http://paintingrevelation.com/blog/ en debby@fireflylife.com Copyright 2009 2009-12-07T15:26:02+00:00 http://paintingrevelation.com/blog/comments/all_we_need/ http://paintingrevelation.com/blog/comments/all_we_need/#When:15:26:02Z Napa Valley The past three weeks I’ve been struggling with pneumonia, first in an airplane, then a week on the 41st floor of a hotel in New Orleans, finally back home in bed. Many lessons have come to mind as I’ve found myself unable to DO but rather just have to BE. I’ve uncovered some false messages from my childhood that were ingrained deep in my child soul. I’m getting a close up look at how important breath / pneuma / spirit is for our very existence. I’m on the mend. Today I was looking through a file in my desk labeled prayer. It’s a ragtag assortment. I found a note scribbled on a 3” square of paper and thought it is still worth pondering. This is the first verse of Genesis: In the beginning     TIME God                     PERSONALITY created                   ENERGY the heavens             SPACE and the earth         MATTER 2009-12-07T15:26:02+00:00 http://paintingrevelation.com/blog/comments/love_letters/ http://paintingrevelation.com/blog/comments/love_letters/#When:21:24:32Z detail from Come and Eat by Debby TopliffWhen Painting Revelation was first released we threw a viewing party in our little town of Saugatuck. A few days later I ran into one of our guests, a poet/painter friend who had been widowed for many years. After exchanging the regular friendly words, she looked me hard in the face and said, “I should tell you sometime the story of what happened to me because of your DVD.” Tell me now, I wanted to say, but waited. “I went home after the party and dug out my Bible. I wanted to see what it said.” She smiled a little, “I don’t read it very often.” I knew she sometimes went to the Catholic Church. “When I opened it up to look for the book of Revelation, I found a letter—from my husband—from 1972.” Her eyes filled with tears. “It was a special letter, a very important letter. Precious to me.” May we all find love letters when we open the Bible. 2009-11-24T21:24:32+00:00 http://paintingrevelation.com/blog/comments/reading_rewards/ http://paintingrevelation.com/blog/comments/reading_rewards/#When:12:10:07Z Two of my favorite readers This past weekend our two sons and oldest grandson came for a visit at our home near Lake Michigan, one flying in from the Pacific, the other two from the Atlantic. We sat four hours in midwestern rain to watch the University of Michigan Wolverines get swamped by the Nitney Lions. Joy comes in many forms and often requires hard work and endurance. Sometimes you have to sit still and keep turning the pages to find what you’re looking for. The November issue of American Library Association’s Booklist magazine will be on religion and spirituality. I don’t know how or why, but they chose my DVD, Painting Revelation, as one of the Top Ten Religion Videos of the year! I think it’s okay to toot my own horn since I’ve been playing quietly in obscurity for quite a long time. Perhaps this blip on the radar screen will bump my work into consciousness long enough so I can make a second video from my painting of the Book of Acts. But most important, I hope people will watch Painting Revelation and see the fearful yet full-of-hope message of the last book of the Bible. It’s not too late to strengthen your faith and build an everlasting raft of peace that will carry you safely through any storm. 2009-10-27T12:10:07+00:00 http://paintingrevelation.com/blog/comments/a_bruised_reed/ http://paintingrevelation.com/blog/comments/a_bruised_reed/#When:15:39:59Z Wedding Platter “A bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.” Almost a year ago our daughter was married. As a gift to me for hosting the wedding and reception at our house, she had this family tree platter made for me. She asked my husband to find out my favorite Bible verse and I told him Isaiah 42:3, which she had inscribed at the bottom of the tree. I found this verse many years ago, not long after I experienced God’s rescuing love. I saw myself in the weak images of a bruised reed and a dimly burning wick. But I must confess I have not spent much time contemplating the end of the verse: He will faithfully bring forth justice. This past Sunday a Catholic priest gave the teaching at our Protestant church. We are going verse by verse through the Sermon on the Mount and his text was Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. Father Sirico offered an insight I am still pondering. He said that our passion for justice is a form of grief. We mourn not just evil, but the tragedy that what becomes evil or unjust, cruel and neglectful could have been great. We mourn the lost potential, the love and joy, peace and health that God intends for all people. I had coffee with a new friend last week and was taken off guard—and delighted—by her comments on the health care debate: Health care is a human right and not a benefit for those who