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Bethany Colas

For when you're afraid of friction

Updated: Jan 4, 2022



“Robert Antony ‘Tony’ Leake (version 2),” 2015, oil, wax, charcoal on paper, mounted on board, Collection of the artist.

 


Note to self: Life is full of friction and you will spend a good deal of your life trying to avoid it. You will put your hope in routines, in living a quiet life, in taking up as little space as possible, in keeping your opinions to yourself.


You will do this because you will think this is what you need to do to survive, because you are afraid that too much friction will light your life on fire, and for all you've heard about the merits of refining fire, you wonder if your life is more dross than silver or gold.


And then you will become a mom and you will learn that friction is unavoidable. You will find that you can no longer hide from the world because by birthing three beautifully complicated humans, you've brought the world swirling into your home--all of the heartbreak and wonder, fear and joy, anger and love of humanity unfurled in these children who are flesh of your flesh.


There will be days when you feel raw from all the colliding you do with one another. The protective veneer you've carefully preserved will get rubbed right off. You will see what lies beneath and you will not like what you see: weakness, great and gaping need, the depths of your brokenness, the limitations of your humanity.


These days will feel less like friction and more like a great weight is pressing in on you, and because you have a flare for the dramatic you will feel as though you're being crushed into oblivion. Annihilation, you will think, can come in many forms.


What you will not realize is that pressure and friction are not merely, perhaps not even primarily, destructive forces. They are also constructive, the inherent tools of the artist used to shape and form and fortify a work of art that embodies beauty and truth.


Your life, your entire being, poeima. Every moment of friction, tension, resistance, an invitation to the creative process of being and becoming.


 

"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." Ephesians 2:10

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