JULIET'S MUSINGS

  I've just finished this painting, inspired by the thought and anticipation of Spring. I hope it lifts your heart out of any winter blues you may have been having...xx Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –             When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;             Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush          Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring          The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;    The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush             The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush          With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         ...

  ....OR UNIQUELY YOU? Something I just read in a book by Eugene Peterson got me thinking, and feeling uncomfortable at the way the term 'Dysfunctional' has become common usage for people/families/behaviour of human beings and/or cultures that are behaving differently or unusually from what is considered the norm.  What is normal anyway? Obviously, this is not to affirm destructive and abusive actions and ways of life - those things should be named as such. I only feel a bit sad when it is applied to our fellow human beings, whose patterns of behaviour or communication is different from our own, perhaps caused by negative, traumatic or abusive things that have happened to them, or simply just the way they are. Dysfunctional is a term more suited to a machine, not a complex human being. The term seems to overlook all the different reasons that a person is unique in their life, a lack on our part of looking deeper. I've been quiet for a while, getting over the loss of my dear...