Posts in Category: Sunday
Carol and Anna at Taos Pueblo. Happy Sunday!
Carol and Anna, Taos Pueblo, New Mexico
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
My wife Carol and I are in Santa Fe, New Mexico visiting our daughter Anna, who is finishing up her masters in Art Therapy / Counseling here. Yesterday we took a drive to Taos and Taos Pueblo, taking the National Scenic Byway called the Taos High Road, which winds up through the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, offering a series of memorable views of the upland landscape…as well as passing through some interesting mountain towns. It is off the beaten path in the truest sense of the word, but a certainly a wonderful drive. Then we spent the afternoon at Taos Pueblo. This is Carol and Anna in the main plaza of the Pueblo, where they hold religious ceremonies (fiesta) and dances several times a year…some of them as old as the buildings behind my wife and daughter…going back 1000 years. Unlike most remaining Pueblos, Taos has large communal dwellings that are more like the architecture of the Anasazi ruins in the area, than they are like the more southern Pueblos, which feature more individual family homes. Taos is still a living community. Though only 4 or 5 families still live year round in the Pueblo, every home and apartment is full around the fiesta days and celebrations, and the Pueblo is still the heart of the community, even if members have a home in the one of the newer areas where they have access to electricity and indoor plumbing, not to mention wifi and the internet.
As with all the Pueblos, the history of Taos since the Spanish Invasion and the American Conquest is bittersweet to say the least. Taos was the leader in two Revolts, one against the Spanish which actually drove the invaders back down into Mexico for 12 years, and another, this time allied with the Hispanic settlers in the area, against the American forces, which resulted in the death of 150 women and children who had taken shelter in the church, when the Americans turned canons on it and destroyed it. But Taos is still a strong community. Taos was the first tribe to force (or convince) the US Government to return native lands, and now holds over 100,000 areas of sacred land above the Pueblo in the mountains, which includes Blue Lake, the source of Willow Creek that is the heart of the community (Taos means “place of the willows”.) They have a strong sovereign government and have their affairs well in hand. They welcome visitors to the Pueblo and many of the Pueblo homes have been turned into cafés (fry bread and chili) or shops that feature a wide range of Pueblo arts and crafts.
It is always a challenge for me, as a descendent of the invaders and conquerors, to visit a living community like Taos. It is a reminder of the pain that has been inflicted by my people in the name of religion and manifest destiny. But it is also a testimony to the best in human nature…to the strength of the spirit that lives in us all…that not only survives but thrives in this world. It is a testimony to the light that lives in us all. It is a testimony that peace, even if tentative and tainted by the past, is possible among us. And I need that reminder this week…after we appear to have elected a old style manifest destiny Conqueror as our president. The last few days have certainly been a challenge to my generosity. I can only hope that our community is strong enough to reign him, and his forces, in for the next 4 years, and that we can emerge, as the community of Taos has, stronger and more alive for the experience. Happy Sunday!
Milkweed. Happy Sunday!
“If your eye is generous, then your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
Hope is a puff of Milkweed silk, blowing in the wind, carrying the future. And not the future only of the plant, but the future of the Monarch Butterfly, and in a very real sense, our own as well. It might all rest on where some single Milkweed seed falls to earth.
Hope is a dangerous thing to base a life on, unless, of course, you know where your hope resides…unless there is a huge power of good backing your hope. The generous eye lives in hope. The generous eye sees in the frail beauty of Milkweed silk, all the strength and beauty of the universe…all the loving care of a creator who works through love.
If you can see the beauty in this image, then carry it inside…into your heart and let it grow. Sometimes it really does all hinge on where the Milkweed seed lands. Happy Sunday!
Safe Harbor
Cape Porpoise Harbor, Cape Porpoise Maine
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light.” Jesus
Yesterday was one of those gray fall days in Maine along the coast. Just enough rain falling to dampen, skies heavy overhead, sea agitated…almost angry on the rocky shore. And yet, it was day to enjoy…a day of joy in being alive. In Cape Porpoise the lobster boats were mostly anchored, and the dock was quiet, under the eye of the lighthouse on Goat Island. We ate the excellent clam chowder at the Chowder House, and watched Eiders catching crabs, and Gulls stealing them. The sign on the wall announced the end of the season and begged our patience since all the summer help was gone back to college and school. We were warm on the inside and the outside by the time we left, with a the deep quiet of the end of season day settling in us, still at our centers as the boats floating the harbor…anchored by our faith in a loving creator and wrapped in the light, of the fellowship of Christ. Our safe harbor, our guiding light, no matter what comes in wind and rain, or how the waves beat against the shore…no matter the end of seasons, or even the end of days. We know where our harbor lies…we know the light within and look at the world of weather and change with generous eyes.
