Perspective

As a freshman at Purdue studying Fine Arts, I spent an entire semester drawing the same structure. Three days a week. Every week. Four months. The same thing.

There is this place right in the middle of campus where a number of walkways, corridors and buildings converge into an open space. Architecturally and from a space planning sense, it is really quite stunning.

Right in the middle of the open space are these fountains, that seem to be oddly misplaced in the context of what surrounds them. To one side are the buildings that house the schools of engineering. On another side there is the pharmacy school and to yet another side are administrative buildings that house the dean of students and other official types.

But there are these fountains. They seem to spring up from nothing. Whimsical and playful and completely unexpected.

The assignment for the entire semester was to build a portfolio that showed this spot on the map from every possible perspective. To be honest, I liked the idea of spending warm afternoons out on the grass drawing rather than in the studio being lectured. I liked that part far more than I did the idea of drawing it repetitively.

It didn't take me very long to figure out that there were places that I could plant myself that made drawing the space pretty easy. Finding a spot where I could look at the fountains straight on made rendering it in perspective a breeze. Everything looked right. There was no need to measure angles and figure horizon lines and vanishing points. The view from that spot was aesthetically pleasing.

It was the perspective that mattered.

It took me just about as much time to figure out that there were places that I could plant myself that made drawing that space a nightmare. A spot where lines and angles and forms converge and twist and becomes nearly impossible to replicate. The view from that spot was gritty and tangled.

It was all about the perspective.

It could be where one sidewalk would crash into another, both coming from opposite angles. Or where the slope of the walls of the fountain would intersect visually with the overhang from the roof of a building in the background. Or looking down on them from the corner of a roof top of Schleman Hall where, when you stare for too long, your eyes begin to play tricks on you, like you have been staring at an optical illusion and soon you don't know which lines are real and which ones are imagined.

I learned so much about composition and technique and scale and art in general that semester.

I learned perspective.

Little did I know at 20 years old that the lessons that I learned sitting in the grass with some paper and a a pencil would not only encourage me later, but at times sustain me.

I learned perspective.

Perspective isn't this static thing. It's not a feeling. It's not an emotional state. It's not the way you view things.

It's the way you see them.

Objects don't change.

A building is a cube. That doesn't change. No matter where you plant yourself, that building will always have the same walls and roof and windows and doors. The angles and the slope and the pitch of things will always be the same.

If you can't make sense of what you see, closing your eyes and opening them again is not going to help. If you try it enough times, eventually your eyes may begin to play trick on you. They may begin to see things that aren't really there. Just like an optical illusion, you can think you see it a different way. But you don't. It didn't change.

There is only one way to make what you see in front of you different. You have to get up. Up from where you planted yourself. You have to stand up and move to another spot.

It doesn't change things.

The building is still a cube. The walls and roof and the windows and the doors. They didn't change. But the way you see it has.

My life is just like that spot. All around me are things that are black and white. They are schools of thinking that have only one answer. They are diagnosis and diseases and relationships that have no room for interpretation. They are what they are. That will never change.

But there are these fountains. They seem to spring up from nothing. Whimsical and playful and completely unexpected.

If you plant yourself at many spots around them, they don't make sense. You have to squint your eyes just to even begin to see where one form starts and the other stops. It's gritty and tangled and nearly impossible to reproduce in any way that would be recognizable, let alone pleasing.

But then there is this other spot. This one place where if you stand and look at just the right time and in just the right way, what you can see takes your breath away. These two concrete forms begin to take on life and they don't just exist in the same scape, they begin to interact with each other, almost as if they have this dialog that doesn't need words. The juxtaposition of the two forms as they swirl and dance around and among each other is beautiful.

You can capture that image on paper, it is aesthetically pleasing and it makes people stop to stare into it. An image that, had you not moved, would have been lost forever.

Make a Move

I am really good at being mad at other people. I am a master of placing blame and feeling frustration when other people disappoint me or let me down. I am really good at angry.

Where I am having a hard time is when the person that I am frustrated with is myself. When I am the one that let me down. That I am not good at. Not at all.

For the last several weeks I have had this feeling inside me. Frustration. Angst. Confusion. It has been building to the point where I can't pretend that I am happy. People don't do well with that version of me. The one that isn't silly and fun. I am not really sure what to do with her either.

I have been reading tons of stuff and praying a lot lately and the more I read and the more time I spend with God, the more I feel like I am failing.

If there was on characteristic I could change about my self, it would be the speed at which I fall. Fall in love with ideas, fall in love with ideals, fall in love with programs and concepts and models and systems. But mostly, fall in love with people.

It doesn't take me very long before I meet a kid and I love them like they were my own. I worry about them. I wonder about them. I pray and plan and dream for and about them.

I want the same thing for them that I want for my own boys. I want them to be healthy. I want them to be happy. More than that, I want them to fall in love with Jesus. Not just hear about him, not just believe about him. Believe in him, with everything that they are and with their entire lives. I want them to recklessly love the one that created them.

That's is where I feel frustrated. That is where I know that I have failed. I have stood in front of a room full of kids over and over and over again and I have told them that Jesus loves them. I have told them with songs and puppets and silly games that Jesus wants to be their best friend.

I have told them. I have been working with them long enough, that for many of the kids in our church, I have told them a hundred times how much Jesus longs to to be number on in their lives. They know it because they have heard me say it.

But many of them don't believe it. The don't believe that Jesus really changes things. They don't believe that Jesus can come into some one's life that was screwed up and change them. They don't believe me, because they haven't seen me live that way.

Research shows that by the time kids turn 18, they are aren't just slowly dropping out of the church. They are running. As fast as they can, they are deserting a culture that cared more about telling them how to live right than it did showing them. They don't leave the church because we didn't tell them. They leave because we failed to show them a life that would cause them to believe us.

That makes me sick to my stomach. That keeps me up at night. That makes my heart so sad that I simply can't pretend to be happy. That makes me wanna scream and fight and more importantly, it makes me wanna change.

It means that I believe the things that I tell them are true. It means I believe that God can show up in my own screwed up life, and make it better then OK, make it right. It means that I stop living everyday as a sentence and start living it as a story. It means I let go of some things that I have become far too good at holding on to.

It means that I have to move. To be honest, I am not even sure I know what that means. But I do know that not doing it is not an option. The stakes are too high not to make a move.