The other day author Nina Killham typed in the words “fear and writing.” It was one of those days and among her findings was a post by blogger Jennifer Louden who nails a daily fear for most of us:

“I have to know what my thing is and talk about it in very clever ways and be different than everybody else who does my thing or else I will starve /never matter / and be alone for the rest of my life, shut out from the brightness and goodness of life.”

“I know, that’s a powerful, believable, seductive story,” she writes. “I also know it’s a lie.”

The need to name and succeed can paralyze us. It keeps us from picking up the pen, the phone, the racket, the whatever. But as Christians it’s possible to live without fear. In fact, it’s implored of us. We are called into the dark to follow. We are led to new things without name. We are promised hardship, trials, and hard-won rewards. Yet success is seductive. Adoration, alluring. Recognition, rewarded.

I planned to begin this post with a line from J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey: 

“I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.”

I’ve been meditating on these words for the past month. They came to me from a friend in Winnipeg. I haven’t yet met someone who wants to be a nobody. I am no exception. Even as a new mother I find it difficult to say no to opportunity though I have the perfect excuse. 

But we’re not called to success, certainly not to every shiny proposition. It takes courage to blend in the shadows. It takes work. It’s counter-cultural and Biblical.

I know a lot of people that read this blog are ‘somebodys.’ People who lead organizations, professors, and CEOs. I also know some of you are artists, students, freelancers (like me) and everything in between.  

Our culture is masterful at teaching us how to ‘get there’ but where can we learn to leave, to bow out, to persevere in quiet?

Casey Downing tackles some of these questions in his recent article “Notes on Leaving the City.” He is preparing to leave New York, noting Joan Didion’s public exit from the same city in 1967. Her essay Goodbye to All That begins:

“It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.”

Downing echoes her words:

“Suddenly we weren’t quite so young or quite so entitled. Suddenly the paradise of New York was preparing to cast many of us out. Were we unworthy? Where did we go wrong? This was something that no one had prepared us for.”

Maybe Downing and his friends weren’t being cast out. Certainly a city cannot bestow worthiness. How could he and his friends have been better prepared for the end of their stay in the city of dreams? How can we?

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Originally posted on the Cardus After Hours blog.

Make It Productions has stepped up the craft fair circuit. They’re not alone. The handmade revolution has taken North America by storm in the past five years. They DIYers even wrote a book about it.

I grew up within the walls of a fully operational art gallery. I shared my bathroom with clients perusing oil canvases and iron toilet paper holders. Family trips were spent visiting current and prospective painters and potters, equal parts bonding time and sourcing ventures. At the age of 14 I was on a first name basis with some of Vancouver’s most prominent artisans. (On an aside, my high school boyfriend was often mistaken for an artist in attendance at gallery openings. It was his safety pin earring and five o’clock shadow, I think.)

It’s obvious, then, that buying handmade is second nature to me.

Buying art can be expensive. I have been blessed to have many creative friends (and a gallery owner mother) who have filled my shelves and walls with gifted work, but you don’t need to ‘know someone’ to be surrounded by the same. 

Fairs like Make It bring us affordable, high quality art. They’re in major cities everywhere. At a show last weekend I discovered the stunning work of Calgary-based photographer Amy Victoria Wakefield. I bought an original as a birthday gift for a friend and took home a couple of her prints. At the same show I picked up two hand-stitched journals and a large hand-printed poster by Edmonton-based Bird on Wire, all for under $30. I’ve framed the poster and its clean black and white lines now lean atop my writing desk. I met the women who crafted these pieces. I praised their work. They smiled and told me stories. Now I see their faces in my home.

Art carries memory. 

I have a favourite piece of art. It’s a small painting of the Fathers of Confederation my husband and I chose to take home from our honeymoon in the Maritimes. It hangs in a hallway where you’d likely miss it. It’s not the prettiest picture but, every time I pass by (about two dozen times a day, en route to the baby’s room) I am reminded of this first moment as husband and wife.

Do you have a favourite piece of art? (A clay bowl your child made in art class twenty years ago, perhaps?) If so, what is it? Does it carry meaning? Does it too have a face?

