Thought for The Day - A Measure

Birds of a feather 18 x 24 pastels

I'm Listening 24 x 36 oils

A dip in the container, the amount available surpasses what's needed. But from time to time, we look at the container and the scoop (what's inside us) as if we needed to dole it out in small portions. We measure, we calculate and somehow our calculations don't include the supply. And yet, this supply, the place where we draw from, never runs dry.

Lavish living; not spending every penny earned, but finding joy in what cannot be purchased. Or what is purchased is cherished, valued and enjoyed!

Thought for The Day - "There's enough to go around!"

I'm Listening 24 x 36 Oil

I remember summers in Kansas City, MO and Omaha, NE the places where my mother and father's siblings settled. The large families, with three or more children, where dinner or even breakfast was an event. Food on the tables from one end to the other. And though, as a child, I could barely eat an entire hot dog (and at this point in life, I struggle not to eat a pack of hot dogs) my relatives could put away food. But rare were the words, "stop eating so much," uttered. No, what was usually heard were the words: "have more, there's plenty."

Now as a grown man with a family of children, I look back at our meals, when my youngest was willing to have a meal with us, there was always enough to go around twice. My daughter, always a thin princess grew to eat her fair share and can cook as well as her mom. My middle son, always "husky" can eat me under the table and my youngest, now a teenager, eats his height in food, when he is so inclined to eat what we've prepared. When we have family over, please believe there is more than enough to go around and around and around!!! And someone always wants to take containers of food home. My niece always asks my wife to bring a healthy portion of potato salad by the next day. Plenty of food.

Too often in life, we act as if resources are scarce. Even in our prayers, we pray for a portion, as if the supply were meager. We pray for the success of our children, while we are barely seeing success in our lives! We are willing to put our dreams on hold or abandon them altogether, in hopes it will somehow happen for our children. And we seem to do this with the thought: "there isn't enough success to go around." Well to that I say "there's plenty to go around!" I dare say, if every living person in this world were willing to work for theirs and work for the good of their neighbor, family and foe, we would find the very universe would make it possible for everyone to achieve!

Honestly, I believe every person thinks the same to be true. But when we look at what we've accomplished, when we consider what we desire as being so far away, we 'assume' the resources are small and obviously - based on my feelings of lack - there has be a short supply of ______. But when we examine the number of mornings we wake and the sun rises, when we consider the number of times we toss food in the garbage because it's gone bad. And when we consider the times we take clothing to shelters and the Goodwill because we have more to fill our closets, you've got to know "there's plenty to go around!"

Thought for The Day - Making a Dollar out of Fifteen Cents!

Desert Floor (in progress) 12 x 18 Pastels

Sometimes, your lessons reflect back at you! Years ago, my middle son had an art class. Freshman in high school at a time when I was "considering" getting back into art myself, but not quite there, he was struggling with color mixing techniques. He thought the answer was to buy all the different shades and colors in tubes of premixed paints. A lesson I learned in my college days was the technique of blending colors and creating your own shades. Certainly a tedious process, but you learn as much about your 'vision' as you do about the technique.

Some years later, when I started drawing and painting regularly, I could afford to spend money on paints, pastels and colored pencils. A few times, when I didn't have a certain color, I would express my frustration and limitations and how I could get "this" detail if I just had the right shade of green. And of course, he said to me, "you could just mix it. That's what you told me!" And of course he was right. Not that I followed his advice or my own; eventually, I bought that shade of green I needed and other shades of blue. But...

...When I sit with a blank canvas or sheet of paper, I might have a concept in mind, but often it is the willingness to do so that opens the channel to the flow. I'm learning that the very act of sitting through the process, feeling the frustration, the pain, as well as the joy and liquid creativity is part of the process. There are times when my supply of pink pastel is down to a single nub, but I have red and white in abundance...I make it work. I have had times when I only had newsprint available for paper, but in that moment, it may as well be a sheet of the finest sanded pastel paper as far as I'm concerned! I work the surface as if every thought and emotion in my head, is buried beneath the white surface. And it's my job to bring out what's beneath.

I have plenty of things to say, to write, to express...and the means, the medium and time are limited. But today, I'm making a dollar out of fifteen cents!