I have an on-line friend who is a Texas farm wife. She drives huge tractors, reads books from her Kindle, prays for rain, thinks her grandchildren are the best grandchildren ever made, loves the flat earth that surrounds her, calls her husband Sweet Farmer, and can draw and paint in such a way that it makes me drool. This morning I awakened to find a new painting gracing her blogspot. The painting is called Exuberance, and as my eyes took it in, I fell in love for the umpteenth time with Peggy and her pencils, paintbrushes, and palette of color. She always lists the items used to create her art, as though the tools are as important as the painter. I guess if you are an artist you’d be up a creek without your tools. Fluid acrylics, shiva oil pencils, and black gesso gave birth to this particular painting.
This magical spilling of color to the page is of a fairy-winged, skinny-legged, aging, gray-haired ballerina. This lovely dancer has a huge head, rainbow-colored eyeshadow gracing the lids of starry, twinkling eyes, and a heart that appears to be “dripping” love sewn to the front of her tu-tu. She is a magical little creature born in Peggy’s imagination.
Peggy and I both live within the realms of imagination. Peggy likes the way I write. She’s told me so. I love the way she paints, and I have told her the same. Both words and paint are tools of expression, and just thinking about that made me go off on a “ field trip for the mind” this morning. I suppose I am known by those who love me for those field trips. I don’t exit the room. I don’t pack a bag. I don’t board an airplane, but I go far, far away as stories, characters, and dialogue are spun from nothing into something inside my head. Peggy does the same, she just does it with pencils, chalks, and paint.
I wonder how many of you take similar “field trips?” Perhaps your field trip shows up in the kitchen. You take a little of this, and a little of that, and churn out a culinary miracle. Can you make a really good pie crust and fill it to the brim with yum? If you can, I assure you that you’re talented. Perhaps, your trip takes you to the workshop “out back” where you assemble wood and nails, screws and bolts, and “Voila” you’ve created a treasure with the magic of your hands. Do you clean house well, or perhaps, for a living? If you do, you are a giant among humankind (in my messy-housed opinion) because you bring both joy and exuberance to the unorganized of the world. Can you sew, knit, crochet, or do counted cross stitch? If you can, there is a real likelihood that the works of your hands will outlive you. Your creation, your gift, will become someone’s treasure.
Gifts and treasures come in all shapes, sizes, and mediums. Just as the biblical wise men came from afar bearing gifts for the Christ child, we too are expected to share our gifts with the world. Those men brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh. In yesteryear’s economy those were items of great value. There wasn’t just one wise man hoarding all the gifts on his long-legged camel. There were wise men, bringing multiple gifts. Think about what that little field trip cost them. Not only did it cost the value of those gifts, but also the time and attention it took to follow a star that led to a child of Promise. Some theologians surmise the trip took about two years, and yet, these wise men left behind their families, and their lives as they knew them in order to ride camelback so they might “gift” another with something of precious value.
I am not suggesting you leave your family and ride camelback for two years in order to share your gift, but what I do want to say is that whatever your gift may be……. you do have a responsibility to share it with others! Be it words, paint, wood, food, needle and thread, organization, or even the lovely intangibles like humor, kindness, and tenderness you must share your gift . So take a little field trip in your mind. See what comes up, and then see that it comes out. You’ll be glad you did, and so will the people who get to share in your act of joyful creation and exuberance.
“Thank you, Peggy, for that reminder, and also for the image of the starry-eyed, big-headed, knobby-kneed, dripping- hearted ballerina that is now forever etched in my mind and in my heart!”
Motto of the story: Live life exuberantly, and don’t forget to share.
