woven together

I. A Theology of Place And

Starting the conversation of place, at first seems unnecessary, of course we are a person in a place. Unless this is all happening in our heads, which could be just as likely.

Rather than theorizing different beliefs of the Genesis creation story, let us be like the children whom Christ spoke to.

There is a fairly simple order of creation given to us that we tend to confuse. God made the land, made us, and then gave us dominion over it. The order is essential to our being and doing, but often dismissed. God did not make man and then create land as something for humans to overtake.

The earth, soil, dirt, was created first. It was here before us. We were made from the dirt of the ground of the land.

And in our human nature, we messed up. God gave us the responsibility to be loving and God-honoring caretakers of this land before us and from which we came, and we proceeded to exploit and destroy the natural life around us that gives us life.

Incarnation of the Messiah resulted in a being fully god and fully man. Man, human, who came from Adam. Adam translates literally as dirt, soil, earth. As he is said to have been formed from the ground.

If we are made anew and redeemed in Christ and take on his holiness, then to live in a way that exploits and destroys the land from which the man that redeems us came from is a direct contradiction. We cannot claim righteousness while living in complete disrespect and disregard to the biological father of humanity, the ground from which Christ ultimately came from.

We live in a way where we view ourselves as primary, the beginning and the power, of course under Jesus, but over the land. We forget that we came from the land, not from extravagant plants, but from the dirt.

Maybe we are healthily broken bodies because of our own poisoning of the land.

Global warming and climate change might still be viewed by some more conservative christians as controversial or liberal terms, but to live in denial of what humans are doing to creation disrespects the God who created it and creation itself.

The basic call to action in environmental consciousness is primarily first zero-waste living. A set of standards to live by in which one discards the polluted items in their home and replaces them with sustainable models. Some can more easily partake in this zero waste lifestyle, however a large portion of the population does not have the resources or finances to do so.

Just ten corporations are responsible for 71% of global emissions. The problem is not individually-based conscious living, but larger companies that prioritize profit over the planet.

The link between imagination and action is essential to placemaking. In the Genesis creation account we see one of the first dichotomies of imagination and action–Adam’s naming of the animals. This process required Adam’s perception of the other creatures’ as part of his own place in the world. We see for one of the first times this link between imagination and action.

This is not however the first time we see this link. We tend to focus on the nature of creation as good, rather than the creator’s perception of the world as good.

“And God saw that it was good.”

If one is a reflective being in the image of God, this beginning narrative implores us to see this imagination action dichotomy, prompting us to live in a way in which proper perception leads us to proper action, cultivating proper placemaking.

Dominion is not, as we have assumed, synonymous with being highly rulers over the land with power to extort and exploit as humans please.

Rather, dominion over the land is to live in shalom with creation. To interact with the natural life around us in a way that respects its use and place.

How do I view creation? Are animals simply pieces of meat to stuff full of the cheapest genetically modified food to be crammed together in cruel conditions until they are ready to be slaughtered? Old testament Hebrew texts are full of pages going into detail of how to sacrifice animals, conveying a respect for the life being taken. That respect is not translated into the American mass meat industry.

Do I care so little about the life in countries to which we send our garbage to that I am willing to support any kind of company and its packaging? Living in the privileged United States, we don’t see all the trash that we produce because it is conveniently picked up and then shipped away to third world countries that then have to live in our discarded fast food packaging and excess of plastic things we don’t need and then discard.

Again, not a call to drop everything and suddenly be plastic free and never use anything that produces any sort of carbon emission ever.

What matters is this imagination and action link. We cannot hope to be sustainable placemakers without the imagination to do so.

We are not only to live in harmony and with respect to the land, but we are to do so because it is our land that distinguishes us, our land that formed us, our land that brings new life and shapes our cultures and identities.

Art aids in this process because when we are in a state where we have lost our imagination of the land, art in public places can collectively transform our imagination of what our relationship is with the land for the better.

Art ages imagination because it is a never-ending creativity process. Art does not need to be expensive, to look and be made in a certain traditional way.

Use the things around you. Imagine a purpose and place for the materials in your life. And in imagining with creation around us, we take action and become placemakers in our particular land.

