On my walk today, I saw a man with a camera and powerful lens. He was peering up into a tree, where a bald eagle sat, peering back.
I continued to my turnaround point, a mile beyond. When I returned, thirty minutes had passed, but the magnificent creature was still there. So I approached him and asked, “Do you observe the eagles often?”
[Yes, I know how to write]
This is one of those pieces that I love, even if nobody else does. It twists the referent for effect: “…the magnificent creature was still there. So I approached him.” My hope is that the reader is assuming that the “magnificent creature” refers to the bald eagle. But it doesn’t.
This is a sermon to self: “What is good and beautiful in God’s eyes? Are you seeing it better today than yesterday?”
Here’s a post along the same lines, from back when I frequently walked around White Rock Lake, and was training my vision:
The annual anointing of the fruitcake, wherein I celebrate my father. He was a theologian, teacher, and writer. Super-disciplined, he avoided alcohol… except for the little bottle of brandy he’d have us bring him this time of year to “anoint” his fruitcake.
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
On another long walk today, I bravely commented to a fellow old man, “It must have been quite a thud when that came down!” He was walking across a field as I do, and studying a giant fallen cottonwood that I recently photographed. I say “bravely” because as often as not the people I meet on my walks are either standoffish or eager to lecture me as though I were some curious and innocent five-year-old. This particular fellow was hampered by language—he had a strong Spanish accent—but clearly smarter than me. Nevertheless, he was ready to learn from my feeble contributions. In the end, he said, “God has made many wonderful things. We live in a paradise.”
I agreed, but secretly wished my current outlook were as cheerful as his seems to be. I have difficulty seeing Paradise in my surroundings.
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
Commentary
[This strange little poem is a flight of fancy. Any connection with a Greek goddess, a Norwegian singer, or a school in Cusco, Peru is accidental.]
Tonight, I was thinking about a photo I edited this morning. I had shot a Peace Lily flower and then boosted the saturation. Was it too much saturation? Am I overly enamored with jewel tones? Then I thought about places on earth where jewel tones are extravagantly displayed. I’ve seen them in the clothes of Quechua in the Peruvian Andes; I’ve seen pictures of the Aurora Borealis. How is one like the other? I began writing about the harsh settings, and the comfort brought to those settings by brilliant displays of color….
By the way, here’s the photo that launched me on this flight of fancy. As I was walking by one of the Peace Lilies at the library where I work, I thought I’d stoop down and look at one of the flowers from a lower vantage point. The heavy timber framework of the library’s high ceiling provided an interesting background. So I snapped a photo, and then did a little editing.
(poem’s background image by Yolanda Coervers on Pixabay)
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
Commentary
Someone I love advised me against being as transparent as I wish to be. If this is insensitive, please forgive me….
In my work at the library, my favorite clients tend to be older black women. Here’s what I have observed…. They are often vocal followers of Jesus Christ, and they tend to have a joy that rises above the circumstances I KNOW they have experienced through a lifetime in our country. They are my superiors, and I love working with my superiors.
Here’s a story I wrote about one such patron:
A little lady stopped by the reference desk holding her computer pass. “I’m going to need your help,” she said to me. Then, feigning terror, she added, “Look at my face!”
“Full of beauty, love, and grace?” I shot back. “Don’t worry, I’ll help you.”
As we sat together working on her documents, she began telling me how good her grown children have been to her, how if she asks them to do so they’ll pool their money and buy her a computer. To prove her point she showed me pictures of the little greenhouse they bought her, complete with a clever sprinkler system. I asked her how she’ll cook the squash and okra she started in the greenhouse and is now growing in her garden (hint: it involves baking, which is better than boiling!).
Humor, patience, thankfulness. The question I’d shot back at her was right on the money. Look at her face… full of beauty, love, and grace.
This is a little weed that I found on my lunchtime walk at the park across the street from the library. If Google Lens found the right match, it is Medicago orbicularis, commonly called Button Clover.
Just look at those seed pods! They remind me of Isaac Watts hymn, “I Sing the Mighty Pow’r of God,” and the line, “There’s not a plant or flow’r below, but makes Thy glories known.”
