Pink flamingo's are not pink naturally.  This was news to me until very recently during a conversation with an old boss of mine who had travelled to Kenya in an area that had flocks of wild flamingo's.  Apparently the flamingo's environment and what they eat (including algae and small crustaceans), over time changes their white to grey feathers into everything from a pinky, orange to a deep red and on an extremely rare occasion even black.  Wouldn't I love to see a black flamingo!!

Learning this, put flamingo's higher on my radar these past few years.  I had never had any urge to paint them and suddenly their outlines and reflections seem to start appearing on my canvas and I simply saw them everywhere I turned.  Something about them being a product of their environment in a good way, struck a cord with me.  After all, who wouldn't love pink feathers?

I've recently discovered audio books.  Yes, I know they have been around for sometime now but I've been slow on the uptake.  You see I love my paper books.  I love a good library of them too.  The kind of library where books exist on shelves up to the ceiling and reading lights, coffee and comfy chairs are plentiful.  The problem is that I have not read a great deal since coming to Australia.  Time has sped up and slipped away and the hours I used to spend, absorbed in the pages of a great book, just can't be found. 
​So audio books have taken up a place on my phone.  I can plug in and listen whenever I have time and I get notifications on newly published gems on a daily basis.  And so I've listened to more books than I've read in the past 5 years. 
One of those books, I have yet to finish.  I hit play on "A Course in Miracles" by Dr. Helen Schucman almost 2 years ago now.  This book is a bit of a marathon and I still have over 14 hours of it left to go.  It contains a lifetime of work that I need to do on my personal growth and so the going has been a bit of a journey.

I heard this for the first time in a training session I attended as an emerging leader at Colt Engineering many years ago.  Lou Tice's words, "There is greatness in you", sprung from the page and struck me in my heart.  "Really?" I thought.  I stared at the words 'you' and 'greatness' written together on the page and lost track of what was being said in the class.  I shook my head to return to the discussion and waited to later that night to stare at the words again, in wonder.  Those words, "There is greatness in you", started a glimmer of an awareness that lit up my soul. ​