illegitimi non carborundum

OK, time for a small remedy to the angsty poetry. Every now and then I flip through this book called Art and Soul - 156 Ways to Free Your Creative Spirit by Pam Grout (which is fantastic, by the way) when I need a little pick-me-up. Here's what I came across this time:

Serving an art makes you feel alive, to pulse with expansive energy. Without it, we shrink like the wicked witch from The Wizard of Oz after Dorothy throws water on her.

Art opens our eyes.

It burns through the fog. It makes you notice things. Things that matter, like the drop of dew that's about to spill off the tip of a chrysanthemum, a shooting star, the lady in the green hat who pushes her grocery cart to the bowling alley every afternoon at 3pm.

You'll notice you live in a great big world that's rich with details, abundant with beauty.

Once you start to notice these things, what step could be next but saying "thank you"? What possible emotion could anyone who really sees ever have but gratitude? Until we commit to being conscious, which is another way of saying being committed to our creativity, we ignore life's beauty and richness. We have so many blessings, yet we walk by them every day.

As someone once said about Jesus putting clay on the blind man's eye: It's not to make men see. The challenge is making them see.

How many of us are like that blind man, blind to our own beauty, blind to the wide, deep galaxies within us?