Life, Love, Spirit, and Imagination – A Clarifier

Unlike most other brief poetic blog posts of this website, I am taking a moment in this piece to clarify some dynamics of my little project. Hopefully this will be clarifying for the few in this “world wide” web of viewers who may be reading.

My life is most definitely blessed in countless ways and chief among those blessings is the love of family.  My wife graces me with her kindness and understanding that has flourished in almost thirty years of marriage – and still counting!  Together, we enjoy a very happy and loving marriage.  (As a pastor, I feel obligated to clarify these matters for any congregants looking on as I share my hobby of art and literature.)

Some may wonder why I am posting literature of hardships or fragments of love poetry that could well have been written by a less fortunate or wandering man in thoroughly different circumstances.  The best answer I can give you is that I am convinced every person has a heart that resonates with insight and experience not fully their own.  For example, I resonate with the great poetry of Pablo Neruda – his passionate works on love or justice.  I can feel the longings of my youth or sense anticipations of old age that are emblematically set forth in literature so beautifully.   All of this – Love, Life, Spirit, and Imagination – is placed within the arts.  I enjoy, as a pastime, the chance to explore, write, and share things such as this.

So it won’t do to worry or wonder if one post or portfolio image signifies some hidden truth I am seeking to express – not at all.  This little project is simply an appreciation of beauty.

Life is an unfinished canvass.  The shades of color God offers us are never fully completed on the masterpiece of our lives. So I invite you simply to be interested, surprised, puzzled, and bemused by the literature and images I am posting.  If anything is concerning to you, I welcome you to send me a note via the contact page – or just let your interests turn elsewhere.  Thank you for reading and visiting.

Finally with this post, I will leave you with a line connected to an image.  That is mainly what I am doing here, connecting words and images. Again, the line is more connected to the image than to me. But I found the lines very moving.  It resonates with moments of my youth and moments others have described from their lives. (In this example you could say that all of us at some have known what it is to have some missing piece of life.)  The quotation is a line drawn from Edith Wharton’s novel, “The Age of Innocence.”  To me, it seemed to match the wistful musings of this fellow in Gustave Caillebotte’s painting.

“Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been – like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery.”