We’re in the second week of Advent. It’s a cool, damp day and I’m hoping to have time for a muddy trail run with Ollie before this evening’s Studio open house with the Bottletree Crew.
I started to write, “it’s been a crazy couple of years,” but really, when hasn’t it been? As we hurtle through space on this gigantic ball of earth, we have this amazing gift of a human life-span. With it we love, commune, create, and reflect. That last one is a big one this time of year.
Reflect. On what we’ve done and not done. The connections we’ve gained, or nurtured, or lost. The lessons we’ve learned.
As a nation we are in what I hope is a waning phase of letting hatred be in charge of the government. Hatred and fear. It manifests as racism, xenophobia, antisemitic, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, contempt for the physical Earth itself. I don’t understand it, but I’m trying. I’m trying to understand it because really y’all, without understanding other’s viewpoints, what is there? Just this destroying energy which elected the current occupant of the white house. All that fear which fueled legal segregation, the murder of Matthew Shepherd, the rise of Naziism, all that fear will continue to destroy us and our planet if we don’t try to understand and heal.
How to understand and heal? I don’t know. But I think with this huge gift of life, my challenge is to continue to reflect and learn, and try to make a difference. To talk to you through my words, through my paintings, through my actions.
This second week of Advent, we will run through the mud and let our life-juices flow, let the moments past and to come flow through our hearts, and try to make this world a better place, every single day.