God's Amazing Color Palette.......

God dipped his brushes into his most spectacular colors and painted beautiful splashes of gold, orange, red, yellow and blue across this evening's sky, the deeper the sun sank into the horizon the deeper the rusty reds became. A stunning site to behold, the sky displaying a beautiful dance of vivid colors reflecting the sun's settings rays.
I snapped these pictures one right after the other, the sun was setting fast and the colors were disappearing into the night sky.
Thank you God, for this quiet and gentle reminder of your love in our evening sky.
A reminder that made my soul smile.

Grandma...............

I felt compelled, quite a while back, to sketch this portrait of my paternal grandmother. All I have of her is one small black and white picture, the one I used to sketch from. I feel like I miss her even though I never met her, she died when my father was about 6 years old. I think of her often. I wonder what she was like. My dad had very few and not very clear memories of her. I feel like she had so much love still to give to her family.......she just ran out of time. She died young, of Tuberculosis.
If you are listening grandma....I love you.

♥ ON CHOCOLATE ♥

My homemade chocolate treats

My ode to Chocolate.....

Chocolate, so sweet, so rich, so melt in your mouth delectable deliciousness.
I am lost in a whirlwind of decadent delight.
Taste buds dancing with ultimate joy, tickled by unparalleled sweetness.
You, my dear friend, are to me.......
comforting in times of sadness,
delightful in times of happiness,
and uplifting in times of melancholy.
Always within reach any time a need arises.
Never contradicts, talks back or makes a face.
You who never judge, disparage or patronize.
Chocolate, I praise your silent loyalty
A true friend forever more
~Sylvia Weaver Rivera

ON BEING OBSERVANT

I am not really an observant person usually. Things can be happening around me and sometimes I am oblivious to it. In my opinion, most people need to be taught to pay attention to their surroundings. If someone walked casually into a public place, say a restaurant, where you would be having a meal, and then they proceeded to walk out, would you be able to give an accurate description of their clothing or their hair, if it was a man was he sporting a mustache, perhaps a beard. Well, even though I am not very observant, as I mentioned before, I thought that, yes, I would be able to describe the person down to the facial hair and I would probably be about 80 percent correct. Well......much to my surprise, I was totally wrong when I was faced with a situation where I had to give a description of two people who were involved in a public altercation a while back. Two of my friends and I were returning to work from a lunch break one day and when we pulled into the parking lot of the office building, there in the middle of the parking lot were 2 people in what seemed a very heated argument. The young man physically shoved the young lady and she almost fell backwards! We quickly stopped the car and yelled at him to stop and they both ran off. We called the police and when they arrived they asked us for a description and we proceeded to give three totally different descriptions! We couldn't agree on her clothing or the young man's clothing or facial hair or anything!! The only thing we could agree on was that they were two young adults, male and female and that they were fighting. Unbelievable!!!
So, I was really surprised at how badly unobservant I was and still am. But I am working on it, when I remember. Sitting in the doctors office waiting room, or shopping at the grocery store, I try to see how much I can observe of the people around me. I make a mental note of everything about them I can see. I am training myself to be much more observant. It might come in handy, it might not, but it is fun to really observe people. I guess it's good mental exercise.

THE STORY OF THE BUTTERFLY (Life's struggles)

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly.
One day a small opening appeared.
He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours
as it struggled to squeeze its body through the tiny hole.
Then it stopped, as if it couldn't go further.

So the man decided to help the butterfly.
He took a pair of scissors and
snipped off the remaining bits of cocoon.
The butterfly emerged easily but
it had a swollen body and shriveled wings.

The man continued to watch it,
expecting that any minute the wings would enlarge
and expand enough to support the body,
Neither happened!
In fact the butterfly spent the rest of its life
crawling around.
It was never able to fly.

What the man in his kindness
and haste did not understand:
The restricting cocoon and the struggle
required by the butterfly to get through the opening
was a way of forcing the fluid from the body
into the wings so that it would be ready
for flight once that was achieved.

Sometimes struggles are exactly
what we need in our lives.
Going through life with no obstacles would cripple us.
We will not be as strong as we could have been
and we would never fly.

ON LIFE........

