This year my organization joined with our Roman Catholic allies in filing a legal brief with the U.S. Supreme Court asking the court to uphold Texas’ laws regulating the abortion industry. That isn’t all that surprising. After all, Catholics and evangelicals have been working together for decades to uphold the sanctity of human life. What was surprising was that an opposing brief, filed by a Baptist church, argued that legal abortion is moral and just.
In a Baptist News Global article, the church’s senior minister Donna Schaper defended Planned Parenthood by saying that those of us who oppose abortion are “having a hard time dealing with women as moral agents and as adults.” I thought I recognized her name, and after I looked about I found that I had written about this pastor a decade ago, when she admitted that abortion is murder.
In 2006, Schaper wrote an article about the abortion she had. She wrote that her abortion was the right choice since she and her husband had young twins at the time. “Because women are mature sexual beings who make choices, birth control and abortion are positive moral forces in history,” she wrote. “They allow sex to be both procreational and recreational, for both men and women.”
What was striking to me at the time was that Schaper did not rely on the standard abortion advocacy arguments of the unborn child as a “clump of tissue” or a “mass of cells.” Instead, she called her abortion murder, and spoke of her unborn child as a child. She even named her “Alma,” which means “soul.”
“I happen to agree that abortion is a form of murder,” she wrote. “I think the quarrel about when life begins is disrespectful to the fetus. I know I murdered the life within me.”
“I could have loved that life but I chose not to,” she continued. “I did what men do all the time when they take us to war: they choose violence because, while they believe it is bad, it is still better than the alternatives.”
“When I made my choice to end Alma’s life, I was behaving as an adult,” the pastor concluded. “It was a human life. That’s why we named her, wanted her, but also knew we knew we did not want her enough.”
These words would be chilling coming from anyone. They are especially chilling coming from a pastor of a church. Add to the horror of it all that this church is named for the most beloved Baptist missionary couple of all time, Ann and Adoniram Judson. The Judsons sacrificed their very lives to take the gospel of life to those beyond the ocean. In the pulpit named for them stands a woman who speaks of violence to a defenseless infant in her womb, not in repentance but without apology.
The lessons to be learned here are not just one more reminder of what happens when doctrinal orthodoxy and ethical accountability are lost. We can see that all over the place. What is to be learned here, I think, is that the terms of the abortion debate are deeper than we think. We often assume that the debate is about when life begins. We marshal our scientific and philosophical and biblical arguments about the personhood of the unborn child. And we should continue to do so. But we should also remember that this alone will not end the debate, The problem, after all, is not one of information.
I suspect there are many who share this pastor’s views, though many would be loathe to say so publicly. They know the unborn child is just that: a child, a human being. They know that abortion is an act of violence. But they would rather this violence than the alternative. Behind that is a Nietzschean vision of morality, in which the will to power devours everything in its sight, especially the weak and the vulnerable.
To confront this, we must articulate and embody a different sort of universe, the one Jesus reveals and makes true. We must articulate and embody a kingdom where violence is not a sign of one being a “grown up,” a kingdom where one enters as a vulnerable child. When we refuse to define people in terms of their usefulness, when we bear witness to the image of God in all people, including the most vulnerable, we will find ourselves at odds with a world that sees power, and the violence that maintains it, as all that matters.
The Supreme Court will decide this particular case, of whether the abortion industry should be essentially self-regulating. But we should remember that, in the pile of briefs before them, there’s a church named for missionaries that stands, in its own words, on the side of violence. We must speak to those who hear in that sort of violence a kind of “good news,” a counter-gospel that is attractive to the spirit of the age. And we must hold out a witness for life and for peace and for justice, inside and outside the womb.
This article was originally posted at RussellMoore.com
This tea has similar properties as ginseng, as it is extremely beneficial. It has anti-inflammatory, anti-peptic, antipyretic, anti-allergenic, antibacterial, antispasmodic and anti-fungal properties. All of these characteristic help in strengthening and protecting the liver from being damaged.
You can use it as a relaxing tonic for muscle tension, stress, insomnia etc. You will be able to have deep night sleep and in this way the detoxification process won’t be interrupted.
The 8 Most Effective Nighttime Drinks For Quick Liver Detoxing and Fat Burning
The traditional Chinese medicine says that the human body goes through a 24-hour cycle which is similar to biorhythm that affects the emotional, intellectual and physical state.
