Spring Semester, Second Semester has a spectacular kick-off. I've attended all classes but one (Basic Photography which was supposed to be this past Monday which was Martin Luther Day). Maybe I should start with when I arrived on campus... and what feelings hit me.
It was a pleasant ride from Penn Station in NYC to Baltimore on the MVP bus. I felt a bit queezy inside upon seeing the Gateway building over the bridge while riding past it. Here I was, back at MICA inevitably thinking about how soon I'd be starting classes the next day - launching into them actually. It was frightening how winter break flew by... like "that" [she snaps].
I got off the bus with my other MICA New York friend, named April, and lugging our suitcase down the dark, orange streets of Baltimore, I called the Shuttle bus to transport us to the Commons (our dorm). It was a different feeling on the MICA Shuttle. My queeziness had gone away and had been replaced by a sort of curious excitement. We arrived at the entrance to the Commons and I literally said, "Oh my gosh. I remember this place." But the Commons building wasn't quite the same either. It looked familiar and surprisingly a bit homey, kinda like a smack of nostalgia right in my face, but there was a peculiar freshness on the campus - like even though I had a history with these buildings, it's all underneath me and I'm starting anew again. "Pilot," like the very first episode to a new t.v. show.
I realize there was a change in me that day. Getting on the bus and on the shuttle, I made conversation with April and the bus driver and I'd never felt freer in loving them and not having to act out love like I had to prove something. I felt like myself and my conversations were genuine, not forced or imposed as if I had taken a personality-enhanced drug before getting on. No, I was myself. And that alone changed everything about how I viewed MICA again. And I could easily point my reasoning towards Urbana and how God worked through that convention to set my heart and mind straight.
My room - oh the appearance of it. NO ONE MOVED IN! I completely expected to have a roommate this year (due to transfers), but the navy blue springy mattress was still naked on the bed frame! Alone again?? No, as my mother pointed out to me in the car, God blessed me with privacy and a spacious dorm room when I could have lived uncomfortably in tight quarters, considering I had this monstrous drafting table in the middle of the room and countless Art stuff accumulating under the bed and in-between the wall and closet - from canvases, to portfolios, to scrolls, to art bins, to drawing boards and all the art supplies in-between. I'm supposed to be living with a roommate (cus it's a double), but God gave me a single, with the size of a double, but without the extra cost... He's amazing. Not because He made Rachel Verity homesick and drove her out of MICA, but because He wants me to be alone so that I could spend precious time with him. And He does it again, second semester.
There seems to have been a paradigm shift that occurred sometime between Urbana and now because I don't view my room the same either. I wrote in my earlier post that I dreaded going back to my dorm room because I was afraid that It'd bring back dusty old habits of closing myself in again. But it didn't happen this time, and I know it won't happen again (I'm sure of it). Why? Well I think it's because my life looks outwards now. It doesn't seek to satisfy personal needs, but it seeks to spend time with others, and that leaves me detached with everything in my room. Anything in my room I can dispose of, but relationships now seem to carry the better half of my value system.
Neither do I dread homework or heavy projects. They seem like fun and thought-provoking undertakings and it gets me excited. Neither do I consume myself in my work. There's a difference between engrossing oneself in one's work and concentrating on one's work. Like the creation of Frankenstein, the man was mad and he engrossed himself in collecting human body parts dug up from the grave in vision of creating a monster. I suppose concentrating on one's work would mean that the man could easily drop everything and abort the project at any time. It doesn't mean that I have not drive or passion to do well. Of course school is a priority, it's essentially my occupation [wobbles head], but in hindsight, relationships (something I thought I was capable of sacrificing first semester in order to do well), have become something big in my life as well. I used to put relationships on the back burner and pick them back up whenever I could. But now, relationships envelop my work and I don't even try - I seek, I desire to form new relationships with people and to keep them and to make them genuine and profound and authentic. My room? It's now just a place where I work and where I sleep. It's not a haven, it's not my home away from home. Because I find that home is where God is, and God thrives in the bonds that I make with other people - bonds that I don't abuse to keep me sustained as a person, but bonds that are formed with loving and outward intention.
Everyone seemed lethargic the first day of class... but I wasn't! I felt alive and awake and I felt OUTWARD, not in any "burst of energy" way, but in a resolute and excited way. All the classes that followed day after day seemed so fresh and I felt so renewed. A total of five classes and I'm thirsty for more. I can't wait for painting class to unravel because not only do I love working with paint, but I seem confident now that I took the seminar on "the Spiritual Foundation for the Artist" at Urbana (which taught me that I should paint with truth and that my work should breathe life into the viewer), now that I know that God can inspire and instill visions in me, and now that I can actually focus with intellect and creativity (like I once had at RISD Pre-college and unlike first semester where every work I created seemed flat and blunt because I was too distracted to get anywhere near complex thinking and fabricating images in my head). Despite, Spring Semester looks very promising. New (and more female) teachers, new guidelines, new materials, new friends :) , new classmates, new perspective, new attitude, new dimensions, new life, new world, new.
The E, A, B, C#, F#, and G# chords on the guitar are my favorite chords to play! I get excited when I flip to a song sheet that is composed in that chord. I've realized, having a handy-dandy guitar at hand, that when I worship God in song, I don't seek to find a song that has already been written by another heart. Instead, I start with the E chord and I sing whatever's on my heart, and half-way through I realize that the lyrics that I'm singing can easily be published and used by other Christians. But I, too, recently realized that the worst thing I, as a Christian and on a personal basis, could do is not to use God's name in vein (no), but to use His name and take all the glory for my own. I guess that's where humility needs to be worked in.
Ok, i'm all left out of words to say. Actually not, because there's a personal problem at hand, but it'll probably be another story for in the near or far future - we'll see. I was also thinking that because Spring Semester has kicked-off on a good note and I'm feeling aligned with God, that people actually have been praying for me (in the broad or specific prayer - no wait, I remember now that Pastor Grace prayed for me last Friday), and I'd like to thank you (them) for doing so. It encourages me to know that God is working through so many people all at the same time (there's a word for that! but I can't remember what it is... ah! omnipresent? anyways..). I'm truly thankful that I'm living in a new light. I'm truly thankful that I long to shed light in other people's lives as well.
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