Tag Archives: Photography

May It Be A Good Day

The video below provides ten minutes of beautiful images, wisdom filled words, and a simple and profound perspective that may change your days.  Take a minute (well, ten minutes).  I promise it will be worth it…

Time and a sense of wonder.  Amazing what depth they bring to your hours and your sense of gratitude.

Time and wonder – I hope you can give those gifts to yourself today.

Spring’s Benediction

Winter’s serene time and space has left me open and in-tune to the minute changes, nuances, and majesty of Spring’s unfolding.  Day by day wonders are absorbed on a soul level.   There is a deep comprehension of all the powerful growth that the earth’s veins are sprouting forth.

It is felt, it is known, it is heard, it is experienced.

Red BudsRed Buds, Blue SkyMay 12

“The peace and beauty of a spring day had descended upon the earth like a benediction. ”
– Kate Chopin

 

 

“When spring comes the grass grows by itself. ”
– Tao Te Ching

 

 

 

 

“It is always quietly thrilling to find yourself looking at a world you know well but have never seen from such an angle before.” -Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life

Melting

 “I feel an indescribable ecstasy and delirium in melting as it were, into the system of beings, in identifying myself with the whole of nature.”  -Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Pond, Beaver Lake RoadPond Melt

Everywhere water is flowing, moving, seeking new adventures.  Awakening the earth, trees, sprouts, bushes and bears.  The melting brings a sweet song and a green promise.

What will you make of the promise of Spring?

“Because when the spring comes,

it melts the snow one flake at a time”

-Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“Spring rain conveyed

under the trees in drops”

-Matsuo Basho

Pond with Light Prism

 “Daughter of heaven and earth, coy Spring,

With sudden passion languishing,

Teaching barren moors to smile,

Painting pictures mile on mile,

Holds a cup of cowslip wreaths

Whence a smokeless incense breathes.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love on Tiny Hooves

Fawn

 

Yes, love does come in the door in many ways.

Seeing the beauty of creation in all the wild ones, knowing every life is a gift –

how can you not?

 

“Your growing antlers,’ Bambi continued, ‘are proof of your intimate place in the forest, for of all the things that live and grow only the trees and the deer shed their foliage each year and replace it more strongly, more magnificently, in the spring.”
Felix Salten, Bambi’s Children

 

Creation’s Dawn

The morning stars were resplendent as this new day unfolded.

Remembering that we all live in creation’s dawn is rejuvenating, exhilarating and liberating!  We can always start anew bringing our best and most creative selves to this newest dawn.

“…I also live in ‘creation’s dawn.’

The morning stars still sing together,

Night-Sky-2012-January-1038x576and the world,

not

yet half made,

becomes more

beautiful every day.”

-John Muir

Blue Sky, Tall Trees & Sun Burst

 

Morning has broken like the first morning, blackbird has spoken like the first bird.  Praise for the singing!  Praise for the morning!”        

     Morning Has Broken (Song Lyrics, Cat Stevens)

 

Every morning the world is created.  Under the orange sticks of the sun the heaped ashes of the night turn into leaves again and fasten themselves to the high branches—and the ponds appear like black cloth on which are painted islands of summer lilies.  If it is your nature to be happy you will swim away along the soft trails for hours, your imagination alighting everywhere.  And if your spirit carries within it the thorn that is heavier than lead—if it’s all you can do to keep on trudging—there is still somewhere deep within you a beast shouting that the earth is exactly what is wanted—each pond with its blazing lilies is a prayer heard and answered lavishly, every morning, whether or not you have ever dared to be happy, whether or not you have ever dared to pray.”

-Morning Poem, Mary Oliver

Manatee Springs Water Lillies

 

Sail Away From Safe Harbor. Explore. Dream. Discover.

April!

Full of rain showers and promise, budding possibilities, growth in every molecular moment!

Red Buds, Blue Sky

 

The earth is singing of new life.  Trees radiating their energy.  Water flowing.  Melting, absorbing, being….

Time to get immersed in the wonders all around.

Uncomplicate.  Be amazed. Feel the majesty.

 

“Maintaining a complicated life is a great way to

6020_1129586154853_6748046_n

avoid changing it.”

-Elaine St. James

“There are years that ask

questions and years that answer”

-Zora Neale Hurston

 

Raven Child Portrait

“Keep walking, though there is no where to get to.

Don’t try to see through the distances.

That’s not for human beings.

Move within, but don’t move the way that fear makes you move”

-Rumi

Swiftcurrent Lake

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the

things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.  So throw

off the bowlines.  Sail away from safe harSan Juan Island Sunsetbor.  Catch the trade

winds in your sails.

Explore.  Dream.

Discover.”

-Mark Twain

Here Comes The Sun

Bright sun shining day!

In northwest Montana, Spring comes slowly – a gradual awakening, full of fits and starts.  Beautiful warmth in the daytime, back to freezing at night.  Comfortable transition.  Exciting anticipation.  The earth waking up, baby critters on the way, red buds on shrubs by the river, cottonwoods showing bright yellow…

Yes!  Here Comes The Sun, and I say, “It’s all right!”

 

 

Thin Places

Peter Gomes, a Harvard theologian, writes:

“There is in Celtic mythology the notion of ‘thin places’ in the universe where the visible and the invisible world come into their closest proximity. To seek such places is the vocation of the wise and the good — and for those that find them, the clearest communication between the temporal and eternal. Mountains and rivers are particularly favored as thin places marking invariably as they do, the horizontal and perpendicular frontiers. But perhaps the ultimate of these thin places in the human condition are the experiences people are likely to have as they encounter suffering, joy, and mystery.”

Mountains and Rivers and

Soft Stream in the Forest

 

Mysteries as the clearest communicators between the temporal and the eternal – yes, for me, absorbed in those sacred places in nature and contemplating the Great Mystery, the visible and invisible are almost merged.  The veil is thin and the feeling is of a wondrous oneness.

Chief with Clouds

To The Morning

What a lovely way to start the new morning – Dan Fogelberg……..

(the photography in the video accompanying the song is just stunning, click below to hear the song and/or just look at the photos – it’s such an inspiring collection of images)

“To The Morning” (Lyrics, Dan Fogelberg)

Watching the sun…watching it come
Watching it come up over the rooftops
Cloudy and warm…maybe a storm
You can never quite tell from the morning

(Chorus)
And it’s going to be a day
There is really no way to say no to the morning
Yes it’s going to be a day
There is really nothing left to say but come on morning

Waiting for mail
Maybe a tale from an old friend or even a lover
Sometimes there’s none
But we have fun thinking of all who might have written

(Chorus)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=RxClQ_pInzc

And maybe there are seasons
And maybe they change
And maybe to love is not so strange

The sounds of the day
Now they hurry away
Now they are gone until tomorrow
When day will break and you will wake
And you will rake your hands across your eyes and realize
That it’s going to be a day
There is really no way to say no to the morning
Yes it’s going to be a day
There is really nothing left to say but come on morning

And maybe there are seasons and maybe they change
And maybe to love is not so strange