What I Learnt From… Letting People See Me and Having No Access

Two Saturdays ago I was on YouTube and a video from Jonathan McReynolds live popped up (I can just hear his fans right now). Now the person did use a clickbait, but the message was so worth it. I am not going to be long with this so let’s start this Monday fresh, clean and quickly.

He was talking about some of the questions that people had asked him in his IG Story and asked that he go in a bit more on the responses. He was asked what was a lesson he learnt from being an artist and he mentioned that at the time he said, “being transparent but not vulnerable, be seen but not touched“. Then this can be preached… I stopped moisturizing and really focused on those words. After that moment, I even brought it up with my dad and he of course gave away wisdom for free like the Bath & Body Works had a sale. HELLOO lol.

There were even instances the following week (last week) that I had to really be transparent but not seen, or seen but not touched. There were many great individuals that felt the “push” to give their words of advice and so I had to decide if I was going to give them access or not.

He went on to say that “so many times in this particular life of [his, he] allowed people that were only assigned to see [him] touch [him] their thoughts their opinions, their fears, their comments, their concerns”.

Have you ever allowed the fears of others affect how you carried out your plans?
Journal prompt

A perfect analogy that he used was that,” There are some very expensive paintings and sculptures and… art pieces in a lot of museums and they are the originals they are extremely valuable [and] expensive. The beauty of those artifacts, those sculptures, those art pieces need to be displayed to the world; we need to see them they’re too beautiful. They [tour guides etc.] say something so incredible about: creation, about the history, about a culture. We need to see them, but they are kept behind glass, sometimes even behind a velvet rope [and] most people can only come about 10 feet away from them”.
– Jonathan McReynolds

Uhm, first of all, this alone is already so important. Some artist’s also only have limited printings of their work because of the quality of the piece; it becomes a rare and hence, more valuable. But, I am not going to say anymore so let us continue a bit more into what he continued to say…

That’s the transparency. We see what it is, it is not cloaked in a weird red glass. It is not in any way altered, we only see maybe one side of it or depending on where it is and how it’s displayed we can maybe walk around it and see what’s going on with all different sides of it, or we can see clearly what the painting is because it is being displayed in a transparent manner. We want you to be able to see this. I want you to be able to see me… I do… I want you to be able to see the imperfect, wise, challenged, dysfunctional, intelligent, funny, serious, me. I want you to see it. I want you to see the gifts and the songs and the albums. I want you to see it because to me it says something great about God, about my culture, about me, about my faith, about what I have lived through and learned as a Christian. I want you to see it, so I gotta put it up high enough for people to see it and I want to put it behind [a] nice transparent clear glass that you see what’s going on but there’s a reason why you’re behind glass and there’s a reason why you’re 10 feet away and there’s a reason why you are behind the velvet rope. It is because you’re allowed to see that thing but you’re not allowed to touch that thing because you touching it being vulnerable to your touch, threatens it’s safety, it threatens its design, it threatens its cleanness, it threatens even its authenticity and it’s integrity because who knows what your touch would do to that oil? …Who knows what touch would do to that structure as an artist? …You’re not supposed to allow everybody that came to see you to touch you. Their thoughts, their opinions, their criticisms of what you do, whether they like that painting or not, whether they think the artist should have done a little more green and a little less red, that’s not for the painting to have to deal with it’s supposed to be seen not touched.
– Jonathan McReynolds

More Journal Prompts

What would you consider to be your painting? What is your purpose, talent or gift?
Have you allowed people who were to stay 10 feet apart touch you?
How did that affect you and your gift?
Are you being touched more than seen?
Did the actions of others affect your authenticity, if so, how will you work on changing it?
Are you ready to be yourself (transparent) but keep a 10 feet distance from those who should just see you?
Have you found the small group of people who are actually allowed to touch you?

You might want to get closer to it so you can really inspect it. You can really hold it and you can really… see what’s going on and how to even make this. It’s not like it’s bad energy but… since you didn’t make it and you didn’t hang it, you don’t necessarily know how to handle it. So if anybody gets to touch something that they don’t know how to handle even if they have, all the appreciation, all the respect, all the love in the world. … Family members… friends… really shouldn’t be able to touch you that much because they don’t know. They don’t know how to handle that gift. They don’t know how to handle that piece of art, that workmanship… They know how to handle theirs [and] they don’t know how to handle yours. They don’t know what that opinion and what that thought is going to do to you. They don’t know what that text is going to do to you so if you allow them and those messages and those opinions and those whatever is to touch you that’s vulnerability and that’s when you can really be tainted and hurt and threatened… That’s the difference between transparency and vulnerability. To me transparency allows me to show off who I am particularly for the purposes of showing you who God is but it has to keep glass around me 10 feet, no pressure and maybe even a velvet rope so that everybody understands and really it’s not even about everybody, it’s about me understanding. It’s about you understanding your own value and that everybody is not allowed to touch you. Why? It’s not because they’re terrible people, it’s not because they have something bad to say, it’s just that they have not been put on this earth to handle the gift that God gave you, so chances are they’re gonna mess up something they’re gonna pick it up thinking, “oh man that looks what eight pounds“. No it’s really 75. Now you just dropped it on the floor. “oh what’s that oh I’m sure all the ink is dried”. No it ain’t, they jack it up, they mess it up, they had all the good intentions in the world, but if you allow things to touch you, if you allow the results even of the situation when that artist puts that painting up there, if he’s paying too much attention to what people are saying about the painting, that’s going to affect the next painting that he makes. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to. Maybe it was just this particular group of people, this family that didn’t like the painting, when 80 percent of the other people loved it and it blessed them. Maybe you released an album and it blessed millions of people but you listened to the wrong ten and that made you write something different next and it pushed you off your square and it made you less effective than you were because you started to care about those 10 people that you let touch you when they really should have just been able to see you, say what they want to say, walk away, [and they] didn’t even get to you because of the glass space and the velvet rope.
– Jonathan McReynolds

Final Set of Journal Prompts

Have you allowed the wrong people to handle your painting?
Can you identify 3 family members or friends that don’t know how to handle your gift?
Have you gotten messages from people who were to just see you, affect you? How did that make you feel?
Have you been transparent for the purpose of showing who God is? How does that make you feel?
Have you been transparent for other reasons? Why?
Are you going to put up a glass if you haven’t already or start replacing the broken glass?
How can you practically only focus on the 80% that loves your painting?
Have other people who know how to take care of their painting broken yours because they didn’t know the value?
Now that you know to be seen and not touched, write 5 ways that you can fix times that you were touched and 5 ways to now be aware of the signs and how you will keep that glass up.

This was a very exciting blog to post because I can feel the healing that is about to take place and the damages that we are about to escape because of what we now now!!!

In my part 2 of this blog I will have available some freebies!! I will be sure to include a PDF version of these journal prompts so that you can have access to them anytime and remind yourself of this promise you are about to make to yourself and maybe even print it to show yourself that you’re serious about this 10 feet apart!!

~🇯🇲 The CreatOR creatED a creatIVE – Queen Ruthie 🇯🇲~