II. Georgia Blueberries

The sun was red. Sometimes.

The ground was red, depending on where you stepped.

The grass is green, and there we were in the space between. Making place as a family, we were the colors in between.

There were days I was closed off. My doors were opened by a father holding a little boy’s hand and a mother holding a baby girl. Time is different to me, but I knew I was the first home to this little girl. She went from crying, to laughing, to talking. She crawled and walked and ran. She climbed trees and parachuted off with a bedsheet knowing she could fly. There were days the mother forced them out of my reach and locked my doors. I watched the boy run down the road to play with friends, as the baby girl who could walk now stepped around me. From my roof, I could see her climbing trees. From my foundation I watched as she drank from the hose to quench her thirst as her mother locked my sliding glass doors preventing her from the water inside.

Some days the four of them would leave together and come back carrying pails of blueberries. The girl’s face was always purple from smashing blueberries into her mouth. I loved seeing her delight in the natural, something I am not. She didn’t grow the berries, but chose each one. The aromas that filled me after these days were warm and royal. The blueberries, once young and green inside, when cooked became grand and purple. They were not only a tasty treat, but also an excuse to gather around the table and hold hands, praying to royalty.

There was a certain trinity in place I observed; the mother and girl, the land, and art. All were woven together in a macrame of self learning. The mom taught her daughter creativity and to use the natural things around her. They made paint from eggs, picked ferns to print, and wove flowers and branches into holiday garlands. While I was structured and could not change, they dressed me in festive foliage, and I was blessed seeing their creations together. While the mother taught her to use her creativity, it had to be in line with the family doctrine and had to be done in the traditional technique as taught. Exploring more than a conservative amount was not allowed, and the mother saw everything.

I watched her flinch every time her mother grabbed her hand. It seemed as instinctual as the birds eating bugs. With every flinch she became more sure of her place. It wasn’t confined to my walls and the family. When my space felt unsafe to her or she was locked out, she found comfort in the rooms created by the trees she climbed. She no longer felt alone when her mother locked her out, for she had her fairy friends to talk to. I saw them knit together, all intricately laced within the other. Separate, but forming one place. It beget a safe space for the anxious girl, but was never separate from the mother. The girl didn’t know anything else, this was her first place being formed. And so she was seemingly content in her restricted limitations of art. Although when she went to sleep at night, her dreams were filled with colors and shapes that were more explorative than her drawings.

III. A Saturation of Green

I, a camera lens, took in city sights and mountain hills as the girl and I traveled around the bay area. Though residing in a city, I saw beauty in the land and the place we took up in it. Through me, she found weird angles to convert scaffolding and rooftops into unique images. Driving along the coast, I captured blurry photos of the ocean roaring at us. I tried to take in the colorful sunsets at the tops of hills we would travel to, but could never come close to capturing its radiance. A camera lens can only take in so much light, and the world was shining around us.

We did our best to respect the land. Conscious of the space and life around us. Conscious of our place in the land. Though in San Francisco which was spilling over with man-made structures, we strived towards living in shalom with creation. Listening to the trees as I framed them in my view and dancing in meadows, I spun around capturing the faces of fully satisfied friends and family. I took in the shadows and depths created by paints on canvases. I reached my frame to the tops of redwoods, but never could capture their height. I wonder what the tops of those trees look like. Another mystery in this incredible tapestry of life.

I could take in a certain depth, a certain reflection. But how to portray the majesty of life breathing together around me? The harmonious rhythms, though broken by humans, resonated in my lens.

They created and built incredible things, far surpassing what anyone expected. But they became too obsessed with their own portraits. They viewed the surrounding land and life as a disposable resource to exploit and profit from.

Slowly, they began to realize the effects of their living with disregard to the land. Each one on their own could not make a difference. The sunsets I captured became brighter in color as corporations pumped out gasses poisoning creation. One person using a metal straw could not make a difference to the thousands of pollutants coming from factories. Each person, like me, could see their place. They could choose how to position themselves to frame a beautiful image of themselves within creation. They could see how each of their decisions, though small and rather insignificant to effects of pollution, formed their depth and reflection of their willingness to be in shalom with creation.

