Category Archives: photos

skywatch friday

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I took my mom to get some bloodwork early this morning and then spent a few hours hanging out with her while my dad golfed. She’s not doing so well. It was nice to just be with her though, seems like I usually see her just long enough to drag her to and from doctor appointments. When I got home I decided to participate with a blog that has people post photos of the sky where they live. I went to the park across the street and snapped a few, one of which is gracing this post. There’s a busy playground on one side of the park, a ball diamond, and this lovely little fishing hole tucked between some hills. As I was looking at the peace-filled photos I wondered why I don’t grab a book and go plop down there on a bench to read sometime?

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. ~Rachel Carson

monday reflections

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I love when I come across a sentence or a paragraph in a book with words that seem to sing to me. Sentences that I read over again just so I can savor their cadence, their melody. When I was growing up my mother filled our home with books. We had a huge wall of shelves with everything from Faulkner to Fitzgerald to Conroy to Willa Cather on them. Before I could read grown-up books I would stand in front of those shelves and pull books out one at a time, I would feel their weight in my small hands and smell their yellowed pages. If we are fortunate, our mother’s love gives us many gifts while growing up, such as a sense of security, support, and comfort. My mother gave me those things and she also gave me words. Below is a quote from Leif Enger’s novel, Peace Like a River. The main character has briefly crossed over to that place between life and death.

At the moment I had no notion of identity. Nor of burden. I laughed in place of language. The meadow hummed as though thick with the nests of waking creatures, and the grasses were canyon colored, lifting their heads as I passed. Moving up from the river the humming began to swell-it was magnetic, a sound uncurling into song and light and even a scent, which was like earth, and I must’ve then entered the region of nests, for up scattered finches and cheeky longspurs and every sort of bunting and bobolink and piebald tanager. All these rose with sweet chaotic calls, whirling and resettling to the grass.

Leif Enger wrote those words but my mother gave them to me. Thanks mom.

wednesday meditations

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I can sometimes sit for two hours in a room with almost no thought. Just complete stillness. Sometimes when I go for walks, there’s also complete stillness; there’s no mental labeling of sense perceptions. There’s simply a sense of awe or wonder or openness, and that’s beautiful.

Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry — all forms of fear — are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence. ~Eckhart Tolle

fragile beauty

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When I was dealing with chronic health problems some years ago my mom once told me that she didn’t know how I did it. She said she wouldn’t have the strength or courage to do what I did, which was to go on. She has been very ill for a year now herself. This past week was particularly rough and she ended up spending twenty-four hours in the hospital. Yesterday, she said that a year ago she expected that she would be healthy by now and back her normal life. Now she is facing the reality that perhaps she will have to accept a new “normal”.

I remember struggling with the idea of acceptance and hope when I was sick. I think that when you face an illness, or most any other great challenge in your life, you need to embrace a little bit of both. You also learn that courage has nothing to do with strength or weakness, it’s really just a choice: to do the right thing, to find the blessings in the worst of times, or perhaps to simply choose to go on.

Mr. bookbabie took the photo above. It’s of a baby crane near his office that fell out of its nest is now living rather precariously in a small tree. The mother is still caring for it and we hope that it can survive until it’s big enough to make it on its own. Isn’t it beautiful?

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow. ~Mary Anne Radmacher

naked words

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I finished reading Mark Matousek’s book, When You’re Falling Dive last night. The author takes a look at how disaster transforms people by interviewing and seeking advice from many different people who have been touched with adversity. One chapter, entitled “Nakedness” begins with this passage: We must accept heartbreak to be fully human. We cannot love without tasting some blood, nor connect without braving some chink in our armor. Those who are most spiritually naked, most transparent, are also those who see most fully. “Let the scar of the heart be seen,” said the prophet Mohammad. “For by their scars are known the men who are in the way of Love.”

I like that term, spiritually naked. I think that’s how it is when you become a parent, the love you feel for your baby is so raw you have no choice but to become spiritually naked. Many new parents are surprised by the force of that love, the uncontrollable fierceness of it. They are both surprised and frightened by it because with it comes the possibility of such profound heartbreak. We love and we lose. Someone I know who is grieving a relationship said that she had wasted the past ten years with her lover because they broke up. Do you think that’s true? Can love be wasted?

Anyhoo, the book was a good read if you’re feeling introspective (as I seem to be lately). Check it out next time you’re at the bookstore. The photo is of my niece Ayrielle, I just want to pinch those chubby little cheeks every time I see her:)

artsy fartsy friday

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Which Famous Artist Are You?

You are Ansel Adams. Your artistic tool of choice is the camera, but you’ve got lots of other skills as well. Spoiled when you were young, you grew up to be a loving person and you have a deep affinity for nature and all things black and white.

Click on the heading to take the quiz:)

The only things in my life that compatibly exists with this grand universe are the creative works of the human spirit. ~Ansel Adams