Normal things...

For the past three weeks I have been looking at art. Now, here I go and blow my bad boy image. I do a photo thing on the net. Just a group of people from all over the world, sharing photos. I have been trying to get into the feelings of what a picture is trying to show. Now, I know this sounds a little cornball, but I just now caught myself. For the past 30 minutes, I have been looking at this photo, that finally brought out some feelings in me and I began to cry. There's a picture of a beautiful black woman, who is obviously living in a third world country. She expresses her feelings very well in her art. I received an email from this lady and she really didn't have to tell her story by text. But just by looking deep into what a picture has to offer is just amazing to me. In her photos, I could see, love, joy, happiness, rage, fear, worry, hurt, pain and curiosity. These feelings I gathered from her art. I sensed that she has strong love for her family. I felt also that she had been raped, beaten, tortured, and stabbed. I don't know why, I just could feel these things. This email I got from her revealed these things to me. They did actually happen in Africa, where violence is rampant. She tells me that she keeps love and joy very close to her heart, despite all the despair, carnage, gloom and doom. She says her art is her way to heal. This is truly a very gifted and remarkable person. She knows by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, she could be gone with a swipe of a knife. With this being a very real possibility, she has learned not to waste a second of joy and happiness. The power of this woman's spirit is beyond words, but certainly, not beyond feeling.

Currently, I am still basically speechless. At the same time, I feel myself opening up to the possibilities...My problems seem really small. The possibilities are huge.

This reminds me of a story told by Father Joe Martin. "There are two little boys, placed into a house. One is an optimist, and one is a pessimist. Each of them are given a shovel, and are given directions for each of them to go to different rooms of this house and open the door. One boys door was on the first floor, the other boys door was on the second floor. The man said, "I'll be back in thirty minutes and see how things are going." and he left. When he came back, the man goes to the little boy sitting on the floor in the hallway in front of his door. "What's wrong?" the man asked. "This room is packed solid with horse manure, there can't be anything good in here!" So the man left and went upstairs to see what the other little boy was doing. Before the man was half way up the stairs he could hear the singing and whistling of the boy. The man peers into the room, and here's this little boy with the biggest smile on his face! He's singing, whistling, and shoveling horse dung!! The surprised man said, "Why are you so happy?" The little boy stopped shoveling and said, "With all this horse manure, there's got to be a pony around here somewhere!!"
I pray we all can find OUR pony...