The Magic, Miracles and Joy of an Artist: Christmas Memories

Saturday, December 11, 2021

Christmas Memories

December, 1951

Patricia, Patrick, and Audrey ~ I would be 4 in just a few weeks. I LOVE this Christmas photo ~ it is one of my favorites from my childhood. This was a typical Christmas in our little bungalow home in the NE end of Canton, Ohio. You can read the happiness in our faces. Mom did everything she could to make us happy. I remember the pretty tablecloth she would put on the table, the many cookies and nutrolls she would bake, the beautiful glass bells and pink and green lights on the tree, the metal bells across the doorway, and the beautiful Nativity set. We would get one or two gifts, but it was always something we wanted and we cherished our gifts for years.
Sadly, Mom and Patrick are gone now, but Patty and I get together each year and still celebrate Christmas with excitement. Perhaps it is because our celebration always takes us back to those days long ago ~ fond memories of Christmases past.

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For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come!

I AM A "SEARCHER"

"I am one of the searchers. There are, I believe, millions of us. We are not unhappy, but neither are we really content. We continue to explore life, hoping to uncover its ultimate secret. We continue to explore ourselves, hoping to understand. We like to walk along the beach, we are drawn by the ocean, taken by its power, its unceasing motion, its mystery and unspeakable beauty. We like forests and mountains, deserts and hidden rivers, and the lonely cities as well. Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter. To share our sadness with one we love is perhaps as great a joy as we can know - unless it be to share our laughter. We searchers are ambitious only for life itself, for everything beautiful it can provide. Most of all we love and want to be loved. We want to live in a relationship that will not impede our wandering, nor prevent our search, nor lock us in prison walls; that will take us for what little we have to give. We do not want to prove ourselves to another or compete for love.

For wanderers, dreamers, and lovers, for lonely men and women who dare to ask of life everything good and beautiful. It is for those who are too gentle to live among wolves."

~ James Kavanaugh

I am THE LOVERS Tarot Card

Motive, power, and action, arising from Inspiration and Impulse. THE LOVERS represents intuition and inspiration. Very often a choice needs to be made. Originally, this card was just called LOVE. And that's acually more apt than "LOVERS." Love follows in this sequence of growth and maturity. And, coming after the Emperor, who is about control, it is a radical change in perspective. LOVE is a force that makes you choose and decide for reasons you often can't understand; it makes you surrender control to a higher power. And that is what this card is all about. Finding something or someone who is so much a part of yourself, so perfectly attuned to you and you to them, that you cannot, dare not resist. This card indicates that you have or will come across a person, a career, challenge, or thing that you will fall in love with. You will know instinctively that you must have this, even if it means diverging from your chosen path. No matter the difficulties, without it you will never be complete.