Dear %$firstname$%, Today we have an unusual Beauty & Spirit Note! For one thing, this is the fifth Thursday - our wildcard day! And for the first time we have a personal message from my dear sister, channeler and co-blogger Minda. (It's particularly personal and heartwarming to me, that is! I hope you enjoy it too.) For another thing, today I get to welcome all of you wonderful people who have recently joined the Beauty & Spirit Note, including a number whom I had the great pleasure to meet at the Pittsburgh Society of Artists demo last weekend. (See below for more on that!) Now from Minda: Hello dear readers of the Beauty & Spirit Note. I hope you are enjoying your weekly missives as much as I am. When I receive my copy from Julie, it is always a most beautiful jewel of a surprise. Of course, I know what the channeling is going to be for the blog, but I never know what words Julie will say to introduce it, or which paragraphs she'll pick out to add to what is posted on the blog, or how she'll speak of her week in the studio. And best of all . . . what slice of heaven painting she'll include for our visual pleasure! I just love the colors, textures, swirls, shapes, lines and depths of her paintings. All of my life I've been blessed by being surrounded by Julie's artistic visions and paintings. As I recount so often, the larger-than-life painting she gave my husband and me on our wedding day almost 28 years ago - which she modestly waves off as an immature work of her distant past - is something I look at every single day, always finding new meaning and inspiration. I never tire of it. How can one piece carry so much beauty and spirit? I hope that as we share what channels from the Universe through our hearts and souls to you, you pass along your own beauty and spirit to those who surround you, and bless their lives. Thank you for joining us in this mission of love! Love, Minda P.S. I recently returned from a scuba trip with my husband, diving off of St. Maarten and Saba. What I loved best was just floating in the surging undercurrent, observing the underwater beauty: the geological structures, marine life, coral reefs, bands of eagle rays flying around in the distance and a hammerhead shark passing by, the sea goddess nudibranch up close ... the macro and micro, shifting back and forth, the big perspective and the detail to focus on. It doesn't get better than that. Minda with her friend, Manta Ray Back to Julie: When an artist demonstrates a painting, it often ends up in the wastebasket because you really can't talk and paint well at the same time. But something magic happened at my PSA demo, because my main painting came out beautifully. I'll show you in a future Beauty & Spirit Note. Meanwhile, a watercolor I splashed onto paper during the same demo was definitely a throw-away (not surprisingly, because the paper was too big for the time I had). But you know what? Sometimes there's hope where you least expect it! The painting was titled (beforehand), "Anticipating the Beautiful Day." Later I cropped the excess paper off and, lo and behold, the painting seems to express the title perfectly! Like a circle of people dancing in the sun. Well, next week we'll be back to our riveting questions for the guides. If you're new, check out the I Listen to Spirit Blog to date and see what's been up. As always, you may submit your own Dear Guides question! See instructions on how to do that - and also a table of contents for the questions already posted - on the Dear Guides page. With love, Julie P.S. We hope you will post your comments on the blog. P.P.S. You are welcome to share this Beauty & Spirit Note with friends! P.P.P.S. Friends, you can sign up yourself at any of the sites below. Julie Bernstein Engelmann julie@julieengelmann.com Artist, www.JulieEngelmann.com Author, Julie's Spiritual Space Co-blogger, I Listen to Spirit blog Co-producer, A Communion of Light: Creating Money The Beauty & Spirit email list is housed securely on the email server of my husband Chip Engelmann's site, www.ChipEFT.com, using his autoresponder program. © 2010 Julie Bernstein Engelmann