As We Walk Upon The Water

 Photographs have always left me with an odd sensation. I have never really been drawn to them as “keepsakes” of those I love. The sudden flash and capture of an image held in time has always left me with an unexplainable melancholy. Because I know this whole thing is temporary. I know this all unfolds in the blink of an eye. Regardless of my focus, or the angle of my lens, this picture of life before me is never a ‘still life.’ It is an ongoing and eternal and limitless dance of perpetual motion. Not to be captured or limited or frozen in concepts of time. And Yet. With time on my hands, I have picked up my lens and tried to sharpen my focus on that which I can not hold onto and don’t want to lose.  I am not well versed in cell phone photography. I can barely see through my lens what my own eyes behold. So I take aim at where the image seems to appear before me, and I pray to steady my heart and my hands. I have recently discovered that The Great Blue Heron likes to visit a local stat

 I have a friend who is so close to my heart that she might as well be considered a part of it. She teaches me, by steadfast example, that all is well regardless of what is placed in the deep reservoirs and wellsprings of our lives. She was recently given a cancer diagnosis, along with prescriptions for surgery, chemo and radiation. What she did with these things is not surprising. She gathered them up, dipped them in light, and shared them with others like holy water for those who thirst. By the time her surgery was scheduled, she had formed a healing circle of physicians, nurses, technicians and aides and taught them the healing gifts of Reiki and energy work as a therapeutic service. This was not so much a teaching to benefit her own outcomes, but to benefit theirs by dipping them all in the holy wellsprings of faith and grace. Lives were transformed by the waves of light she shared so freely with others. Hearts were uplifted and carried to safer shores for the benefit of all. With

 I had a conversation with my son the other day, about the nature of reality, the supremacy of consciousness and our individual perceptions of life here on Earth.  I am honored to have children who regularly engage me in conversations of this kind. They stretch my understanding not only because of their answers to some of life’s most important questions, but because of the deeper questions they ask. I posed my thesis to my son, and I am still unraveling the tapestry in the threads of our conversation. Some of those threads spoke of our supposed independence as individual and solitary beings.  I very much agree that we have been privileged to be given a temporary experience as a singular expression of Divinity while clothed in a body. We are surrounded by beauty and magnificence in this spectacular material world. Nature, herself, could make us fall to our knees in awe and wonder.  Yet we are simultaneously surrounded by cruelty, violence, oppression and pain that is a direct result of