can afford it, she said. So often those with money and access to health care say they shouldn’t be forced to have lesser care, but why should anyone have lesser care? Where does our sense of entitlement come from? Why don’t we want to pool our resources so everyone is helped? I was born into a family with financial abundance. I grew up with many privileges, but I still became a bruised reed, a very dimly burning wick. I became poor in spirit. I mourned. And because of my desperate situation, I was invited into the kingdom of heaven. I received comfort not because of my wealth and education or my standing in society, but because God loves the broken. Let’s not harden our hearts; let’s not insulate ourselves from the reality of pain. Let’s be brave enough to mourn, believing God will faithfully bring forth justice. 2009-09-22T15:39:59+00:00 http://paintingrevelation.com/blog/comments/safety_in_the_storm/ http://paintingrevelation.com/blog/comments/safety_in_the_storm/#When:21:56:40Z Lake Michigan Since we live on the east side of Lake Michigan we experience the full force of winds blowing across the water from Illinois. The last few days we watched whitecaps erupt in the bluegreen and then march onto the beach, eroding sand, dislodging beach grass, gouging the shoreline and depositing sand in bars off shore. Yesterday I noticed how the deep basin of water formed between the sandbar and the shore was much calmer than the shallows. There was room for the waves to go down instead of breaking into a froth on the surface. This morning as I sat in the hot tub the wind was still swirling in the tree tops. But the squirrel’s nest I wrote about in the previous entry was hardly swaying. The squirrel had built its home in the very top of a sassafras surrounded by taller, broader trees. The white oak, the maple, the shagbark hickories were being whipped by the wind but the little sassafras nest held steady. We need to go deep to survive the storms. We need to surround ourselves with people, ideas, books, prayers, music, vistas—whatever we can find that is taller and broader, stronger and more deeply rooted than our present perspective. These are turbulent times but there are choices we can make to minimize the chaos and enhance our sense of security. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. No one can snatch us out of his hand. (BTW—the cardinal babies hatched yesterday) 2009-08-03T21:56:40+00:00 http://paintingrevelation.com/blog/comments/nests/ http://paintingrevelation.com/blog/comments/nests/#When:20:28:00Z cardinal nest I woke up earlier than usual this morning and made my way to our backyard hot tub with fruit smoothie in one hand, Bible in the other. Sunday before 7 is very quiet in the woods where we live. As I settled into the warm water, delighting in the crisp blue sky, I heard something unusual. Just a small sound, a snapping and a rustle of leaves. Right in front of me at the top of a skinny sassafras tree I saw a black squirrel busy at work. It scampered to nearby branches, bit off a leafy length, then darted back to the growing nest. I could hear it working hard, weaving the new twigs into the mass of leaves. Then from behind me I heard a cardinal’s call. I turned to see a male and female perched on top of our fence, the female with a spindle of grass in her beak. The male called out again and they both flew away. When I got out of the hot tub I spied the beginnings of their nest under the wisteria vine on the trellis outside my bedroom door. The other end of the trellis held the remains of this spring’s nest. Was this the same couple? Or their offspring? I hope I didn’t scare them away. They comfort me, these squirrels and birds. They know their place in the world. They know how to make their homes. I feel so blessed to live in the peaceful woods where I am, yet my awareness of the millions of people living in poverty, homeless, in refugee camps, sick and hungry and in squalor is always just below the surface of my mind. I am tempted to despair, to sink in guilt. Yet I remember God’s command to rejoice always, pray continually, and give thanks in every circumstance, for that is his will for us in Christ Jesus. This weekend I was blessed to open my home—our rustic cabin in the woods—to a friend and her five children. Seeing them delight in the creek and the woods, giving them the opportunity to discover the serenity of this place, makes me feel better. But it is really the birds, the flowers, the fireflies, the steady moon and stars, that encourage me to accept my place, my sphere of influence—always with thanksgiving, always with an attitude of grace. 