thoughts on art and discipline.

It's been ages.

In the span of four months, I have wandered alone on an island in Galapagos- singing praises to Jesus in a hammock behind the Armada, I have played with two new littler sisters in their comfortable Quito high-rise apartment living room, I have laughed with a jungle family in their Amazonian hospital compound, I have gotten my first job at UNC Health Care as a grown up multimedia journalist, I have sat on my couch for a week with a bad case of swine flu, and I have shot three weddings around the state of North Carolina. That's crazy to me.

I miss writing. Expressing myself in general. Since returning from Ecuador, photography has become a means to fill my belly, not my soul. So of course I am turning to different forms of expression. Last year it was painting and drumming. Previous years it was writing poetry and prose. Now, the uncontrollable urge to dance has seized me this past month (probably fostered by a recent obsession with So You Think You Can Dance), but I can't help from leaping in the kitchen and watching "how to do a jazz attitude leap" tutorials on youtube. I'm seriously considering taking a modern dance class. When I dance (even though I don't technically know what I'm doing), I forget about all of the trivial worries that flood me at all other hours of the day. I also feel this way when I drum, or play piano, or paint, or run in the woods. But this season I'm feeling it most strongly in dance.

I do regret that in all of my artistic endeavors, including photography, I have lacked hard-core discipline. I just do it when I feel the urge; when the urge leaves, the art form leaves. Kathy and I have been trying to lead more discipline lives, while meditating on the verse in 2 Timothy, "For God gave us not a spirit of fear, but of power and love and self-discipline." Which is encouraging, b/c it means I already have the spirit of self-discpline! I don't have to do anything special to acquire it. I do, however, have to pray and struggle with how to use it--how to grab ahold of it, using it for God's good purposes and not as a futile means of self-betterment sans God's grace. I do wonder what would happen if I could merge my artsy self--the one full of pathos and genuineness and spontaneity--with my rigid, disciplined self (which is often short-lived. this self can get LOTS of stuff done in a day, but feels empty at the end of it). I guess both selves have their pros and cons. I prefer the former, though. I choose dancing over duty.

summer again

so I graduated from UNC two weeks ago...





which brings me to the futon in a messy, moving-out-moving-in-boxes-strewn-everywhere bedroom at my parents' house in wake forest, N.C., listening to the latest Iron and Wine CD and feeling the artistic urge to write/play piano/tinker with cameras.

Julianne and Emily came to play with me and catch up on life for a week...and it was so wonderful, albeit difficult at times. (apparently when you don't see your best friends for two whole years and then get together again, you are way different than you were the last time you saw each other). Our time together was so blessed, though, and I'm grieving their departure. :( We went to Asheville to play with goats, contra dance at warren wilson, drum at the friday night circle, hike up a mountain and enjoy the view at the top and eat dried berries, and talk talk talk.

pictures are forthcoming.

in the meanwhile, I will be hanging out with my future landlady, discussing the ukraine, where she might be taking me in november to photograph her missionary endeavors. (cross your fingers and say a prayer. this would be awesome!) other pressing concerns include visiting relatives and drinking tea, photographing a kick-ass wedding in hillsborough, and calling the leaders of an indigenous tribe in ecuador to discuss my upcoming documentary in the amazon. Does anyone know the best way to contact them? ehhhh...this will be an adventure. :)

oh, and if anyone wants to hire me next year to do photography, give me a call. seriously. :)

end is near

what a crazy day
crazy week
crazy semester
crazy year
crazy last
four
years
of
my life

God stilled me, shocked me, with his grace today. spent several hours outside at the stonehenge-replica in chapel hill, praying, crying, needing him, then being moved by his LOVE for me. he called me and then saved me from a bad long-distance relationship, he put me in a HUGE family where I can be a big sister and a little sister and a daughter to many. He put passion for photojournalism (which is really a deep desire to be vulnerable with others and enable them to be vulnerable with me, for His glory...to share that with others) in me, and He has seen me through a lot of shit, pardonmylanguage.

