February 7--Another Completion

Life must be rich and full of loving--it's no good otherwise, no good at all, for anyone.  --Jack Kerouac

    Art makes life "rich and full of loving." I have completed another straight-line painting. It has taken some time for me to like my own artwork (super-self-critical), and I love this latest accomplishment. The title is "That's Odd." There are five colors: peach, turquoise, ivory, black and tan. There is an odd number of occurrences of each color. Every occurrence of every color has an odd number of sides. I started with the 7-sided turquoise splotch in the center and worked outward from there. It grew however I was moved on any given day. I started this the day after Christmas 2023 and worked on it every day since then. I believe this qualifies for complex art--at least in my brain, it does! The triple-coated acrylic paint is on a 2' square of weather-resistant sealed plywood that can be hung indoors or out. 

    Now I'm a little freaked... what is my next creative project!?!?!!

        Leta

"That's Odd" by Leta Renee Miller,
February 2024

February 6--More, More, More

Only love can be divided endlessly and still not diminish. 
--Anne Morrow Lindbergh

    I'm so grateful for this. When I was pregnant with our second child, I remember wondering if I could possibly love him as much as the first. Sure enough, I certainly have. The arrival of each child simply makes love grow. 

    Yesterday was the "dry run" for the simulated patient (SP) gig involving a birth. I get to be the voice of the pregnant manikin from the control room. We spent most of our time learning how to load the baby into the manikin so that it pushes it out properly. It is amazing technology. The birthing manikin even blinks, which freaked me out when I first noticed it. Next Monday we do the actual delivery Encounters, five each in six practice rooms. You'll get to hear all about it...

    Love makes everything work better.

        Leta

This gives you the idea, but 
there is LOTS of lube involved!

February 5--Note the Vibes

People are felt rather than seen after the first few moments.  --John Steinbeck

    I think this is a good thing, and I am a strong advocate for using that intuitive sense wisely. 

    I can think of a few people in my life with whom I would rather not be sharing the planet. They give me "the creeps" because they have displayed sleazy or deceitful behavior or said inappropriate things. I'm glad there have been only a few such folks. 

    On the other hand, I have encountered many folks in my life with whom I felt great comfort and joy very early on. This has been especially true as I have met so many people playing pickleball. It has been pretty easy to "feel" those who are "win at any cost" vs. "let's have fun." 

    Being an introvert, it can be a challenge for me to get past "the first few moments" of conversation, but I am nearly always rewarded with good feelings as I learn about another interesting earthly life. 

        Leta

It's February--Spring Training starts soon! 😂

February 4--Share My Joy

To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.  --Mark Twain

    You, my sweet readers, get some of this "full value of joy:" 

I am going to be Grammie again in mid-September!!!!!!!!!!!

    Nothing else I could write today can top that!

        Leta

February 3--Me Loving Me, You Loving You==>GOOD!

You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.  --Buddha

    I remember many years ago at a gathering of my husband's family that his father gave a prayer in which he hoped he had lived a life of sufficient goodness to get into heaven. It was a stunning thought to me. He had made a wonderful life for himself and his family, and the idea that he was worried about getting into heaven was so sad. The possibility that there is no hell could not enter his long-held belief system. It seems we are trained, almost from Day One, that we are faulty, and what faulty human deserves love and affection? We are ALL faulty, and all deserving! Isn't it our faults that make us human?!?! 

    How boring would it be for Spirit, taking on human form as us, to reside in perfect humans!?!?! Let us love ourselves, simply for taking on the adventure of earthly life!

        Leta

 

February 2--It Is Way Past Time to Change

One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving. 
--Paulo Coelho

    I live in Wichita, Kansas. We made national news recently with the theft and destruction of a beloved Jackie Robinson statue from League 42, a nonprofit "dedicated to bringing the love of baseball to the youth of our city." Some pigs chopped off the statue at the ankles, hauled it off in a pickup, chopped it up and burned it. Fortunately donations are flowing in to rebuild and replace it. 

Episcopal priest Stephanie Spellers describes the story of domination emerging from our collective self-centeredness:

When you see cultures based on White supremacy, misogyny, environmental exploitation, consumerism, oppression, and domination, you are actually seeing the fallout from self-centrism. Entire systems, institutions, and societies are fully capable of this sin, as when a group places itself at the center and expects the rest of humanity and creation to support its singular prosperity.

There is no possibility for right relationship if one powerful group protects and sustains itself over and against all others. From there, it’s just too easy to construct binaries and hierarchies of human existence. Our group is good; all of you are bad. Our group belongs on top; we have to keep you low. Our group owns these resources and knows the best way to use them; you will only receive what we give you. Other members of the human family become objects and tools to be acquired, controlled, used, and discarded.

    The destruction of the statue is hateful self-centered White supremacy at its grossest. 

        Leta

February 1--Affection and Reconciliation

Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our natural lives.  --C. S. Lewis 

    The February theme in "Daily Kindness" is affection. Who couldn't use more of that?!!?

    Stories... we all have them, individually and collectively, that we have made up about life. Facts may or may not be involved. I am pleased to share this from Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation of January 29:

In their e-book The Seventh Story, Brian McLaren and Gareth Higgins create a tale of the origin of seven stories of how humans—The People—interact and live with one another:

One day, a long time ago, one of The People saw another one of The People holding something shiny. “I want it,” said one of The People, so he took it. When he got back home that night, the rest of The People were amazed. “Because I have a shiny object,” he proclaimed, “You have to listen to me.” He told them a story about what he had learned about how to be happy, how to have peace and security, how to keep the shiny thing that he had found. The first story [the domination story] said that the way to be happy is to rule over others.

But every time that story was attempted, people were unhappy because the rulers oppressed them. So a second story was invented: Let’s overthrow the rulers. This [revolution] story didn’t work either because it just turned the tables, putting new people under oppression.

Another story began in which the old revolutionaries withdrew into their own isolated spaces and judged the world. Nothing changed. These island communities used the same old stories to run themselves, competing to be in charge … and dominating each other.

Meanwhile, the domination story and the isolation story had a business merger, which resulted in an experiment: if they could get rid of the people they didn’t like, who looked or sounded different, or whose customs weren’t like their own, surely that would fix things? Of course, that [purification] story just led to more suffering.…

The People still weren’t happy, and they knew it…. The People tried to convince themselves that things were okay by accumulating things; toys or nations, it was all the same to them.… The People kept hurting, and hurting each other. A sixth story [the victimization story] was created…. The People would make sure that no one would ever forget that they were the victims, that their suffering was their very identity, and that no one had suffered as much as them.…

Then, something new; a poet came to town, a storyteller who knew that the domination story, the revolution story, the isolation story, the purification story, the accumulation story, and the victimization story were all destined to fail.

They were destined to fail because they invited every human being, who is already interdependent with every other human being, and even with the earth itself, to pretend instead that we are in a competition.… The poet had a radical idea, the seed of a Seventh Story that will heal the world.… In the Seventh Story, the story of reconciliation, we still get to win, just not at anybody else’s expense. In the Seventh Story, human beings are not the protagonists of the world. Love is.

    Let's amp up our efforts toward the reconciliation story...

        Leta

Creativity is an essential element
of our reconciliation story. 
(One of my barn quilt paintings)