What the World Needs

Memories of the Garden at Etten*

Vincent Van Gogh (1853 – 1890)
Post-Impressionist painter of Dutch origin

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs.
Ask yourself what makes you come alive
and then go do that.
Because what the world needs
is people who have come alive.”

Howard Thurman (1899 - 1981)
African American author, theologian, educator

*************I discovered this particular Van Gogh one day when googling "Garden of Eden" -- even though "Etten" has nothing to do with "Eden." It just goes to show how sometimes when you search for one thing, you find another?!

Van Gogh Home

House and Figure, c. 1890"Spring was moving in the air above him
and in the earth below and around him,
penetrating even his dark and lowly little house
with its spirit of divine discontent and longing."

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Bedroom in Arles, 1888"He saw clearly how plain and simple -- how narrow, even -- it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one's existence. . . . it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome."

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Passages by Kenneth Grahame, 1859 - 1932
from The Wind in the Willows (5, 87)

Paintings by Vincent Van Gogh,1853 - 1890

Click for "Vincent: Starry Starry Night" Slideshow
with music by Don McLean, b. 1945