Myriad Ways

2021 Graphic Journal page #3 Jan. 8-21

Groping Our Way into to the New World

How We Make Life Work with Each Other: 2 Quotes and 2 Prayers

We are building something immense together that, though invisible and immaterial, is a structure, one we reside within—or, rather, many overlapping structures…Though there are individual voices and people who got there first, these are collective projects that matter not when one person says something but when a million integrate it into how they see and act in the world. . . The consequences of these transformations are perhaps most important where they are most subtle. They remake the world, and they do so mostly by the accretion of small gestures and statements and the embracing of new visions of what can be and should be.

Rebecca Solnit, Whose Story is This

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love,

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

And, where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek:

To be consoled as to console,

To be understood as to understand,

To be loved as to love,

For it is in giving that we are pardoned;

And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life,

Amen

“Civilised life, you know, is based on a huge number of illusions in which we all collaborate willingly. The trouble is we forget after a while that they are illusions and we are deeply shocked when reality is torn down around us.”

― J.G. Ballard

SMILE!

Here is a new day

To be present

in each miraculous moment

and to create

peace and compassion

with every conscious

breath.

2021 Graphic Journal page #2 Jan. 8-14

After the Insurrection

2021 Graphic Journal page #1 Jan. 1-7

New life rises from the decaying detritus of the old.

In This New Year I Am Hoping for a Whole Bunch of Nothing

Things were never “the way they used to be.”

Things will never “be the way it is going to be.”

Things are always the way they are for the time being.

And the time being is always in motion.

Alexander Evangeli Xenopouloudakis

Found in “Words I Wish I Wrote” by Robert Fulghum

The only way out is forward and we can’t get there with our worn out tired ways of thinking and being in the world. We need to clear some space and let go of some of our baggage about what ought to be or should be and open some space for what we have not thought of yet. We need to dig a tunnel through the all those jetpack/time machine fantasy visions of the future and dreams of bringing back some mythological golden past was made up in our simplistic childhood minds, painted in the bold colors devoid of the hard and dirty details that make up adult life. Tunnels made of time spent in thinking with open minds and hearts that can look honestly at ourselves and the world. Somehow we have to be realistic outside of our cluttered boxes that are filled with the unrealistic and fear induced distractions we gather around us to cope with uncertainty. Life is just as uncertain with all the distractions; we are just not paying attention. This year I hope to clear my mind, life, and relationships of the unnecessary cobwebs and glitter and get down to what helps me make sense of my life living in the present. So I am hoping for less of all the filler that separates me from my small still voice of truth, that part of me that gives me insight and courage to move into the next moment with optimism and curiosity. I am hoping for a whole lotta nothin’ from now on and a happy new year everyday.

Happy New Year!

2021 Graphic Journal page #3 Jan. 8-21

Groping Our Way into to the New World

How We Make Life Work with Each Other: 2 Quotes and 2 Prayers

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love,

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

And, where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek:

To be consoled as to console,

To be understood as to understand,

To be loved as to love,

For it is in giving that we are pardoned;

And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life,

Amen

“Civilised life, you know, is based on a huge number of illusions in which we all collaborate willingly. The trouble is we forget after a while that they are illusions and we are deeply shocked when reality is torn down around us.”

SMILE!

Here is a new day

To be present

in each miraculous moment

and to create

peace and compassion

with every conscious

breath.

2021 Graphic Journal page #2 Jan. 8-14

2021 Graphic Journal page #1 Jan. 1-7

New life rises from the decaying detritus of the old.

In This New Year I Am Hoping for a Whole Bunch of Nothing

Things were never “the way they used to be.”

Things will never “be the way it is going to be.”

Things are always the way they are for the time being.

And the time being is always in motion.

Happy New Year!