And that is how I found my favorite color green in San Francisco. Green was the living plants around us, that taught us one doesn’t need to fill their life with waste and pollution in order to have a beautiful place in the world.

IV. If Even the Wildflowers

We lived on the side of the hill next to the wood cabins. No one planted us, we were the wild flowers whose birthplace was these woods. I was born on this hill, and I will never leave, as I am content with my view of the surrounding mountains.

Cars dropped off girls on the mountain all the time. They came and went, following the plants in season. A forest of trees stared down at a twelve year old girl, her eyes wide with fear. There were girls that were fighting, screaming, and running, and then there were girls who were frozen and could not move. Older girls came too. They were different ages, different sizes, different colors, but all had eyes that seemed to be searching for somewhere to hide.

We bloomed and they did the opposite. I watched them crumple like I did in winter and then try to regrow themselves, but the colors were always off. Clad in neon pink and gray sweatsuits, the girls walked silently in single file lines from one building to another. Some I watched for years. Some I watched run off the mountain, however, they always returned.

It was an interesting space we took up. In their silence, it seemed they were other places. The girls who pretended they weren’t there did the best at the program. I observed the two methods of survival–fight and flight. Physically fighting, and fleeing in their mind. The girls who were fighters were constantly on discipline, they wrote biblical lines on pages and pages, meta of the trees that surrounded us.

Silence was forced. I wished I could talk to them, but even if I could have, they would have been punished for it. It broke my heart to see them reprimanded and disciplined for things as simple as talking or saying the names of the other girls they lived with. Even the ones that were constantly on self-watch and followed the rules were not safe. The staff changed rules as they saw fit when unhappy with the girls and wanting to make them pay for the stress they caused the staff.

Girls were twitching and shaking on the ground, not in control of their bodies, as if something had taken over them. And yet they seemed to be faulted and disciplined personally for these moments.

From our meadow, I watched the girl from a distance. She rarely spoke, but traveled everywhere and had conversations with all sorts of people in her dissociative place. Her island. It seemed to be a survival coping mechanism, a safe place in this unsafe space. It helped her, for she saw less of the reality around her, but she didn’t know the dangers of living in an island inside her head..

I wished I could tell her all about her place. Even if I could have, why would I take this place of safety from her when she needed it most.

I couldn’t tell you where she went in her mind. She rarely spoke or showed emotion, and so I could only assume these repressed human feelings were taking place in her mind.

And then suddenly, 503 days later, she was ready to leave.

Did all that time really just pass? It had always felt excruciatingly long, but when the time came it was like none had passed at all. Did things really happen here? Was this real? Daily evaluations on every move taken through the day. Writing sentences hundreds of times like they used to do in school on chalkboards. Strict no-talking rules that were enforced with threats to hell. Neon uniforms like prison. Forced food that made a delicate 90 pound girl jump to 140.

503 days. I watched this and child abuse take place, as she silently nodded and smiled for her “fake it til you make it” attitude. And then it was over like no time had passed at all.

And after all these days, growing and dying and rebirthing all while watching her, she picked me.

She picked me, the wildflowers, to arrange and adorn into bouquets, to aliven her graduation ceremony where she finally would leave the mountain and not come back.

I never thought I would be so happy to die.

V. Red Threads

TRIGGER WARNING SELF HARM

Every six months or so I changed rooms. I lived in the cycle of being folded up and put in a box, only to emerge a month after and be taken out of storage to adorn a new space with the familiarity I held. A new space each semester. A room full of memories and moments, all woven together. Just like me, just like her.

All three of us, a tapestry, the moments, and the girl, were a desirable thoughtfully placed together image. We were each a complete image but made of threads.

Though I faded over time in sunlight from different parts of the country, I rarely ripped. Unlike her and the moments.

Hair colors changed as frequently as friends yelling at each other. Locations moved, but constant breaking occurred. Unlike my fading from the sun, this breaking was unnatural damage between people and her body.

Over the course of living in a space with her, I felt as high as she did sometimes with all the instability that occurred.

