Going Off-line

The Wondering Eye Blog is no longer linked to the Oak Hills Church Website.

I'm relieved, a little sad, but mostly relieved. I've been in some unrest about this blog for the last year and a half, plus, ever since I was given the assignment to do a blog about the arts for the church website.

The purpose of the blog was supposed to be to connect artists and to encourage artists and stir up the arts in the church. And I have always thought this was a marvelous purpose. I had some missgivings about my abilities, but it was kind of like all the elaborate recipes or craft projects I have taken on in my life (and there have been a'plenty)... I figured the details would come together somehow and it would all turn out. But much like the queen-sized blue and yellow star quilt I got far enough to have 90-some blocks of varying dimensions--I always had a profound sense that the Blog representing Oak Hills Artists was not what I was writing and I didn't know how to begin to gather the resources to write the blog that I thought should be on the church website...

That blog, I thought, should be by someone who knew a lot about the arts, who knew how to speak intelligently and eloquently about the philosophy and history and theology behind art. But I haven't read enough or interacted enough with the materials to do that.

That blog, I thought, should make connections with the other artists in the community. Musicians and visual artists, actors and playwrites, novelists, photographers, dancers and composers, as well as quilters, cooks and wood-carvers should all find something that helped them in their pursuit of art as incarnational work and worship. But I didn't know how to make those connections. The truth is that although our church is filled with many wonderful artists who are passionate followers of Christ and extraordinary people-- I don't really know them well--we simply run in different circles.

That blog, I thought, could be a venue for the arts community--we could publish poetry, fiction and essays or photographs and other visual art on the blog as a sort of online 'zine. It would be a lot of fun. But again, the thought was overwhelming to me. I didn't know how to begin. And I always thought, no one will want to do this with me. I was very intimidated by the thought of asking people to take me seriously.

So, the blog became simply a place where I felt inadequate. I didn't know how to begin to do what I really wanted with this, and I fell into trying to do something that came close. But it turned out most often to be some kind of TRYING and TRYING that never seemed to measure up in my mind--and I always felt rather lame and impotent.

I thought, what I really have time and ability for right now is a simplistic blog of my own thoughts and musings about things. A blog like the blogging a lot of folks do out there on the blogosphere, but not a blog that belongs on the church website. And so, finally, after months and months of trying to figure out if I could somehow get around quitting...like if my blog might just grow a virus and disintergrate... or if I was going to quit, how I could do it without looking too silly... I finally mustered up the courage to be a goofy quitter, and I quit.

I think I'll still keep blogging--but now instead of the horrible angst about how this is not what it really should be--I'll shamelessly write what's going on in my own head. Not because it's profound or of use to anyone, but because right now, at this moment in my life, that's all I've got.

I have no idea where this will lead... but I have this tiny glimmer of a hope that perhaps this could become a small training for becoming the kind of person, artist and writer who can more fully and honestly and vibrantly serve the church, and especially my beloved church, and her artists with more than "all I've got."

My prayer for all of you readers (if there are any) is that you could find places and people to explore the person that you are, with freedom to use and enjoy the skills and gifts you have right now... with the trust that with prayer and hope God will enter into these small gifts, the "not-trying gifts," and make of them something beyond what we can now ask or imagine.

Godspeed to all of us,

Jenny Jiang