Here we are again. I must be a forgetful hearer. I sure have the bad habit of idealizing people and get crushed afterwards. I don't understand my persisting need for role models. I know role models are good, and I know there is only one good, holy, trustworthy and perfect model, and that is God, as Jesus stated clearly, but I keep finding it difficult to have such an invisible, masculine and abstract role model as God.
When I am disppointed by my role models, my whole world is shaken. I might choose them poorly or my idealization blinds me and eventually makes it unhealthy, but I feel like I need to think there are human beings I can look up to on this earth. Otherwise, the ugliness of the fallen world simply becomes overwhelming.
I have come to understand grace through it all, forgiving and faithful love in spite of disappointment, but I feel the next step is faith. Trusting and waiting patiently on God to provide inspiration, motivation and the right challenges.

I've been doing a lot of thinking on how inspiration strikes lately. It usually emerges from a person in my case, and I dared to investigate the phenomenon last time it happened big time, which was when I met my Joan of Arc model Melissa Dennison. I was afraid such analysis would kill the magic out of it, but on the contrary, it helped me see the wonder and complexity of it and how deeply rooted in someone's life experiences it can be. In this case, I was standing near the piano at church on Sunday morning preparing for worship (I am a church musician), and this Word of Life Bible Institute student group walked in. I spotted Melissa in the crowd (I had never seen her before) and kept my eyes on her. I observed her the whole service through, and even though I never had an occasion to speak to her, inspiration wouldn’t let go. I knew I had found the Joan of Arc model I had been seeking for a good ten years. I eventually got in touch with her through a common Christian friend and found she was very much like Joan of Arc inside.

When I took the time to ponder on why this random girl had startled me so, I noticed that Melissa physically resembled many people I had met or seen in my life, friends or individuals who had left a lasting impression on me, some of them linked to the process of understanding Joan of Arc or finding a model to portray her. I also noticed Melissa seemed to serve God with an honest, devoted heart, in spite of stupid man-made rules, submitting to these with a good attitude, which is a trait I truly admire in young Christians because I had a hard time with this myself as a youth. There was something very genuine and pure about her faith (something I also aspire to), and all of these things coupled together generated inspiration and led to two paintings and a drawing, and great fellowship with this young missionary who happens to be the most cooperative model I’ve ever had a chance to work with.

As I look back to old muses, I see they have meant something to me in the same way, unconsciously reminding me of people from my childhood, people that have done something important for me, people I have admired, but mostly people who have made me a better person, people who have set an example by the way they were, becoming ultimate role models in a context where I desperately needed one. These muses appeared to me as human incarnations of spiritual concepts and beauty ideals (both inner and natural outer beauty) that had been piled up in my head for years but now manifested themselves in a harmonious form that led me to grasp the tail of universal truth. I now realise I need these people to motivate me to paint or write. Without them, my creativity withers away.

I still don't understand how I can know them from just getting a glimpse of their faces and how my interpretation can turn out to be so accurate about what they are like inside, but I suppose this will probably remain a mystery to me. I believe God simply knows who I need to meet and leads me to the right people in His time.

So thanks to all of you who have incarnated these ideals for me even if you didn't do it on purpose: Anne, Liane, Chantal, Bonny Jean, Christian, Daniel, little Sara, Laurence, Asa and Melissa. You all mean a lot to me.

"When we arrived, we put several questions to Joan, and, among other questions, Master Jean Lombard asked her why she was come and that the King wanted to know what had impelled her to come to him. And she answered boldly and gravely that while she was guarding the beasts, a voice had manifested itself to her which told her that God had great pity on the people of France and that she, Joan, must go to France."
-Brother Séguin Séguin, Dean of the Faculty of Theology at Poitiers University

Joan of Arc has fascinated me as a model of spiritual devotion and steadfastness since I saw Christian Duguay's Joan of Arc in 1999. Her story left such an impression on me that I would weep every time I'd watch the film. I later became quite concerned and interested in Christian martyrs because of this. I often heard scientific or psychological rationalizations of the Maid's "voices" as schizophrenia or some other mental illness, but after reading the very well documented Joan: the Mysterious Life of a Heretic who became a Saint, by Donald Spoto and Régine Pernoud's Jeanne d’Arc par elle-même et par ses témoins, I simply couldn't doubt the authenticity of Joan's experiences anymore; atheistic rationalizations were plain silly and cynical. The Maid was a profound lover of God. She had a relationship with Him that was quite rare in the Dark Ages, with a free mind about it. She stood up to the Inquisitors and declared: "I am the servant of all; but Sire God first served."