I dream a lot while I am asleep, way too much.....not too long ago, I was dreaming that I was told I could ask any one question I wanted ........I asked "What is the secret of life?" The answer that came back to me was - "Just go with it." And just then I woke up. I don't know who I was talking to or where I was (in the dream) but you know.......that answer actually makes a lot of sense. So then I came to the conclusion that the secret of life is to just simply "go with it".

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• "Look, I don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're alive you've got to flap your arms and legs, you've got to jump around a lot, for life is the very opposite of death, and therefore you must at very least think noisy and colorfully, or you're not alive." ~Mel Brooks

• When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash - at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance. ~Thomas Merton

ON DAYDREAMING..........

All through my school years, I would constantly be in trouble with my teachers because of my daydreaming. My mind would just wander out the window and into the world beyond. It's a wonder that I learned anything at all! I love to daydream to this day.

• I think creative people are the best daydreamers. ~Sylvia Weaver Rivera
  

• When ideas float in our mind without any reflection or regard of the understanding, it is that which the French call revery, our language has scarce a name for it. ~John Locke

Aesop's Fables.......The Belly and the Members

This is one of my favorite of Aesop's Fables...............

One fine day it occurred to the Members of the Body that they were doing all the work and the Belly was having all the food. So they held a meeting, and after a long discussion, decided to strike work till the Belly consented to take its proper share of the work. So for a day or two, the Hands refused to take the food, the Mouth refused to receive it, and the Teeth had no work to do. But after a day or two the Members began to find that they themselves were not in a very active condition: the Hands could hardly move, and the Mouth was all parched and dry, while the Legs were unable to support the rest. So thus they found that even the Belly in its dull quiet way was doing necessary work for the Body, and that all must work together or the Body will go to pieces.
~~Aesop's Fables

THOUGHT PROVOKING QUOTES

• As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives. ~~Henry David Thoreau

• Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. ~~Henry David Thoreau
  

Even when it looks like all is lost.......

I was walking down the hall in my house one day and I happened to glance out the window and stopped in my tracks when I saw a Mockingbird flapping it's wings suspended in midair, I thought that was a little strange so I stepped up to the window and I saw that it had a huge green caterpillar in it's beak! The caterpillar (similar to the one pictured) was hanging on for dear life with only a few of his many little legs wrapped around a small branch on the tree and the Mockingbird had a hold of the rest of his plump body, pulling it with all his might while flapping his wings to stay airborne! I was stunned at that sight and ran to grab my camcorder to film this war of the wills. The battery was dead and in between looking for the cord and the extension I would run to the window to make sure they were still there and they were. I finally found an extension cord, plugged the camcorder in and I ran out to film but the bird was gone! I stood there feeling sorry for the poor little caterpillar that for sure had lost it's life to the tenacious bird......and as I was looking at the branch.....lo and behold, there still clutching the branch, was the caterpillar!!! He looked a little worn but there nonetheless!! Wow, I thought to myself, this caterpillar never gave up!! He was in a battle for his life clinging on with only a couple of his many legs and he won!! Wow! We could learn a lot from that caterpillar.....because even when it looks like all is lost......if you hang in there long enough, you will triumph!! Sometimes when things get a little rough, I think of that caterpillars will to survive and heck, if that little caterpillar can do it...so can I!!!

ON SERENDIPITY...........

......even the word is beautiful!

• The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’, but ‘That’s funny ..’- Isaac Asimov

• Serendipity is putting a quarter in the gumball machine and having three pieces come rattling out instead of one—all red.- Peter H. Reynolds

GREAT THINKING..........

• Never miss an opportunity to make others happy, even if you have to leave them alone in order to do it. ~Author Unknown

• Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It happens every day. ~Albert Camus, The Fall, 1956

• Every one should keep a mental wastepaper basket and the older he grows the more things he will consign to it - torn up to irrecoverable tatters. ~Samuel Butler

• I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.... People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back. ~Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982

• "Learn to love the flaws that you see within yourself as they are often the unique characteristics that other people love most about you." ~~Janelle Johnston

NEW BLOG...........

Hi, this is my new blog, where I will journal observations, quotes, magical happenstance, kismet, serendipitous events and divine interventions that happen as we go about our daily living.
Things that people often chalk up to coincidence and lucky or unlucky breaks. I believe in Guardian Angels, divine intervention and that things really do happen for a reason. I believe in Karma. One way or another what goes around comes around.