My online journal where I share my interests in photography, nature, coffee life, journaling, fountain pens, bicycling, spirituality and asking deep questions.
Watching the morning break, I realize again that darkness doesn’t kill the light—it defines it.
Richard Wagamese
I have been a morning person all of my life. Both my parents were also early risers. Working rotating shifts while in the service was not easy for me. I have had only one job where I worked four ten hour evening shifts so that I didn’t have to commute five days a week. Now in my later years of life my Circadian rhythm is still in cycle with sunrise and sunset. I am not a night person. I like the morning hours.
The contemplative discipline of meditation… doesn’t acquire anything. In that sense, and an important sense, it is not a technique but a surrendering of deeply imbedded resistances that allows the sacred within gradually to reveal itself as a simple, fundamental fact.
Martin Laid
This image was handheld when it was 7 degrees and with a slight breeze out of the northeast. Because of those two factors it is not sharp, probably true of more of my images than I want to admit, but I do like the feel of it. It shouts, “Damn it’s cold!” On the upside we are moving into a few days of warmer weather, reaching into the 60’s.
Now is the season to know That everything you do Is sacred.
Hafiz (translation by Daniel Ladinsky)
This is a ridge along Horsetooth Reservoir after the night’s dusting of snow. And, it was bitter cold. And, I see that it is cold on the east coast and cold up north, also. Please stay warm!
But the silence in the mind is when we live best, within listening distance of the silence we call God… It is a presence, then, whose margins are our margins; that calls us out over our own fathoms.
R. S. Thomas
It seems we have had a winter wonderland to enjoy over the past couple of weeks. The gifts shared by this winter’s season has been in abundance. I have thoroughly enjoy the visual beauty, enough to bear the single digit temperatures and venture out with my camera. This morning, we are at -2 degrees and had a dusting of snow during the night. Stay warm!!
Rightly understood, the mystic is not a special kind of human being; rather, every human being is a special kind of mystic.
David Steindl-Rast
A blue sky and sunshine the day after a snowfall will make me smile as a photographer. I can be confident that images will be available if I will bear the cold. This was one of those days! The quote above makes me wonder what our world would look like if we all believed we were a special kind of mystic. Mirabai Starr states a mystic is a person who has a direct experience of the sacred, unmediated by conventional religious rituals or intermediaries. I’ve also seen it defined as someone who has a direct experience of the Divine. Mary Oliver also believed that anyone who knows how to pay attention, can be considered a mystic. And, there are many more we could list. But with those definitions, then if we have stood in awe and wonder at a sunrise, snow covered mountains, a butterfly flitting from branch to branch or mesmerized before a place of refuge, then I would suggest we are a mystic.
“And remember, also,” added the Princess of Sweet Rhyme, “that many places you would like to see are just off the map and many things you want to know are just out of sight or a little beyond your reach. But someday you’ll reach them all, for what you learn today, for no reason at all, will help you discover all the wonderful secrets of tomorrow.”
