Margaret Kilgallen

 Margaret Kilgallen is such an inspiration to me. Not just because she was a great artist, not just because she was a huge contributor to folk art, but because she was a mother. 
She refused treatment for herself when she found out she had breast cancer while she was pregnant to protect her baby. She carried her baby full term and delivered a girl before dying a few weeks later.

Stories like this aren't told enough. She is nothing short of a saint. 

 "I like things that are handmade and I like to see people's hand in the world, anywhere in the world; it doesn't matter to me where it is. And in my own work, I do everything by hand. I don't project or use anything mechanical, because even though I do spend a lot of time trying to perfect my line work and my hand, my hand will always be imperfect because it's human. And I think it's the part that's off that's interesting, that even if I'm doing really big letters and I spend a lot of time going over the line and over the line and trying to make it straight, I'll never be able to make it straight. From a distance it might look straight, but when you get close up, you can always see the line waver. And I think that's where the beauty is." -Kilgallen 

My dreamy obsession; forests.

The colours twirl and dance.

Silence is the only thing that brings them life.

Silence that is not the absence of noise;

but rather, the right commotion. 

The symphony of the interworking's 

The breaking of twigs make up the heartbeat.

The singing of birds replace the breath. 

You feel these workings alter your own.

Soon your chills move with the spinning leaves.

Your limbs mimic the spirals of the trunks

Your spirit is at peace with the stillness.

Your soul is open to the grace of the Divine;
The way the trees open to soak in the body of rays.

Stay a while. 

You are one step closer to home.

                             
                            
                                                                       

             

 

Friendship.

Bonhoeffer wrote that friendship belongs to the sphere of freedom.

Friendship, true friendship, belongs to something greater. It is community. It is 'brotherhood'. It is a connection that we were created to give and receive. I believe, as much as older generations may say, our generation is no worse then the many that came before us. The only thing we lack that is scary to our existence and soul is this kind of connection and friendship. 

I love the moments when I am reminded how important sharing life, your heart, your desires, and your soul is;
It is the moment I spill my life's purest and most buried desires over poutine with a new found friend.
It is the moment when I doubt trust and then immediately get shaken awake by the loyalty of a dear friend.
It is the moment I realize I am not alone in something and the truest form of friendship sparks.



Edgar Alan Poe said;

"Sometimes I am terrified of my heart; 

of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. 

The way it stops and starts."

Whenever this quote transforms into reality in my life usually is correlated with the times when I lack connection. When I don't value my brothers and sisters as I should.

"We live in fact in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship"

-Clive Staples Lewis

There are so many grace-filled examples of what true friendship can accomplish. The lives it can save. The burdens that it can make lighter. The beauty and transformation that can take place if even just one person decides to be like Jesus and enter into this radical, hang out with the same dudes 24/7, kind of friendship.   

It is about experiencing it all together. The laughter. pain. death. miracles. devastations. sights. 

It was always a thing in my family to say it is all about the "journey," living in each moment and growing towards the next. I now see it is not as much about the journey as it is about who you take the journey with. 

This type of true friendship changes the world. Jesus changed the world most simply by changing the world of 12 guys who carried out much more out of loyalty and love. That is the real testament of his life. Friendship.

Study Partner

Why so sleepy?

New hair

I may regret this very soon.