In eighth grade, my English teacher Mr. Mono asked us to write an essay on our dreams. I didn't think to ask for clarification on this, and true to my matter-of-fact, pragmatic self, I wrote an essay on what I dreamt about the previous night. He returned the paper and gently suggested that next time I might consider staying on topic. I, thinking I was on topic, came away slightly confused. Apparently, no one else shared my confusion because standing tall and proud at the top of their papers were letter grades, while scribbled at the top of mine was a large, red question mark.

As far as dreams go, that question mark has hovered above my head ever since I saw it written across that lined sheet of college rule paper. I wondered if I wasn't the dreaming type. Or that I didn't dream big because I didn't know how. Or, maybe that growing up on a solid diet of realistic expectations with a high value placed on practicality, swept me clean of dreams. I didn't realize that for some of us, dreams gather in the cobwebbed corners, the ones that can't be swept clean no matter how much life and well meaning adults try.

Big dreamers draw me in; they both fascinate and overwhelm me. Sometimes I want to be like them, and then I remember that my dreams are spun in the dark, still places. I don't know what makes some of us out-loud dreamers and some of us silent dream weavers. Out-loud dreamers paint the walls and floors with their dreams, while others of us carefully spin them in the corners where the floorboards meet.

There comes a time though, when the afternoon sun hits the shadow and gossamer strands just right, and the beauty of it takes your breath away. Your dream's intricate design becomes perfect and clear. And you realize that you've been creating it there all along, you just needed the light to shine just so in order to see it.

On my way to the hair salon, I walk by a large bank with four artfully arranged display windows. While banking and art make rather strange companions, I always look forward to the seasonal change in the display. I never try to make the connection between the two, the banking and the art, instead I simply enjoy the aesthetics. They are a little bit of beautiful in an otherwise logical and mathematical environment.

I had a hair appointment today, so I hopped off the tram eager to see what the new display would be for spring. Each window was arranged with dressmaker's forms clothed in perfectly tailored architectural drafts. One wore a sport coat, another a parka and honeycomb scarf, with the loveliest paper-like fringe. One was dressed in everyday wear, and the pièce de résistance, a feminine form in a wedding dress with a full bustle and cluster of gathered paper at the shoulder. They were amazing and creative and probably made from something other than paper, but I loved each one.

As I passed by, those images stayed with me. Lines and graphs and numbers laid out in such a way as to create a plan, something that needed to be followed exactly in order to produce the desired outcome. Then that plan was bent, pulled, bunched and cut into the shape of something recognizable but infinitely more interesting than, say, four walls and a roof. No doubt, it was the dress that got me.

I'm learning to live this way; to walk around with a blueprint, a rough draft, some numbers and figures and ideas on a page. But, to allow for them to be manipulated into something more than I think they can be. I can't live by a two year or a five year plan. Oh, I mentally draft them, but they are flat and tidy pieces of paper with some funny looking lines scratched into them. They don't have the sweep and drape of a wedding dress. Or a honeycomb scarf with delicate fringe. And that right there is where I find freedom. There is a blue-print, a first, second and maybe even third draft.  But, it's up to me to take what exists and fashion it into a wearable work of art, complete with gathers, folds and a cluster of something lovely on my right shoulder.

Do you find yourself stuck in drafting mode? Get out there and fashion a dress made out of your best laid plans. Take it in, let it out, simplify, ornament, create something astonishing with your life.

This photo has nothing to do with anything, other than the fact that it doesn't make me feel like I'm going to throw-up. That's my only criteria at this point in time. I feel like I've been living a scene out of the movie Contagion this week. Albeit, on a slightly less harrowing and life altering scale. Our 'vacation' week is almost over, and if vacating from everyday life is the goal, then I need a do-over. We're falling like flies here, victims to some sort of bug that laughs in the face of Lysol antibacterial spray.

But, you didn't come here to hear about my battle with the bug. While sitting around waiting for it to strike its next victim, I've taken the time to read some favorite blogs, a book, a few poems, and listen to some new music. I wish I took the time more often, really took the time to slow down and enjoy something nourishing. Too often I treat my soul to a steady diet of fast food, and it limps along bloated and dissatisfied. I've been thinking a lot about this lately, about feasting on things that nourish. I think, for me at least, it requires a simplifying, a cutting out of the extraneous nonsense that I fill up on and learning how to 'be' instead of 'do'. Do you find that too?

I've found myself longing to live more simply, even in the everyday things. Our life is complicated and harder to navigate than most, the expat thing is exciting, but it's no picnic in the countryside. And while this is the life we choose to live, I know there has to be a way to make time for soul-feasting within the current framework of our crazy life.

How do you make time? And when you do, what do you feast on? I'd really love to know!

I'll go first:




Wishing you a wonderful, feast-filled weekend.

PS I don't recall mentioning it, but I am now on Twitter. I know what you're thinking. It's one more thing adding to the noise of my life. Anyhow, I'm there, I tweet, I'd love to meet you! @KimberlyACoyle

This morning there was a watercolor sky as the sun tried to rise through the clouds and snow fell like white confetti. Peach and pink and gold. Beautiful. When I see mornings like this, I want so badly to find a way to capture it and carry it around in my pocket like a tiny treasure. Something lovely to pull out and hold in my palm while I go about my day. My husband's cousin is an artist, and whenever I see something paint-worthy, I think of him, and I wonder if it would capture his eye too.

I envy him that. The ability to capture and release this beautiful world with his eyes and his hands and his gift. A dear friend is a musician, a violinist, and I think about her too and wonder what music she hears when she sees a smile or a sunrise or her laundry pile. I think it must be a glorious thing, to hear the music and to make it too.