According to this cycle, the body energy or chi goes through the essential organs.
During the night sleep, chi is flowing throughout the body and is restoring your health. The liver is the most active organ during the night, especially between 1-3 AM. So before going to bed, it is recommended to consume food that is known to improve liver function so it can clean the body of toxins.
You also need to stay hydrated so the kidneys could clean your body of harmful toxins which are accumulated throughout the day.
8 Detox Teas You Should Drink Every Night
Below you can find 8 healthy teas which can improve the liver function. With their help you will feel energized and you will lose weight faster. These teas can be found in Asian groceries, health food stores and online stores.
Chamomile Tea
This tea has similar properties as ginseng, as it is extremely beneficial. It has anti-inflammatory, anti-peptic, antipyretic, anti-allergenic, antibacterial, antispasmodic and anti-fungal properties. All of these characteristic help in strengthening and protecting the liver from being damaged.
You can use it as a relaxing tonic for muscle tension, stress, insomnia etc. You will be able to have deep night sleep and in this way the detoxification process won’t be interrupted.
Lemon
We all know that warm lemon water should be consumed first thing in the morning. But you should drink it before going to bed as well. The citrus fruit is rich in hesperidin (bioflavonoid), which has hepatoprotective properties. So, just add one unpeeled lemon in a glass of water. You can also add a teaspoon of honey for better results.
There is always someone out there who is smarter than you are. You may think that you are on top of your game and smarter than the average person, but look around and you will notice these signs of intelligence if you are looking for them. Smart people often show some of these signs or all of them, but most of us don’t even notice because we are too busy being self-absorbed. Smart people generally have these traits or do these things. Are you wondering now what these signs are? Read on to find out more, and it will all start to make perfect sense to you:
1. If the person is in a managerial position at your work or is a supervisor of staff, they will make every effort possible to help the people they supervise to become smarter. This could mean sending their staff to educational courses or teaching them new skills. The point is that smart people will work as hard as they can on this personal ‘project’ because it reflects on them when their people are smarter. If the outside world sees them improving their staff by helping them become smarter, that only works to reflect their own cleverness.
2. Smart people are often the most quiet people in the room. Smart people learned a long time ago that it is often better to remain quiet and seem smart than to open their mouths and remove all doubt. Smart people sit in a room and absorb as much information as they possibly can from the conversations going on around them. They take mental notes and learn lessons from the information they absorb, and they always listen to everything. The stupid people are the ones who talk incessantly without taking the time to listen to what other people have to say. Instead, they work hard to talk over everyone and drown out other conversations.
3. Smart people tend to know a lot about a wide range of topics, and not just a few basic things. They know a lot of things that you know little about and may not have even heard of before. This is because they are genuinely interested in what everyone else is doing around them, not just what they are involved in. Smart people continually look for ways to educate themselves, learning more information about more things as often as they can. If they find something they do not quite understand, they will certainly take the time to find out more about that topic until they do understand it and can explain it to someone else in a meaningful way. They tend to read more books, watch more informative television programs and take educational courses in their free time to increase their knowledge and expand their skill sets as much as they can.
4. Smart people find a way to manage work, home life and outside interests very well so that they are always engaged and interested in everything they are doing. They also know how to have downtime so they don’t burn out or fail in their endeavors, and they never say “I can’t do it.” Many people marvel at how smart individuals seem to find time to ‘fit it all in,’ but they can’t quite figure out how they can do it, too. Smart people realize the value of balance in every area of their lives, and they ensure that they get enough rest, play and work into each day, maximizing every day they spend on the planet.
5. Smart people typically never make other people look stupid by mocking them or making them feel inferior. That’s because smart people know there is always someone smarter than them out there, too. When people get cocky and make other people look stupid, it only makes them seem like a bad person. Every smart person has been in the position where they were made to feel dumb, and they don’t want to do that to other people. Smart people do not take the opportunity to belittle others. Instead they lift people up when possible by helping them overcome an obstacle with knowledge.
6. Smart people usually have extensive educational backgrounds. Most of the time you would never know much about this unless you saw their resume, and most smart people are not going to flash theirs in your face. If you ask a smart person where they went to school, the answer will probably be a well-known college or university. They probably have a Master’s degree in one field, or even several. Smart people are often bored with one type of work, so they tend to engage in several careers over their lifetime. Sometimes a very smart person may be on a second or third career by the time they reach their forties, while many of us are still working on being great at what we have been doing for a while already.