2009-07-12T20:28:00+00:00 http://paintingrevelation.com/blog/comments/waiting/ http://paintingrevelation.com/blog/comments/waiting/#When:20:43:00Z July 9th garden Six weeks have gone by since the photo below. Radishes have all been eaten, carrots are filling in after them. Peas climbed up, flowered, and produced. Yum. Swiss chard, butternut squash, tomatoes in cages, beets, onions, peppers. The broccoli have tiny heads. One morning I found a hole under the lettuce, 4” round, 6” deep, carefully lined with long grass and two marigold flowers. I’m guessing a rabbit thought it found heaven. Each living thing follows its unique, implanted directions, produces its own special contribution to the world. How do we learn to pay attention to what our cells are telling us? Why do I wish I was an early radish or a peapod when my fruit takes all summer to mature? This past weekend I attended Rob Bell’s conference called Poets, Prophets, and Preachers. It was phenomenal. Preaching as the original guerrilla theater and a peek inside the heads of some of today’s most brilliant minds. Graciously they allowed me to sell my Painting Revelation DVD at the book table. I watched as the speakers’ books flew off the table while my DVDs languished. There was interest, and some wonderful encouraging comments from people who’d watched the video. One pastor bought it, watched it in his room that night, and came back the next morning to tell me how much he liked it. I was happy for the exposure and the affirmation. But when I got back home I started doing the numbers, calculating percentages, and feeling sorry for myself. I may be a carrot who needs to spend a lot of time underground, going deep. Or more likely an asparagus plant. This spring I dug a trench for the bare roots. When the tiniest shoots came up, I added more soil. Now I have little feathery plants in the trench. Next year the stalk will be a bit bigger and I’ll cover it more. Maybe the third year the trench will be filled in and the asparagus ready to eat. I hope so. 2009-07-09T20:43:00+00:00 http://paintingrevelation.com/blog/comments/resurrection_seeds/ http://paintingrevelation.com/blog/comments/resurrection_seeds/#When:20:40:00Z Seedlings My neighbor and I have started a garden. My favorite part of the process is planting the seeds and watching the seedlings sprout. I love their diversity—peas with tendrils, bumpy beets, tiny carrots with furry tops, round radishes. Yesterday I was reading through I Corinthians 15 and pondered what Paul says about resurrection bodies beginning in verse 35. “Someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’....What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.” This morning I thought, what if the life we choose to live right now is the “seed factory” of our eternal being? What if an earthly life of bitterness and unresolved anger becomes the seed for an ugly, tormented soul? And the reverse: what kind of eternal body would grow from a life of generosity and love? I hope to find out! 2009-05-27T20:40:00+00:00 http://paintingrevelation.com/blog/comments/essence/ http://paintingrevelation.com/blog/comments/essence/#When:22:50:00Z Hidden in Christ Today is my birthday. For the last couple of weeks I’ve struggled with the idea of being 60. Before now, it seemed so old. Yet here I am, still me. One of the biggest challenges in life is discovering, knowing, owning your true identity. This was the temptation Jesus wrestled with in the wilderness. At his baptism by John in the Jordan River, the heavens opened up, a dove descended, and a voice said, “You are my son. I’m pleased with you.” But immediately after that the Holy Spirit drove him into the wilderness where the enemy kept asking, “If you are the son of God…..” The insinuation was: maybe you’re not. A wise counselor that I visit from time to time used EMDR (eye movement therapy) to help me integrate who I knew with my mind I was, with who I felt I was. It’s hard to explain, but after the session I drew this image of my true self. Ever since that session I’ve been much more grounded, much more integrated. My mind and my heart are one. I know who I am: I am crucified with Christ. It is no longer Debby (whether 10 or 35 or 60) who lives, but Jesus Christ lives in me. And the life I now live in this earthly, aging body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. 2009-04-24T22:50:00+00:00 http://paintingrevelation.com/blog/comments/shorebirds/ http://paintingrevelation.com/blog/comments/shorebirds/#When:22:54:00Z Where’s Woody? Gulf Shores Osprey flapping furiously Mate and chicks hungry at home He hovers, dives, comes up wet Empty handed Shakes away the spray As an angry rival swoops Chases him downwind Pelican wafts, threads the waves Into a shoreline beeline Fingertips dipping the salty mix Seagulls sprint and glide Two black-tipped ibis scoot past the commotion Hurrying to the coquina cafeteria Opening at low tide A pileated woodpecker clings to a palm Battering last year’s fronds For ants and beetle larvae Is this the hammerer on my metal chimney? The whispering chirper above my hearth? Willets screech into the wind As sanderlings skirt the froth Crisscrossed crab prints Divulge their nighttime doors While I relinquish winter coat Winter work Winter worries And sink deeper onto the trillion googleplex Of sun-drenched specks Wave-beaten grains Star-numbered promises Of sand 2009-04-23T22:54:00+00:00