The Dreamer – updated 2018
It’s Silent Saturday. Just a drawing for you to enjoy.
Be Yourself
Drawing © Marty Coleman
Be yourself, everyone else is taken – Oscar Wilde
Worth Sharing:
I Draw In Church – Door in the Sky – updated 2018
Sometimes I don’t draw anyone in particular in my drawings done in church. I might notice something; a sleeve length, hair style, eyebrows, etc. of someone sitting close by or saw walk in. I will keep that in my mind when I start to draw and incorporate it as a starting point.
The rest of the drawing might follow the sermon line, maybe it won’t. By the way, if you are wondering if I remember the sermon or not due to my drawing instead of just sitting there, I can tell you I do remember it quite well. This one for example, was obviously about a door in the sky and on the ground with a turtle and box pointing at them. See, I remembered!
P.S. When you get this Sunday morning I will be in the middle of running my first marathon! It is the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon. Wish me luck!
Drawing and commentary © 2016 Marty Coleman
Worth Sharing:
I Draw in Church – The Beautifully Coiffed Mother
On Sundays I am posting drawings I do in church. This one was done in March, 2006.
The beautifully coiffed mother sitting very still while her down syndrome child fidgeted and touched everything around him including his father but he never touched her once and she has a tired, strong face that speaks to her pain and vanity and dreams deferred and love she goes to church to find and tries and tries and tries and tries and tries and tries and tries and tries and tries and tries and tries and tries and tries and tries and tries and…
Worth Sharing:
Excellent Beauty – updated 2018
Three out of my four daughters were in either Cheer or Pom squads as they were growing up. Some did it for many years, some just for one. I spent a lot of time watching cheerleaders.
Have you ever noticed how uniforms attempt to do what the name suggests? They are used to create uniformity. Uniformity is good to create the visual impact of a team working together. Identity and purpose is based on the team.
But uniforms did the opposite for me. They focused my attention on what made each individual cheerleader just that, individual. The uniform created a standard base by which I could see how they were all different, all beautiful.
And what made them beautiful? It wasn’t how they were similar, it was how they were different from each other. If there is one thing of utmost importance for a parent, especially a father, to instill in his daughters, it is that he sees them as beautiful in their uniqueness, in how they stand apart and are themselves, not how they look like everyone else.
That doesn’t mean you denigrate their desire to fit in. We all want to fit in, and that is ok. But as they work to fit in they will always find that they don’t completely. When they experience that, it’s a parent’s job to build the value of their uniqueness, the beauty in it.
If a woman isn’t proud of her unique beauty, she will only be proud of how she appears to be like someone else. That doesn’t lead to true self-confidence, just the temporary illusion of it.
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“There is no excellent beauty that hat not some strangemess in the proportion.” – Francis Bacon, 1561-1626, Englishman, 1st and Only Viscount of St. Alban
Worth Sharing:
Drawing in Church – updated 2018
Sunday church drawing. I have been drawing in church most of my adult life (that’s a long time). I thought I might share some on Sundays for a while. This is one from 2006.
Here is the text in case it’s not legible on your monitor.
“The upper class woman with the bra strap showing and a tag as well listening to the simple sermon by the Methodist who looks like that character actor who later did infomercials whose voice is coming to her as a flying turtle translating it into what she wants to hear so she can live the life she wants as do we all.”
Drawing and single run-on sentence by Marty Coleman, 6/25/2006
Worth Sharing:
Great Doubt – updated 2018
When my wife and I were dating we went to Pacifica, California for a day trip while we were on vacation. She had lived there for a while before we met and she wanted to see it again and show me the place. We went to the beach, which had a cliff off to the side. I wanted to climb up it but she was hesitant. She wasn’t very much into that sort of thing at the time. She decided she would do it and off we went. We made it up and down no problem, viewed the Pacific ocean and just drank in the beauty of it all.