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Posted yesterday on the After Hours blog.

Paris, 2009

Cardus, my favourite Canadian think tank and publisher of Comment magazine, where I frequently contribute, has a new online venture called After Hours. It’s a daily blog interested in ‘issues that affect the architecture of North American public life, including economics, literature, religion, politics, social and scientific innovation (and sundry other things.)’

“Slow for Good,” my first post as a Contributing Editor, went live last Thursday. It’s a bit ‘manifesto-y,’ according to my husband. I get that way sometimes. 

Anyone is welcome to contribute to After Hours. Please, fire off an e-mail if you are interested.

My latest column exploring fashion and theology is up in Comment Magazine. Madeleine was my inspiration as I considered ‘The advent of personal style.’ Enjoy!

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Also, speaking of fashion, the following invite arrived in the ‘ol inbox this morning. Paul Hardy presents at Vancouver Fashion Week tomorrow. I can’t wait! Paul’s shows never disappoint. 

I hope to bring you back pictures…

“It began on a long wooden pew.

I grew up on The Banner, Calvinettes (now GEMS), rolls of King peppermints, and the steadfast traditions of my Christian Reformed church in suburban British Columbia.

I used to believe that at some point all Christian Reformed kids had to spread their wings, fly the CRC coop, and explore the wider world of Christianity. We’d travel like vagabonds to charismatic revivals and Pentecostal worship services—finally, finally, experiencing the omnipotent God we’d learned so much about.

The moment my last high school bell rang, I hopped a plane to New Zealand. Eventually I settled in a prominent Baptist congregation in the heart of Queenstown, where my brother and I lived.

My memories of the church are sparse. I remember my brother, in a testosterone-induced flurry, scaling the church’s roof with his bare hands. I remember the calico church cat who’d comb through the pews looking for bored churchgoers’ attention. But the memory that stands out clearest is the particularly bright Sunday morning the minister read aloud the following passage:

Now listen, you say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. . . . Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that” (James 4:13-15).

Those words helped me, at the age of 18, first understand God’s bigger story. I could make my own plans, but ultimately God was guiding my path…”

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An excerpt of my piece in the October issue of The Banner. Read the full article here.

Calling all poets: a poetry competition from our friends at Comment magazine.

Comment magazine (www.cardus.ca/comment) invites poets to submit contributions in the form of a rondeau suitable for publication in our September print issue. This will be our fourth annual “Making the Most of College” issue, and the submitted poems should in some way be connected with that theme, or with the beginning of the school year. Our poetry judges will select three of the submitted rondeaux for publication and offer pre-publication editorial advice to the poets. One of the selected rondeaux will be published on the first page of the September issue, and its poet awarded a prize of CDN $50. Two other winners will be published elsewhere in the magazine. Email submissions or questions to dpostma@cardus.ca by June 15, 2009.

Michael and I have stolen away to Bowen Island to house-sit for a couple of weeks.

Our friends, the Cowpers, are away in Africa — first landing in Swaziland to tour Bulembu (an incredible self-sustaining community founded by Vancouver’s Volker Wagner, and led, in large part, by our good friend Jamie Woller. We just had the opportunity to visit with Jamie over a few days, at the To Change the World Emerging Leaders Summit, presented by Cardus, in Ottawa.) Then the Cowpers travel to South Africa and, finally Namibia.

People ask us why we’re here on the island, (it’s definitely not convenient.) But really nothing can capture our sentiments other than experience (right, Avital? right, Jenn?)

Waking to waves washing up on the shoreline, staring through forested hills as I wile away at the computer, ending our days by candlelight — well, those are a few of the reasons, for sure.

Here’s the view from dinner Monday night:

Do you see what I mean? ;)

Also, as a writer, I find new places and experiences inspiring. Travel, for me, is renewing. These experiences give new breadth to my work, spurring ideas, poems, articles, that wouldn’t have been there otherwise. For some, this is hard to understand, but for me, it is a way of life.

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Tomorrow I will post a Bowen poem. They’ve been spilling out since we arrived Sunday. The first of many, I hope.

To view the complete album click here.