Making Art: What do I owe?

Each of us is made to be a gift to world.  We ourselves are God's gifts to each other, and the art and the beauty and the vision that he gives us are also God's gift to us.  (One reason, it seems, that God creates some people who reject his salvation, is because the gift that their lives are to the rest of us, during the time that they are alive, is something that makes the world better.)  (Side-side note:  on the topic of each of us being more than our worst action.  We know intuitively that the good that someone does is worth vastly more than even the most horrible instance of evil.  And so the art of a Paul Gaugin may outweigh his disgusting personal habits.)

And so the art that flows through my hands is something that I am responsible to let flow downstream.  It is a debt that I owe.  It is not mine to hold in some personal resevoir. 

It can still be truly mine while I do this.  And it may be gift to only one person.  It may be gift to nothing that I can visibly see.  It may only serve toward the artistic compost for the next generation.  But life giving way to more life is still a gift.

This is a debt that I owe more than money.  Equally with service.  It is service of another sort.  Whoever I am, whoever God made me to be, he made me to be poured out.

If I have to suffer, I would prefer to suffer well.
I don't like listening to other people whine about their problems.
or to myself whining.

So unattractive.

If my children were whining like me, I'd snap.
How can God stand it?

But to do anything well wants practice
and . . . 10,000 hours of suffering?
do I have an alternative here?

Suffering comes to us all.  
Everyone
loses a job
fails an assignment
has people die on them

we're all going to do it
and maybe some more than others

(but it's not like we have some sort of units to assign suffering
which we could then measure
against our capacity
for some sort of *perceived* suffering score, to know whether
something *feels* harder)

and we can learn to do it well
or not

but maybe if we learn to do it well . . .
well, it's not like we'll actually suffer *less*
because we'll notice more to grieve

but maybe if we learn to grieve
and to grieve those things that grieve God
we'll be more capable of standing up under it?

But if we never learn to lean into it
will every little hurt
ache and ache and cry

God suffers
He says--keep your eye on the cross
See
how I suffer
and what I suffer for
and what pains me
and what is endurable

and it is there that he invites us
to sit down and
have a cup of coffee

God wants to share his pain and
are we willing to listen?