sweet peas

Why stay we on the earth except to grow?   

                                                                            -Robert Browning 

Sweet peas.

There is such connection and vivid imagery when it comes to letting your fingers sketch your heart's words.  As we are learning in our Wild Art Workshop, when we feel free to sketch whatever comes to us, it is such a freeing and healing experience.  

Our hearts want to create, they are meant to create~ 

At times our art comes out in playful romps of sketches ~ radishes and woolly sheep. Other days it may come with a story in mind, a more serious thought, or a loose connection of simple colors, words and lines. 

(this is a page of my art journal, a Beth Moore book I am gessoing and painting ~ 

letting the large text stay along side my sketches)

*****

I think sweet peas are always a spring delight, a favorite in my garden.  This year they haven't even started sprouting but my heart is telling their story anyway~   

Fast growing.  

Always growing. 

An persistent upward path. 

Hanging onto friends. 

Pulling friends up and pulling me up on the way 

(all those sticky tendrils are so loveable!)

Early risers. 

Spring bloomers.  

Tenacious climbers, vines just don't give up.

And every sweet bloom whispers... Hope!   

"I am the vine; you are the branches.  

Whoever abides in me and I in him, 

he it is that bears much fruit, 

                          for apart from me you can do nothing."                           

               

             Jesus  (John 15)

As I sit and think about the way my life is being tended:  planted, watered, and loved, I am undone.  Being present in life, seeing life move moment-to-moment, brings such a heightened sense of God's overwhelming love.  It doesn't make it simple or easy, or without hardship, but to see the new-green-growth and to hear the whisper of "hope" in my ears every morning is heavenly.

Seeing life sacramentally is a realistic and *open gift* to all~  

I am also amazed at the ways our hearts, art, and lives connect and intersect (like those loveable vines) -- I am blessed beyond words for the girls I have met in this online class.  May our efforts to sketch our hearts be met with God's grace.

Would you like to sketch some sweet peas today too?

In the beautiful spring gardens & this barnyard of life~

jj