I love this picture I took of the patterns cast by the October 14, 2023 annular eclipse. The reason I love it is that despite the fact that *I took the photo,* it surprises me every time I look at it. First, I see the crescent shapes. THEN, I see my own shadow. Something has to shift in my perspective each and every time.
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
Commentary
My younger son Joshua just moved to New York City. I am almost ecstatic for the growth he’s poised to experience. Recently, I have been taking measure of the fathering I did when my boys were young. My sinfulness—including cowardice and racism—affected them negatively. HOWEVER, I am convinced that God can restore, even where we deprive and waste.
There’s more than one side to the homeschooling issue, especially in our circumstances. But I must be honest about my mixed motives. One of the beautiful things Joshua did for me is to help me see my racism (as well as some other failings).
(background image is a photograph I took of kids in a one-room school in Peru, when I was there on a missions internship in 1986)
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
Commentary
ON THE PATH This early morning poetography is too personal, too idiosyncratic to be GOOD. But, like the dream from which I just awoke, it is TRUE.
The elements don’t go together for anyone outside my head. But for me, they all belong. I know when and where I took the background photo: December 22, 2019, west shore of White Rock Lake. I know what I was thinking then: I was beginning to recognize my judgmentalism, how unreliable I am in whether people are attractive or repulsive to me.
I’m still learning my place on the trail. What I think of—or feel toward—people I encounter on our respective paths is not what’s ultimately important.
THUS, THE TITLE: Wherever we go, See ourselves as sent: Not for our pleasure, but His.
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
Commentary
Two things prompt this reflection.
First, I am thinking and praying about participating in an organization that promotes spiritual development through outdoor adventures. So I ask myself what part outdoor adventure has played in my own development? Did hiking and climbing mountains alone and with friends lay the groundwork for spiritual growth? If so, how?
Second, I was preparing some photos to help me tell the story of “The Road of No Return.” This was a mountain climbing trip with my great friend Darol. When I was 52, he and I revisited a mountain area where we had climbed 17 years earlier. In the intervening years, wisdom had traded places with strength. To put it another way, strength had migrated from my feet to my head! I have a vivid memory of seeing our car in the valley below, and of the seemingly interminable trek down the mountain road to reach that car. How could it hurt so much to reach something we could see with our own eyes?
Note: I’m not suggesting that the reflection in the image is one of profound understanding. It’s simply a recognition that places and experiences affect how we think about the world. They form a map in our brains… sometimes, a topo map.
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
Commentary
From worldhistory.org: “Sisyphus (or Sisyphos) is a figure from Greek mythology who, as king of Corinth, became infamous for his general trickery and twice cheating death. He ultimately got his comeuppance when Zeus dealt him the eternal punishment of forever rolling a boulder up a hill in the depths of Hades.”
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this piece and commentary; click the title above)
If you were going on a trip to the ocean, would you take along “BRAD’S SALTWATER KIT: PERFECTLY MIMICS THE SEA”? I don’t think so. Recently, I composed two poems, inspired by John 11, but have held off on writing them up and posting on my blog. Both poems may seem to advertise a conceit that I have something worthwhile to add to the sea of God’s glory.
Far from adding to God’s glory, I find myself continually mulling over what I’m missing. Thinking about a story like the raising of Lazarus, I ask if I’m seeing what Jesus wanted the witnesses there — and us! — to see regarding the Father’s glory, his own glory, and how they’re related.
This place of uncertainty and insufficiency, where asking questions is the best I can do… it isn’t all bad.
Over the years, when I and my climbing friends reached high camp, there was a decision each of us had to make: “I’ve come this far; should I summit?” We respected each other’s decisions. There was no shame in saying, “No, I’m not physically or mentally up to it today. I’ll hang around camp while y’all summit.” Even when my answer was “Yes,” I envied those who answered “No.“ They were uncertain, or insufficient that morning, but they were in for a different kind of beauty. While we trudged up the mountain in pre-dawn darkness, the guy who said “No” would warm by the campfire, watching a curtain of light descend on the peaks, as the sun rose from across the valley. Later, he’d poke around camp. Deer and birds would visit him, creatures more comfortable with one silent man than with a group of noisy men. Unhurried, the one left behind would see many things the rest of us had missed.
How long am I willing to linger here, to hang around camp in this section of God’s word? The more I see, the longer I stay. I’m in for a different kind of beauty.
