Tag Archives: Photography

A Holy Curiosity

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reasons for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”

Albert Einstein

“In the next twenty centuries…humanity may begin to understand its most baffling mystery—where are we going? The earth is, in fact, traveling many thousands of miles per hour in the direction of the constellation Hercules—to some unknown destination in the cosmos. Man must understand his universe in order to understand his destiny.

Mystery, however, is a very necessary ingredient in our lives…Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis for man’s desire to understand. Who knows what mysteries will be solved in our lifetime, and what new riddles will become the challenge of the new generation? Science has not mastered prophesy. We predict too much for the next year yet far too little for the next ten. Responding to challenges is one of democracy’s great strengths. Our successes in space can be sued in the next decade in the solution of many of our planet’s problems.”

Neil Armstrong

Overwhelmed By a Ray of Sunlight

“I was born to walk the Earth, experience the amazing beauty of this planet, and witness the splendor and magic of all things—to be overwhelmed by a ray of sunlight, touched by an encounter with a frog, mystified by the texture of a rock wall.

I was born to splash through the creeks, sing through the canyons, laugh with the squirrels, just as I did as a small child in the woods behind our family’s home.

I was born to be a kid, and not take life too seriously, or get sidetracked by a career, a project, or anything that ties me down to the life of bills, shiny new toys, status, and pavement.”

-Scott Stillman

You Are Every Age You’ve Ever Been (or Earth is Forgiveness School)

This!  This wisdom from the writer Anne Lamott, written on the eve of her 61st year, speaks to me of the beauty and learning inherent in being on the planet for sixty years.   Years are a gift to be savored for the wisdom they impart, for the glorious wonder and the searing pain witnessed, for the connections, the laughter, the ability to go deeper and deeper into this journey, into the very consciousness that is our essence. It may not be an ideal system this life, especially for those of us born sensitive, as Lamott states, but it’s all ours, to be absorbed and valued.  To be savored. To be accepted.  To learn from.  It’s an inside job.  And, yes, take your shoes off. Thanks Anne!

Anne Lamott, What she has learned from Life and Writing:

“My seven-year-old grandson sleeps just down the hall from me, and he wakes up a lot of mornings and he says, “You know, this could be the best day ever.” And other times, in the middle of the night, he calls out in a tremulous voice, “Nana, will you ever get sick and die?”

I think this pretty much says it for me and for most of the people I know, that we’re a mixed grill of happy anticipation and dread. So I sat down a few days before my 61st birthday,and I decided to compile a list of everything I know for sure. There’s so little truth in the popular culture, and it’s good to be sure of a few things.

For instance, I am no longer 47, although this is the age I feel, and the age I like to think of myself as being. My friend Paul used to say in his late 70s that he felt like a young man with something really wrong with him.

Our true person is outside of time and space, but looking at the paperwork, I can, in fact, see that I was born in 1954. My inside self is outside of time and space. It doesn’t have an age. I’m every age I’ve ever been, and so are you, although I can’t help mentioning as an aside that it might have been helpful if I hadn’t followed the skin care rules of the ’60s, which involved getting as much sun as possible while slathered in baby oil and basking in the glow of a tinfoil reflector shield.

It was so liberating, though, to face the truth that I was no longer in the last throes of middle age, that I decided to write down every single true thing I know. People feel really doomed and overwhelmed these days, and they keep asking me what’s true. So I hope that my list of things I’m almost positive about might offer some basic operating instructions to anyone who is feeling really overwhelmed or beleaguered.

Number one: the first and truest thing is that all truth is a paradox. Life is both a precious, unfathomably beautiful gift, and it’s impossible here, on the incarnational side of things. It’s been a very bad match for those of us who were born extremely sensitive.It’s so hard and weird that we sometimes wonder if we’re being punked. It’s filled simultaneously with heartbreaking sweetness and beauty, desperate poverty, floods and babies and acne and Mozart, all swirled together. I don’t think it’s an ideal system.

Number two: almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes — including you.

Three: there is almost nothing outside of you that will help in any kind of lasting way,unless you’re waiting for an organ. You can’t buy, achieve or date serenity and peace of mind. This is the most horrible truth, and I so resent it. But it’s an inside job, and we can’t arrange peace or lasting improvement for the people we love most in the world.They have to find their own ways, their own answers. You can’t run alongside your grown children with sunscreen and ChapStick on their hero’s journey. You have to release them.It’s disrespectful not to. And if it’s someone else’s problem, you probably don’t have the answer, anyway.

Our help is usually not very helpful. Our help is often toxic. And help is the sunny side of control. Stop helping so much. Don’t get your help and goodness all over everybody.

This brings us to number four: everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy and scared, even the people who seem to have it most together. They are much more like you than you would believe, so try not to compare your insides to other people’s outsides. It will only make you worse than you already are.