God changes hearts. It happened today, this semester, this college era of my life. there are always hard-hearted periods, but it doesn't stop Him from working. Praise God.

I love you, Lord.

arboretum

portraits in the arboretum. spring smells the best.

gonna live with this lovely lady next year :)

the last day of college, act of worship on my rug

I prayed this afternoon, in twilight frustration about my REM-interrupted, apathetic, isolated, no-good day, that God would show me the work that he would have me do.

This is it: what I am doing right now. My work is to remember God’s grace, God’s love, and how he has manifested Himself through so many people…in my weaknesses and strengths. I haven’t gotten through the last four years because I am strong. I haven’t forged lasting friendships because I am perfect. I haven’t found a major or passion because I am clever and industrious. I am about to graduate the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill because I am LOVED by a HUGE and GLORIOUS King, Redeemer, and Friend!!!!

God couldn’t have made this more evident to me in the manner that He chose. Of course I would have come to the RUF Banquet kicking and screaming, grumbling some jibberish about how “no one knows me” and thinking myself “past” RUF. Of course I wouldn’t have decided on my own strength, “Yes, this would be a lovely thing for me to do in which I will encounter God’s faithfulness to me through the years.” That isn’t my history. God has always used my weaknesses to the very fullest to teach me bigger lessons about Himself.

While at the RUF Senior Banquet I was well aware of my failures; I was not like Bethany- I had not been faithful to RUF through the years…I mean, from my very first day I was running away, not towards, large group and organized activities. When Ben was fired I grew frustrated and disillusioned and bitter. I harbored all sorts of bad fruit. I missed out on opportunities to draw near to folks—I ate with Rebecca just once or twice, and never have I done anything with Hannah Hoffman one-on-one. When I dated Mike I wilted and withdrew from community. I have not always loved Julia; I have been super-frustrated with her for MONTHS, and she was right in saying that our friendship was “stretching” (yet so so fruitful!) Yet these failures don’t crush me before God; Christ really has nailed them to the cross, been scorned for them, bled for them, killed for them, and RAISED in spite of them! I could stand in that room, loved and valued by RUFers not because I was perfect, but because every promise in Jesus is “Yes” and “Amen” and one of those promises is to use even Courtney Potter’s smallest acts of (unconscious) faith to spread His glory to others. That’s why person after person could raise their hand and share with me meaningful ways—both small and HUGE—that God had used me in their lives. It’s incredible. It’s absolutely incredible that this flighty, emotional, noncommittal, doubting woman could make a difference in the lives of people around her. God used me? ME????? But it’s not incredible in the sense that Jesus promised this would happen.

And that’s what I mean when I say the RUF Senior Banquet was a foretaste of heaven. When I die and ascend to glory, I will remember all those hard lessons that I had to learn on earth; I will remember my failures and mistakes. But that sin and weakness will no longer crush me the way it can on earth. I will not be ashamed not because those sins are small but because Christ will be VISIBLE, and that visibility will cover all of my darkness. On earth I am sinner saved by grace, and in heaven I will still be a sinner saved by grace. And I will see all the other ways that God used me to love others and make His glory known that went unrecognized by myself or others on earth. I will not forget my past; no, my memory of my past will be magnified in the presence of Christ. Does not darkness’ very presence provide a contrast for light, making the final painting that much more stunning?
Lord- thank you for your faithfulness to me. Thank you for fulfilling your promise to use me. I really am a jar of clay, and you really are the Maker! And what you have made is good. I praise you for the works of your hands!

