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.”)
Motivation
I’ve always been more motivated by what I don’t want than by what I do want.
This fear has served me well. It has sent me out of the ordinary, out of where I don’t want to be. I think about the Twenty pilots song Leave the city that admits to not knowing where you’ll end up, or Brené Browns book Braving the wilderness, about leaving our clearly pronounced structures and stern belief systems.
And it reminds me of what a lot of people seem to be going through at the moment, or have been going through for a while. Churches, ministries, or just people. We know we’re not exactly where we should be, and so we lay things down, move out, take the first step in trust even if we don’t know where we’ll end up. The wilderness, or trench, as Twenty One Pilots call it, is scary, because it’s where we don’t have all the answers. And now we’re out here, not knowing the answers.
It’s made me to think about my competitiveness. If you’ll stay with me for a moment:
I’m extremely competitive. Always have been. But it’s much more important to me to not lose, than it is to win. It’s bad, I think. People motivated by winning and succeeding will do anything for it, they’re fighters and victors. But for me: if there’s a chance I’ll lose I might not even want to try in the first place.
This is obvious in other parts of my life as well. I’m very motivated by what I don’t want. What kind of life I don’t want, what I don’t want to do, who I don’t want to be. The most motivating sentence to me has always been: “But what if I’m not?” in response to “What if I’m too scared to do all the things I’ve ever wanted.” My point: I am fully aware of what I’m moving away from.
Too aware.
Truth is, anyone can be a rebel. And our courage has served us well. So has our eagerness to obey God, to move out into uncertainty. But I’ve been out in the wilderness for a while now, and the problem with it not being a place for answers is that there still seems to be no answers. And so what I’ve decided is this: There comes a moment, out in the dust – with that city looming in the background – when we have to stop looking back at what we left and turn our heads to where we want to go.
It is time to stop being motivated by what we don’t want and start being motivated by what we do want. If it hasn’t yet, the looking back, the awareness of what you don’t want, will make you desperate. What takes actual maturity is to look forward. To make a choice and move towards it. To be brave enough for what you want, even if you think you don’t know (Which, you do, you actually do, otherwise you wouldn’t have left that other place behind. It might just not be in the shape you think a dream should be.) Grow up, look forward. Maybe it’s a mirage, that city you see in the distance, I can’t promise that it’s not. There’s no way to see from this distance.
But I know you’ll never know if you don’t start moving towards it.
Direction
Yesterday I was walking home through the sunset and I was thinking about how in philosophy, both everything is movement and movement cannot logically exist. That everything is movement makes sense, all atoms are vibrating and spinning and twisting, otherwise we’d fall apart. It’s a solar system in miniature, it couldn’t stand still. But the thought that there’s no such thing as movement, that makes sense as well. The classic example that some old greek dude whose name I’ve forgotten spoke about is of an arrow flying through the air. If you would observe that arrow at any point in time it would be still in the middle of the air. Another moment, it would be still at some other point in its path. But if at any given point it is not moving, how then can it be moving at all?
I’ve been thinking about that because I’m curious about how it’s supposed to work in our own life. Are we supposed to run or stand still? Is everything movement and direction, or do we live better by being empty somehow, content.
There’s argument to be made for both. But I do know that we’re not good at being directionless (and direction must be a form of movement, or at least an indicator of it). You feel it when you have too much time, walking in slight circles, don’t know what to do when you put your phone down. Your direction is off, you’re not exactly sure what you’re pointing towards. That’s dangerous, makes you feel lost.
So about arrows and philosophy or whatever, I side with movement rather being everything. We can not live if we’re not aimed at something, can’t breathe if we don’t have a moment to move into. But then I think it can also be paired with stillness. Actually, what it is maybe – I think I’ve got it now – is this: Movement is a necessity for stillness.
The cure to restlessness is sitting still and letting your mind flow towards something. And it’s not what my prayers sometimes become, an oops-I-thought-about-that-instead, need-to-think-about-God, but it’s the freedom of believing that our hearts are created and redeemed to be aimed at Him. Sometimes you need to control your mind, but sometimes you need to let go of the reigns and believe that when you allow silence, your spirit will know direction.
eirians 