I have been playing with some new products I purchased for my workshops. I have used Adirondack Color Wash before (have just order some of the new and improved ones) but have never used Glimmer Mist. I like the way the Glimmer Mist sprays, it seems to come out a bit easier than the old Adirondack Color Wash. I think the new and improved version of ACW is supposed to have a finer spray than the old. I"ll let you all know when it arrives and have played with it a bit.
I am reading "The Journey of Desire" by John Eldredge again. I began this book a few years ago, but don't think I ever finished it. I am really bad about beginning another book in the process of reading one and not getting the first one finished. And it's not like I got bored with the first or did not like it...I just got distracted as I do with a lot of things in life.
This life we live has some incredible moments of deep satisfaction. But there are also moments of deep dis-contentment. I used to ignore those feelings, saying to myself that I really am asking for too much. I should be happy as life is...I have so much...but the nagging feeling that there is more stays.
"There is a desire within each of us, in the deep center of ourselves that we call our heart. We were born with it, it is never completely satisfied, and it never dies. We are often unaware of it, but it is always awake...Our true identify, our reason for being, is to be found in this desire."
The Awakened Heart, by Gerald May
Yet hints come to me from the realm unknown;
Airs drift across the twilight border land,
Odored with life;
...whispers to my heart are blown
That fill me with a joy I cannot speak,
Yea, from whose shadow words drop faint and weak.
Diary of an Old Soul - George MacDonald
"The heart has it's reasons which reason knows not of."
Blaise Pascal
"When the desire is too much to bear, we often bury it beneath frenzied thoughts and activities or escape it by dulling our immediate consciousness of living. It is possible to run away from the desire for years, even decades, at a time, but we cannot eradicate it entirely. It keeps touching us in the little glimpses and hints in our dreams, our hopes, our unguarded moments."
The Awakened Heart, Gerald May
"The secret that begins to solve the riddle of our lives is simply this: we are the sea lion who lost the sea. Life as usual is not the life we truly want. It is not the life we truly need. It is not the life we were made for. If we would only listen to our hearts, to what G. K. Chesterton called "divine discontent", we would learn the secret of our existence." The Journey of Desire, John Eldredge
"Our Creator would never have made such lovely days, and given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were meant to be immortal."
Nathaniel Hawthorne
"Something awful has happened; something terrible. Something worse, even, than the fall of man. For in that greatest of all tragedies, we merely lost Paradise - and with it, everything that made life worth living. What has happened since is unthinkable: we've gotten use to it. We're broken in to the idea that this is just the way things are. The people who walk in great darkness have adjusted their eyes. Regardless of our religious or philosophical beliefs, most of us live as though this life is pretty much the way things are supposed to be. We dismiss the whispers of joy with a cynical "Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt." That way we won't have to deal with the haunting."
John Eldredge
What good will it be for man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?
Matthew 16:26
Simone Weil said, "There are only two things that pierce the human heart, beauty and affliction."
"Moments we wish would last forever and moments we wish had never begun." John Eldredge
I travel my days living with the angst and ignoring it. I want to learn better how to live gently with the discontentment that is inevitable in this present life. To not expect too much, but not settle for too little as well. To live fully in every moment with my heart open despite the pain it may receive.
I am not doing well with this balancing thing right now...I close up when things get hard. I want to ignore them or scream my head of...
I know this post is too long, but I have this feeling that I am not alone in these feelings, and I wanted you to know you are not alone in them as well.
Here's the story of "The Sea Lion" if you want to read it...and you want to read it.
Grace and peace
