Monday 08292011 Added New Artwork

So I added a new art piece to my Art Gallery entitled “Speechless.”

Being a big fan of Folkart and that particular style, I wanted to do a piece that would reflect that influence in my life. I did this drawing in colored pencil originally but I really love the different tints that came out when I converted it to black and white. I also wanted to focus in on her eyes – so here’s my art advice for the day…

It doesn’t matter if you draw, paint, photograph, or even doodle – focus on the EYES of your subject. Eyes tell the whole story. They truly are the window to the soul. If you are taking a picture, it doesn’t matter if you’re an 8 year old experimenting with your first camera or a seasoned veteran, zoom in close to the face and focus intently on the eyes. You’ll be amazed at how much more intense and exciting your pictures will be.

I hope this does something for you…

"Speechless" by R.K. Richardson

Where Is God?

What do you do when God stops caring?
When you sit alone in the dark crying,
Reaching out to nothing because
No one is there,
Nothing to touch,
Nothing to love,
Nothing to hope.

Where is God?
I don’t know – I don’t feel Him.
Rejected, unaccepted,
No happy ending.

Why do I feel so alone – so cold;
As if there were no love?
As if there were no one?
As if there were no God?

My soul hurts, my body aches
I am empty without life or breath.
I crawl on my belly
But You will not hear.
I flail at the darkness
But You do not care.

I am the biggest failure to ever exist.
I am the king disappointment
There is no other so despised.

My confession means nothing
My pain simply payment due.
Your regard completely callous
No forgiveness, no renew.

All I want is to feel You
Know that Your warmth is still there.
Just to have one simple, single prayer answered -
My God, let me know You are there.

Don’t put me away
Stop ignoring me
Stop rejecting me
Stop hating me
I have yet some little worth.

Why does my pain seem to make You so happy?
Why does my sorrow bring such joy?

Your chastisement or affliction
Or whatever You call it – make it stop!
Make the violence against me refrain.
Hold me, love me, forgive me, accept me
Just as I am – a reject, a loser, a failure.

But You’re supposed to love me in spite of it all, so -
Where are You?
Why do You make such a horrible exception for me?

Bring Her Back To Me

PREFACE:

In the Bible’s Old Testament, there is a verse that encourages all nations to return to worshipping God. 2 Chronicles 7:14 says, ” If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

Growing up in America is the greatest experience a person can enjoy. Just the thought of all the potential and possibilities that are avaiable – we are truly blessed.

But I must admit I am not quite so proud of the America I see today.

Things have changed through the years. Many have lost that “special heart” that Americans used to demonstrate so clearly. Our government is corrupted and crime and injustice is allowed to run without challenge throughout our streets and neighborhoods.

With a heavy heart I wrote the following, “Bring Her Back To Me.” I hope and pray that this will cause you to ponder the state of our beautiful country and to beseech God, on her behalf, to forgive her sins and heal her land.

BRING HER BACK TO ME

It’s my America, the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Just hearing the sound of that phrase brings warm remembrances of parades, cub scouts, and learning to honor the red, white, and blue with dignity and respect. I grew up as an American, something to be proud of, something to cause my head to be held a little higher.

Bombs bursting in air, bike riding in the park, rockets red glare, playing catch with Dad on the weekends. It is the outrageous Americana that we all grew up with. The fourth of July lived out daily across the waves of amber grain.

Give me your tired, your, poor . . . the Lady represented us well. Even in my young mind I conjured up visions of poor, starving immigrants rushing to the side rail of a transport ship to catch their first glance of her—Liberty—freedom incarnate. What unexplainable joy must have filled their being as they looked at her, memorizing each and every detail. What a remarkable picture they made as they stood there united, making a collection of sights and sounds and smells that would last a lifetime.

Many traveled with the knowledge that they’d never see family, friends, and home again. There was so much opportunity ahead and so much freedom to explore. There were so many obstacles overcome, and yet many still standing in the way. But it didn’t matter. It was America!

But as I’ve grown to manhood I’ve learned this is not my America at all.

My America is full of burdens, injustices, and depravation of liberties.

Somewhere in my heart I am ripped asunder by the reality of my America. The understanding of her shortcomings is a marring violation to my soul. It’s not the same as discovering that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are mere fables. It goes deeper than that – down to the embodiment of my pride and allegiance.

The once honest hustle and bustle of city life (men and women scurrying about to commerce etc.) has given way to dark and unspeakable deeds done in broad daylight. Even in the rural nucleus of my great land people spit upon the very essence of what I hold so dear and continue under the guise and protection of freedom and sweet liberty.

