"What are you going to miss most about Chicago?"

"We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the 

only solution is love and that love comes with community." 

- Dorothy Day

This.

The Fine Mist

“I love to watch the fine mist of the night come on" 

―Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

Is it nighttime yet, Reshma?

There is something magical to me about dusk in a city under a misty rain.  I love the way the lights glow, and perhaps the anticipation of people closing up their shops with dreams of someplace warmer and cozier.

My friend Jane and I started the evening by the harbor at Lake Michigan, but lasted only about 5 minutes due to the heavier mist.  We made our way inward, and instead I completed a sketch (and she a watercolor) across the street from the Art Institute from the vantage of a cozy Starbucks.  

Jane often completes paintings along her travels and was an inspiration to me to start an art blog.  She has quite a gift with watercolors and a hopping Etsy business, too (http://waterpaintings.blogspot.com).  

I have also been thinking about my roommate Reshma this week, as she holds the traditional Ramadan fast--praying and abstaining from all food and liquid from sun-up to sun-down.  As Jane and I made our way back through the misty night, we wondered if nighttime is determined as absolute based on the sunset times, or whether on such a dim evening it might come earlier.

Jane will be moving just outside the city, and I home to Virginia, this summer.  But I have enjoyed sharing some painting art ventures with her, and tonight I felt like a regular city-dweller in an enchanting city.

And speaking of enchanting.  

Post by Anne Krane.

vessel

I walk through this underpass (overpass?) on the way to my internship.  Passing through one day, the slogan that usually boasts luxury condos flashed into my head.  Something like this.  (The photo program on my computer tried to label the plastic bag as a face: "nameless.")

I am not brave.

If you want an example of brave, see Antonio Anderson.

I am not generous with smiles to or interactions with strangers.  I am under the impression that I act as expected, or at least have convinced myself that I must abide by the norms of Big City living.  When in Rome.

Most especially, I am fearful of beginning contact with strangers whom I would come into regular contact with.  That is, the strangers who sift through my garbage cans, collecting cans with carts, pedaling a shopping cart or large trash bag.  He is not so much of a stranger anymore; I recognize his gait as I look on from my second story window.

I am most scared of commitment.

If I meet you today, then I have to maintain a relationship with you

for so many months,

every time I see you,

because I will know your name,

because your face will become familiar,

and then I will be a part of your story

and you a part of mine. 

And I cannot risk that kind of relationship.

Also, I have bags of excuses:

I am female,

I am alone,

I am a student with lots of loans,

it is evening,

I will pray for you,

I have given my time of service.

I will give to a charity instead.

During Lent I stopped.

Others stop.

One day I will stop.

I was so fortunate to participate in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and Amate House programs after graduating (experiences I loved). However, if I had any delusions that these experiences would check off any boxes in my life: “service hours,” “selfless time,” “generous years,” I would be mistaken.  I am empty again.

I have felt myself as a cup, carrying a portion of love, generosity, and selflessness: poured into (Thank you, God) and with need to be poured out. 

This cup of generosity is no container to be filled to a specific quota, capped, and added as a trophy to my shelf, as I dust my hands and recline in my seat to admire.

Rather, these rhythms of filling and emptying confirm its shape and purpose,

time and time again:

echoing like a habit over time

that somehow slips into and reminds the thing of its essence:

you are a cup.

Consider Harold, hungry on the street; you give him a sandwich. Around the corner is Joe. The sandwich you gave Harold in no way satisfies the pangs in Joe’s stomach.

It is no universal stomach we feed. 

There are many individual stomachs.

“I do not agree with the big way of doing things. To us what matters is an individual. To get to love the person we must come in close contact with him. If we wait till we get the numbers, then we will be lost in the numbers. And we will never be able to show that love and respect for the person.”

Mother Teresa

2 Corinthians 4:7

“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”

By the amazing Claire, who donated her April proceeds to Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.  Check out her sweet stuff.

spring

Saint John Paul II Newman Center at UIC

The Newman Center has been a welcoming faith community during my time at UIC.  Although sometimes I feel a little old, there are always warm and welcoming faces to greet me and a solid sense of community that attracted me.  I sang in the choir a bit last year and have participated in a Bible study facilitated by the FOCUS missionaries.  Oh, AND 2 Easter egg hunts.  This painting is a gift for the liturgical minister, promised as a wedding gift about a year ago.  She and her husband are expecting a son next month!

 My 1/2 hour walk to Newman is showing joyful signs of spring.

Rosebud's chairs and umbrellas, eager to be unleashed.

branches bedecked with white...blossoms

And at long last, the bikes of Chicago are melting!

Thanks be to God!

Nip in the air

What more did I think I wanted?

Here is what has always been.

Here is what will always be.

Even in me, 

the Maker of all this returns in rest, 

even to the slightest of His works,

a yellow leaf slowly falling,

and is pleased.

Wendell Berry

acrylic, wedding present

Lake Michigan at sunset,

manipulated from a photograph

in the interest of hospitality

"I did not invent those pairs of differential equations.  I found them in the world, where God had hidden them." -19th century mathematician Bernhard Riemann

"When I stumble across metaphors in the course of writing, it feels much more like discovery than creating; the words and images seem to be choosing me, and not the other way around.  And when I manipulate them in the interest of hospitality, in order to make a comprehensible work of art, I have to give up any notion of control." -Kathleen Norris

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Somewhere whose zip code does not begin with 606--

Commission, 11''x14'', acrylic

Meanwhile, beneath blue-grey skies...

there are signs of hope

as Chicago begins to reveal her own verdant hues.

Cheers!