THANKSGIVING

Thanksgiving time once again, and I am grateful for so many things in my life! For my art journal, I was thinking of things other than the "usual" list, and came up with things like:
sunshine
friends
good books
beauty and art
music
trees
flowers
cinnamon rolls
wisdom
peace
All these things contribute to, and enrich my life in so many wonderful ways; the cinnamon rolls contributing to making my world "larger." Years ago, a very good friend of mine wrote this poem that I continue to love, and read each Thanksgiving. I would like to share it. She wrote one every Thanksgiving, and this was her poem for 1998. She is now gone, but her poems and spirit live on in me.

THANKSGIVING, 1998
I fold my hands
I bow my head
Over my plate,
my daily bread
That God from whom
each blessing flows
Put there beneath my appreciative nose
And then I close my roving eyes
And thank Him for each day's
routine or rare surprise
I offer up a grateful prayer
For all His nurture, loving care
For family, and sharing friends
For helping me meet the
stretched-apart "ends."
For Church
and fellow pilgrims on the way
With whom to speak and think and pray
I thank Him for the shadows
and the colors
Of the tapestry of living;
Sight and sound, kaleidoscopic
reasons for Thanksgiving
But most of all, I thank Him
all other things apart
For the gift throughout my
lengthening life
Of a year 'round grateful heart.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL!

I am enjoying creating an Art Joural, and this is one of my entries. I will post additonal ones soon. This is a very fun activity, and I am including some of my poetry, and some of my favorite sayings....Stay tuned. Also, I am doing book reviews for the Internet Art Joural at Escapeintolife.com I have just submitted my latest one; check it out under Writers, and then scroll down to my picture.

ART JOURNAL

Click on 2009 (60) in colume on left to see others

I am very excited about my new project: ART JOURNALING. A friend suggested that I try this as I love both writing and art. Here are some of my first attempts as I fill up my first Art Journal. I am using a lot of my poems, and finding art work to illustrate them. I also include some famous poems, and pithy thoughts. I am having lots of fun with it! Here are a few samples.

It has been too long since my last post; that is for sure. But, have you ever had the universe collide in your life, in such a way, that you did not see it coming; did not deserve it, and basically were blindsided and thrown under the bus without cause. Well, I believe this happens sometimes in life, and it happened to me several weeks ago. And, without going into details, I have had to spend an exasperating amount of time trying to unravel a difficult situation. So, my energy has been elsewhere, but hopefully this will be resolved this week, and I can, once again, go on with my life with the demonstrated integrity I have always had. Sometimes, other people in life, who know absolutly nothing about you, try to define you, and you find yourself having to defend yourself to people who do not have the honesty, integrity or professionalism that you have. And suddenly you are in a royal battle with "the know-nothings" and you don't even know how you got there, just that perhaps someone needed a scapegoat or someone to blame...and you were in their sights. Anyway, safice it to say that I am still sleeping at night, can hold my head high, and have had the courage to speak up and speak out about something that was and is clearly wrong. I know that anyone reading this may be curious for details, but I shall not be able to share them here. What I can share is a poem that my sister, Maureen Conlan wrote years ago about Courage which applied then and applies today. Thank you Maureen.

WOMAN OF COURAGE 4-5-92

You who have courage for others,
be courageous for your own life.
You who birth babies and bury parents,
have courage to embrace your own joy.
Look inside---
You are already courageous
Think of the times you were crushed by sadness
thought you could not live
And then rose to comfort others.
You who listen to your friends' most awful
secrets and love them no matter what
Find courage to love the dark cornors
of your own heart.
Think of the times you felt unloved, shamed,
humiliated; soul and body battered
And yet, got up the next morning,
Put one foot in front of the other
and marched into a new day.
I sing for your courage
It is nothing this poem can confer
You have it already; a legacy from
every moment of your life
And the lives of those before you
that has led to this one
Think of the courage it has taken to live
with your lonliness
Consider small acts of courage
when you were in physical pain and you went to work
or cooked dinner for your family.
Times you were so afraid you were sick to your stomach
and still you did what had to be done.
The simple courage
to live as a woman in this world.
Think of the heroic times....daring to battle
an angry god
What courage it has taken to unravel the early lies,
to speak the first secrets
trap them in a shoebox in a closet
And when they escape, as they do once in awhile
have courage to face them again and again and again.

I celebrate your courage.
Use it to rescue the radiance
at the center of your heart,
Waiting so patiently for you to shine forth.