Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Darkness & Light

On Sunday I returned home after spending a couple of days in Toronto. I had a doctors appointment and we decided to spend an extra two days exploring the city afterwards.

One of the these days we went to the Art Gallery of Ontario to view the King Tut exhibit. While the exhibit was fabulous, the gallery itself was also pretty incredible. I love photography and was thrilled to explore the large exhibit they had, mostly of black and white prints. They also had a whole room dedicated to the masters of the details- Freud and Rembrandt. I was surprised to see just how many sketches Rembrandt did of Biblical scenes. I think he captured the story of Abraham and Isaac more profoundly in one picture than I've ever seen or heard it explained before.

On the way out I stopped by the store and while browsing, I came across a painting by Lawren Harris that I really connected with. At first glance I know it's not the most amazing painting that's ever been done, but there's something about his use of darkness and light that really resounded with me:


To me this painting speaks to the truth that many times in life there is a lot of darkness in front of us and it's easy to just focus on the darkness, the ugliness, the despair. But if we take our eyes off of the foreground and look at the whole picture we can get a glimpse of the light, and the hope, in the distance. Light and hope which we are moving towards, not away from. At the same time, the light can cast on even the darkest things, as we see with the outline of the trees in this painting.
So needless to say I ended up buying a print of this painting and will be hanging it on my office wall. A reminder that even in the darkness, there is light and hope in the distance.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

The Words I Would Say

Over the past couple of days I've been thinking a lot about comings and goings. Maybe that has something to do with getting ready to take a trip, but I've been thinking about our "hello's" and "goodbye's" in life. In my case now I might be only leaving for a few days, but what would I change if I knew I was leaving and never coming back?

Would I change the way I talk with my friends, my family? Would I spend more quality time with them? Would I see that person who lives ten minutes away, but might as well live 10,000 miles away for all we see each other? What would I do differently?

And as I thought about this more, I realized how important it is in life to never leave things undone. Because while I've booked a return ticket to come home after my trip, we never really know what life has in store for us or the people we love. Nothing is a guarantee and that said, we shouldn't get too comfortable with the idea of a certain tomorrow. Not that we should freak out and never plan for tomorrow, but we should never leave things undone or unsaid because the truth is we really don't know.

Monday, March 01, 2010

Olympics

I've always been a fan of the Olympics, but I can say with certainty that I've never before gone as "Olympic crazy" as I did this time around. I think having the torch pass through our community on the way to Vancouver helped in reminding me what our great country is all about and what it really means to be patriotic. Then watching our athletes rise to the top on home soil? That just sweetened the deal.

But the Olympics are about more than just winning gold medals. They are about countries coming together who normally would not stand next to each other. They are about lowering the walls the divide us. And they are about victorious moments when athletes surpass what seem to be insurmountable obstacles in order to stand on the podium, representing their country.

Yes, Canada won more gold medals than any other country has ever won at a winter Olympics game, but that's not why I'm proud to be Canadian. I'm proud of our never give up spirit and I'm proud that even in a country that is as spread out and as diverse as we are- we still can come together and stand as one. And isn't that what the Olympics are all about after all?