Anselm Society – gianna soderstrom

beauty will save the world

June 21, 2019Posted in beauty, camp lifeTagged Anselm Society, beauty, beauty will save the world, camp life, camp wife, double rainbow, Eagle Lake, Eagle Lake Camp, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Imagination Redeemed Conference, Imaginationredeemedconf, rainbow, wildflowersLeave a comment

I have always loved this quote, even before I knew where it was from, but I have not always believed it. Even when I heard it perfectly illustrated at a conference about the arts – about the necessity of beauty – even then I didn’t believe it. There was a seed of Midwestern Baptist doubt that nothing, not even the beauty I crave like living water, could be so instrumental in saving the world. But yesterday I found a new layer of understanding.

I wish I could say it was a new understanding altogether but my spirit has rarely learned like that, in leaps and bounds. I grow slowly and deeply and my roots have to push deeper into a thing, a truth or a season or a reality, before I can see it slowly growing in my own life. The thing about beauty is it’s been growing on my heart for the past year and a half and only now can I shape into words how this belief is changing me.

But I don’t have to just believe that beauty will save the world anymore. I’ve heard stories so blatant they spell it out nice and slow for even those as stupid as me. The story I heard this spring was the story of a woman in a choral group that sang old latin hymns. She loved them for their beauty even though she didn’t believe the truth of them. And yet gradually, that beauty became so rooted in her heart that she began to wonder if these words about Christ and saving and hope could actually be true. There were other influences in the gradual renewal of her beliefs, but it began with the hymns of a dead language whose words were very much alive.

Yesterday it came home to me in my own way: I had tucked my toddler in for bed and stepped outside for a walk. We live in the woods, at camp, with other families: there were people who’d hear him if he cried, and I only wanted to walk the quarter-mile loop of the driveway a few times. There were birds singing. A sunset glow was gathering on the opposite hill. Wildflowers were blooming – some I know, like shooting stars and blue flags and golden smoke and alpine bluebells. Even more that I want to learn were pushing their blossoms up in places I didn’t expect, catching me off-guard with perfect tiny white blossoms and surprising fragrances. Last year’s rose hips marked the places where this year’s roses will bloom.

I walked in that wide loop for a long time, just savoring the freshness of the air and the presence of the flowers and the singing of the wind on the tops of the hills. It’s moments like that which give me the ability to go back to being a mama with more gentleness. Walking and solitude and beauty give me the chance to be restored. They save the way I talk to my toddler, or my husband or my friends. They change the way I write, process, imagine. They save the way I see the world, the way I understand beauty and its small saving graces. Yes, beauty will save the world, one wildflower, one tired mama at a time.

There’s hope in this knowledge; when I can’t find or get to beauty, I can know it still exists. It still changes things. It still saves in it’s own small God-made ways. And when I can, it saves me, sends me back to God again in ways that don’t quite happen in a church. Yes, beauty will save the world, sometimes whether we realize it or not.

original

October 16, 2018Posted in courage, habits, writingTagged Anselm Society, art, artists, blogging, Colorado, Colorado Springs, creativity, essays, ideas, insecurity, learning, originality, photography, truth, writingLeave a comment

There is mysterious soulful glory in a community of artists. When you gather with people whose mission it is to manifest the unity between ethereal beauty and true holiness, magic happens. Conversations are spun out of real joy and gentle criticism and intangible dreams that may yet become reality. I’ve joined an Arts Guild. It is the most encouragement my writing has seen in years.

I used to worry that I didn’t think very original thoughts. All my ideas were old; they felt spoon-fed and recycled. I wanted to think fresh things but I didn’t know how. I was envious of the people who seemed to think of new wonderful things without effort; the people who could think a thought and write an essay and paint a picture without stagnating in the same repeated ideas. The ease of their intelligent communities frustrated me. How could I get there? Why was it so hard to think things?

I wanted more of this originality; if not my own, then to sit in on theirs. “They” was non-specific. Podcast hosts who somehow had new ideas every week. Writers whose words were fresh and thoughtful. Friends whose conversations seemed alive and interesting. I remember a conversation I once had about insecurity with a close friend. I don’t usually get intimidated by people who are better than me, she said, I think of them as examples. I can learn a lot from how they work. I have struggled with that idea for years, honestly. Envy is often my default reaction to excellence. I wish I didn’t think that way so often and I’m working hard to change it, but that used to be my default mode of thinking.

