Photograph courtesy of Jeremy Parker, January 2018
burst of beginning light-
clouds and water reflect
Grace in this new day.
New Day
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Tag Archives: morning
What Do You See?
“What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew
I was reminded of these words when I looked out my bedroom window this morning and reached for my camera. What I saw was not what I usually see in early morning light. I had not traveled elsewhere or changed my perspective in any way. But what I saw depended on what I knew as a person. It also depended on my imagination.
I knew that our weather had changed dramatically overnight and what I saw was thick ice covering these windows on the north side of our home. That is unusual for us on the South Texas Gulf Coast so I took a photo through the ice. When I looked at the pictures, I saw an impressionist’s rendition of a mountain range covered in snow!
What do you see?
October
Listen! The wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves,
We have had our summer evenings, now for October eves! ~Humbert Wolfe
October in South Texas brings welcome change, but not only from summer heat. The mornings this week have been cool, heavy mist rises from the lake, sunrise is coming later, and pecans are falling from the trees. There are only slight changes in the green of the woods, but the thing I notice first is the way the light changes. It sifts through leaves and falls more softly, dappling and dancing. Chrysanthemums and marigolds color faded flower beds like mini sunsets.
Burning Layers
Sunrise, June 11, 2016
“By means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails us, penetrates us, and molds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, when in fact we live steeped in its burning layers.” ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
September Sunrise
Driving toward Houston at dawn is a rush of hurrying commuters headed for their work target, streams of traffic, sounds of impatient horns. On a morning recently when Joe and I were headed to an early appointment in the Medical Center, I photographed the quickly changing colors of sunrise. The car was moving fast, the clouds and colors shifting, and there was no opportunity for focus. The wash of color is still a gift, and a reminder to me to look for beauty everywhere, all the time.
Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.
Clinging
hear November whisper and sing
rain drops and ball moss cling
morning light holds onto night
a few brown leaves hang on tight
I linger like these and pray
reluctant to busy my day
yet still, yet silent
clinging
A Different Way of Seeing
Underneath a caladium leaf in morning light
Standing in front of the same caladium leaf in the same light.
“What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew
The pot of caladiums on my front porch continues to multiply and thrive in our cool mornings and sunny afternoons. Every time I come in that door I pause to to appreciate the soft colors and hint of scarlet at the center and edge of the leaves. They are pretty. But this morning when I opened the front door to go outside, I looked from a different place and what I saw took my breath away. Veined and shaded, the leaf’s translucency drew me closer. Morning light streamed through emerald tissue and glowed like stained glass. In this moment,, in just this angle of sunlight, there was beauty I would have missed if had hurried by. I believe we have countless opportunities like this to see with the eyes of our heart. I am grateful for this one.
This Morning…
dear familiar line and color
velvet spread of leaf
magenta and vermilion petal
held in the sweet curve
of glazed garden pot
one brief glimpse
telling me
this is home
“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.”
~ C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces
New Day
This Morning, I Do!
The cardinal pair which is faithful to choose nesting sites in our garden is a consistent source of delight for me. Their song draws me from my own nest with pillow and lamp, put down my book, walk barefoot on the cool wet stones of today’s path. I am called to pay attention, to have my heart pierced as the sun rises, to love this world and to cherish this life, to exclaim of the dearness given to me new every day. I love Mary Oliver’s poem that prompts these words for me.
This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers
and they open —
pools of lace,
white and pink —
and all day the black ants climb over them,
boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away
to their dark, underground cities —
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,
the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding
all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again —
beauty the brave, the exemplary,
blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?
Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,
with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?
~ Mary Oliver, “Peonies” from New And Selected Poems
Stones and Feathers 
