Imagine a beautiful, colorful stained-glass window, 30’ long. Now imagine a stone has broken one of the panes. 

Rev. Margaret Stortz recently wrote an essay on this subject and noted that even though the broken pane was small, and not brightly colored, its shattering was deeply felt by all who saw it.

So too when one of us dies (transitions, passes, choose your verb), those of us left behind feel the loss deeply.

Good habits are golden! It takes 21–28 consecutive days to “deeply root” a habit into our psyche. If you’ve been doing something for 20 days and then you skip a day, you have to start over at day one!

I skipped two days of a new habit I’d hoped to make permanent this week. Darn it! 

Those were the exact words running through my mind over and over again while I tried to sleep. I finally got out of bed and wrote them down. Obviously this was an important message. I’m glad I did that! These words have continued to keep me focused the past few weeks and I’m expecting them to last me the entire year. They are my “words of the year”.

The more consciously we look for things, the more we see them. Try it for yourself. Look for a specific brand and/or color of car on your next commute to work and be amazed at just how many you see.

I asked my class at Spalding House (aka The Contemporary Museum), to take the week between classes to look for faces — not in people, but in the world around us. They found faces in the clouds, on slabs of marble and granite, on a wall of brushed metal, on a piece of wood paneling, in the lichen and moss on rocks, in trees. They brought a cornucopia of images to class.

Today is a day of finding incredible beauty. Keanu found a dead monarch butterfly in the garage; I brought it with me to the studio this morning so I can enjoy its form.

On my way to the studio, I found some fallen banana flower petals and knelt down to pick them up. You guessed it; I brought them along to the studio with me.

My students are often surprised to hear me tell them that I’m not sure what I’m doing, or what I’m going to do next when I paint.

This usually happens when I’m starting a new painting, or working on one in front of class.

What they might not realize is that I hope I never really know what I’m doing next!

I don’t want to know exactly how something is going to turn out. Where is the excitement, the fun, the thrill of adventure, if that happens?

One of the things I love about painting is that I continually see the world through “new eyes.” When we look at things through the lens of curiosity, we learn more about the world in which we live.

When I first visited the Waikiki Aquarium with my Lotus Aqua Art Escape class in April, I was unprepared for the way the octopus there grabbed my attention. He still has me in his grips! 

Sometimes life feels too full! How can that be? Each day holds the same number of hours and the same number of molecules of air. 

Is life too full or am I too empty? Does that sound like a contradiction? I think not. I think I just hit that nail on the head! My energy is gone.

The cure? Spend less time doing; spend more time being.

I took just one painting class in college — oil painting. I loved it, but had more fun working in clay, and spent many semesters up to my elbows in “mud.” 

Years after graduating, when I decided to paint again, I dug out my old oils. They still held magic.

Have you ever felt as though “negative” vibes surround you? 

Do you wonder why all the news you hear is “bad”? Why even call it news, why not call it “only bad news”, which is what it seems to be. 

It isn’t always easy to stay positive in a world that seems to celebrate the negative. But that’s “the work.”

Let’s continue the analogy of planting a garden and growing a watercolor practice. In the last post we ended with you imagining yourself painting, even just for five minutes a day. Now, back to our garden …

If you planted the seeds too close together, you will have to pluck some of them out of the ground to give the others room to grow. If you don’t, all of your plants will be weak and their lives short and stunted.