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
One of the things I love about walking is that it wakes up, or animates, my imagination. It does so especially when my walks are away from the humdrum, clattersplat of city life. That’s one reason I value the nearby White Rock Lake park. I was walking there the other day, and here’s how my mind took in some of what I saw….
I call the above image “Serving Shade.” Generally, a tree that grows so crooked will get cut down. But I posted on Facebook, “DON’T REBUKE THIS TREE! What do you do with a tree that sees its purpose as providing shade for walkers? Make sure it’s watered!”
I call this image “Miscreant Path.” Here’s how I described it on social media….
There was a time when I resisted taking shortcuts in my walks around White Rock Lake. But the park service has replaced all the charming, narrow little paved paths with concrete paths so wide a car could drive on them. The best way now to feel like I’m in nature is to cut across country, taking the route that coyotes, opossums, and other fellow miscreants take.
Walking, Well Worth the Effort I keep running into stories of philosophers, theologians, poets, and other writers who testify to the high value of taking walks. Here’s an account that I recently read:
“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, from a letter to his favourite niece, Henriette Lund, in 1847
One of my favorite types of work is photo retouching. Recently, a client learned that I have some expertise at this, and she’s been paying me to perform magic like turning dirt into asphalt parking lots, and carefully removing live power lines from in front of buildings. Don’t tell her, but I enjoy this work so much that I’d do it for free. Take the one below. On one of my walks, I snapped a photo of this 1932 Packard and posted on Facebook.
My sister commented, “That’s my favorite car era…only mine would be deep emerald green.” So I obliged her:
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)I titled this photograph “L’Abri,” which is French for “the shelter.”
Commentary
In the years when I walked frequently around White Rock Lake, I increasingly recognized outcroppings of beauty as expressions of a wordless language. Its grammar was unrecognizable, but its vocabulary was everywhere — in flowers, sunsets, paintings, music, and human kindness.
For several years, I have been trying to grasp and define something that I sense, but cannot identify about BEAUTY. Beauty strikes me as a fundamentally important quality, something closer than almost anything else to the nature of God. I may ultimately find this to be above my mental pay grade. Two of my friends who have done PhD-level work on the subject of beauty have referred me to the writings of Hans Urs von Balthasar. This 20th-century Swiss theologian wrote a 15-volume trilogy focusing on beauty, goodness, and truth. Since I’m such a slow reader, I’ll probably resort to someone else’s introduction to Balthasar’s thinking.
Here’s what prompted me to revisit the photograph above, and reflect on its significance. I was going through my large collection of Instagram posts, and got to a section from about three years ago where almost every image was of something that struck me as beautiful. If you click the image below, and then scroll down through the results, I think you’ll see what I’m talking about (it’s especially easy if you have an Instagram account):
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)One of my favorite photos: the Wetmore Valley in Colorado, taken on a family trip to Horn Creek Ranch
“Meaningful! Meaningful! Everything is meaningful.” That’s what was running through my head early yesterday morning. I couldn’t go back to sleep. As I lay in bed, I planned a web page exploring BEAUTY: WHAT IT IS, AND WHAT IT POINTS TO. I listened to an interview of Sara Groves. Her song “Why it Matters” also explores this subject. I noticed that as she spoke to the interviewer, much of her thought was carried in metaphors. Since I keep trying to improve as a poet, I pay attention to metaphor—how to use it, and how to recognize it being used. And so, I went through the day thinking about how so many things point to something else, and ultimately to qualities of the Creator. “This flower is meaningful. That kindness is meaningful.”
Then, I went for a walk. The Bible listening plan I do on walks had me go through Ecclesiastes this time. In Ecclesiastes, the preacher exclaims “Meaningless! Meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” This was the opposite of what I had been thinking all day!
How could I resolve the contradiction?
The preacher in Ecclesiastes seems to be talking mainly about the meaninglessness of a life lived AS THOUGH there is no eternity. Two or three places in his sermon, he touches briefly on the judgment. Most prominently, he does so in the conclusion:
“Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”
Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 NIV
The judgment implies an afterlife. Otherwise, judgment itself would be meaningless.
