If everyone cared

This is a picture of two of my very dearest friends in the world, Diann and Sue.
They are always there for me and are two of the most loving and kind people I know. The below song reminds me of what they are all about.

http://tinyurl.com/2owz3d
click above to see an inspiring video.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
below are some of the lyrics.
Love,
Michele


"If Everyone Cared"


If everyone cared and nobody cried
If everyone loved and nobody lied
If everyone shared and swallowed their pride
Then we'd see the day when nobody died
When nobody died...

Connection

mark in our art studio...hard at work.


Only in the intimacy of the timeless present can we awaken. This intimacy connects us to one another, allows us to belong, and in this belonging, we experience love. In this way we move beyond our separateness, our contaction, our limited sense of ourselves.
- Jack Kornfield

trusting the universe to unfold

We made this picture after cutting up all of our credit cards...the kids helped us....It is called Debt Free.....unfortunately, we still aren't debt free, but we do have less credit cards!!
have a great day! Love, Michele


"The courage to trust process means believing in magic, having a vision and following it, letting the imagination play, letting go of the controls."
-Claudia Bepko and Jo-Ann Kreston
from Singing at the Top of Our Lungs

Inside you

Don’t go outside your house to see flowers.

My friend, don’t bother with that excursion.

Inside your body there are flowers. One flower has a thousand petals.

That will do for a place to sit.

Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty inside the body and out of it,

before gardens and after gardens.

The Kabir Book

Robert Bly version

Loving all that is

I took a watercolor class at Omega a few years ago.....no I did not paint this there...I think I made this one when I was messing around with the kids one day.
Anyway, at Omega, the teacher, Ann, gave us the below quote. It has been something I go back to often...it is a good metaphor for being an artist..but it is also a metaphor I use for my life......I am trying to learn to trust my intuition...and allow things to just unfold....not needing to know why.....just falling into the unknowingness. Love, Michele



After all, we can not know what we are going to express.
What is really creative is bound to be a surprise because it is something we couldn't have thought of.

This is the thing we resist the most.
We want to know where we are going, why we are doing it, and
what it is going to give us.
We want to know it all.
To be creative means becoming more familiar with being a little lost.
If we are always full of what we want to do, there is no room for the new.
-Michell Cassou, Artist

Allowing

In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all costs,

we may be left without intimacy or compassion;

in rejecting change and risk we often cheat ourselves of the quest;

in denying our suffering,

we may never know our strength or our greatness.

~ Rachel Naomi Remen

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
~ Mother Teresa

Real Security

Real security means contemplating death, not pretending it doesn’t exist.
It means not running from loss, but feeling it, surrendering to sorrow, entering grief.
Real security is not knowing something when you don’t know it.
Real security cannot be bought or arranged or accomplished with bombs.
It is deeper. It is a process.
It is the acute awareness that we are all utterly interdependent
and that one action by one being in one town has consequences everywhere.
Real security is the ability to tolerate mystery, complexity, ambiguity—
indeed hungering for these things.
-Eva Ensler

Strange Design

(No explanation.....just Kuhar decor)


Perhaps life is a spiral of time rather than a circle,
for as we move through each cycle and season,
we are at a different place than we were at the beginning.......
and in this cycle and season, at once familiar and ever new,
may you know your LIFE to be your true vocation,
and may you live it wide and deep in LOVE
-Burkhardt and Nagai-Jacobson

On being vulnerable

Freedom is about being vulnerable to one another, realizing that our ability to connect is more important than feeling secure, in control and alone.- Eve Ensler

Being here now

For a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life, but there was always some in the way, something to be gotten though first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. This perspective has helped me to see that there is no way to happiness. Happy is the way, so treasure every moment you have and remember that time waits for no one.
~ Senza

forever young

HOW TO STAY YOUNG

1. Throw out nonessential numbers. This includes age, weight and height. Let the doctor worry about them. That is why you pay him/her.

2. Keep only cheerful friends. The grouches pull you down.

3. Keep learning. Learn more about the computer, crafts, gardening, whatever.
Never let the brain idle. " An idle mind is the devil's workshop." And the devil's name
is Alzheimer's.

4. Enjoy the simple things.

5. Laugh often, long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath.

6.The tears happen. Endure, grieve, and move on.. The only person who is with us our entire life, is ourselves. Be ALIVE while you are alive.

7. Surround yourself with what you love, whether it's family, pets, keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever your home is your refuge.

8. Cherish your health: If it is good, preserve it. If it is unstable, improve it. If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.

9. Don't take guilt trips. Take a trip to the mall, to the next county,to a foreign country,
but NOT to where the guilt is.

10. Tell the people you love that you love them, at every opportunity AND ALWAYS REMEMBER: Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

-George Carlin

Butterfly

Happiness is like a butterfly. The more you chase it, the more it will elude you. But if you turn your attention to other things, it comes and softly sits on your shoulder.
- Henry David Thoreau