Lunch-hour Peace

While you're taking a lunch break and pondering the chaos of holiday visitors, why not take a few minutes to visit an art gallery?

Here's a great one, and you won't even have to leave your desk -- The Missing Peace -- Artists Consider the Dalai Lama. This is a fabulous exhibit in which artists represent the teachings of the Dalai Lama, his persona, and other aspects of his existence. It is an impressive exhibit, including works by Richard Avedon, Chuck Close, and even Richard Gere.

Here is an overview of the exhibit, information about the artists, and upcoming dates and locations of this exhibit.

Imagine

This is an old photo, but I don't think I've posted it here. I thought it would be a good one for September 11th.

I would like to challenge everyone reading this to do one thing to promote peace today. No, I don't mean to protest the war, although that's fine with me. (I hate it that the word "peace" has been hijacked by the current administration and now anytime you say "peace" it is read as "against America." But then again, that says something about America, too. But I digress...) Do one thing today to promote peace in our society. Offer your umbrella to a stranger, share your lunch with a coworker, allow someone with just a few items to get in front of you in the line at the grocery store checkout... just do something nice for someone you don't really know. Who knows? That could be the only peace that person experiences all day, and then maybe they'll do something peaceful for someone else. Who knows, we could set off a chain reaction that brings about world peace. Sure, that's a tall order, but wishing for peace and doing what we can to bring it about gets better results than sitting in our offices, our cars, our homes, and forgetting the power a simple kind gesture holds.

Painting, Day 3

It's been a crazy, hectic day, and I didn't get done as much as I wanted to. I did get to work on the black crane in the bottom left corner and I added a yellow crane head on the right bottom to balance out some of the yellow I added yesterday on the left side of the canvas. Some of the cranes on the right side of the canvas are supposed to be unfinished and I need to work on those next week. The idea is that peace is a work in progress -- it takes a lot of work to fold a crane, and it takes a lot of work to create peace. At any point during the process of creating either, you might find yourself saying, "this isn't working out the way I wanted it to," and wanting to give up. Then you try again and wind up with something beautiful ... or not... but it can be achieved with a little persistance and creativity.