December Stars--6 days till Christmas

Mountain Stars, 5 by 7 watercolor card

Mountains call...places of power, where the air is thinner and clearer, where stars are so bright it can seem like day.
It's no accident that many world religions consider specific mountains as sacred. They can be places of solitude, of individual focus, of retreat and rejuvenation, of spiritual preparation for ordeals.

Psalms 121:1--"A song of ascents. I lift up my eyes to the mountains-- where does my help come from?"

The Quran, 16:15--"And He has set firm mountains in the earth so that it would not shake with you."

A favorite song: 
"Go tell it on the mountain,
Over the hills and everywhere.
Go tell it on the mountain
That Jesus Christ is born.

"Go tell it on the mountain—
Yeah, Lord—
Over the hills and everywhere.
Go tell it on the mountain
That Jesus Christ is born.

When I was—when I was a seeker,
I sought the Lord both night and day.
I asked the Lord to help me,
And he showed me—showed me the way."

From Thomas Merton, Trappist monk, writing in The Seven Storey Mountain: " Solitude is not something you must look for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present, you will never find it."

(Day 19 of 31 December watercolors)

"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time." --Thomas Merton