And though I stayed intact, it broke me to see her break her skin apart for years.

When not exploring acrylics and oil paints, she painted her skin in red.

Red is psychologically the most controversial of colors, the warmest and most fiery. It is inlaid with intense emotion, linked to passion and love and power and anger. These were coincidentally the same emotions as to what was sewn into the moments.

Red threads. Her body of red threads holding her skin together. An anger and range of extremes in the moments. And me, a knockoff Urban Outfitters tapestry of maroon and purple and yellow.

My weaving was simple. Hers was complex. Arteries and blood streams, all connected and begging her to live. My simple stitching also begging her to live. We all watched and cried as she broke her threads, wishing that instead of slicing apart her threads she could instead see them and herself for the beauty she was.

It’s not that her pain wasn’t valid. I was there for all the screams and tears. How could somewhere that was supposed to be so glorifying be so harmful? I constantly did the math and it didn’t add up. The people around her and herself were there to study holiness and become more so. But holiness wasn’t this. Holiness wasn’t friends lying and scheming. Holiness wasn’t judgment and condemnation. Holiness wasn’t the evil I watched between women living together.

If this was holiness, it made me wonder what the point of it all was after all.

VI. Disco

Why must a canvas be constricted to a rectangle? Why must paintings be done with lead filled liquid over mass produced traditional canvases? Art is an essential part of placemaking, and yet so restricted by traditional methods.

Our apartment shines at golden hour, the disco balls reflecting light all over the walls, and the suncatchers creating rainbows throughout the setting. The sun highlights all the knick-knacks and trinkets we’ve acquired, enlightening each little story and memory. I look at the tables I’ve built, and remember Christ as a carpenter, an artist. I look at the fish lamp I built for my roommates when we first moved in, and remember how something so silly created new bonds between us. I look at the plants that have thrived, and the empty pots of the ones that have died, reminding me of how life is like vapor, here one day and gone the next. I look at the art decorating the walls, and remember each project with emotion. The flowers I drew in a psychiatric hospital. The accumulated and thrifted art each with a unique origin story.

All of this reflects us. We are the light shining and spinning off the disco balls. We are the delicate rainbows that create radiant colors when lit up. We are the songs sung by Broadway roommates. We are the ALDI meals, shared together. We are the hanging macrames and tapestries, stitched individually but woven together.

Several have described our place as organized chaos, and I describe it as a raw, colorful, ever-changing, disco-spinning reflection of us. We made this place. We took a dusty dirty old apartment, and made it into a hospitable place that many have shared meals and deep moments in. We did this with the things we make, the food we cook, the conversations shared, and the tears we’ve cried. This is our place. We shine in our apartment at golden hour, and reflect this upon each other and those around us. We are a safe space, one where a girl who had been scared her whole life to sleep with the door open now does so without thinking twice. We are ever-changing, growing as the plants do, some struggling more at times than others.

Sustainability often excludes anything made of unnatural materials. But to live in this mindset is naive of the mass production our lives are already overflowing with. I realized my love for recycling here. Not referring to separating paper and plastics into a separate bin, that, let’s be real, majority of the time ends up in the same dump anyways. But referring to the love of creativity I found in reusing things. Rarely does something need to be “trash.” Challenging ourselves to find a new use for the physical things taking up space in our lives rather than discarding them is a creative take on sustainability that expands our artistic options vastly. Anything can be made into art. And in reusing things from our lives as art materials, the art itself becomes so much more meaningful than if it was made from paint from an art store.

Making paint from foods I ate as a child has brought me a painful but sweet nostalgia. Burning my nostrils boiling cayenne and other spices to work into a tapestry of rage reminds me of past pain I am now free from. Painting maroons with cheap wine gives a communion with the art that would not be possible with acrylics.

Wendell 2 west, our apartment, has been full of bright colors and bright lights. It has been pushing past the rectangle of a canvas. It has been reimagining use for deemed trash. Creativity is pouring down our walls, in how we have built this place for us to share with others. A rainbow reflecting life full of more colors and patterns than I would have ever thought imaginable.