7. When things go wrong for a smart person, they do not tend to dwell on that. This is because they are always thinking of ways out of these types of situations, and they can easily tackle a problem with a well-thought-out solution. A smart person’s brain is always working to help them to deal with anything that life throws at them – and good or bad, they will find a way to deal with every situation effectively.
You are probably thinking about who you know that exhibits some or all of these signs. The next time you’re in a group or crowd, study the people in the room and watch for these signs. You will be blown away when you start to be able to identify the smart people in the room. You might not have thought of them as smart in the past because they were quiet or never felt the need to prove their superior intellect, but now you can see right through them!
Natural thyroid and hormone treatment – One Trick To Improve Your Adrenal And Thyroid Hormones
Author: Dr. Alan Christianson
Think of the thyroid gland as a dynamo that generates massive amounts of electricity by water flowing through a dam. In this analogy, the adrenal glands would be the switch that allows this electricity to leave the dam and travel down the wires where it will be used by neighboring homes.
Thyroid hormones give energy to your body, allowing it to burn fuel and do work. This energy is also needed for repair of your tissues, like your skin, hair, and nails. When this energy is lacking, you feel tired. You also might feel less mentally sharp, and/or more depressed, or run down. Because you’re not able to burn the fuel you feed your body, it all gets stored as fat. This is the double whammy of gaining weight and being tired at the same time. You would think that storing energy would make you feel more energized, but the opposite is true. It is a physical sign that your body is not properly burning energy and is storing too much of it.
Because these thyroid hormones are so powerful, your body has many ways to regulate them. The main way is by regulating how much hormone comes out of your thyroid gland and goes into your circulation. This is called the central control of thyroid hormones. The other main way these hormones are regulated is called peripheral control, and it includes all the things that happen in your body after the hormones have already been released. Of all of the peripheral control steps, none is more powerful then the adrenal hormones, especially cortisol.
Every single part of your body is made up of individual cells. This includes your hair, brain, skin, bones, muscles, nerves, organs, and nails. All of these cells need just the right amount of thyroid hormones to work properly. These cells are all surrounded by cell membranes, which is kind of like the walls and doors in your house. Just like a door, these membranes control what is allowed to enter the cell and what is kept out.
In order for the doors to open and let thyroid hormones inside, cortisol has to hit the doorbell on a regular basis, but not too much. In states of health, cortisol is made in higher amounts in the morning, which allows your body to be alert and active when your cells are absorbing all the thyroid hormones. Later in the day, this process reverses and cortisol shuts down. This shutdown of cortisol lets you get deep refreshing sleep, repair all of your aches and pains, and you get your body ready for another busy productive day.
When these two glands are working together well, your body will produce abundant energy all throughout the day. You will also be able to effortlessly maintain a healthy, lean body weight without having to micromanage every morsel of food you consume.
What is one easy thing you can do today to help your thyroid and adrenals give you great energy and great metabolism? Be strategic about your caffeine usage. Foods that contain caffeine happen to have pigments called anthocyanins that are very strong in healing antioxidants. This is why there have been many health news stories extolling the benefits of caffeinated beverages. However, it is important to realize that the benefits come from the anthocyanins, and not the caffeine.
People have very significant differences on how well they can tolerate caffeine. It is also true that we all become more sensitive to caffeine once we pass our mid 20s. Specifically what happens is that it takes longer to move caffeine through our liver and out of our body as we age. If you are in your 40s, you might be able to eliminate up to 100 mg of caffeine over the course of the day. Imagine what would happen if you consumed even just 120 mg every day. Rather than starting over each day you would have a backlog left over from the day before, on top of the extra hundred 120 mg that day. The problem is that eventually you have caffeine in your bloodstream all day long even if you only consume it in the morning.
That continual exposure to caffeine prevents you from shutting off your cortisol at night. For many people that can lead to poor quality sleep; harder to get to sleep and harder to stay asleep. You can also prevent your body from responding to your thyroid hormones in the morning, which makes you more tired and less able to burn fat.