Happy Sunday! May you know safe harbor today.
Hippo in the sunset. Happy Sunday!
Hippopotamus, Tshukudu Game Reserve, South Africa
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light.” Jesus
I am more or less back from nearly a month of intensive travel, with spotty to non-existent wifi, and very little unscheduled time. I am actually in Columbus Ohio for the Great American Birding Expo, but that is relatively close to home, with excellent hotel wifi, and some time this morning to properly reflect on the Sunday. I am thankful for the time this morning, but I am also thankful for the travel. I spent a week in Panama, and 11 days in South Africa, and my head and my heart is full of new and memorable sights and experiences. This shot is from a sunset drive at a private, fenced, Game Reserve in South Africa. Tshakudu Game Reserve specializes in Rhinoceros, but they have all of the “big five” game animals on their extensive property. The small herd of Hippos was basking in one of few ponds that still have water at the height of the severe drought that has the Greater Kruger region in its grip. The water is actually shallow enough so the Hippos are kneeling on the bottom of the pond. This is a classic Africa shot, with the Hippo roaring in the sunset.
I feel incredibly blessed to have stood on the dam in Tshakudu to witness this. And incredibly is just the right word. I am very close to not being able to believe it. Africa has been a dream of mine since childhood, and, now, just after my 69th birthday, it has come true…and it was everything I had dreamed it would be. I went into the trip determined to be as generous as I possibly could be…open-hearted and open eyed as the blessing deserves. I failed, of course, but each day I woke with thanksgiving and did my best to enjoy what might well be a once in a lifetime experience. Just to be there…just to see…just to record…just to share. Overwhelming! God, please grant me generosity of spirit to match the gift. Happy Sunday!
Hairstreak photobombed by Yellowjacket! Happy Sunday.
Coral Hairstreak Butterfly and Yellowjacket Wasp, Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, W. Kennebunk ME
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
This might be one of those Instagram or Facebook celebrity photo bomb shots 🙂 The Choral Hairstreak was busy with the Meadowsweet blossoms and I was busy taking it’s pic, when this Yellowjacket buzzed in from the left. The Yellowjacket was after smaller prey lower in the flower cluster, but it looked for an instant like it might go for the Hairstreak. Talk about being in the right place at the right time!
And I had already had a great morning at the pond. This shot was right next to the car in the parking area. I had already put my camera bag in the car and was looking forward to cranking up the AC…but the Hairstreak right there beside me was irresistible, so I dug the camera out again. And you just never know what God is going to provide when you open your eyes and turn them on nature. I am, based frequent experiences of this kind, always ready to be blessed when I turn my attention outward, with or without my camera lens.
In a week of news from the Republican Convention and the presidential campaign, I need this kind of experience to remind me that the world is not nearly as dark as the politicians portray it. In fact, for the generous eye, the world is as bright as it has ever been…and that is bright indeed. Yes there are pockets of darkness…always have been and always will be while human beings exploit each other…where greed and self-interest rule the human heart…but that is not, no matter what you hear from the podium or the pulpit, the norm. The norm is generosity and light. The norm is grace. The norm is love. That is because light, grace, and love…generosity…is the nature of the God who creates all we know and all we are…who lives in all we know and is the true being of all we are. For people my age, i can say that the world is a brighter place today than it was when we were children. Safer, saner, with more people who walk in love…less want, more openness, more fairness, more inclusiveness. And yes the actions and effects of those who are motivated by greed…the stingy eyed…is often on display in today’s “bad news is good news” media world…but that does not mean we have to give the darkness, or those who peddle it in whatever from, power over our lives. God is good…in God there is no shadow or turning…and we get to live in the world we choose. Open your eyes wide in generosity…and be the light in this world we are intended to be. Happy Sunday!
Nubble Light. Happy Sunday!
