• The Spa Life and Righteousness

    As a gal who loves her spa days, few and far between though they are, I enjoy the pampering these small forays into indulgence involve. The friendly staff, the luxurious soft robes, the warm scented tubs, the cold needled showers, and even the brief stints in the steam box. Most of all, I live for…


  • Homage to Van Gogh: Sunflowers

    Flowers please us because of their colors and forms, but also because of their fleeting beauty. While the class was painting, I threw some colors on an old canvas. It is a sketch, since never got to the dark accents of the petals. The paint was wet, so I would have had mud, not two…


  • PLANNING TO FAIL MISERABLY

    How to do it as an artist or any other professional. Or lollygagger in the workplace. I personally like #8—Why don’t you ever paint landscapes in normal colors? I get this question all the time. How do we know our greens and blues of today are “normal?” We live in creation after the fall, not…


  • The Butter Queen

    “If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness,  we lie, and do not the truth…” ~~ 1 John 1:6  Oh, Paula Dean, the Butter Queen! Once you were everywhere seen, but now you just seem awfully mean. Or were you just good at hiding your true self until you got…


  • Doing Battle With The Dragon

    “The horse is made ready for the day of battle, 
but the victory belongs to the Lord.”  ~~ Proverbs 21:31  As I journeyed with my group along the Silk Road on the fourth day of our pilgrimage, we saw the twin peaked volcano Mount Erciyes, on which St. George of Cappadocia was said to have slain…


  • 50 Shades of Slavery

    “But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.” ~~ 1 Corinthians 8:9 Twenty million copies of 50 Shades of Grey have been sold, earning author E.L. James around $50,000,000 to date—one million per shade of grey, as the wag might say. As a result, the…


  • Crayola Crayons and the Secret of The Cross

    “When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”                                  …