So live meaningfully—with Eternity in your heart. Otherwise—as the preacher took pains to demonstrate—it will all have been meaningless.
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
Commentary (A Facebook Exchange)
ME: (referring to the photograph above) No matter how many times I walk under these bois d’arc trees on my shortcut to the lake, it feels like I’m entering a special place, or embarking on an adventure. What are the magical places and moments in your life?
JOSH VAJDA: When I was a teen, we had 10 acres of forest and brush behind the house, with paths winding through. My favorite part of the walk was in the back corner on just the right winter’s day. After a hairpin turn in the brush, you walked along the side of a patch of older trees, which soon sharply turned right, inviting you inside, and winding so you could not see too far ahead. With a fresh blanket of heavy, wet snow, it was truly magical. The frosted pine and birch towered above, while the brush heavy laden hugged the path. The sun lit the chamber like a cathedral, and the snow smothered every sound except the crunch beneath your boots and the swish of your winter coat. Sometimes I would just stand in the center and soak it in as long as I could.
ME: Josh, you have written elsewhere about the importance of imagination. In the space set apart, the cathedral, we begin to imagine how everything could be different. As you describe that magical place from your youth, I want to map it out in my head. If I were sitting with you, I’d ask you to sketch the scene. I want to locate that cathedral and enter it myself. Those of us who have read Lewis think immediately of a wardrobe in an old professor’s house. But we should probably find our own wardrobes. Then, what is it we encounter in the set-apart space? To define it seems only to diminish it.
JOSH VAJDA: As usual, you are correct. I couldn’t help feeling it had a certain Narnian magic to it.
ME: This one’s for Josh Vajda (an echo of your elevated prose):
[Note: Josh Vajda kindly gave me permission to include our Facebook exchange in this post. Josh is an excellent thinker and writer. Check out his blog. For instance, this study of “The Sin of Sodom.”]
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
Commentary
One of the better things about Facebook is that it brings up posts from the past. Today, it brought up this post from September 14, 2020. I had posted the photo with the question “Today, will I see beauty, or will I be blinded by ugliness?” That prompted me to think about how I have been answering that question over the last two years. Here’s what I wrote today:
In the two years since I posted this question, I have have become far more aware of ugliness. In fact, I’d say that it has been necessary for me to remove blinders about the evil in my culture. Already in 2020, I was asking myself, “Why do I so readily identify sins on ‘their side’ and don’t recognize sins on ‘my side’?” Major events in the US took care of that naïveté, as did some of my reading. Pride, ambition, selfishness, arrogance, shortsightedness… these are equal opportunity sins and weaknesses that afflict both ends of the political spectrum, and everything between. I’m left with profound sadness about the prospects for my nation. On the other hand, I no longer despise people on “their side” as I once did. I’m able to pray prayers of blessing for people on “their side.” Sadness is better than hatred.
“The end of the Maker’s dream is not this” … or that, or that, or that.
(if you are viewing this via email, the website has a recording of this poem and commentary; click the title above)
There’s a print that hangs in my hallway, mostly never seen. It’s a photograph I took when I was young, hiking through the mountains. Just now, I went and grabbed the photograph, to reflect on how it pictures a man who, in one way, was very like me.
Taciturn, the prospector, his dog, two horses, and a mule passed by below, heedless of the trail. He halfway turned to acknowledge my presence in his domain. I lifted my camera and captured the moment for later consideration.
It’s later now. The man was looking for something… gold I assume. He was not one to announce his quest. Talk, and words were not his way. A boy with a camera didn’t need to hear his story.
Gold: that’s all the prospector sought.
I don’t have two horses, a mule, and a dog. I am not taciturn.
But the prospector and I are alike in one way. Gold is all I seek. That’s why I dig with words. It’s the reason for my poetry.
These little trails have always intrigued me, be they in the mountains or in a local park. Why do they evoke such strong emotion?
Seriously… I took the photo, walked another 200 yards, and sat down on a park bench to edit the photo and pen a few words. Then, as I continued walking home, I felt a tremendous lump in my throat. Why?
As I have revealed before, I’m seeing a counselor to help me explore what may be some deep-seated emotional “problems.” I don’t say that with shame. Frankly, I think we all have deep-seated emotional “problems.” I just have the luxury right now of exploring mine.
