“There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”
– Francis Bacon
Reflection
unexpected image
changing with the hours
curled around cobalt sphere
reflecting creation without straight lines
Reflecting
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Category Archives: Seeing
Finding Beauty
“if you ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it,
But if you invest in beauty,
it will remain with you
all the days of your life.”
~ Frank Lloyd Wright
Remembering the planting and sprouting
watching for beauty of weed and flower
cool dark hours bring both
To be still
to be astonished
to see beauty in a cabbage
before it goes into the soup
Seeing a Star
Of the many symbols which decorate our home at Christmastime, my favorite may be the star. Our big tree is lit with tiny twinkle lights reminding us of stars, and is topped with a star. A crystal star holds a candle on the kitchen table. My grandchildren draw stars. Joe loves the Christmas Song “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem.” I love the deep mystery of the great star which led wise men to search for a baby. How sweet, then, in this simple and sacred ordinary evening, to slice an apple to float in the cider on my stove and find this star, marking seed and promise of fruit..
Star giver,
Light shiner
Promise keeper…
Come.
Quicken.
Emmanuel.
Smooth Stones
I keep a small basket of smooth stones, each marked with a word, on the back porch which I use like prayer beads. Somehow, as I lift a stone and place it beside me with a prayer for each thing the word I have written there represents, I am able to focus more sharply and receive these gifts. I keep the same list by the coffee pot in the kitchen and can cover it with the palm of my hand in my petition. Laying the stones down is a random process, so I am drawn to the pattern on this particular day when I look at all of them together. I begin with seeking Light and the progression leads me to the most important request, “Thyself.” I realize that if I could have only one request it must be that, for it is in the presence of God I find the all the rest.
The poetry of John O Donahue helps me imagine he might have had a basket of stones, too.
May I live this day
Compassionate of heart,
Clear in word,
Gracious in awareness,
Courageous in thought,
Generous in LOVE.
– John O’Donohue
See and Tell
Pay attention Be astonished Tell about it ~Mary Oliver
Small children often have a practice at school called show and tell. That seems to be kin to Mary Oliver’s words. First you have to notice, to really see before you can choose something to show or have its description to tell about. I grow a great many herbs in my garden. Each has unique characteristics of growth and appearance and fragrance. Part of the joy of tending this garden is in seeing and knowing the differences.
This Cuban Oregano is one of my favorites for its beauty – softly variegated colors on aromatic velvet leaves that I love to touch. I like the way it leans into our weathered wood fence as if to press its restoring oil into the splintered plank. When I water the plants around it, I look for it, I pay it attention. I am rewarded with fresh amazement at the loveliness of growing things, surviving the heat of summer and thriving.
“Seeing is of course very much a matter of verbalization. Unless I call my attention to what passes before my eyes, I simply won’t see it. It is, as Ruskin says, ‘not merely unnoticed, but in the full, clear sense of the word, unseen.’ I have to say the words, describe what I’m seeing…But if I want to notice the lesser cataclysms of valley life, I have to maintain in my head a running description of the present.” ~ Annie Dillard, from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Secret Garden
A book which is now considered a classic children’s book of the twentieth century, Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett was published as a novel in 1911. Its story, full of loss and gain, tragedy and triumph develops as children and a garden grow and change. There have been a number of productions produced for movies and television which bear the name and tell the story. But the movie version created in 1949 is the one which lives in my memory. I was 9 years old, and not allowed to see many films. The scene which so impressed me was one of sudden change. Almost the entire film is in stark black and white. The scene in which the door to the garden is opened to reveal the beauty of the garden in vivid Technicolor created a breathtaking moment. Little girls weren’t the only ones to gasp.
It is only these many years later that I am understanding that I was far more than entertained by this. In this story, it is only as Mary begins to think of others rather than herself that she became more than a spectator of the garden. As her perception as well as her vision changed, the garden became more beautiful.
This photo is a sign in our garden that has become intertwined in a yellow climbing rose. It reminds me of that other Mary, and of the miracles created when I see beyond myself.
