I was honored to have my poem Splinter accepted for Fahmidan Journal’s 6th Issue. The themes for this issue is so important to share. As someone who deals with PCOS and mental health issues, it’s beautiful to see so many contributors coming together to bring some hope.
Follow the link to read Issue 6. Autoimmune and Mental Health Worriers.
When we listen to music, we hear the rhythm of a spirit.
When we make music together, that’s a kind of lovemaking.
An intimacy. A sharing of existence.
It’s not touch.
It doesn’t need words.
But it invites all who hear into this space.
A controlled chaos of language and emotions.
A corporate call.
Worship.
What are you worshiping, when music is made?
When we record it for the future, music tells a story of more than what was.
It transports a mind through time.
©2021 Mary Grace van der Kroef
Photos sourced from unsplash.com
As the guitarist placed a pick on metal strings, the first notes of music were born. Together, they made chords. Waves wrapped around each other, then dove into the blackness of guitar’s belly.
A single Wave came awake. Was it particles all clumped together? No. It was sound. A singleness that moved and bounced and collided with its siblings within the darkness.
“Were did the light go?”
At the moment of birth, was brightness. Then speed swallowed light, and shadowed hardness housed multitudes, and became Wave’s world.
The journey changed Wave. With every bounce it slowed, or speed up. It brushed, or joined, then ripped away from a sibling. When this happened Wave warped.
It was pain and pleasure. An existence of experience crammed within small spaces, and fragments of time. Edges of knowing were fuzzy. If Wave had known what time was, it would have seen its lines. It followed them, unaware.
“Where is the light?”
Can a wave remember? This one was searching for something. A doorway? Freedom? There!
The abruptness of existence ceased and Wave sprang past metal strings to bright openness.
It sliced past dust particles suspended in air and rocked them with its wake. They danced and waved goodbye.
The lines of time directed Wave’s path, and in a blink it knew a human. It stretched within the openness, only to fold across the mass of skin and hair, seeping through fabric to touch warmth and disappear.
As Wave broke apart upon the mountain of flesh, it found a tunnel. Small, hot, yet soft. A shard of Wave reverberated down this narrow well. It touched taught skin and changed again.
Wave was tinny, yet it filled the entirety of a human. It shivered between skin and bones, liquid lines that reached out and sought understanding. It joined with electricity and plasma to become the flesh that had taken it in.
A pulse, heartbeat, and tap of toes. A movement with a smile. It knew and breathed and in the absorption of self, it touched a soul, and became whole.
“Play it again for me, please?”
The guitarist chuckled, and again set pick to metal, birthing chords that split as fingers held down strings and a human heart sang without words.
©2021 Mary Grace van der Kroef
My friend John at Thoughts, Dreams and Enigmatic Things blog asked me to write something he could share on his own blog. I was honored when he asked, and had to take a good long think about what I would write. After I started writing I had to stop, and think again…
I am not sure why, but an episode from my favorite TV show, MASH, kept coming back to me. In this episode, Father John Mulcahy takes a trip up to the front line with Radar to pick up a wounded soldier. On the way back, the injured man chocks and stops breathing. The Father has to perform a tracheotomy on the side of the road, with the surgeons from the MASH unit guiding him over the radio. The procedure is a success.
Well anyway, that bit of remembering prompted this reflection.
Like a tracheotomy, the writing of poetry lets me breath while I choke.
It’s an invasive cutting, digging and searching through self.
Often its prayers whispered in pain, or shouted silently inside my brain.
Always, it’s a breathing out of questions.
I strive to make poetry, all that is worship. Not worship of self, but of the one who does the cutting and inserting of my breathing straw. The one who hears the silent words, the whispers. The one who writes the poem of me, for His, the author’s glory.
Thank you for asking me to think, John.
©2021 Mary Grace van der Kroef
I was recently the subject of my first author’s interview with Kirsten McNeill. Kirsten is a fellow writer, as well as an editor for self-published authors. It was a great experience. You can read the interview by following the link provided. Don’t forget to check out Kirsten’s other posts, and all she has to offer the self-publishing world.
Learning to grow in silence can be hard. Sometimes we think all the action happens when our lives are spinning at a crazy pace. But we still grow in silence. It’s like a child doing most of his growing while asleep.