One of the things my counselor has encouraged me to do is to try to figure out what relationship some of my poetry has to my life story. Now that’s a good challenge for a poet!
Really a problem? Is it really a problem that I get inexplicably emotional? After all, what do we expect of someone God crafted to be a poet? If a poet cannot feel deeply, and desire with determination to express that emotion, what hope is there for any of us? God is an intelligent designer. We are not random results of happenstance. God has a purpose for making us as He did.
There must have been some interesting conditions in the sky over Dallas yesterday. A little after I took this photo of clouds with finger-like extensions, I noticed the formation of mammatus clouds* a little to the East.
So, I wanted to share the photograph, and to confess that I actually looked to where the clouds seemed to be pointing.
Is that silly? I suspect most adults would have looked for where the lines converged just as I did. But only if they haven’t killed off a God-given imagination and sense of the transcendent. We expect nature to communicate something — for very good reasons.
The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Psalm 19:1
Disappointed? So, I didn’t see a rider in the sky. But the conclusion of my little poem is not anti-supernatural. Rather, it’s based on a notion that creation is continually celebrating the pleasure and provision of a good Creator. Are you? Am I?
Related Poem I’m not sure HOW this poem is related, but I thought of it when writing the above: “A Meditation.” Also, see “Voice Lessons.”
*From www.whatisthiscloud.com: “Mammatus clouds are formed the same way cumulus clouds are formed, but in reverse. They are formed by sinking cold air that form pouch-like figures as they’re carried into a warmer layer of air, contrary to the puffs of clouds rising through the convection of warm air.”
I’m not aware of any deep meaning in this.* I had taken a photo of broomweed by the path and began editing it, trying to help the viewer see the yellow flowers standing out as much in the photograph as they did in my eye. Stereoscopic vision is a magnificent gift. With it, we isolate objects from their background. Flowers stand out from foliage. That’s what we SEE. But most photographs fail to convey their subject in three dimensions — photographic images are flat.** In this photograph, there was little separation between the yellow flowers and the green foliage, especially in the yellow light of late afternoon.
So…. I was editing. And the more that I edited, the more I isolated the yellow flowers from their background. Eventually, I pushed all but yellow to black. That’s when I thought of the line, “Imagine if at night….” Phosphorescent flowers…. Wouldn’t THAT be something?!
THE ORIGINAL, AND A MEMORY Below is the original photograph. And here’s a memory about broomweed: When I was a teenager, I got to help the gardener at a camp I was working at in Mexico. One day we drove to the other side of the lake where Cayo gathered stiff little bushes that we fashioned into brooms and rakes. I recall that they worked better than the store-bought ones.
The original photo
*On the other hand, one could easily make the case that all beauty in creation illumines our path to understanding a beautiful Creator.
**Incidentally, this is part of why I insist that in editing photographs, “you have to lie to tell the truth.” That is, you have to lie about what the camera captured in order to tell the truth of what our magnificent vision captured.
About four miles into my hike, I called one of the ladies in our church. I rely on her for advice. “Do you have time to talk?” “Yes,” she answered. For the next two miles, we talked about hospitality. By the time I reached my half-way point, we had thought through several options for how our church can practice hospitality in this lingering pandemic. We wrapped up the conversation. “Thanks,” I said, hung up the call, and began retracing my steps to home.
As I walked, I reflected on how hospitable my friend had been to me in our conversation abouthospitality. “Here, where the weeds give way to a mowed meadow… it’s one of several places in the path where she suddenly grew silent, yielding to my impetuous mind.” There, where rainwater recently rushed through the grass, “I was babbling, while she listened politely.” Up the white rock path a ways, I remembered what solid footing I felt when we shared a memory of Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow. There, where petrified wood sticks out of the limestone… “That’s where I was stepping when she recalled how Count Rostov arranged the seating at dinner parties, thus insuring a perfect evening for everyone.”
These weeds, that grass, this petrified wood in a limestone path…. Insignificant, except when they mark moments in a good conversation, an outcropping of hospitality.
Back in late May, Joshua rescued a kitten that he found on Ferguson Road. Here’s what I wrote a day or two after:
Jonathan promptly renamed him Furrgie. I’m going with Furrguson. So far, he understands that friends check you for fleas, and that purring melts hearts.
