All the day’s color
Summer sketches.
Hello there! And welcome to Dandelion Seeds, an illustrated newsletter in search of beauty and wonder in the world.
This week’s summer sketch is a chance to share one more of my heroes with you — John O’Donohue, the late Irish poet and philosopher.
My friend Erin introduced me to him years ago. We loved to read poetry together, often in her home overlooking San Francisco Bay — our favorite tomes spread open across her dining room table, a bottle of sparkling rosé always at hand.
I especially love John’s book, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings. It is a collection of beautifully specific blessings, such as “For the Artist at the Start of Day” and “For Marriage,” which Erin sent me when Jose and I got married in July of 2020.
That blessing came back to me when I sat down to paint a memorable sunset from our honeymoon, and, just like twilight, I tried to harvest all the day’s color.
With love,
Candace
WOW! As twilight harvests all the day's color. Indeed, the clouds soak up the salmons, teals, and mauves that sneak passed us unnoticed until we look to the sky.
I think I would like to write blessings, because everyone needs a blessing now and then. So far, no one I know has endured a crisis of the self (“I don’t know who I am, even though I think”), so my philosophy degree is pretty much unused. The blessing market is much more promising. Bless you, Candace.
Going home at sunset to loving arms is worth even the most troublesome days. Sometimes during my years in Africa, I would awake with an intense desire to do whatever it took to go back to the one place I call home, to leave Africa, but by evening, as I drove toward home through the African bush, the contented smell of cooking fires, a kudu or a scimitar horned sable bounding off into the mopane scrub, I would think how not one thing on earth could ever make me leave this piece of my heart.
Going home at sunset to loving arms is a sweet time when life moves freely and lightly through us.