If you are a regular caffeine user, here are some ways to be strategic about it:
Take a minimum of one day per week to avoid caffeine altogether. This will keep you from building up a backlog. For many, two days works even better, especially when they are consecutive. Here’s a secret, the days you have caffeine, you will enjoy it more and get more of a boost out of it then you would if you were a daily user.
If you are more sensitive to caffeine than others, you may be better off focusing on decaffeinated beverages like coffee or tea. Some are sensitive enough to where they are better off avoiding even decaffeinated beverages on a regular basis. “Decaffeinated” does not mean caffeine-free.
Want to learn more about your adrenal health? Take our adrenal quiz at: www.adrenalquiz.com
Wondering about your thyroid health? Take our thyroid quiz at: www.thethyroidquiz.com
Courageous Leadership Is Needed to Reverse Secular Trends
However unpleasant this might feel, it’s time for American Catholics to acknowledge that over the past decade, a tsunami wave of aggressive secularism has swept across the United States. This is confirmed both by sociological data and a disturbing secularist trend in politics in this age of Obama and Obergefell v. Hodges. There is, however, hope for us, probably more hope than for any other local Church in the West. Now is the time when, more than ever before, we must be uncompromising defenders of tradition. Some American bishops have chosen this path and seen renewal in their dioceses, but others (including several princes of the Church) are missing the boat.
In the nineteenth century, many philosophers and pioneers of the social sciences—Nietzsche, Freud, Feuerbach, Comte, Marx—predicted that religion was destined for obliteration as a result of modernization. For years, this secularization thesis came to be taken for granted by most Western social scientists. Indeed, observational data seemed to confirm this: in the post-World War II era of unprecedented prosperity, both the public and private role of religion became increasingly marginal in the world’s wealthiest societies: Western Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, etc.
There was, however, one glaring exception to this trend: the United States, a country with the best universities in the world, the most modern technology, and a large middle class, remained religious. Increasingly, American religious exceptionalism caused sociologists to reject the secularization paradigm.
However, something has visibly changed in recent years. It has been widely reported that the proportion of Americans identifying as having no religion has been surging in recent years. A 2014 study by the Pew Research Center shows that over the span of just seven years, the proportion of Americans identifying as “nones” has shot up from 16 to 23 percent. Meanwhile, those claiming to be Christians has plummeted from 78 to 71 percent. Among senior citizens, only 11 percent have no religion; that number is more than three times larger among “older millennials” born in 1981-1989 (34 percent) and “younger millennials” born in the 1990s (36 percent).
Some have downplayed these statistics by saying that these “nones” aren’t abandoning spirituality, often citing another Pew study showing that more than two-thirds of non-religious Americans believe in God, while nearly a quarter pray at least once a month. However, the 2014 Pew study shows that American atheists and agnostics are indeed on the rise, mushrooming from 4 percent in 2007 to 7 percent seven years later. Such optimistic reasoning also misses the point that most humans are simply not willing to accept the stark realities that atheism entails: that we are alone in the universe, there is no life after death, and life has no objective purpose. A few years ago, a group of secularists placed posters on buses all over London reading: “There’s probably no god [sic]. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” In reality, though, true atheism requires facing some depressing notions that make life much less enjoyable. Having been born in the 1980s, I know my generation well. Many Americans my age—inseparable from their iPhones, preferring cohabitation to the commitment of marriage—are narcissists primarily concerned with comfort and convenience. They don’t like the depressing “bummer” doctrines of Christianity, but they don’t want to face stark nihilistic realities, either, so they turn to yoga and being “spiritual, not religious.”
The Catholic Church’s own statistics confirm these trends, especially with regards to the East and West Coasts. In Boston, once the most Catholic city in America, a mere 16 percent of Catholics attend Mass regularly. In the Archdiocese of New York, the figure is just 12 percent, and in the Diocese of Sacramento it is less than 14 percent. The East and West Coasts are just as secular as much of Western Europe: while Catholic pundits like George Weigel often criticize German cardinals like Marx and Kasper for being influential in Francis’s Vatican despite representing a withering Church, Mass attendance in Germany stands at 12.3 percent, a rate comparable to that of many American sees on either coast.