“And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.” ― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
Sabbath Song and Shade
Image of Redbud tree leaves in prayer garden of First Baptist Church, Richmond, Texas.
The clearing rests in song and shade.
It is a creature made
By old light held in soil and leaf,
By human joy and grief,
By human work,
Fidelity of sight and stroke,
By rain, by water on
The parent stone.
We join our work to Heaven’s gift,
Our hope to what is left,
That field and woods at last agree
In an economy
Of widest worth.
High Heaven’s Kingdom come on earth.
Imagine Paradise.
O Dust, arise!
~Wendell Berry, Sabbath Poem VII (1982)
Beautiful?
When I was making some purchases at our favorite garden supply shop, I saw a wall decoration that simply had the words “just as the caterpillar thought its world had ended…it became a butterfly.” For most of us, it is so much easier to admire the beauty in the floating and flitting of irridescent butterfly wings than the bulges of voracious caterpillars or the lump on a twig that is a chrysalis. Yet beauty and wonder are there if we see more than a worm. Maddie brought in tiny larvae she found in the garden. We found a glass jar, supplied extra host plants for food, and watched them grow. Jordann, although a bit skeptical at first, became intrigued as she watched the caterpillars eat and eat and eat.
In her book My Grandfather’s Blessings, cancer physician and master storyteller Rachel Naomi Remen quotes Proust by saying that the voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new vistas but in having new eyes. She says that she sometimes suggests to depressed patients that they review the events of their day for fifteen minutes in the evening by asking three questions and writing the answers in a journal. 1. What surprised me today? 2. What moved me or touched me today? 3. What inspired me today? In this chapter, which is titled “Finding New Eyes”, she tells of one patient who told her he answered the questions with “Nothing, nothing, and nothing” in the beginning, but that gradually he realized he was building a capacity he had never used, so that he began to see things differently. Maddie and Jordann have a capacity for seeing that I hope they never loose.
“Most of us lead far more meaningful lives than we know. Often finding meaning is not about doing things differently; it is abut seeing familiar things in new ways…We can see life with the eye, with the mind, with the intuition…But perhaps it is only by those…who have remembered how to see with the heart, that life is ever deeply known or served.”
~ Rachel Naomi Remen
Seeing
Recently I heard a radio interview with an artist who contended he wanted people to look at his work. He said folks go to “see” a movie, but people really “look” at paintings. Without mentioning there can be art in making films just as there is creative expression in other media, I disagreed in his use of the two viewings as one being superior to the other. I believe the question lies in whether either results in true recognition. From its beginning, Stones and Feathers has been a blog subtitled “A Different Way of Seeing.” Contemplative seeing, or seeing with the eyes of the heart is a work of the spirit as well as simply receiving images. So much of my photography and writing is simply an effort to pin down these results and express my gratitude for them.
This video was prepared by a student in a class taught by my friend Sheila Otto. Sometimes I experience something so penetrating and true I weep. My granddaughter Skye once told me the beauty in a red strawberry she was slicing made her whisper. When I viewed Dietrich Ludwig’s film, I cried while I whispered “Thank You.” I share the video with his permission and in tribute to my son, Ben, a man with an extraordinary, different way of seeing. His physical vision loss as yet has no surgical correction, but he lives every day with courage, fortitude, and the beauty that is experienced by seeing with the eyes of his heart.
Video from KarmaTube
The film also spoke to me since I was diagnosed in 2005 with Fuch’s corneal dystrophy for which there is no cure, only transplants as an option. My vision deteriorated so rapidly that I (who had been Ben’s reader and driver for so many years) became unable to read or drive. I received cornea transplants in May and July of 2006 and have very good vision at present although still followed closely by the surgeon. I am grateful to the two donor families who made these surgeries possible for me by their gifts.
Please note that the young man who created the video is dyslexic. He has trouble with letters and numbers, but pictures are his best way of learning and communicating. That is the reason he has chosen to work with photography. Thank you, Dietrich Ludwig, for what you see.
Stones and Feathers 