Let Gratitude Be Your Guide


... and watch her as she unveils beauty all around you! 

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WORK IN PROGRESS

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  Here is the latest painting I am working on.  It is not done, but is a "work in progress". I love where it is now, and sometimes when I look at it I call it "Mango Lady" because the colors remind me of a delicious ripe mango - my favorite fruit.  I once told a friend, that if heaven had a smell, it would smell like mangos.  I started this painting last week, on what was probably the first day of the heat wave that had come through San Jose and settled into the valley for what seemed like a good week.  And for some reason I was inspired to carry my paints and easel outdoors to paint, which was a bit crazy, because folks it was warm out there. I love this idea of a "work in progress," which is often used for projects that have a beginning, middle and an end. It gives credence to every step in the process, and validates wherever you are.  What if we looked at our own lives as a "work in progress" - would that help keep our eye and focus in
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AN ETHEREAL NOTE

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In the morning light, the orange tabby sits atop a chair and waits, diurnally, like the birdsong  arising from the pit of this small valley after my boyfriend goes down 22 steps to his sun- fire red  truck and  drives off to work.  What awakens the birds from slumber?  Is  it the fading light from  the last star in the sky, or the regurgitating  sound of the truck's engine.  The morning sky is gray, yet a patch of blue so light and luminescent is quilted in the western sky, an ethereal note that this day  will be good.  How many times in our lives have we needed a  whisper of beauty  to make it through, after the alarm  clock goes off once again, and  another day begins, similar to yesterday, yet different. Did the ancients experience routine in their lives? Or did they live in the mystery enough.  So that each day  they woke up,  thrilled to see  another sunrise, thrilled to be alive.  - Pranita Patel   (c) 2015
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Read This Book: When Breath Becomes Air

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“That message is simple: When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.”  ―  Paul Kalanithi ,  When Breath Becomes Air Paul Kalanithi has a given us a tremendous gift in this book, he has shown us how to live and die with integrity and meaning.  Go get this book and read it.  
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