After long consideration and attempts to imagine myself as the 80-year-old woman with ink on her arm, I just went for it.
Remember all my gushing about the Fiddler’s Gun/Fiddler’s Green books? I’m not gushing so much anymore as just finding myself leaning into that narrative. I started reading them in the Fall of 2010, before my final residency…when things back home were so dark and I found myself incapable of even approaching prayer or a Bible. I read these books and met God there.
If you haven’t read these books…it’s the story of a girl, an orphan, who carries a lot of pain. She ends up hanging out with Bart, the cook at the orphanage (and an ex-pirate) who also carries a lot of pain, but with more experience in how that pain can be carried. He teaches her to play his fiddle and tells her what she’s got to do with the hurting: “You got to turn it beautiful…”
And the story unfolds…revealing how we can turn it beautiful or allow it to run a destructive course.
I’m still not so keen on opening a Bible and prayer, in any traditional sense, is a little off the radar. I’ve got a love-hate thing for church. But this story….I read it and I have no doubt that God is very real and very there and very much in love with me.
** Shameless plug: Buy the books at the Rabbit Room (best choice) or on Amazon (if you must). **
It’s a story I want to carry with me for forever.
So…commemorating the past year and the beginning of Spring…I got a tattoo.
(I plan on writing more about the whole experience soon — just waiting for the ink to settle…literally and figuratively.)
“You got to turn it beautiful” : that is deep wisdom, something that, me, in my life, I work with constantly. It’s not always easy though, that’s for sure – some days I’m just down in the dirt – you get me? Getting inked seems to me to be some deeply symbolic moment for you – a reminder to stay with the glory. Me, I won’t be inking a tattoo but maybe I’ll find another way to mark this pearl…
Do I get you? Ohhhhh…yes.
It was deeply symbolic for me. But I think there are many ways to mark our lives with truths that carry such profoudn truth. Grace to you as you make your mark…and feel free to keep me posted :)
Well done. That looks beautiful, and very fitting … Looking forward to hearing more about the experience.
Thanks, Seymour…as always :)
Such beautiful books . . . so much “there” there. And they not only offer a picture of healing and grace, but they offer the things themselves, somehow. Love the ink.
They do. I don’t know that I’ll ever find the words how how deeply these books have moved me. But I’ll keep leaning into the narrative…see what comes.
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