I agree with those who see her as a beacon of the Reformation, because of this resolution of having God's will done, not men's: "In the Lord's books there is more than in yours," says the Maid to the Catholic clergy. I am very moved by the way she died, crying out to Jesus until the flames engulfed her.

I find amazing how her life story echoes the lives of biblical characters and prophets such as Moses, Gideon, Jeremiah and even Jesus himself. "And me, I answered it that I was a poor girl who knew not how to ride nor lead in war," said Joan about her call. Most of the prophets didn't think they were fit for the task, and answered the same. Also, the assurance she had in her God reminds us of Elijah and Elisha as she speaks to the Bastard of Orleans: "In God's name, the counsel of the Lord your God is wiser and safer than yours. You thought to deceive me and it is yourself above all whom you deceive, for I bring better succour that has reached you from any soldier or any city: it is succour from the King of Heaven." Her most unfair trial and cruel death certainly resemble that of Jesus who was crucified even though he was a Saviour and an innocent. If Joan of Arc was mentally ill, I suppose we have to assume most Bible figures were insane as well.

Something very unusual happened to me the other day.
I was asked to partake in a Christian Art Camp held at Terrebonne-Mascouche Baptist Church on June 13 and 14. The Word of Life event included teachings and workshops and wrapped up with a gala concert on Saturday evening. My part in the concert was to read an excerpt from a novel I had written, along with some illustrations cast on a screen behind me.
As I sat waiting for my turn to come, I felt great heaviness and fatigue. I had been very busy lately and was completely drained. Considering the pressure of going up on stage made me think: "Oh, I really don't feel like going through this."
A verse from Colossians suddenly sprang up into my mind: And whatsoever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men. (Colossians 3:23). The Holy Spirit's still small voice uttered to me: "Do it for me. Don't worry about the crowd."
"Fine, Lord," I replied. "But I have no strength. You'll have to do it through me."

So I walked up to the stage and adjusted the microphone. I began reading and felt very little stress because I was so tired and could barely see the people behind the spotlights. The excerpt I read was taken from my story Léa Fallon ou les chrétiens de l’ère post-chrétienne and described a vision the character has after a night of powerful intercession. As Leah prays and begs for forgiveness, she begins to weep at the ugliness of sin and sees herself proceeding along hundreds of burdened souls gathering around a precipice. Demons are casting the sinners into the pit, and so I read the sentence "Some of the shackled folk headed straight to the precipice and jumped…" –and what a strange emotion! My guts were suddenly shaken with sobs, I really had to refrain myself from crying aloud. All of those lost souls' lot became so sad and so real to me. The very text I had written touched my heart in a way it never had before.
It took me a while to realise what was actually taking place in me. God was reading through me. He was answering my prayer. But He was so heartbroken at the thought of those too many souls heading towards perdition that His Spirit within me wept sore.

I managed to finish reading without showing tears, but when I went back to my seat, I could not help letting some out. The music was so beautiful; my soul was flying and crying at the same time. I was free from myself a moment. The emotion was noticeable, because Lysanne Picard, the artist sitting besides me asked: "Are you all right?"

At intermission I understood that the Holy Spirit had not only read through me; He had moved through the audience and opened many spiritual eyes. The people would come to me and tell me what they had felt and found, what each element had meant to them. Oh, the "manifold wisdom of God!" This is what it can be like to be a feeble instrument in God's almighty hands. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (II Corinthians 12:10)

I'm getting it. I now understand why God often allows the people I love to disappoint me and hurt me while I'm soaring high about this relationship. Hallelujah.
He had given me a hint before, but we are "forgetful hearers," aren't we ?
Last fall, a friend I care a lot about unintentionally did something that made me question our very friendship. I wept alone about it and started the whole process I often go through: "You have fallen into idolatry; God will take this person away from your life to give you a good lesson and teach you to love Him only."
When this happens, I start to make up my mind about letting the relationship go and put up with loneliness once more.
But that event was different. I was praying to God and asking how my friend could do something like this while I loved her so much. Then the Holy Spirit's voice rang into my heart: "Do you love her ? What is love ?" Then, my mind immediately switched to the 1 Corinthians 13 description of Agape:

Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Was I ever wrong and pretentious to claim I loved my friend. I didn't and I was selfish about it.

Then similar things happened again lately, and God brought me back to it through a most unlikely book about occultism. In it, the author denounced the different types of idolatry, and among them Eros, excessive conditional love for a person, as opposed to agape love, godly unconditional love.
God wasn't asking me to give up a friendship; he wanted to teach me to love unconditionally; to stop feeling sorry for myself and to start forgiving and keep on loving. Gracious Lord !