Throughout this journey of mine, focusing in on yearly themes: Clarity, Bearing Good fruit, Truth, Love, Joy, Leadership, Seeing and Hearing, Power, Hope, and now Faith, the path forward for me has become so much more clear and open than when I began, and yet my movement forward, while seemingly unobstructed, is with an even greater amount of trepidation. I think the more I’ve observed, learned, and pondered the more I realize the limits of my ability to do anything about what I’ve learned. The painful reality of stripping away the illusions that I’ve embraced over a life time, is the vulnerable smallness of what is left. I am aware of my limited power and capacity as a microscopic and seemingly insignificant part of the body of humanity to have any impact on what appears to be pathological spiral toward extinction, all the while dragging me along for the ride. I believe one of the greatest illusions of our time is to think that we are not significantly connected to every other living being on our planet, and to believe that: 1) the choices we make have no impact on or create consequences for anyone else, or 2) we are aware that our choices do impact and have consequences for others but justify the degree to which any given choice is acceptable by embracing multiple ideologies available out there as a defense or justification. All that being said, I also know, even subtly, that my actions send out ripples that can be life affirming or not, and even if I am just a cell in a larger body, I will hold myself responsible for the life force I’ve been given to play my part in keeping the body healthy and moving forward.

Yes, I am fully aware that this is a post about faith in each other, in which I still have the greatest confidence, so I will shift from the negative to something more positive. My confidence lies, predominantly anyway, in the other simple cells like me who are trying their best to play their part in keeping the body healthy. I don’t want anyone to think that one cell is unimportant in the scope of things because we all know the havoc one cancerous cell can do to a body, eventually. I also want to wake up those small parts of the body who have been chained to the belief that they have nothing to offer, because you do, we all do. We need every gift, every light if we are to survive. One never knows how one’s innate gifts will affect the body of humanity’s ability to thrive. I think the greatest source of evil and darkness in this world are the people who encourage the condemnation and extraction of parts of the body of humanity that have been determined unworthy. There are plenty of loud voices in power clearly determining who the lesser parts of this body are and that they don’t matter. God says otherwise though, that every person is of consequence. Every creation, every gift, every light sends out ripples that can influence and help another part of the body thrive. Every individual has a gift unique to them, a beautiful blueprint that should be celebrated. We have to stop undermining these simple blessings of goodness that make the world go round

This body of humanity still holds and reflects such incredible beauty, some of which I have tried to capture in my art, and has become a powerful fuel for kindling my faith in moving forward. One of my greatest transformations is that once I learned to see and recognize beauty in its multiple forms, I see it so much more clearly, readily and often, (even amidst the all the subterfuge or being co-opted for nefarious purposes). I think the result of recognizing and developing one’s own unique gift, or ones light…and then using it, you begin to have a greater impact and create stronger ripples into the world, bringing that positive energy into someone else’s line of sight, thus influencing them to do the same with their own gifts. The last painting I did (up above) was something completely different, unassociated with anything I know of personally. Somewhere on the other side of the world, I was able to capture an image of a character in a story seeing something beautiful. I don’t think that assessment is a personal invention, because where I have it displayed at our clinic, or at a one of my shows, others stare at it and feel the same way. One person said to me they felt “calmly encouraged” That will be my mechanism for future work. There is just so much beauty I want to capture out there, that I want everyone to feel calmly encouraged.