Monday, May 31, 2010

The beauty of trees


While at church Sunday morning, I was observing the faces of those around me.  By this I mean I was literally looking at the faces, noticing how people I've known over the years through school or attending church have changed.  If you see a face fairly often, the metamorphosis from aging is not so readily apparent and the faces are just accepted as what they are.  I changed my perspective, trying to recall the faces as they were at a younger age, noting how time has altered the person's appearance, the characteristics that stayed the same, how the changes often make the person more beautiful just in a different way.

This thought process somehow segued into comparing people to trees. I must say I love trees.  Love looking at them, marvelling at the beauty of them, the many ways that branches can grow on a tree, some twisty and curly, others straight and reaching toward the sky.  How beautiful the trees look in every season!  In spring, there are small green buds or colorful sprigs of flowers bringing hope for growth and warmth after the cold of winter. The full grown leaves of summer feed the tree, provide shelter, and give us greenness to beautify our world.  As the leaves turn the glorious shades of autumn, the horizons portray the masterpieces painted with the brush that God holds in His hand.  When bare of the leaves that graced them in other seasons, the beauty of just the shapes of the trees and their branches becomes apparent.

In the words of the preceding paragraph, I think you can see how I began to relate trees and people. Each season of our life has a beauty all it's own.  As written in Ecclesiastes, there is a time for everything.  The young are lovely in a way unmarred by the ravages of time.  They are tender but resilient all the same. As growth brings them to young adulthood, hopefully roots grow that will anchor them firmly when storms blow.  Sometimes there may be damage from these life storms, branches lost, wounds inflicted by uncaring individuals, and even some that will be lost altogether in the different stages of life to disease or the storms. Those who survive to adulthood will bear the scars and the signs of the passage of time but still have a God-given unique beauty only enhanced by these marks of character.  Often the spark of the child within can still be seen in the face of those who are granted the favored privilege of old age, especially those who can appreciate the value and preciousness of life. I had the fortune of working with people for many years in a hospital with the majority of our patients being in the latter stages of life. There is beauty in the wrinkles and the sight-dimmed eyes just as there is in a tree that has lost most of it's branches. Even when the life is gone from the tree and there remains only a stump, nature is still at work, returning the remains of a tree back to the ground to enrich the soil to bring new life again. Hopefully we leave enough goodness behind when we are gone that we, too, are still contributing to the lives of those coming along after us. Even if it be a nameless legacy that would be enough for me.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Already into another month


I know I keep saying it but time is flying by. I just enjoyed a great Mother's Day weekend. I was off for 4 days so we took advantage of this time to take some furniture down to Emily that we had stored here in Mom and Pop's Storage Building(aka our garage)on Thursday evening and exchange it for a baby Thomas. Definitely think we got the better end of the deal all the way around, a little more room in the garage and spending time with our precious grandson. Bad Granna that I am, I did not take the first picture all weekend! Emily drove up Friday evening to join us for a visit. This was her first Mother's Day. I totally intended to take some nice photos for remembrance and then we stayed so busy I never did. Oh, well, we have memories, although Emily and I joked that we don't know how long we'll have them the way we forget things. I told her we could just make something up when and if we did!

I've spent all evening working with my desktop, trying to get it working faster, with no luck. For my internet browsing these days I'm using my laptop since the desktop is sssooo slow.  My scanner is connected to the desktop computer, so if I want to scan some art to share on my blog, I need to do it there.  The connections/plugs are not easy to get to or I would just have it to where I could use the scanner interchangeably with either my laptop or the desktop.  I got my latest art scanned but only managed to get one pic loaded onto my blog before I lost patience with it all.  Shown above is a spread I've done in a cute deco book/journal that a friend of Beth's has going around.  I've had it several months now and need to get it in the mail to the next person.  Hope to get that done this week.  The theme of these pages is to take joy in the moment and were done by gesso on the base pages, collage with various paper scraps, and a little stamping. 

I have completed and did scan the fabric cuff I've done for Beth, but the scan didn't save to my blog. It will be a post for another day and upon thinking about it some more, might be best if I wait to show it until I've sent it to Bethie anyways.  I still haven't made the extra gifts that I want to send with the cuff so that is the reason it's still here and not on it's way to her. I've ideas and plans that I hope come about soon in regards to art and crafting.  Trying to keep up hope that I will find a way to incorporate art into my life again and have a creativity spark be there as well. 

Today I had time but I was not feeling well, achy and draggy like I'm coming down with a cold.  Emily and Kerry have both been sick with some really bad stuff, so I hope that is not what it is.  I'm fortunate to hardly ever be sick, having developed a strong immune system working at the hospital, I guess.  I've been drinking Airborne and taking my vitamins trying to fight this off and hope to be successful.

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