The setting for this painting is a perfect day in Germany, in a small village on the edge of the Black Forest. I go out for a walk with my children, passing through the lower fields beyond the community gardens. We enter the cool darkness of the forest and follow the logging trails in a loop.

When we exit a bit later, everything has changed. Before me the fields are still precisely laid out in blocks of newest green and deep gold. My immediate sky is still impossibly blue, with storybook white clouds framing the forested hill in the distance.

But the upper ranges of the sky have turned a fierce dark blue while I was not looking, with striations that indicate rain in the distance. I stand in this wild, sweet moment. The smell of hay in sunshine collides with the fresh scent of rain. The fields glow preternaturally bright in contrast to the darkness far above.

Do I run for shelter? We still have time to keep dry, to turn our backs on the storm in the safety of home and routine. And so it is with life, that I can try to outrun the next storm, to seek safety in the familiar.

Or I can pause, and drink in the wild sweetness of life suddenly so clear before the coming storm. To take this moment, and fold it like extraordinary origami that I can carry in my pocket as a talisman against the challenge ahead.