“You’ll learn, as you get older, that rules are made to be broken. Be bold enough to live life on your terms, and never, ever apologize for it. Go against the grain, refuse to conform, take the road less traveled instead of the well-beaten path. Laugh in the face of adversity, and leap before you look. Dance as though EVERYBODY is watching. March to the beat of your own drummer. And stubbornly refuse to fit in.” ~ Mandy Hale

girl on mountain

“Artists are prophets. We speak of a world yet to come. We bring the far things near. We create the new earth with our love, our faith and our vision. Our vision will be clearer if we do not entangle ourselves with the problems of this world. To be powerfully prophetic, we cannot give a voice to the day we live in. We must be deeply acquainted even intimate with the One who has already created our future home. When we are in that creative spirit painting, we find the vision of this future world and we make it seen, we make it known. Before anything is ever done on this earth, it was first sung, written, or painted.” ~Art and words by Elli Milan

Art by Elli Milan

“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days… Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me…So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling…” ~Aldous Huxley

art by katherine-smit

Art by Katherine Smit

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places–and there are so many–where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” ~Howard Zinn, the optimism of uncertainty

Art by Laura Graves

Art by Laura Graves