My Most Recent Watercolor painting – making progress…

I am continually shocked and dismayed by violence, racism, sexism, greed, and lies that I see and hear about in our country and our politics. My heart is with all who are suffering and grieving the loss or injury of loved ones at this time. And also with those who are scrambling to support themselves and their families, who are homeless or hungry or sick.

Reach out to connect with someone with a kind word this week. Smile at a stranger. Bring a tiny bit of light into the world. Do something that brings you joy.

I encourage everyone to vote this week and to think about what kind of country you want to live in before you vote. Ignore the hateful and negative political rhetoric and base your vote on what a candidate has actually done and voted for, not what he or she says. Do not ignore the lies or attribute them to the “other.” If a candidate readily lies to get elected how can you believe that he or she will do anything that he or she promises to do.

We Must Risk Delight

It feels like a good time to share this poem that struck me this week. I really love the lines, “We must risk delight ” and “We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.”

Please risk delight in your life and have the stubbornness to accept your gladness in the midst of all the madness.

Making my amateur watercolor paintings brings me delight. Little by little I learn how to control the brush, how to mix and dab on colors that please me. The paintings I render may not match the photographs I use as inspiration but the colors I choose are my colors, the vision is my vision, the joy is in the doing, not in the viewing.

A Brief For The Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies

are not starving someplace, they are starving

somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.

But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.

Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not

be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not

be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women

at the fountain are laughing together between

the suffering they have known and the awfulness

in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody

in the village is very sick. There is laughter

every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,

and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.

If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,

we lessen the importance of their deprivation.

We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,

but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have

the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless

furnace of this world. To make injustice the only

measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.

If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,

we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.

We must admit there will be music despite everything.

We stand at the prow again of a small ship

anchored late at night in the tiny port

looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront

is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.

To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat

comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth

all the years of sorrow that are to come.

Jack Gilbert

Painting made in my third water color class – 1 more to go in this series of classes!