Also, you can’t save, fix or rescue any of them or get anyone sober. What helped me get clean and sober 30 years ago was the catastrophe of my behavior and thinking. So I asked some sober friends for help, and I turned to a higher power. One acronym for God is the “gift of desperation,” G-O-D, or as a sober friend put it, by the end I was deteriorating faster than I could lower my standards.

So God might mean, in this case, “me running out of any more good ideas.”

While fixing and saving and trying to rescue is futile, radical self-care is quantum, and it radiates out from you into the atmosphere like a little fresh air. It’s a huge gift to the world. When people respond by saying, “Well, isn’t she full of herself,” just smile obliquely like Mona Lisa and make both of you a nice cup of tea. Being full of affection for one’s goofy, self-centered, cranky, annoying self is home. It’s where world peace begins.

Number five: chocolate with 75 percent cacao is not actually a food.

Its best use is as a bait in snake traps or to balance the legs of wobbly chairs. It was never meant to be considered an edible.

Number six —

writing. Every writer you know writes really terrible first drafts, but they keep their butt in the chair. That’s the secret of life. That’s probably the main difference between you and them. They just do it. They do it by prearrangement with themselves. They do it as a debt of honor. They tell stories that come through them one day at a time, little by little.When my older brother was in fourth grade, he had a term paper on birds due the next day, and he hadn’t started. So my dad sat down with him with an Audubon book, paper, pencils and brads — for those of you who have gotten a little less young and remember brads — and he said to my brother, “Just take it bird by bird, buddy. Just read about pelicans and then write about pelicans in your own voice. And then find out about chickadees, and tell us about them in your own voice. And then geese.”

So the two most important things about writing are: bird by bird and really god-awful first drafts. If you don’t know where to start, remember that every single thing that happened to you is yours, and you get to tell it. If people wanted you to write more warmly about them, they should’ve behaved better.

You’re going to feel like hell if you wake up someday and you never wrote the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart: your stories, memories, visions and songs — your truth, your version of things — in your own voice. That’s really all you have to offer us,and that’s also why you were born.

Seven: publication and temporary creative successes are something you have to recover from. They kill as many people as not. They will hurt, damage and change you in ways you cannot imagine. The most degraded and evil people I’ve ever known are male writers who’ve had huge best sellers. And yet, returning to number one, that all truth is paradox, it’s also a miracle to get your work published, to get your stories read and heard. Just try to bust yourself gently of the fantasy that publication will heal you, that it will fill the Swiss-cheesy holes inside of you. It can’t. It won’t. But writing can. So can singing in a choir or a bluegrass band. So can painting community murals or birding or fostering old dogs that no one else will.

Number eight: families. Families are hard, hard, hard, no matter how cherished and astonishing they may also be. Again, see number one.

At family gatherings where you suddenly feel homicidal or suicidal –remember that in all cases, it’s a miracle that any of us, specifically, were conceived and born. Earth is forgiveness school. It begins with forgiving yourself, and then you might as well start at the dinner table. That way, you can do this work in comfortable pants.

When William Blake said that we are here to learn to endure the beams of love, he knew that your family would be an intimate part of this, even as you want to run screaming for your cute little life. But I promise you are up to it. You can do it, Cinderella, you can do it,and you will be amazed.

Nine: food. Try to do a little better. I think you know what I mean.

Number 10 –grace. Grace is spiritual WD-40, or water wings. The mystery of grace is that God loves Henry Kissinger and Vladimir Putin and me exactly as much as He or She loves your new grandchild. Go figure.

The movement of grace is what changes us, heals us and heals our world. To summon grace, say, “Help,” and then buckle up. Grace finds you exactly where you are, but it doesn’t leave you where it found you. And grace won’t look like Casper the Friendly Ghost, regrettably. But the phone will ring or the mail will come and then against all odds, you’ll get your sense of humor about yourself back. Laughter really is carbonated holiness. It helps us breathe again and again and gives us back to ourselves, and this gives us faith in life and each other. And remember — grace always bats last.

Eleven: God just means goodness. It’s really not all that scary. It means the divine or a loving, animating intelligence, or, as we learned from the great “Deteriorata,” “the cosmic muffin.” A good name for God is: “Not me.” Emerson said that the happiest person on Earth is the one who learns from nature the lessons of worship. So go outside a lot and look up. My pastor said you can trap bees on the bottom of mason jars without lids because they don’t look up, so they just walk around bitterly bumping into the glass walls. Go outside. Look up. Secret of life.

And finally: death. Number 12. Wow and yikes. It’s so hard to bear when the few people you cannot live without die. You’ll never get over these losses, and no matter what the culture says, you’re not supposed to. We Christians like to think of death as a major change of address, but in any case, the person will live again fully in your heart if you don’t seal it off. Like Leonard Cohen said, “There are cracks in everything, and that’s how the light gets in.” And that’s how we feel our people again fully alive.

