Connecting Artists to the Community with Education, Therapy and Fun

So far today, I've: connected 3 calendars together with twitter/facebook/homepage, updated the update blog, updated the website, fixed a misunderstanding, re-typed a grant in "digestible format", but I can't get my eyes to quit itching!! Arggh! Stinking allergies.

The best thing about this line of "work" is the souls I run across. I got to meet an awesome fiber artist this past week named Katherine Stephens, who does amazing knits. What a creative machine her mind is! She's now connected to Weebly and is setting up her website and domain name this week. Go Katie!!! You can follow her on Twitter: Katie Darling . Her friend Kelli Bosarge is also on Twitter and is a strong, creative force to be reckoned with, too. She is the mental master who helped us with the Tom's of Maine grant I was refashioning today.

Speaking of interesting people I've met... just the other week or so ago at Performing Friends/Disability connection, I ran across a beautiful little girl who had the most profound soul. As I painted her and looked into her pretty face, she asked me one of the deepest questions ever posed to me: "Do you have enough love?"

I sat there dumbfounded. I stammered for a minute at the depth of the question and then for a few more, trying to come up with an honest answer for the little girl. After looking around me at the many people that showed up to paint at this event out of the goodness of their hearts, my husband sitting across from me painting children (a sight I never thought I'd see) and the knowledge of those who wanted to be there and couldn't and what we do throughout the week and... I answered, "Yes. Yes, I do."

How many of us can honestly answer that question? Do we have enough love? Do you? Can we ever? The question can be laced with complexities of our daily lives and our personal struggles: Do I have enough love to forgive someone else? Do I have enough love for self care? Do I have enough love to forgive myself? Do I have enough love in my marriage, career, family? Do I have enough love to do the "right" thing? Do I have enough love to let go? Or to hang in there?

So many ways this can be interpreted, yet this little girl only wanted one interpretation, mine. After I gave her my answer, I asked her the same question. "How about you? Do you have enough love?" She looked to the ground, to the left, to the right and then shrugged her shoulders and hands and said "I don't know." I asked, "So, do you think I might have enough? (she nodded and smiled) Well, now- how about if I gave you some of mine? Do you think you might have enough if I gave you some of mine?"

As she grinned and nodded, I cupped my hand towards my heart and imagined it filled with light and warmth and then grabbed her little hand and put it square in the middle of it. She took it and put it on her chest and I said "There, there's you some more love, baby." She grinned really big and I finished her face painting.

She left me with the questions that I was too blown away to ask at the moment, like, what has happened in this child's life to make her pose such a question? Does she have disabled people living in her house, is her mother a care giver who has said that it takes a special person to have enough love to care for these people? (It might be true, who knows?) Or is she a foster child who has heard that it takes someone with enough love to care for her or others? Is she up for adoption? (I wish! We have a room open now.) I pray that she feels all the love her little heart can handle.  What a special little girl.

At the time, I couldn't ponder any further than profundity of her question, but I pray I run into her and ask her some of my own. I have more love to give her.