As the days and weeks passed, Furrguson seemed to forget all about his “early life.” He got his first kitten vaccination. All the fleas are gone, and he is fattening up. Now he pounces on anything and everything, often terrorizing the older cats despite their hissing and powerful bat-downs. But when he has expended all his kitten energy, he does still like to curl up as close to our faces as possible. He purrs his little heart out, and occasionally reaches up to gently touch our lips or noses with his velveted paws.
This poem comes out of struggling with what constitutes love for the Creator. Is it only fixation on signs of his return? Will we even recognize his voice then if we cannot recognize it now?
[NOTE: the following may be gobbledygook. Perhaps I’ll wake up early tomorrow morning and do major edits to the post, or even take it offline. That occasionally happens. Let’s just say for now that I’m “thinking out loud.” I’m trying to put words to something I sense more than understand]
Not Just an Expression
Nature expresses the majesty of the Creator. King David spoke of that in Psalm 19:
1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the sky displays his handiwork. 2 Day after day it speaks out; night after night it reveals his greatness. 3 There is no actual speech or word, nor is its voice literally heard. 4 Yet its voice echoes throughout the earth; its words carry to the distant horizon.
Creation and the Creator are not the same thing. That would be pantheism. HOWEVER, let me suggest that creation bears the same relationship to God as the soundwaves of speech bear to the speaker: they are his expression. When a child hears her father say, “I love you,” she doesn’t look around and say, “How curious… sound waves emanated from somewhere and landed in my ears.” If she separates the sound waves from the speaker at all, it’s only to say, “Those sound waves tell me that Daddy loves me.”
Nature expresses the majesty of our loving Father. Perhaps it would be better to say that in creating the universe, our Father spoke to us, He expressed his glory (intelligence, kindness, power, beauty, love), and creation is the “sound waves” of His voice.
Are we impressed by what He has expressed? That’s not an idle question.
“They’re Just Flowers”
Long ago and far away, I accompanied two friends on a long hike. Our path entered and followed an arroyo. At one place the walls of the arroyo were covered with tropical flowers. “How beautiful!” said one friend. I agreed. “They’re just flowers!” said the other friend. To this day, I think of that second friend’s response with pain and sadness. God’s beauty was there speaking to us in those flowers, expressing His powerful love. But the second friend was not impressed. He seemed to make no connection between creation and the Creator, between the expression — the “words” — and the Speaker. For him, it seems, Daddy wasn’t saying “I love you.” It was just flowers, random sound waves from who knows where.
If this NEVER happens to you, please spend time with me. Perhaps you can pull me up, and I won’t pull you down.
Commentary
It’s almost impossible to write this commentary without doing the very thing I do NOT want to do: to claim credit for something God has empowered me to do. But I’m tempted, over and over. I’ve succumbed often enough to know the short-lived intoxication.
Is it wrong to feel affirmed in our exercise of God’s gifts, even to revel in them? I don’t think so. Don Regier and I talk about this occasionally. As a fellow creative, he knows what it’s like to create something and then to enjoy the creation. Don points out that we are made in the image of the One who looked on His creation and concluded that “it was very good.”
Where does appropriate affirmation and pleasure bleed over into inappropriate pride? I’m still trying to figure this out, to put my finger on just when I go astray. But I sense it when I’m overstepping. Perhaps the Holy Spirit makes me aware.
The empty trophy shelf… I do have a sort of trophy shelf in my office. There are two actual trophies that I won back when I was running competitively. Everything else on the shelf is a memento: rocks from mountain climbs, a music box I made for my grandmother, a fun photo edit I collaborated on with Glenn Clark. The actual shelf is not empty. In fact it’s overcrowded:
While the shelf is not empty, I find that some of the trophies I’d like to display there and elsewhere ARE empty, vapid, vanishing as soon as displayed. The substance of those trophies is like whatever was in that little bottle I found in the firepit at high camp below Blanca Peak. It meant something to someone long ago. What’s left now is just a little broken bottle. As far as trophies go, it’s quite empty.
Monarch butterflies are unpalatable (so they say) because of toxins they ingest from this plant. I’m amazed at how different the cottony seed pods later in the year look as compared with these flowers.
