Life is Art

Blogging lets us, for posterity, paste words and photos together in combinations we might not see if we didn’t make the time to reflect and record.  Blogging lets us paint a picture, our lives a masterpiece, the screen a gallery.

And by masterpiece I don't mean some hallowed museum piece. Sometimes we use decorated words strung together in thoughtful eloquence. Sometimes we hide behind vague metaphors, writing in circles and shadows and outlines. Sometimes we share photographs worthy of frames. Sometimes the pictures are hard to look at but speak unutterable truths.  The blog may not follow the formal conditions of beauty and composition and our story is certainly not pretty, but there is art in living.  In our family, life is sketched in and sculpted around and refined by love, and that's what qualifies as our masterpiece.
We want the love to last.  Writing it down here is a hopeful guarantee that in some way, it will.

It's been said that happiness makes for dull artistry. And if you look throughout history at great works of art, the idea seems quite valid.  Some of the best paintings and stories and songs seem to be the result of seasons of depression, sorrow, heartache. I've said before that I credit grief with introducing me to my best writing, with helping me ferret my truest emotions and with motivating me to spill them somewhere.  Here. 
But I'd be lying if I didn't say that I'd rather our story were dull, that our lives were nothing but boringly happy.

Our lives are messy.  And they are beautiful. 
JEB