Thought for The Day - A Crowded Space

A space for clutter, items that are one step away from the trash, the back of a metal collector's truck or a gallery! The type of area your mother would threaten to skin you if you brought anyone into! My space! My area, my corner of peace. It's similar to the space that lies on the other side of the grey matter in my cranium. Yes, it's cluttered, but there is so much promise in that space!

Ideas, hopes, plans and a past rich with disappointments and joys, resides between my ears. There are times I can cry - and I do - for the things I want to accomplish! But I don't weep for selfish reasons; I've got hope for family and friends as well. And everything isn't focused on earning millions. But it is about living life as "wealthy minded" individuals! My dreams are that everyone discover their promise living between their ears as well! And having discovered it, or open their minds to the idea that exists, we all live together as God has designed us to live!

When you view us with fear and hatred, choices are made to discriminate and discard. But when the whole is viewed as God's image duplicated across continents, islands and remote places, we are beautiful creations, designed to live up to God's expectation!

You are far more than you perceive yourself, in this moment!

Thought for The Day - Sublime

Sailing under a Penny Moon (in process) 12 x 18 pastels

One of my friends, when she saw my work, said "it's so colorful!" Now mind you, I don't know what I was looking for in that moment, maybe something along the lines of admiration, adulation, a deeper connection to the imagery. But that was her reaction. I didn't question, though in retrospect, I wish I had. Sometimes you want more than compliments or a "like;" you want dialogue, a conversation about impressions and feelings. This isn't an ego thing, this is Eddie, wanting to make connections and have conversations about more than which restaurant has the best chicken or the temperature outside!

When I look at areas of the above picture (in process) I'm struck by the tones and the depths of the color. Again, not an ego thing, but realizing there is a current, a well or vast ocean beneath the surface. Creativity is not something to "own" or "possess." Someone may own the pond that sits on their property, but you don't own it's supply. One may have the advantage of owning a lake, also on property you own, but wildlife that feed on it, the water falling from the sky, the minerals and every organism making up that ecosystem, do not belong to you. We are caught in the beauty of it all and it surrounds us. In truth, it overtakes and dwarfs us!

The colors, the sense of movement; for me the very sense that each color conveys an impression, an emotion and thought...no, this is not ego; this Eddie expressing his view of the flow he was fortunate to enjoy!

Thought for The Day - Following The Pattern

"I have no choice..."

We need "expertise" to back up our hypothesis...

I've talked about it before, my new hobby: aquariums. As in plural, as in more than one. For me a dream and nearly overnight. In my 10 gallon, I have 5 Buenos Aires Tetra and 3 Red Eye Tetra. You can barely tell them apart and though the Buenos Aires came first, when the Red Eye were added, they learned quickly to do as the predominant group does. When they stand in formation, seemingly floating in space, little or no movement, you do the same. Or else, there's a nip here, and chase there. When the leader breaks formation, you wait a few seconds, then you break formation. But slowly, everyone does the same thing.

When we were children, we learned to speak the language, avoid hot surfaces and to sit up straight - I've struggled with the last one all my life, with a natural curvature of the spine. We learned - if we wanted to accomplish anything in life - to wake at the right time, what to eat for breakfast, which classmates to avoid and those that should be friends. Some lessons we learned the hard way, others, we simply accepted.

As adults, "success" is defined as a family, a home or apartment, a job and a car. While the world has been 'kind' and not required we all be accountants, doctors and attorneys, it has not been kind in telling us teachers, dancers, writers and artists are second class citizens; "you don't earn enough" or shouldn't "to contribute to the fabric of society. And yet, it is the individual who quietly or raucously, follows their own 'inner pattern' that blows the doors off our mundane lives EVERY TIME!

Some stand out as strange and eccentric and rarely outgrow that title. Some are just close enough to "normal" that they dazzle us with their eccentricity and yet do it with a quiet humility. But in my mind, everyone has the potential to be AMAZING!

For about 15 years, I secretly held the opening thought as my marching orders. "I had no choice" to be a minister, work in an office where no matter how well I served, I would remain a 'second class citizen.' I had little or no choice regarding with whom I spent Sunday afternoons or the movies and television shows I was allowed to see as a Christian...

But I do now! I'm choosing to break many of the patterns that define me and redefining the parts of me that no one knows. I'm declaring I AM AN ARTIST, and A CHRISTIAN! I'm saying quite emphatically that God loves diversity and the "oddballs" as well as the person who may never stray beyond the comforts of the sacred four walls. He love and celebrates the people who love with everything they have! He even loves those whose heart remains an open wound because it gets cut, bruised by those they love...