I didn’t think much about it after that. But later, when it was mentioned to our daughter, my wife was very excited about having climbed the cliff. To her, the idea of being able to climb it was a BIG doubt. And being able to do it was, in turn, a BIG awakening. It stayed with her specifically because the doubt was so great beforehand. She now does all sorts of physical things she had no notion she could do before.
Have you ever heard an athlete or person involved in some endeavor tell of that one particular event that caused them to realize they could do it? They made a big play, or they made a big deal in business? That future confidence was a result of that awakening from doubt.
What is your big doubt? What big awakening can you envision if you overcame it?
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
“Where there is great doubt, there will be great awakening; small doubt, small awakening, no doubt, no awakening.” – Zen Buddhist saying
Worth Sharing:
Easter – updated 2017
I draw in church. Yes, almost every single service for many, many years. I thought I might post some of these drawings on Sundays for a while instead of a napkin. I am starting with this one for obvious reasons.
The text is sort of hard to read, so here it is.
The drawing I did in the second church I went to on Easter 2006 with my dad who is old & Catholic but doesn’t like high mass & can’t hear anything buy jokingly thinks it will get him into heaven but isn’t really joking but he didn’t go to the other church which is Methodist and I was late to it but called my fiance to tell her & called my daughter as well who wants to meet at a 3rd church but Linda didn’t want to go & I understand so I will go later & return the cell phone that was left at my house yesterday at Chelsea’s bridal shower where she got deodorant & flour & towels & then eat ham & stuff & do taxes.
___________________________
Drawing and the one really long sentence © Marty Coleman
___________________________
Worth Sharing:
When to Bury A Person – updated 2017
I have a friend somewhere in the world, not sure where, named Agnes. She has traveled the globe, sat with prestigious, inspiring people, experienced life in ways most of us do not. She is in deep, deep love with her husband, with whom she experiences many of these things. Those are her dreams, to travel with him.
He now is struggling with a pretty serious illness and that travel isn’t something they can undertake for a while. She wishes she could, she yearns for it. But though those are her big dreams, they aren’t her only dreams. She makes smaller dreams a reality for herself and her husband in tender, kind and intimate gestures.
She tells the world about these things, along with her larger dreams, in her blog. I read it and it reminds me again and again how much I love knowing people like that are in the world. I don’t really need to ever meet her or her husband, though what a pleasure it would be, I have no doubt. All I really need to be inspired is to know the two of them exist.
Read her latest entry about her manifestation of a little dream at the end of the night and then go and see if you can’t find the same fulfillment in the magic of your own small world.
Dream on, Agnes, and thank you.
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“There’s not much to do but bury a person when the last of their dreams are dead.” – Agnes
Worth Sharing:
Why I Used To Drink – Are You Drunk? #3
Have you ever been abstaining (or don’t ever drink) and found yourself at a bar or a gathering where everyone is drinking a LOT, getting drunk, loud, funny and interesting (or so they think)? If you are not drinking these people are the first two, drunk and loud, and for about 10 minutes, the third and fourth, funny and interesting. But after that they are just the first two. That grows old of course so you have three choices, drink the magic elixir that will make these people funny and interesting again, torture yourself by staying amidst them or go home (or the Waffle House).
I quit drinking a year before I left my job at a restaurant and bar I had been working at for over a decade. Until I stopped I would hang out after work and be one of the drunk, loud, funny and interesting ones. After I stopped I found that while I loved these people just as much as before, I no longer was seeing the ‘funny and interesting’ as I had before. My wife and kids became more interesting (which they should have been all along obviously, but hey, I was an idiot, ok?) and I liked going home at the end of work.
One point to remember in case you are in an alcohol dilemma, what you do now doesn’t just have consequences with a hangover. This is especially true of men, who may have to deal with women who might just happen to have memories longer than a comet’s tail. Be mindful that it, perhaps, is all being recorded in their brain for remembering a LONG time later. I am just sayin….
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“I drink to make other people interesting.” – George Jean Nathan, 1882-1958, American drama critic and editor
Worth Sharing:
The Napkin Dad