Or a brain learning when it’s allowed to be bored.
When WE are silent, the world doesn’t stop its own babbling. In the echoes of our human noise, we often miss how our world speaks to us, sings to us, even prays with us.
Maybe it’s because I am getting old, but I breathe better in the quiet.
©2021 Mary Grace van der Kroef
This week I have a new design available at my Redbubble Shop! I am really proud of this one. I had been eyeing up some round canvas paintings an acquaintance of mine was creating, and decided to ask for some at Christmas this last year. My husband obliged me, and this is the first put to good use.
I have proven to myself that birds are something I am gifted in painting, but flowers are different. I usually struggle with getting the depth I desire, or the delicate details my mind is picturing. This is an example of one of my best attempts. I am proud of it, so am excited to make it available for other people to enjoy.
Black Capped Chickadee is available on over 70 different products though the Redbubble Shop.
The Mourning Dove is not a creature I ever thought about before our first homeschool unit last September. There are several pairs that call our neighborhood home, and a few of them even wintered here instead of flying south. Our feeder was a welcome buffet.
Their call is a haunting song of love.
I was captured by the beauty of the European starling in our lessons. Aggressive, invasive in North America, and so aware of its own striking appearance.
I do not need to hide, I am emperor of the skies.
They exude confidence, wrapped in shimmering tones.
The European Robin is much smaller than its cousin from North American. This little guy is fragile and lively.
Curiosity becomes a common trait in generation that live around people, but experience little danger.
©2021 Mary Grace van der Kroef
It’s thrilling, letting yourself get swept away in the moment of creation… Then someone interrupts you. A child tugs on your sleeve, or the phone rings. A spouse calls from down the hall, “Are you done yet?”
Do you shake off that tug on your arm, mute the phone, and ignore the calling? Can you? Should you?
Creativity is precious, we should cultivate and protect it. Having a space for this is ideal, having a time when distractions and interruptions are at a minimum is important. But there are people in our lives that can’t, and shouldn’t be ignored. It’s a balancing act.
The people in our lives are important. They support our creativity in ways we often take for granted. We shouldn’t ignore them. Not only shouldn’t we ignore them, but they are a pivotal part of our creation process.
In many cases they are directly, or indirectly, our inspiration. We get many of our ideas from watching them, talking with them, living with them, and all the ups and downs that go with that.
As a mother and wife, I sacrifice my creative life to care for and nurture my family. I have obligations, expectations and jobs I can NOT ignore. Families need attention, children need nurturing. But is it ever okay to say, “No, not right now, I need this time?”
Yes. Sometimes it’s healthy, and even important, to set boundaries around our creative endeavors. They are a part of us. When humans walk in their creative abilities, positivity flows out into the world. Finding the right place and time for that pulling away is the hard part, and the key to a thriving creative life amid people.
When I first became a mother, my kids became my entire world. But I let go of something that I never should have lost. My creativity. I stopped drawing, except doodles for the kids to color. I stopped learning and pushing myself artistically. I even stop writing, only picking it up once or twice a year when a fleeting spark touched my life. Because I let this part of me go, my soul suffered.
I didn’t know how to balance my creativity around the people important to me. But now that I have found my creative spark again, it’s a learning process. Like learning to juggle. But it’s one of the most important lessons of my life.
Do not lessen your light in this world by letting God given trats or abilities die. Instead, seek to learn how to incorporate new people, places, and responsibilities into your creativity.
Who are the people in your daily life that inspire you? Who are the ones that test you? Who adds flavor to your hours?
Cherish them, friends, family, and prickly people alike. I look forward to seeing them represented in your creative works.
©2021 Mary Grace van der Kroef
It’s the little things that decide weakness or strength. It’s the unguarded places that erosion starts. Mountains are raised by pressure and flattened with quakes, while water and ice brake walls.
Humans crack under pressure, our pieces scattered.
I am learning not to fear the brake so much. Because I have seen the art in mending.
The laws of science are the laws of God. He is the Author of their workings. He wrote the plans and mixed the elements.
He poured His spirit in to my chemistry. Now watch me change.
©2021 Mary Grace van der Kroef
Photos sourced from Pixabay.com
Mary Grace Writing 