So this summer I began trying to change. If I couldn’t bring forth my own original ideas, the next best thing I could do was listen to them, immerse myself in them. So I kept listening to the podcasts. I even found more good speakers to listen to. I read the blog posts and essays that seemed beyond any aspiration of my own skill – perhaps they would rub off on me. I spent time with people who entertained big ideas and philosophies. At least I could learn from them.

I began to lean into knowledge instead of begrudging those who had it. And slowly, I learned: we become like those we surround ourselves with. The more I listened to these original conversations, the more original thoughts and ideas I began to have. I realized that my own mind could generate ideas, craft thoughts and story lines, put together questions and answers in new ways. I was learning how “to be governed by [my] admirations rather than [my] disgusts…” (Henry Van Dyke). It is a beautiful place to be.

I might not ever be able to shake my old habit envying everyone who is better than me. It’s a horrible vice that brings a twinge of shame every time I think of it. But I am learning more and more how to think differently. When envy creeps in, I try to pick out a few things I can learn from somebody else’s success. I look for all the ways that artists and writers and thinkers I admire are reaching back, holding out their hands and ideas to bring the rest of us forward. They share selflessly and I want to learn selflessly.

I am finally seeing that originality does not cohabitate with isolation. Just as giving gifts and having less brings spontaneous joy, so sharing ideas and relying on others for thoughtful community cultivates our own original thoughts and ideas. May we live into this paradox of artistic friendship with joy and generosity.

old and new

September 29, 2018Posted in writingTagged Anselm Society, Artists Retreat, beauty, blogging, Colorado, Colorado Springs, earth, faith, friends, friendship, learning, nature, scars, truth, writingLeave a comment

Colorado Springs, Colorado, Anselm Society, Fanciscan Retreat Center

Maybe they were just rust spots but when I walked by slowly I felt the orange-printed echo of fellowship. These weird patio stains happened because people sat here, talking. They argued and they laughed and they encouraged and they cried and whole friendships left their tattoos on the concrete patio for the rest of us to see and take hope.

I saw a tree that had been strung with barbed wire to make a fence a decade ago or more. There was a crease around the rusted wire and dark green moss was growing into that old scar and it was beautiful. Scars have no need to end in ugliness, I thought, and the thought gave me hope.

We sat in church one week, listening to passionate teaching from Colossians, learning verse by verse the ways Paul tells us to live like Christ. “We’ve all heard that we should live like the world is about to end, like this is our last day. But what if we lived like this world is about to be made new? What if we lived like heaven was breaking into Earth?” My soul grasped at that thought and has not let go since. I realize it with cartwheel-inducing joy: that is the vision that has slowly been taking over my sight this year. Scars twisted away from ugliness towards glory? Rust stains cemented proof of relationship? This is beautiful. This is real.

This is, somehow, the beginning of something. There are whole wide reams of sight and knowledge to rediscover. Lean into this with me. Look for the newness. Look for the magic. Don’t all our favorite fairy stories end with the world being regained, recovered, evil fought back and goodness reinstated? I know there will be a new heaven and a new earth one day but let’s not write this one off just yet. Maybe if we look closely, his kingdom is coming on earth as it is in heaven. Coming right here in this old imperfect globe.

homesick

May 3, 2018May 11, 2018Posted in adventure, writingTagged Anselm Society, Colorado, flowers, Imagination Redeemed Conference, Imaginationredeemedconf, Lord of the Rings, Minnesota, seasons, spring, springtimeLeave a comment

I used to say of Minnesota that the air was made fresh again in the spring. All the old winter air was gone, I averred. It was all brand new. The soft mists above the melting snow, the clear air in the greening valleys, the air coming through my open window at night; it was all clean, unbreathed yet.

Lanier Ivester said, at a conference last weekend, “I think we are all homesick for a garden.” Ohhhh I think so too. I walk and walk down the streets, past the blooming yards in our neighborhood. The purple lilacs are beginning to flower and I pause by them wherever I find them, just breathing, smelling.

I remember reading The Two Towers and hearing in my mind the deep voice of Treebeard saying “I used to spend a week just breathing.” Yes – I could spend a week just breathing the springtime air.

Tonight was soft and fresh from a scattered rain. The wind was blowing cool off the treetops and I sat outside even in the late afternoon damp chill to enjoy the wet, fresh scents. It was lovely to sit here, in my dry, desert state and remember the freshness of a spring season in my childhood. I think we are all homesick for a garden, a garden in the springtime air.