Yesterday I got to go on a bus trip to the Philadelphia Art Museum.

Aside from the 5 am wake up, yawn) it was really a lovely thing to climb on a bus and head out. (And let’s here it for Panera’s who open at 6. Very convenient when you’re leaving from their parking lot.)

But the museum provided a day of splendor. So much to see and breathe in.

The light, oh, the light in those Impressionist paintings… and those lovely rivers and coast lines… Every once in a while we’d run into a teacher who was hauling her class around and explaining why this and why that stroke… it was fun to hear.

And the life! Oh, the dancers. Oh the beauty.

And what a daring interesting man Durand-Ruel was who invested in those artists and that movement! Bits of history I never knew.

And I had a lovely introspective moment at the Japanese tea-house. My mom went to art school in Philadelphia and spent formative years there at that museum. We always thought of it as her museum. And I have real memories of seeing that tea house with her. So there I sat for a while, with the Buddha and remembered Mom and being her little girl so amazed that there was a building inside a building and that it was so wonderfully exotic.

It was a moment. I missed her a lot and I was so blessed to have been hers. And although I wasn’t ready for art museums when I was her baby, and I still have to be careful about over-stimulation, it was a wonderful day filled with color and light and movement.

And lovely bus companions. Hurrah.

Here’s to the Peace of Art Museums. Here’s to more thought-provoking Beauty.