Statistics aren’t the only way to see that America has visibly changed. In 2008, a militant secularist openly hostile to Christian values similar to Spain’s Zapatero was elected president of the United States. If anyone had doubts as to what Obama’s attitude to life, family, and religious liberty was, in his first term he became the first sitting president to openly support same-sex “marriage”; forced Catholic institutions to pay for contraception and abortifacients; and obsessively supported abortion. Despite this, Obama easily won a second term. The president enjoys wide support among my generation, for whom, as polls and everyday observations show, support for same-sex “marriage” is as important as opposition to racial segregation and the Vietnam War was to Baby Boomers. Meanwhile, more and more states are legalizing recreational drug use and assisted suicide, and nearly half of American babies are born out of wedlock, a proportion not much lower than in Scandinavia.
It is thus clear that something has changed in America for the worse. This begs two questions: what should be done and is there any hope?
First, we need to acknowledge that there is a problem. Too many Church leaders have been blind to the troubling rise of secularism. Take, for example, Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s denial that the massive closings of New York parishes had anything to do with secularization: “[T]hank God, we Catholics in the archdiocese and, actually, in the United States as a whole, are not, like … Europe, in decline.” Cardinal Dolan’s confidence is misplaced. By every measure it is evident that the Church in many parts of the United States, including the Archdiocese of New York, is on the same trajectory as Europe. If secularism is not first recognized as a threat, it cannot be overcome.
Second, this should be the time for evangelical radicalism. Both in North America and in Europe, the mainline Protestant churches have experienced the most severe declines in membership. Quite simply, the salt has lost its taste, and, for example, the Episcopalian Church here or the Lutheran national churches in Scandinavia have become indistinguishable from the broader post-Christian culture. In our own Church, the American Jesuits—who for decades have actively worked to make Catholicism a mainline Protestant denomination—have lost more than two-thirds of their members since 1965. People yearn for a Church that goes against the current. New York’s aforementioned low level of Mass attendance is not Cardinal Dolan’s fault; he inherited a bad situation. However, his style of leadership—approving LGBT activists to participate in the St. Patrick’s Day parade and giving communion to an aggressively pro-abortion and pro-LGBT politician, is unlikely to reverse current trends. Cardinal Dolan isn’t the only East Coast bishop to adopt an accommodationist strategy toward secularism. Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, for instance, has refused to publicly oppose same-sex “marriage.”
In order to counter this secularist blitzkrieg, Catholic leaders should instead adopt the leadership style of the emeritus bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska, Fabian Bruskewitz (1992-2012). Bishop Bruskewitz openly challenged secularism. In 1996, he gave a decree excommunicating all Catholics involved in Planned Parenthood and other anti-life, anti-Catholic organizations or who become freemasons. In recent days, Bishop Bruskewitz has alerted the faithful to the harm done to marriage by the Obergefell decision and called upon fellow bishops to uphold Canon 915 prohibiting pro-abortion politicians from receiving the Eucharist. He was a leading proponent of the Tridentine Mass long before Pope Benedict XVI made its celebration easier in 2007, and made sure that Lincoln churches were beautiful. During his twenty-year episcopal service, vocations surged, and Lincoln has the highest ratio of seminarians to priests in the country. While dozens of American seminaries have been closed since Vatican II, Lincoln opened a diocesan seminary in 1998.
Of course, there are other reasons to be optimistic about the United States. Mass attendance in the United States stands at 24 percent, a ratio higher than in most other Western countries. While, as we saw, religious practice is low on the East and West coasts, my home parish church in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is always crowded on Sundays; the Midwest and South remain much more religious than the coasts. Excellent Catholic publishers like Ignatius Press and Sophia Institute Press flourish, and in recent years a number of orthodox Catholic colleges that are a refreshing alternative to Georgetown, Notre Dame, and other post-Catholic universities have sprung up or expanded considerably. However, we have to recognize that the overall cultural climate for Catholics is increasingly challenging, and it’s the outspokenly, dynamically orthodox dioceses that have weathered the secular storm best.
Pope Benedict XVI was realistic; he understood that the likelihood of reviving medieval Christendom was small, and instead believed that Catholics in the secularized West should be a “creative minority” with the potential to change society. Although acknowledging this fact may make us queasy, Christians who take their faith seriously have become a minority in American society, which is increasingly hostile to their values. This does not mean that Catholicism in this country is destined to die out, as it did in the Maghreb. But to avoid that sad reality we have to be in uncompromising opposition to the surrounding nihilistic moral landscape.
