Tag Archives: will

Celebrate Early!

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Happy-Kids Celebrate 2I paint in a sea of Spanish. For the past two years, every Wednesday morning I enter the inspiring atelier of my teacher Luz Jiménez Díaz. She is from Colombia and has lived in The Netherlands for the past 20 years. Most of my fellow students are also Spanish speaking, coming from Mexico, Columbia, and Argentina. They easily slide from Spanish to Dutch to English, sometimes laughing and chatting as they paint.

The large room is full of light. Outside a flower garden, tended by Luz’s Dutch husband Johan surrounds us. You enter the garden by way of a large mosaic terrace Luz designed based on Egyptian images and gods. In late autumn, the garden is still vibrant. White and purple cornflowers flourish while the sunflowers hang forlorn and creamy dahlias struggle against the cold.

A small group of us attempt to bring our imagination to life under Luz’s patient and encouraging eye. When I first started, Luz would often appear before my atrocious splashes of color and say, “Your work is full of feeling.” She would then take a brush and tenderly demonstrate a technique that she wanted me to learn. “Why don’t you try this?” she would ask, and I was completely swept away. Only later did I realize that when she said, “Your work is full of feeling,” it probably needed a lot more technique!

Last week I decided to bring German cakes to share with my fellow aspiring artists. We usually stop mid-way for rich Colombian coffee or herbal tea, accompanied this time with slices of tart, both thickly-layered, one of apple and another of raspberry cream.

“What are we celebrating?” everyone asked.

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Your Significance Reaches Beyond Your Imagination

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Our acts of kindness are like seeds in the wind. Surrender them to be transformed into miracles.

Our acts of kindness are like seeds in the wind. Surrender them to be transformed into miracles.

How often do you despair at your apparent insignificance? Between ISIS, Ebola, and the devastation of the world’s climate, what possible difference can we make? Such problems can feel overwhelming and our own meager lives seem so small. Even when we do rise above such feelings of inadequacy, we then might struggle to choose the most appropriate response. What actions can we possibly take at a personal level to affect what is emerging globally?

First of all, you and your actions do matter. My experience is that our significance reaches far beyond our imagination. Even the smallest acts of kindness directed towards rectifying the world’s injustices make a difference. But perhaps most surprisingly and wonderfully, even obscure acts that we may not consider meaningful can make a difference.

Let me offer you an example from my life. Sometimes I write poetry and often I wonder why. What purpose do these poems serve? I scribble them down in a notebook, sometimes share them, most of the time not. But then one day, I received a mysterious letter. The only address on the envelope was:

Catherine Ann Lombard
Giove, Italy

At the time I was living in The Netherlands. This letter, without any street address or zip code, had been forwarded to my new Dutch address from the Italian post office 1300 km (800 miles) away.

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Sunflower Lessons

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SunflowerThere are times in my life when I know I am trying too hard. No matter what I seem to do, nothing works, eases forward, sings in tune. For instance, while working in my garden, I can dig the earth, feed it the richest manure, insure it has enough calcium, carefully sow the seeds, faithfully water, fuss over the tiniest plants, pull weeds, and even pray. And still nothing grows. Sometimes I forget about God. Oh yeah, that Guy. He also might have something to say. In fact, his Will (or in psychosynthesis terms, the Higher Self and Transpersonal Will) might be bigger and beyond what I can imagine growing in anybody’s garden. In anybody’s heart and soul.

I recently learned a lesson from my sunflowers. This year they grew with only the Hand of God to tend them. Last year, we carefully planted sunflowers which grew and blossomed. Once the flowers hung heavy with seed, tipping their heads like bowing monks, we cut and left them on our terrace for the birds to swoop down and eat from. The chickadees and blue tits would shyly flutter from the sunflower stalks down to the cut flower heads on the terrace, steal a seed and speed home. By the end of the day, discarded seeds and shells would lay strewn on the terrace floor to be swept away.

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