I am so encouraged and refreshed right now. So motivated to continue the difficult, threateningly dangerous battle of “working out my salvation in fear and trembling.” God has brought me so so so far and will bring me yet farther.
It’s funny and humbling when you think about the ways I was used to bless others. Elly said I blessed her when I said that I don’t shave my legs because I’m practicing self-confidence. How could not shaving my legs be a BLESSING to others? That’s crazy. We’re talking about leg-hair, here. But this lifted her spirits and encouraged her to not worry about outward appearances and man’s thoughts when what God thinks of you is the only thing that really matters. Hannah said I’m like a big sister to her, yet I didn’t “pursue” her with the fervor and devotion with which I have pursued other friendships. Quentin said he communes with God and prays because I share my struggles so much; if I didn’t struggle openly, he wouldn’t have prayed. Okay, so God uses my SIN then! To benefit others and get them to talk to Him. That’s even weirder than the leg-hair thing. Julia said I blessed her the first week of school when she was “catatonic” and I took her out to Fosters for lunch. She said she didn’t remember a word I said, but that it spoke mountains to her. This may be the weirdest of them all! It means that God didn’t use my well-crafted words in that instance. But He still used me to love Julia and bring glory to His name!

Folks said I was organic, spiritual, genuine, different in thinking and dress, honest, imperfect, sincere in my love for God and my openness for Him to work in my life. That’s really really cool. For anyone who didn’t know me before freshmen year of college—this description is a TOTAL makeover, from the inside-out. In high school I was limited and closed rather than organic; over-analytical rather than spiritual, intense rather than genuine; conformist in thought and dress rather than expressive; striving for perfection rather than honest about my imperfections, absent in love for God or others, and scared of letting Him in. HOLY CRAP. This isn’t superficial. God’s working in my life—God’s grace—has caused me to realize on every level the freedom that I have in Christ. I am me—organic, genuine, emotionally volatile, different, etc.—because I am free in Christ to be that. He is shaping me into the beautiful woman that He has made me to be, and I can boast in His work. I look at myself and I have pride—not because I did it, but because God is writing my story, and He is the best story-teller.

And now college is coming to end. It was the last day of class. It was my last RUF event. And now I am sprawled, half-naked, on the rug in my crazy grafitti-walled apartment, listening to Iron and Wine as I beat on the broken keyboard of my old laptop, which has been with me for these last four years for acts of worship such as this one. What was my work for today? To go to the RUF Senior Banquet and hear how God has used my in others’ lives. To worship God at 10:52 pm on my rug, responding to the fiery impulse inside of my heart to write to Him in humility and sincere thankfulness.

thank you.

unintentional poem

i wrote this in response to a silly online personality quiz question (where you jot down your thoughts in thirty seconds when shown a nifty painting). i found the sheet and forgot what it was for a moment. this is what i noted word for word, spacing and all, which is kind of funny in hindsight:

sky, like earth
creation
egypt and all the
world
earth colors
pool
ancient

okay so it's not really good but oh well.

thoughts/aspirations of the day:
--i want my photographs to become more like words, and I want my words to become more like photographs.

--comics are a lot like photo stories. read (receive/perceive) this sweet book

--anime is kick-ass.

--i'm going to watch unico tonight. need to rewatch princess mononoke.

--i've been reading about anime for my visual culture class and had one of those moments today where i got excited about the vast vast vast vast vast x infinity amount of knowledge/creation in the world! there's this whole unexplored area expression like anime/cyberpunk/comics/graffiti that i don't really know a thing about and couldn't possibly absorb 5% of it in my entire lifetime.

--apparently i'm an innovater. that's what the personality test said, and we all know personality tests are infallible.

--closure is a concept storytellers know how to exploit. didn't realize this.

--I want to be a better storyteller.

come to open eye tonight to hang out!!!!

Do you want to be healed?

“When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, ‘Do you want to get well?’”

Courtney, do you want to get well? Answer this, honestly.