Photo caption: Newly ordained priests stand outside of the Cathedral of the Risen Christ in Lincoln, Neb., with Bishop Fabian W. Bruskewitz and priests of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter on May 22, 2010. (Photo credit: Today’s Catholic News, Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend.)
When I first moved to Martha’s Vineyard, Norman Rockwell was alive and well and living in his beloved Stockbridge, Massachusetts home. It occurred to me that I should probably try and go see him; I could picture myself walking up his driveway to shake his hand so clearly that it still seems it might have really happened. The sensibilities behind his art were so wonderful, and exactly how I felt. His paintings made me fall in love with his understanding and view of the human heart. But of course, I never went there, I didn’t want to bother him. Joe and I have now been to Stockbridge many times, have visited his museum and studio; I picked this stick up from the front yard of his studio to save. One of my prized possessions. My Norman Rockwell Stick. I photographed it where it lives, on my art table, hopefully osmosing genius out into my studio (in my “House of Creativity”) like gamma rays. The paper it’s sitting on is one of the throw-away scraps I use to check colors on my brush and test my pen to make sure it isn’t going to drop a clump of ink on the watercolor I’m working on. I like to think Norman Rockwell had one of these too. ♥
So I thought today, I might give you a tour of my watercolor world. And you don’t have to come all the way to Martha’s Vineyard to see it, I’m only as far away as your computer! Above, is a photo I took when I was working on the page I did to honor Tasha Tudor — this sweet corgi (hopefully like one of hers) and one of her lovely quotes I did for my December 2011 calendar page. ♥ I’d never painted a corgi before, but now I would like to stop everything and ONLY paint corgi’s, he was so fun to do; his colors are beautiful, but my favorite is his nose! Have you noticed that Corgis are like little tea tables? They have such wide flat backs, they could be like a hassock or an end table. You could put a tray on him. ♥
After I finish doing a page for a book or calendar, it gets scanned into the computer, which allows me future access to it (another computer miracle), and the original art goes into these acid-free boxes, and then into this huge old bank safe Joe found for me. All the original pages for my books, along with everything I’ve ever painted, is stored here. The problem is, we are going to need another one.
You know I only started doing watercolors just after I turned thirty? It’s true. I never knew I had that inside me. Even though I paint almost every day now, it’s still a surprise to come into a whole room dedicated to the messes I make and to see my art table covered with paintboxes and brushes and know they’re mine.
I think it’s because I didn’t grow up with them. I always loved to make things …. I especially loved to sew ~ a room filled with needles, thread, fabric and embroidery hoops would make more sense to me than the still-surprising sight of brushes and paint! Now I design my own fabric and mix it up, sewing and drawing to make things like the dishtowel on the left.
I’ve always mixed up my hobbies. I fell in love with the art of cooking in my twenties ~ I loved giving dinner parties, loved surprising people with banana cream pies and pots of bean soup. After I started painting my girlfriend suggested I combine my watercolors with my recipes to make a cookbook. I didn’t think I could write a book, but I knew that even if it was never published, I would still have the pages to give away for some nice Christmas presents! So I decided I would try. And it all turned into a very surprising career.
Sometimes I walk into my studio early in the morning, before the sun has come up…all quiet, birds singing in the rhododendren outside the window, or in the winter, when I paint to the hum of the furnace, with Girl Kitty and Jack on their pillows keeping me company, and a blank piece of paper in front of me, waiting for my brush and that first drop of color, and think about how this all came about.
This was the very first painting I ever did. It was a plant sitting on my kitchen table; I filled a little pot with water, squeezed some watercolors from tubes into a plastic dish ~ watercolors I’d bought with a 30th birthday gift certificate to an art store. I sharpened a pencil, sat down in front of this geranium and started drawing. I had no idea what I was doing. I just looked at the plant and tried to put what I saw on the paper. Everyone was shocked that it looked like a geranium! I was shocked! It was a geranium! This was one of those life-changing moments that are sometimes only visible in the rear-view mirror. One of the reasons I want to encourage people to “just try it” when it comes to watercolor (or any home art, cooking, sewing, quilting, knitting, scrapbooking, gardening) is because I’m sure that this must have been inside me my whole life, and I had no idea. I doodled just like anyone else, random squiggles; drawings of stick people; not the slightest inclination that there could be more. If this ability could be hiding inside me, it might be inside you. ♥ “Trying” has always been the most important word I know. Nothing ventured, as they say so truly, nothing gained.
