My latest pastel is of a lotus--one of my favorite flowers.  Along with the rose, the lotus symbolizes human wholeness.  I think it is fascinating that such beauty blossoms out of the muddy water where lotuses grow.  On the surface they look separate, but far below, their roots are all intertwined.  Lots to ponder in that image.

The lotus shows me that no matter how murky and tangled things are in the places we live, the beauty of our souls can blossom as we grow towards the Light.  

My dear daughter Janelle just left after nearly a week with us out here.
She leaves a big empty space.  Her presence with us is always such a gift.
I sent her home with these two bags (pictured above) for her and her husband Thomas.  I knitted and crocheted them to be Appreciation Bags.  Inside each bag I tucked a small gift and a note which told each of them some of the many things I appreciate about them.   It was a long list and could have been a lot longer.
The bags are on the glass table on our deck overlocking the red rock mountains.
They glowing in the Arizona sunshine and I hope the glow goes with them back to snowy Chicago!
I suggested to Janelle that she could keep the bag and put notes of what/who she appreciates in her life inside the bag and every now and then take out the notes/cards to have an Appreciation Fest.  Or she could pass the bag on to someone else with a note of Appreciation.  Or…..whatever she can dream up somehow connected with Appreciation and the sharing and savoring of it.
I believe that when we are appreciative, we are in a high consciousness, and it is a great place to be.  Its kind of another form of the old hymn sentiment "Count Your Blessings, name them one by one….."

Here are three images of a rose, all of them my images, meaning, that I took a picture of a rose blooming by a big rock wall;  I did a pastel based on that picture; and then I took a picture of the pastel which also reflected me.  That's profound, isn't it?  I mean, each of us perceives something(or someone, or some event) as an image in our own unique way.  And then we re-create it in some way, even if only in our psyche.  Perhaps we then reflect on it, and even share it in some way. We are truly intertwined with it. Obviously then,  no one's perceptions and images of what we like to call "reality"  are quite the same, and the more we make them our own, the more of ourselves go into them.  How true the well known statement "We do not see things as they are; we see them as we are."  

No wonder it is often so hard for us to understand, really understand, one another!  And how foolish for any of us to claim that our particular image/perceptions of reality is The Right One, and all others err in some way.

All of this, it seems to me, is cause for cultivating the virtue of HUMILITY!