The artist has a day job and a family. He has a show to prepare for, and according to his wife, he needs more time and more art. The musician is a full time mom to three. She runs a busy home, and her music suffers. I know because she told me. I wonder if they feel frustration in the inability to pursue their art as they would choose? Does the inspiration ever fade? Or does it build and back up until they have no other choice but to give in and create?

I feel that way sometimes about writing. It's as if the words busy themselves building a tower in my heart until they must, must find a way out. I think they find their escape through a very small window, one that squeezes each letter out slow, like molasses. It doesn't feel like a treasure I can put in my pocket yet, or something that captures the bit of beauty that is inside, building word towers. Maybe someday it will. Maybe it won't. For now, I try to be okay with that. I think of my artist cousin and violinist friend and I know that the path to art isn't perfect, it is simply putting one foot in front of the other and staying the course.

What path are you walking? How hard is it to stay the course?

I was on my way to pick my kids up from school, and I stopped to take this photograph in spite of being rather late. I can't help myself. I can't take a drive on a clear day without stopping somewhere along the road to take a photo of the mountains. One would think after nearly two years of the same view, I would learn to stop living like a tourist.  My husband told a friend that living here, looking on the beauty of the Alps is a spiritual experience. That might sound dramatic and all existential-y, but it is true. Our friend knew just what he meant, responding by calling it a 'thin place'.

Thin places are the ones where the line between the world we know and the one we don't begins to blur. It is where we catch a glimpse of God's Kingdom within the boundaries of our own. I think we can experience them in all manner of ways, they aren't just mountain top experiences. Thin places may show up in the birth of a child, in the way you love and are loved, in your work, in the change of the seasons, in the miraculous and in the messy. The thin places are there.

I've been thinking about these places as I think about art. For me, good art is that which expresses a thin place. I think that is part of the role of the artist. To find the thin places. To capture them in words or music or color, to trap them behind a lens or mold them in clay. An artist sees beyond what this world is to what it should be, they see the hard and know that somewhere in that, there might be Holy too.

I take a lesson in Pilates once a week. I love it. I'm not particularly good at it, but it's good for me. It stretches out all the places that I spend most of the week pulling tight. A few weeks ago, the instructor mentioned that another of her clients asked if she does the same routine with everyone, a sort of 'one size fits all' approach. She laughed and said no, that would be impossible. She has one client who is a ballerina, one who has done pilates for years, one who is an athlete, etc. I kept waiting for her to mention me, 'one who does laundry and wipes dirty noses', but she didn't. She said, 'I told him that you have different needs than the ballerina, you run marathons'.

Apparently, I was the athlete in this scenario. A runner, yes, but athlete? That's like calling what I do in the kitchen on a nightly basis cooking. I can not begin to tell you how ridiculous that sounds to my ears, and also to the ears of anyone who has ever seen me attempt sportage of any kind. I mentioned it to my husband. He said, 'Well, you have run three marathons and one half. I think it's safe to say you've earned the title.' And I thought, is that possible? Is it possible that I can look beyond my past, to the evidence of my present, and own this? And surprisingly, the answer came back a resounding yes. I think I can. I believe I might have the sore muscles, ribboned medals, and worn out running shoes to prove it.

We've talked about this before, this idea of being named, of calling ourselves who and what we are, and of listening to the voice of Truth. I've spent far too much time waiting for someone to call things out of me, when I know them to be Truth in my heart. I haven't given enough thought to the fact that I am always in a process of becoming. We all are. Maybe I've always been an athlete. Maybe with each word laid, I am becoming a writer. Maybe I am learning to see like an artist. Maybe I'm all the things I've wanted to be, and I need to have the courage to speak the truth and call these gifts out of hiding.

I've been circling around these ideas for a while now. I read and journal and pray about them. I look at what others are saying and it resonates deeply. But, I feel like I'm still looking for the magic key that will unlock the art in me, the one that will allow me to stop circling and come home to nest. One of these days I hope to find it.

I've asked before, and I'll ask again. For those of you who find yourself still wondering, searching, hoping to unlock the hidden things: What do you know to be true? What do you wish to be called?

I am reading Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water again. This is my third time studying this book (I say studying because it's so much more than a book that one simply reads), and I can not recommend it highly enough for those of you who struggle with what it means to be a Christian and an artist. While I would love to claim the title of artist/writer, it's an area of my life that I'm still attempting to define. It feels, I don't know, presumptuous? Inflated? False?

I don't have this issue in other areas. I call myself a runner. I have the unnaturally tight hamstrings to prove it. I call myself a mom. In fact, there are three little people who also call me mom. Incessantly. I call myself a Christian, although judging from some of my behavior, this could sometimes be up for debate. But artist? Writer? Those are slippery words that I can't seem to pin down.

In her book, L'Engle quotes Jean Rhys from the Paris Review, 'All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake.'


I realized yesterday that I am nearing my 500th post. And while most of what I've done here is record rather than write, I want to believe that it's adding up to something bigger. I've written for other people's blogs, the paper, a magazine, and once a hand delivered birthday letter to Nelson Mandela. (For which my husband took credit. For which I will always be bitter. For which we need another post.) My words float here and there like the letters in a bowl of alphabet soup, and still, I struggle to own it. Perhaps if I learn to see them as drops feeding the lake, a contribution to the greater work? I am no river, no creek, no stream. I am a drop in the vast body of water that feeds souls. Might that be enough?

Are you an artist? A writer? Musician? Chef? Stylist? The next Martha Stewart? How do you claim your place in the great lake that is your art? When did you begin to think that you might, maybe, in an ideal world be an artist, and when did you truly believe it? I'd love to hear your thoughts.