Peace

Shambala

A study in Compassion would put me in your place;
Would have me walk a stranger's strides and wear a foreign face.
Being in your footsteps; wearing your sized shoes;
Holding back my judgements and suppressing Ego's views...
As your pathway opens up,  making your choices seem so real
Compassion blossoms into Love and both of us can heal.
                                                                     - poem by Jodieanne

Keith has the most remarkable ability to somehow inject feelings of peace into his paintings. 

This was demonstrated to me in our home. For many years we had no paintings on our own walls. (The shoemakers children go unshod!) But finally we brought them in, gifting our home with their lovely light. Our son was a teenager and a remarkable thing happened the very first time he brought his friends over after the paintings had graced our walls. Keith and I observed the noisy, bubbly group of boys enter our home and hush... walk through the living room and up the stairs to Phil's room...where the laughter and joyful exuberance resumed. But the real test was that this happened each time from that day forth! How I wished we had brought the paintings home sooner! But what mattered was that they are there now. 

Keith had an understanding of disagreements, that our feelings are based on either love or fear. If we argued we told the children we were having discussions. (This is now a family joke!) We had two ways of resolving these discussions. One was what we called PUT YOUR HIGHER HAT ON. We both used this to warn the other that what we felt was uncomfortable to express, that at first it might even sound hurtful. In my case, I would 'put my higher hat on', removing my ego self one step away from the issue and remarkably, I could hear Keith's point of view without offense. He said it worked for him as well. As both of us had been in marriages before and done it wrong, we didn't want those sneaky onion-skins of hurts to build up until one day who knew how to peel them safely away? The second way was so simple. I wrote the following poem to him after one of our 'discussions'. He suggested we repeat it as a reminder to each other when times were stressful:

In the heat of our discord what I REALLY meant, what I couldn't say - is that I call for love to take the fear away.

It changed the energy in the argument and let us see it for what it really was; Marriage Enrichment 101 from Keith and Jodieanne! ha! I guess what I am sharing is that Keith lived the very essence of the peace that he painted so it couldn't help but filter through. 

                                                                   Angel of Peace

He longed for the day when our world would know peace. When Keith was a small boy his street was in danger of being bombed in WWll. His mother handed him into the shelter wrapped in a duvet. As she passed him in she said to the people inside, "Save my boy." She then followed and it was a neighbouring street that received that bomb. But this experience had a profound effect on him. He tried to help us see where all our myths, legends and various religious ideals meet. Each painting has a story, a message. You can choose to like it for it's own sake. You can find a message of your own. And now you can hear what it meant to Keith as he painted it. As we continue I will explain HIS messages of peace and unity in the paintings to you as he asked me to do.                                    Many Blessings, Jodieanne

Prints of Shambala and Angel of Peace are on offer for £50 pp paid in the UK (savings of £10 plus postage); Canvas prints of Shambala are on offer in two sizes  -  small £200 pp paid in the UK and large £300 pp paid in the UK (savings of £50 each plus saving on postage) until June 30th 2018