Also, the people will make you laugh out loud at the most inconvenient times, and that’s the great good news. But their absence will also be a lifelong nightmare of homesickness for you. Grief and friends, time and tears will heal you to some extent. Tears will bathe and baptize and hydrate and moisturize you and the ground on which you walk.

Do you know the first thing that God says to Moses? He says, “Take off your shoes.”Because this is holy ground, all evidence to the contrary. It’s hard to believe, but it’s the truest thing I know. When you’re a little bit older, like my tiny personal self, you realize that death is as sacred as birth. And don’t worry — get on with your life. Almost every single death is easy and gentle with the very best people surrounding you for as long as you need. You won’t be alone. They’ll help you cross over to whatever awaits us. As Ram Dass said, “When all is said and done, we’re really just all walking each other home.”

I think that’s it, but if I think of anything else, I’ll let you know.

Thank you.”

-Anne Lamott

Beautiful Wanderer

I have friends who struggle with their worthy essence, and knowing that their partner is out there, really knowing that to be true. And there are those with loving partners that still question. I see your radiance, your beauty, your loving and lovely soul.

This from Andy Charringtonea is for you searchers and questioners and wanderers… we are all on that journey together beautiful wanderer.

I love these words and especially the last line:

“You may find that the adventure of searching reveals as much wonder as the dream you are chasing.”

“Dear Beautiful Wanderer~

You are an important part of this world. And someone thinks you’re worth whatever it takes.

There is someone wonderful who wants to look you in the eyes when you are talking and listen to what you are saying. They want to make love to your mind. They care about your happiness and want to walk your journey with you, moving branches out of your way and leaping over muddy streams with you.

Someone out there thinks that you are so special, they would do anything for you.

You are a great human. And someone admires your greatness. They see the way you think and respect what you have achieved. They want to jump right in with you and show you just how amazing they think you are. They want to climb your walls and explore your depths. Someone out there wants to tell you how great you are with every sunrise and every sunset.

You are sexy. And someone wants to show you that. They want to seduce you and romance you and show you parts of themselves reserved only for you. They want to learn your secrets and be that for you. They want you to know that to them, you are the most beautiful lover and you won’t ever compare to anyone else. Someone out there doesn’t care if they weren’t your first, as long as they’re your last.

You are funny. And someone else thinks so too. They laugh at the world in the same way you do. They want to giggle with you and spend endless hours with just a fire, the stars and your mind. They smile at the same unsaid jokes of the world and finish the sentences you thought were too inappropriate to finish. Someone out there wants to be your sidekick.

You are sensitive. And someone not only sees the perfection of your whole self but is succinctly intuitive and empathetic to your wonderful sensitivity. They admire your way of feeling and they meet you there even when they don’t feel it the same way. They won’t resist any sacrifice they choose to make to relieve your journey and heal your wounds. They want to ride this train with you, in your way and at your speed. Someone out there wants to be your safe place and soft landing.

You are perfect. And someone not only doesn’t care about your flaws, they recognize that they make you who you are and that’s exactly what they want. They want to cuddle you in the hard times and dance in the rain with you for every tiny success. They love everything about you and don’t ignore the ugly parts or wish them gone. Someone out there wants all of you, just as you are, warts and all.

You are beautiful. And someone wants to tell you that. Every day and in a thousand ways. They are attracted to you like a butterfly to a flower. They are proud to walk with you holding your hand and giggle and blush with their friends when they talk about you. Someone out there has falling autumn leaves in their belly every time they look at you.

You are worth it. And someone will do whatever it takes in the name of your beautiful love and future together. They hear your needs and quietly strive to meet them. They understand your weaknesses and help, not through charity, but by seeing that you have been strong on your own for too long. They see your wounds and kiss them not because they have to, but because they want to. Someone out there thinks you’re worth everything you need.

You are kind. And someone sees how you try to be. They notice your efforts and understand your gestures just as you intend them. They find deep comfort knowing how you see yourself, own your past and learn from your mistakes. They know your kindness just as you do. Someone out there wants to be cared for in just the way you want to care.

You are brave. And someone sees what you’ve done and what you’ve done it against and loves you all the more for it. They want to meet you on your adventure and explore every dark corner and every awe filled sky of life with you. They want to hold your hand and jump together. Someone out there thinks you are their fellow explorer.

You are lovable. And someone loves you with every fiber of their body. Not because you are perfect, but because they inexplicably, whole-bodily, head-swimmingly, galaxy-explodingly love you. They see all of you and love each tiny bit as much as the next. They don’t need you to prove your worthiness or chase their affection. Someone out there loves you in just the way you imagined they would.

So be strong my dear, and patient. Everything you dreamed of is out there somewhere. Put on your boots and start exploring. You may find that the adventure of searching reveals as much wonder as the dream you are chasing.

Faithfully yours,

Your fellow explorer”

~ Written by Andy Charringtonea