Changing It UP!

I've decided that this idea--to do a daily blog based on interesting quotations--has played itself out.
I got bored with it, and, more importantly, it was taking time away from something I've shined on for a while: making stuff.
So I've decided to base my posts on things I make myself: drawings and other bits of art, poetry, photography and writing. This includes sharing that which I find inspiring or really funny.
I'm also easing off of the "Daily" thing and doing a "when I feel like it or when I have something I really want to share" thing.
I'm at an age where I not only want to make more space in my life for personal, visual expressions, I want to rediscovering the joy I had as a child when I simply made things for fun..
My posts will be my progress report, and I hope they will be enjoyable for us all.

"The more one judges, the less one loves."--Honore de Balzac

Love has nothing to do with being a perfect 10.  Love has nothing to do with being a good provider.  Love has nothing to do with being tall, dark, and handsome.  Love has nothing to do with being charming.  Love has nothing to do with being smart.  Love has nothing to do with anything you can measure, evaluate, or factor in.  Love IS blind, and that's it's best quality.

"You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love"--Henry Drummond

Fear and anger shut you down. What is closed cannot receive. Nothing changes if you haven't room in your heart to accept what life brings you.
Love opens you up. What is opened is receptive. When you love, you welcome life into your heart and you begin to truly live.

"All that we love deeply becomes a part of us."-- Helen Keller

This is true and more than this: what we love is already a part of us. We are made of love and made for loving. Love is who we are.
We've been taught not to love, but what we recognize when we finally overcome our training is that love sets us free. It feels RIGHT to love, and when we love we feel like we are living the truth about ourselves--and, in fact, we are.

"Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place."-- Zora Neale Hurston

To feel comfortable enough to be yourself is the cherry on top of the love sundae. Feeling safe with someone is a sure sign of love. It's absence means that you're mistaking love for something else.

"We live in the world when we love it."-- Rabindranath Tagore

Love dissolves barriers; at least we want it to. We want to merge with what we love. When we love to paint, losing ourselves in the process is the greatest pleasure. When we love a person, feeling we can be who we truly are in their presence is the greatest relief. When we love the world, we forget that we've been taught to fear it. When we lose our fear, that is when we start really living.

"We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another."-- Jonathan Swift

Ironic, right? So many religions preach loving one another, but so few actually practice what they preach. When people join together to worship might it be because they feel there is safety in numbers, and if you need to gather together to be safe then doesn't that imply that there is an enemy? That would mean that it is only safe to love those who are in your group, while those outside the flock must be dangerous.
This is the great mistake of religion.