Her borders are now essentially closed—the ships are turned away. The harsh reality of a burgeoning economy and welfare class. The unthinkable cruelty of modern politicians feathering their nests and forgetting the fundamental representations they proclaimed so loudly on Election Day. So who cares about the ones who struggle for freedom from tyranny and injustice? Certainly not them.

Yes, I am disallusioned with my America. My dear God far removed, the very sanctity for life robbed from the cradle. The beauty of God’s blessed union dragged through the trenches of hell.

Yes, I am cynical. I am exasperated with the whole mess.

I want my America back. The same America I grew up with. The same America that welcomed the impoverished with open arms. The same America where I proudly gave two-fingered salutes to the passing “Old Glory.” I want to see the streets scrubbed clean with the hearts of men and women, boys and girls who love this land as I do. I want to see and read about my God in all the old familiar places. I want to hear the children speak his name before they begin their work each day.

Where has my beloved gone to? And whence can she return? Do not your eyes run fast with tears of pity as you look on dear Lady Liberty, scarred, tainted, stained with the excrement of her own inhabitants?

Enough, I cry. Polish her skin, light her torch. Bring back the glory that once was held in freedom’s cry. And let her children, her many children, be born without fear or trembling even of existence but rather come forth with resounding patriotism—I AM AN AMERICAN! I am free. I live in the home of the brave.

Please . . . bring back my America once again. Allow me to look into her eyes and behold her beauty one more time before I too perish.

Tears

Life is a mystery
My grandma once said
Searching for meaning
Finding hardships instead.
Tears find their way
Down our face time to time
Following life’s journey
Without reason or rhyme.

Tears of joy
Tears of pain
Cry through the sunshine
Cry through the rain.
We seldom think
How great is the cost
Of each precious tear
That runs down and is lost.

Falling in love for the very first time
Then breaking apart
To the heart is a crime.
Tears come and tears go
‘Tis a fact that is true
Climbing up strong
On our way to the blue.

Tears of joy
Tears of pain
Cry through the sunshine
Cry through the rain.
We seldom think
How great is the cost
Of each precious tear
That runs down and is lost.

All the special moments
In life they stand out,
As tears roll down faces
Showing what it is all about.

Saying goodbye to
My friends who were dear
Holding the first time
My little one near.
Tears, they keep flowing
Down the face bye and bye;
Deep in dark valleys
And on mountaintop high.

Tears of joy
Tears of pain
Cry through the sunshine
Cry through the rain.
We seldom think
How great is the cost
Of each precious tear
That runs down and is lost.

Democracy Is More Than A Small Blessing

The images were startling. I sat and watched in amazement as the video recounted the horror days of eastern Europe, first under the inhuman hands of Nazi Germany, and then the iron oppressive hand of the Soviet Union.

Equal demons and partners in soul destruction – socialism and communism, they both seek to devour the essence and individualism of the common man and force him to conform to another’s ideals and way of life. It is a blatant rape of human intellect and freedom.

Under the Nazi regime, millions of European Jews were literally scorched from the earth. What was their crime? They didn’t fit the mold of a madman’s vision of a superior race. They were different and dared to live and express themselves differently. They paid for their God-given right of free expression with their lives.

I learned that at Auschwitz, the number of Jews being herded into the gas chambers was so great that the incinerators could not keep up, burning between 3000-4000 bodies a day. As a result, another camp was built a couple of miles away to increase production. I learned that nine out of ten Jews who were not exterminated in the gas chambers died in the work camps, most within the first two months they were there.

It was socialism’s greatest hour!

Even the non-Jews, national Polls, Hungarians, Croatians, Slovakians, and other easterners were heavily oppressed. Under communism, only Roman Catholicism was allowed to be practiced and then only under heavy state-sponsored regulations. All art produced, no matter the form, had to glorify the State and promote the cause of communism. To vary from the approved art forms would mean certain imprisonment, banishment, and many times death.

It was communism’s greatest hour!

Seeing and learning more about these events, as recorded by history, it brings to my mind these words, more sacred now than any other time in American history, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Visit eastern Europe today. See first-hand the faces of the people who have been liberated from the freedom-haters. Ask them what they think about governments and people whose sole purpose is to extinguish the hopes and dreams of people who only want to live, be free, and be happy. Open your eyes and observe how their societies are flourishing under capitalism and democracy.

And then ask yourself, “Where is my country going? What do my leaders envision for my future and the futures of my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren?”

For democracy to survive in this still young experiment called America, each citizen will need to draw the line against big government. We constantly, even daily need to remind Washington D.C. that government is by the people and for the people – not the other way around. Stand firm against those who would rob even the smallest most minute particle of our freedoms.

Democracy is more than a small blessing, it should be the heart beat of every man, woman, boy, and girl who live under the graceful, waving banner of the red, white, and blue. Stand tall, stand proud, stand together, for freedom’s sake!