Nubble Light, Cape Neddick, Maine
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
This shot, and others I took last Friday at Nubble Light in Cape Neddick Maine (or York Beach if you prefer), inspired a poem…at least in part about photography. I include it here since it tells at least the first part of the story.
I took a loop south today to photograph
Nubble Light off Cape Neddick, one of
the closer of the iconic Maine Lighthouses
(Goat Island Light in Cape Porpoise is
closer, but nearly as photogenic). Nubble
is a place I take every new camera within
the first month I own it…it is a scene that
forms a baseline in my understanding of
image quality…a reference for comparison…
I know, who cares? I am enough of a geek
to say I do…and geek enough to brave the
Ogunquit traffic on a Friday to get to
the cape and stand on the rocks and shoot
the Light that I have shot, what, 50 times
before…from all angles. Some days the
clouds are great behind the Light (today
was one of them), some days there is drama
in the way the waves drive up the gap
between the cape and island, sending spray
fountaining in the foreground (today the
sea was as flat as I have seen it, and the
water in the gap lapped gently at the foot
of the rocks as though they edged a pond).
But always there is beauty in the way the
old home and the tall light, the picket fence
and the brick pump-house, the cable car
lines draped across the gap, stand up against
the sea, stand fast and sure, stand as an
icon of the struggle to wrest a living from
these northern waters…from this restless sea…
and catching a bit of that beauty, that strength,
is the challenge that keeps me, and a hundred,
(several hundred on a good day like today) other
photographers with every kind of camera coming
back, again and again, to the Lighthouse on the
Nubble, off the tip of Cape Neddick…I admit, most
do not have my interest in image quality, but they
all recognize a quality image when they see it.
And the second part of the story? If you did a count of the number of Christian Churches with Lighthouse in their name, it would, without doubt, amount to thousands…perhaps a hundred thousand or more around the world. It is such an obvious metaphor for the work any church worth its salt (and that is, of course, another reference from the words of Jesus) is supposed to do in this world: to hold up Jesus, the light of world, to turn anyone with eyes to see away from the rocks of this life and bring them safe to shore.
But Lighthouse is also a great metaphor for what each of us is supposed to be in this world. If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light…and that light shines out just as the light of God shines in. Each of us should hold up Jesus in our faces so that those around us know at least that someone cares enough to warn them of the rocks, and stands as a reminder that there is an alternative. Our bodies are lighthouses, or should be. Each one of us who claims the name of Jesus.
So, stand up tall on the line between the sea and shore, and shine brightly today, and every day. Happy Sunday!
Least Terns in flight: Happy Sunday!
Three Least Terns in flight. Laudholm Beach, Wells Maine
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
To the generous eye, the glory of God is all around us in the natural world. Sunsets and sunrises, the drama of clouds over a sunlit landscape, the energy of a storm, the quite beauty of flowers…God’s glory is all around us. And no where, as I see it, more clearly than in birds in flight. Grace and power, intense purpose accomplished with such ease it looks to us like play…our spirits soar just watching, and it takes a hard heart indeed, or one terribly distracted, not to be driven to praise.
There is only one place where the glory of God is more clearly revealed…and that is, as Paul says, in the unveiled faces of God’s children. May your eye be generous to see the glory of God today, and may your unveiled face reveal that glory to all who see you. Happy Sunday!
Jack-in-the-pulpit. Happy Sunday!
Jack-in-the-pulpit, Wells National Estuarine Research Center at Laudholm Farms, Maine
“If you eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
Until last year I had never seen Jack-in-the-pulpit in the wild. I had seen it at botanical gardens in Boothbay and Bar Harbor (Coastal Maine Botanical Garden and Wild Gardens of Acadia), but never actually growing out of “captivity”. Then they cleared back the encroaching bushes and ferns along the boardwalk through the Red Maple Swamp at Laudholm Farms (Wells National Estuarine Research Center) and last year there were two separate stands of Jack-in-the-pulpit revealed. This year, a fairly careful search only turned up one stand, but they have really razed the vegetation to the ground along the first section of the boardwalk, perhaps in an attempt to eliminate the invasive Japanese Barberry that grows in abundance there.
