January 2, 2013 – elizabeth w. marshall

I thought of a million reasons why I wouldn’t choose one word.

Actually, that’s not true.

I didn’t give it much thought at all.

But then… the idea sung to me sweetly and the word screamed loud and strong and wouldn’t stop.

Well yes I danced for awhile around the words that I want to shape me and shape my living this year. If I tell you my heart I bare my soul. If I bare my soul you see a seeking, wanting, hungry me.

If you see me there, that is where the real and the vulnerable are and didn’t I always want to live there, really?

I want to Praise more and Love more. I want to embrace possibility and potential. I want to be healed and whole. I want to enter in, not stay on the fringe in fear. I want to be brave and make new friends and serve God. In everything.

Simply, I want an abundant life. Serving and loving and living out of a place of extravagant possibility.

I long for poetry, lots of poetry. And I want to dare to sharpen the eyes of my soul to see beauty, all beauty. The beautiful in everything.

And the word was set on repeat, washing away in the inner chambers. Though I really had no plans or desire to wrap a year of living around a word.

But it focuses my soul. And I fell in love. And it felt like a calling. So I opened the door, well cracked it really. And in came the rush and excitement of art.

The colors, the sounds, the whimsy, the creativity, the nuance and the wonder.

And when I framed the desires and callings on my spirit it looked and felt and sounded like this, to my soul.

I want to know the art of worship and the art of praise, anew.

My soul longs to experience the art of loving and serving those in my world, my family and community. The friends I have not even met.

I want to seek and find the art of seeing beauty around me, catching the moment at just the right time, when the light hits just so and the smile turns up on a face in that oh so subtle way.

I am longing to see with my camera, the art of capturing life and living and creation, anew.

With art as my frame of living, my frame of reference, my hope is that I will be challenged to live fully and abundantly in all that I do. Without fear, without anxiety, without settling for just so.

Wrapping a year of days with art as the rudder, my hope is to encounter all not half. Full not empty. Strong, not weak. Brave not timid.

Embracing the art of abundant living through reconciliation, healing, forgiveness and embracing this one life.

Will you join me as I eat my words and choose one word?

Will you walk through a year of poetry and prose, photography and faith, with me. Looking to the Ultimate Creative, Artist God, all the while.

You make the art of my life so much richer.

Off to the land of artful living; dancing, singing, all the way there. Won’t you come along? Shaking the dust off as we go. Cleansing and washing our days in new.

These words of Pablo Picasso sing it all so sweet and true: