Enjoying the Beauty Around Us

I am giving a watercolor workshop at the Center for Spiritual Direction on Thursday. The workshop is designed to help people discover the creativity within them as well as to help them appreciate beauty that they may have missed in the world around them. In order to paint something, you really need to pay attention to it. In paying attention, you discover so many things that you may have previously just skipped over.

In preparation for this workshop, I spent some of today gathering up objects that I thought would be interesting to paint. I went out for a short walk this evening gathering some of the colored leaves that have fallen recently. Most of the time, I just pass by the piles of leaves without much of a second thought, other than "Ah, yes, it is raking time again," but today as I looked closely I could appreciate all the different variations in the leaves - their shapes and colors. They were really very beautiful. And so it is with so many things. There is just so much beauty around us if we take the time to stop and take notice.