A reflection on the past year finds me feeling grateful, humble and hopeful when I consider how thankful I am for my circle of support of family, friends, Good Samaritans, and my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

I have always viewed Nature and the Bible as two separate and useful books of revelation available to mankind.  I use my observation and experience of our natural world as a major inspiration on how I create my art.

C.S. Lewis writes in Miracles: How God Intervenes in Nature and Human Affairs that there are two types of people: Naturalists and Supernaturalists. He writes: ‘The Naturalist believes is that the ultimate Fact, the thing you can’t go behind, is a vast process in space and time which is going on of its own accord.‘ and Lewis describe the other sort of person: ‘The Supernaturalist agrees with the Naturalist that there must be something which exists in its own right; some basic Fact whose existence it would be nonsensical  to try to explain because this Facts is itself the ground or starting-point of all explanations. But he does not identify this Fact with ‘the whole show’, He thinks that things fall into two classes. In the first class we find either things or (more probably) One Thing which is basic and original, which exists on its own. In the second we find things which are merely derivative from that One Thing. The One Basic Thing has caused all things to be.”

I stand with the Supernaturalists, because my world view believes that each of us is unique because we have been placed at a specific time and place with the free will to choose how we want to live our life.  It means that as an artist, I am free to choose what inspires me and moves me to create, where inspiration can come both from within me as well as from outside me as I connect to the original source of creation through communion with nature.

I believe that the spirit of Christmas is about the joy and hope of our promise and potential as human beings.  As Christians, we believe in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the firstborn to achieve God’s original conception of having fellowship with us in peace love and joy.

Do you believe in miracles? Why or why not?