Considering, if clearing the brush along the boardwalk revealed two clumps of Jack-in-the-pulpit, the there are probably many such clumps, perhaps hundreds, scattered through the surrounding forest of Maple, Birch, and Pine. They grow low, under the cover of ferns and brush, and so go unseen and unsuspected by those of us who obey the rules and stick to the boardwalk. And if they are growing there, at Laudholm Farm, they are very likely growing in similar habitat all through Maine and New England. So probably not a rare plant at all…though one that is seldom seen.
Still, seeing them growing there along the boardwalk fills me with delight. What a wonderful thing it is to know that something so strange as the Jack-in-the-pulpit is growing, out of sight, and unsuspected, all around us. I do suspect, however, that the majority of people who walk the boardwalk every May never see the Jack-in-the-pulpit even though it is now out in plain sight. It is not that their eyes are not open…it is just that they are occupied with other things. Part of the generosity of the eye that Jesus talks about is being open to any and everything…to whatever God puts in front of us…to whatever is waiting our discovery. I can promise that getting your eye off what concerns us as humans, and opening ourselves to what is right in front of us will have its rewards. The delight of discovery first among them. Who knows what else the forest hides. If there are Jack-in-the-pulpits there, there might be anything! Happy Sunday.
Lady Slipper time. Happy Sunday!
Pink Lady Slipper, Rachel Carson NWR, Wells ME
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
I have been watching the patches of Pink Lady Slipper at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge and along the Kennebunk Bridle Trail in Wells and Kennebunk for weeks now. There is one patch off a deck at the back at Rachel Carson, overlooking Branch Brook, where the sun comes in all day. Lady Slipper orchids bloom there at least a few days, sometimes a week, before they bloom anywhere else in our area. Yesterday the first blossoms opened fully. I can go back through my archives on my WideEyedInWonder site and find images of this plant going back at least 7 or 8 years, maybe more. I don’t mean this plant as in Lady Slipper, I mean this plant as in this Lady Slipper. It always produces at least two blossoms, sometimes as many as 6. There is a delicacy, a rare beauty in these strange blooms, and I do my best to catch it year by year.
My yearly Lady Slipper vigil is part of what keeps me aware of the constant renewal of the beauty of creation…the cycle of change…no two years the same…but each year with its beauty…that is God’s creative love at work, day by day. It is not that Genesis has it wrong when it says that after God created the heavens and the earth God rested…it is that we have the wrong idea of rest. Rest, in the divine sense has to be creative, radiant…an ongoing action producing peace…an continual outflowing and outworking of love. Rest is not a pause in the dance, or a silence in the music…it is the moment of perfect balance within the motion of the dance…it is the moment when the notes of the music echo in the room…echo in our hearts and minds…and fulfill their beauty. That is a little, a very little, like the rest of God.
When I see the Lady Slippers bloom, in the quiet beauty, I sense the active rest of God, and the notes of God’s love echo and swell in my life to fill it. This is reason enough to love the Lady Slipper, reason enough to watch for its coming, and to celebrate its bloom year by year. Happy Sunday!
Cape May Warbler in Evening light. Happy Sunday!
Cape May Warbler, Magee Marsh, Ohio
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light.” Jesus
Last Wednesday was one of those wonderful days at Magee Marsh, when the late afternoon/early evening light illuminated trees just dripping with warblers…and many feeding at eye-level. It was the first really epic day at Magee Marsh since the Biggest Week in American Birding started on the Friday before. This Cape May warbler is showing its colors, and its attitude, in the golden evening glow.
I ran a Cape May Warbler in last Sunday’s The Generous Eye post…but I had to work for that one. On Wednesday it was just easy! A friend calls the warblers on a good day at Magee Marsh “confiding”, and they are…all around you…busy with there own lives, but approachable…sometimes even curious as to what we humans are up to in their forest. On a day like that it is simply joy to photograph them…joy even to stand and watch them. You get such a sense of life…of vigor…of color and movement in harmony. It is a deeply moving experience. I always come back from Magee in the spring filled with a sense of wonder that propels me into the Maine spring, just beginning compared to Ohio.
And, out there on the boardwalk you sense too, the generosity of the birders and photographers around you. Everyone is caught up in the experience…and everyone is willing and eager to share it (with few enough exceptions to ignore). It is just a good feeling. A blessing to be there and be part of this grand happening.
May you discover a similar blessing today, wherever you are, and whatever you are doing. Happy Sunday!