This.

I feel myself inspired.  Don't you just love a kaleidoscope?

Same stuff.  Same essential elements turned on their sides and seen afresh.

What might have been hideous, horrid defeat,  when seen through the correct lens, can be a thing of true beauty?  Remarkable!

I may very well have just found my writer's/painter's voice.

This new outlook, this wonderful sense of freedom I am enjoying at the moment..well, it may not last.

But it's so beautiful now. So encouraging.  How do I keep the view?

When seen without the proper lens, some things can be soul wrenching, shaming, terrifying.

Some things actually are.

But to me, kaleidoscopes are a reminder that God can exchange ashes for beauty.

The seemingly unremarkable, into the intricate, masterfully woven, and awe-inspiring.

Sometimes I wish life weren't so painful. But...consider the alternative.  The lack of contrast between sorrow and joy, shame and acceptance, bondage and freedom. Pain and pleasure.  Well.. In a way, these opposites sort of inform each other.  I wonder if the truest beauty requires contrast.  I think, maybe.

Can it be that we serve a God so creative, magnificent, loving and wise that as we spend time on his lap, crying it out, receiving his comfort, stutter-breathing, that he at some point hands us his kaleidoscope that we can somehow understand a greater reality... A beauty made of shards and fragments.. An actual masterpiece made from broken, shattered little pieces? 

There will be more on this subject.  This takes my breath.  I need some time to sit in this.  Love you.