Tag Archives: seeing

Yes

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It is easy to fall prey to complaining these days when the temperature registers 105 and most people, animals, and plants slow their pace and wilt.  I remind myself that the same blistering sun that sears my skin and makes getting into my truck seem like opening an oven door also flavors my herbs and ripens the figs on our tree. Lord, help me be alert to the yes in every day.

i thank You God for most this amazing day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any–lifted from the no of all nothing–human merely being doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

— from E.E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904-1962, by e. e. cummings

Sabbath Song and Shade

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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?

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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

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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.

Dragonfly

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I love the other living creatures God made who share my garden!  This amazing dragonfly, butterflies who have found their host plants in the dill of my herb garden or milkweed along the path, ladybugs who help control other insects, the earthworms in our compost, birds that sing a hallelujah chorus to us every morning., even the naughty squirrels that raid the bird feeder.  Each has its own lesson to teach, its own joy to share.  May I have eyes that see, ears that ear, and a heart tuned to sing God’s grace!

“Field and forest, vale and mountain, flowery meadow, flashing sea, Singing bird and flowing fountain call us to rejoice in Thee.”   ~ from Henry Van Dyke’s poem set to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”

Growing Season

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We fan the seed packets out like playing cards. My granddaughter chooses Red Leaf lettuce, Sweet Basil and Bouquet Dill. I pick Tarragon and Jewel Nasturtiums. We take them outside and find the rusty trowel and a small hoe. She loosens the soil and draws a line with her finger before carefully placing the tiny lettuce seeds, patting a veil of earth over them with the other hand. She fills the watering can she once called “flower shower”. My seed picks unopened, I stand watching her with a fullness in my heart that makes my eyes sprinkle.

seeds will sprout green and grow deep

loved by a sun warmed hand and heart

little girl also growing

What Each Morning Brings

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I almost missed it.  I nearly overlooked the cobalt and cloud blue ruffles of this tiny iris that seems to have bloomed overnight.  Three years ago, I gave Joe a garden gift for Father’s Day:  a mail order collection of iris bulbs in all shades of blue and purple.  Eleven  came up that year, all  but one.  The next year only three or four dusky green blades pushed through.  Last year, none.  So I wasn’t expecting to find this lovely offering.  I am grateful to notice what this morning brought to light.  Richard Wilbur’s poem adds to my note to self:  notice what each morning brings!

In the strict sense, of course,
We invent nothing, merely bearing witness
To what each morning brings again to light:
Gold crosses, cornices, astonishment
Of panes, the turbine-vent which natural law
Spins on the grill-end of the diner’s roof,
Then grass and grackles or, at the end of town
In sheen-swept pastureland, the horse’s neck
Clothed with its usual thunder, and the stones
Beginning now to tug their shadows in
And track the air with glitter. All these things
Are there before us; there before we look
Or fail to look; there to be seen or not.
~ from Lying, by Richard Wilbur