Here’s what I want healing for:

A healed mind. Where I can sleep at night and not have my mind racing about things I need to do or did that day. The ability to stop thinking about food. The ability to be fully me before my Mom and unashamed; to cry withher and talk with her and embrace her. To be real together. The ability to stop sinning. To not even have a dirty thought enter my head. To not despair. For despair to be so far from me that I can’t remember the days of darkness, of freshman year, of last semester, the sleepless nights where all I can do is groan. To not have to grasp grasp grasp for jesus each morning because I’ve already forgotten what it’s like to be in glory, to be in your presence. To not have to descend to earth’s mediocrity. To not settle. To truly KNOW, from my earlobes to my pinky toe, that I am forgiven; that freshman year’s angry outbursts are wiped away, that last week’s selfish ambition is erased, the way the shore smooths over stones,to not be so into myself when other people are talking; to want to listen to others always and DELIGHTING in this. To be so open and vulnerable, the way a naked woman is before her husband; to be open to God’s intimate leading, his exciting adventure for me. To not want control over my life, but to yield it all to Him. (it’s funny, because deep down photojournalism the Career-the Title-the Status isn’t anywhere in my deepest desires).

But this is what is:

I would like to do things without exalting those things…I would like to be able to take pictures without exalting myself and FORGETTING my status as a child of the king. I want to be able to remember the things I forgot before the fall…how to walk on water, that I am valued because God is my Father, how to sense the emotions of the angels, how to climb trees and jump into the water thousands of feet below without being smashed against the rocks, how to speak in ancient tongues, how to have faith like a little child, how to let my imagination run run run unfettered, how to create stories upon stories, how to dance before nations and tribes without self-consciousness, how to hunger after food that is not sweet or artificial, but nourishing and that tastiest food I could ever imagine, how to daydream and not feel guilty about “wasting time” because there will be everlasting time and no minutes will ever be wasted “doing nothing” because there is all the time in the world, to be able to time-travel and tesseract, to visit other planets, to read and learn forever.

I want healing from short-sightedness. I am spiritually blind; I cannot see what I once saw, before the Fall of Man. I want healing from spiritual paralysis; I cannot walk on water, I cannot dance the tango with my Lord; I cannot even touch Him without shriveling and dying of fright; I want healing for my spiritual psychosis; I have a mental disease that makes me hunger after temporary, moldy bread of this world and it makes my stomach reject Real Food, True Bread. And what I need healing from the most is that I CHOSE these afflictions. When standing at the crossroads of Everlasting Life, Extended Rest, Joyful Singing, Art and Imagination, The Best School Ever, and then the road of Destruction, Half-ness, Decay, Impermanence, Instant Gratification, I chose the lesser path. It’s my fault. “Although I knew god, I neither glorified him nor gave thanks to him, and my thinking became futile and my foolish heart was darkened” (Romans 1:21).
So while that question, “Do you want to be healed,” seemed distant and strange to me at first, when I’m honest with myself my heart and body scream YES YES YES I want healing!!!!

And Jesus’ response to the paralyzed man, and to me?

“Get up. Pick up your mat and walk.”

Pick up all those earthly lackings that shackle you: peel away your spiritual maladies, the way you could old scabs, and watch the skin regenerate before your very eyes. All those sins that so easily entangle you daily and burden you down, just cast them aside. They’re not as heavy as you think, Courtney. Your short-sightedness, your despair, your spiritual paralysis, your inability to do the things of Paradise—unpeel them, pick them up, and put them at my Feet. And then walk—with new eyes, with a renewed mind. You can do the impossible things because I say so. But without my calling, you can do none of this.

And then:

“See, you are well again. Stop sinning.”

Praise God!!! This morning I am well. And with each encounter with Jesus, he reminds me, “See, you are well again.” He has promised me complete healing, a bodily resurrection. And I anxiously await for the day where I can soar on the wings of the angel s and can actually feel their multi-colored feathers—adorned with honeysuckle and lilac and precious gems—with my fingertips.

“Oh, the depth of the riches of
the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable h
is judgments, and his paths beyond tracing
out!
Who has known the mind of
The Lord?
Or who has been his
Counselor?
Who has ever give to God,
That god should repay him?
For from him and through him
And to him are all
Things.
To him be the glory forever!
Amen!”