My mother put this crayon drawing in my baby book. I was a star to her no matter what I drew. Would you have looked at this crayon drawing and thought you should start saving to send the child to art school? No. More likely you would wonder what was going on with her right brain! (Or maybe it’s her left, but something! I should get it analyzed!)
Over the years, I found out that what really matters is practice! In my 7th grade art class, we spent the entire semester drawing our thumbs! Seriously, that’s what we did, left thumb stuck up in front of me, pencil in right hand; the teacher went over and over it, showing us how to really look at things, the curve, the edge, the shadows, the lines. I got an A in that class, but I thought everyone did, it was an elective! And I never took another art class. I can still draw a good thumb if I want to. That’s what I mean about practice. If you look at the art in my first book, Heart of the Home, and compare it to later work, like my newest calendar or the Autumn Book, you can see what a big help practice can be.
I’ve always painted the things around me. Before I moved to Martha’s Vineyard and began to write books, I did little scenes of flower pots, baskets with apples, bowls of fruit, quilts, straw hats, my old stove, and my kitty; I hung them all over my kitchen, called them “Kitchen Art,” and gave them away as Christmas presents. Soon my friends were asking to buy them, giving me confidence to do more and more. My first painting sold to the outside world in a gallery on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills (I didn’t have the nerve to take my art there myself, a girlfriend did it for me. I was jumping up and down happy about this — even the smallest successes build confidence which is just a huge help no matter what you do, just believing you can); after that I began to have local art shows in my little town in California. I took Polaroid’s of the paintings as I did them, which is a good thing, because the paintings themselves are almost all gone. I still have a few of my favorites. These framed apples came with me from California to Martha’s Vineyard and hang in my kitchen now.
I still love using the things around me as my subjects, although you might not know it to look at this — probably a little hard to believe that these “birds” might be “around me.” (BTW, see that real feather lying on the paper? Inspiration! And I know he’s not a real partridge, I just called him that, he’s actually a made-up bird!) Here’s a 20 second video I took that explains . . . (they aren’t really my children :-))
I have worked a little from old photos too, especially for my mom.
This one became a greeting card, which I framed for my mom along with the original photo.
I’m often asked what kind of art supplies I use, so I thought I’d tell you. These are my brushes, but I almost always use the smallest one, there in the middle. It’s a # 1 Windsor Newton University Series 233. I was shocked the first time my brush wore out — who knew paintbrushes wore out?! Now I buy them by the fistfuls.
The paint comes from everywhere, including children’s paint boxes. Actually I love any kind of paint box; Prang and Pelikan have been my favorites. I use watercolor paint tubes, like Holbein, Rowney or Grumbacher, I’m not particular about the brand, I just want as many colors as possible. This is my collection of reds → and pinks. . . I never met a red paint I didn’t love. I keep them in separate baskets, by color. To use them, you just squeeze out a little paint, mix it with water and voila! So easy. Everything I know about art, I learned in kindergarten.
The jar is Daler Rowney Pro White which I use when I make a mistake with the pen; I get it and lots of my other supplies at Blick. I use two sizes of Rapidograph India ink pens to write with, a refillable Koh-i-noor drafting pencil to draw with, and then, the most important item in my arsenal, the eraser! A soft white Staedtler. A metal ruler is important too. For paper, it’s Arches watercolor paper and for the pages of my books I use pads of smooth finish Bristol board.
I hope this helps someone out there who might be thinking of giving it a try. Watercolors are one of my dearest passions. Rarely a day goes by that I don’t paint. When I heard that song, ♫ Raven hair, ruby lips, sparks fly from her fingertips ♪, I said, hey, that’s me. (Except for the hair and lips and the witchy woman part)
I’ve loved lettering forever, always got perfect marks for handwriting (it’s where I got my start). This quote, one of my favorites, is for the new book I’m working on.
I hope if you are thinking about trying watercolors, you might feel encouraged to give it a try. Worse-case scenario is that you have special gifts to give, little watercolor notes to tuck into letters, or art that matches your house to hang on your wall; it’s really a win-win; making something beautiful is within reach of everyone and having something you can give is one of the secrets to a wonderful life. ♥ xoxo
