I found the answer [to how and what to paint] when I joined a school of painters in Paris after the war who called themselves neomeditationists. . . . They believed an artist had to wait for inspiration, very quietly, and they did most of their waiting at the Cafe du Dome or the Rotonde with brandy. It was then that I realized that all the really good ideas I'd ever had came to me while I was milking a cow. So I went back to Iowa.

- Grant Wood

(thanks to The Sun Magazine's "Sunbeams" column for this and the previous post, both in the November 1998 issue)

I was a neurotic for years. I was anxious and depressed and selfish. Everyone kept telling me to change. I resisted them, and I agreed with them, and I wanted to change, but simply couldn't no matter how hard I tried. What hurt the most was that, like the others, my best friend kept insisting that I change. So I felt powerless and trapped. Then, one day, he said to me, "Don't change. I love you just as you are."

- Anthony De Mello

Reasons Why The English Language Is Hard To Learn:

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.
19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting in the shed, I shed a tear.
20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Happy is one who hath the power to gather wisdom from a flower.

Two by Rumi

If you want to know God,
Then turn your face toward your friend,
And don't look away.

*     *     *     *     *     *

Out beyond the ideas of right doing and wrong doing
There lies a field.
I'll meet you there.

Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.

- Japanese Proverb

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.

- Carl Jung

When you're going through hell, keep going.

- Winston Churchill

If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give.

- George MacDonald

Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.

- Henry James

Mine ear is much enamoured of thy note;
So is mine eye enthrallèd to thy shape;
And thy fair virtue's force perforce doth move me
On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee.

- William Shakespeare

The purpose of life is to unlearn what has been learned, and to remember what has been forgotten.

- a Sufi saying

"Dad, look at this!"

1 apple + 1 little boy = a discovery about the creativity in each of us:

A couple of years ago, my oldest son accosted me with news from kindergarten as I came home from my office at Harvard University.  He had learned something about apples and wanted to demonstrate.  Out of the drawer came a knife, one of those he was not supposed to handle, and out of the refrigerator a McIntosh.  "Dad," he said, "Let me show you what's inside an apple."

"I know what's inside an apple," I said, riding for a fall.

"C'mon, just let me show you."

"Listen, I've cut open lots of apples.  Why ruin an apple just to show me something I already know?"

"Just take a look."

Ungracefully, I gave in.  He cut the apple in half - the wrong way.  We all know the right way to cut apples.  One starts at the stem and slices through to the dimple on the bottom.  However, he turned the apple on its side, sliced the apple in half perpendicular to the stem, and displayed the result.  "See, Dad.  There's a star inside."

Sure enough, there was.  In cross section, the core of the apple made a distinct five-pointed star.  How many apples I had eaten in my life, cutting them in half the right way and never suspecting the hidden pattern waiting for me!  Then one day my child brought news of it home, out to convert the infidel - and he did.

I have not tried to find out, but I'm sure this star-shaped structure is common knowledge in botany, where no doubt there are students of apples who do dissections of McIntosh and Golden Delicious, nibbling the scraps as they go.  Whoever first sliced an apple the "wrong" way may well have had a good reason to do so, curiosity being one good reason.  Or it might have been one of those fruitful - I use the word carefully - mistakes all of us make sometimes.  What struck me then and still impresses me now is that this hidden pattern fascinated enough to make its way around.  The knowledge of it traveled from unknown origins to my son's kindergarten class and so to me and now to you.  Its very survival and vigor as something to know about vouches for the engagement we find in discovery.

So, if you want to know what creativity is about, in part it's about an apple - sliced the "wrong" way.

- David Perkins, The Mind's Best Work (1981)
(I came upon this excerpt in the September 1982 issue of Family Circle magazine)

Never throw anyone out of your heart.  People, more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed.

- Eb & Deb Shapiro

Because I love, the Summer air quivers with a thousand wings.

- Kathleen Raine

Tasting a deeper stillness within our own being, we no longer feel compelled to escape from ourselves into a world of distraction or flee from a life that has previously been experienced as overpowering.

- Christina Feldman, Silence: How to Find Inner Peace in a Busy World

As long as you cling to the idea of the way "life is supposed to be," your life circumstances will continue to reflect a perspective that sees itself at the effect of circumstances beyond your control.

- The Wisdom of Oneness, through Rasha
   http://www.onenesswebsite.com/

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.

- James Oppenheim,

Twenty, from the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu

Give up learning, and put an end to your troubles.

Is there a difference between yes and no?
Is there a difference between good and evil?
Must I fear what others fear?  What nonsense!
Other people are contented, enjoying the sacrificial feast of the ox.
In spring some go to the park, and climb the terrace,
But I alone am drifting, not knowing where I am.
Like a newborn babe before it learns to smile,
I am alone, without a place to go.

Others have more than they need, but I alone have nothing.
I am a fool.  Oh, yes! I am confused.
Other men are clear and bright,
But I alone am dim and weak.
Other men are sharp and clever,
But I alone am dull and stupid.
Oh, I drift like the waves of the sea,
Without direction, like the restless wind.

Everyone else is busy,
But I alone am aimless and depressed.
I am different.
I am nourished by the great mother.