Going Somewhere

Plane and Vapor Trails

Three planes, two higher than the third and whose contrails are catching the light of the late afternoon sun.

Guide us, O God, unerringly to you, 

our path and our destination.  

And grant us the grace to be more and more aware 

that our journey is already in you.  

Amen.

Owl Peering

Barred Owl Peering

(Click photo to view full-size.)

The big barred owl outside the window was watching me from behind a veil of yellow raintree leaves. Be sure to view the full size photo to see the shine in his eyes.

What Is It?

Things are not always what they seem.  This forest of twisty trees is actually a highly edited picture of the pith from a clementine.  

Here it is just as it was extracted from the center of the clementine, and after I had eaten the sections:

Normally we discard such objects without much thought (and I did throw this one in the garbage after photographing it).  When we look closely, though, things – and people – have their own beauty that we may miss if we look away too quickly. 

Super Moon Rising

(Click to view full size.)

While I was watching the moon from the upstairs porch, one of the Great Horned Owls who live on the property flew by and landed on the roof.  So for a while we were three: the moon, the owl, and myself.  It was lovely.

Dynamic Air

Dynamic Nighttime Air over the Cenacle Parking Lot

This is a photograph—much enhanced—of the Metairie Cenacle parking lot at night.  But whether the depiction is literal or not, doesn't the air sometimes seem alive with mystery?

In my distress I called upon the Lord;
   to my God I cried for help.
From his temple he heard my voice,
   and my cry to him reached his ears.
He rode on a cherub, and flew;
   he came swiftly upon the wings of the wind.
He brought me out into a broad place;
   he delivered me, because he delighted in me. 

(Psalm 18: 6, 10, 19)

Waning Moon

Waning Moon and Clouds

May 27

I confess having to take two photos as the camera will not focus on both the moon and the clouds at the same time.  The finished photograph is composed of several layers.

Blossoming with Egrets

Our large Southern Magnolia trees (Magnolia grandiflora) have been having a good year, decorated all over with magnificent white blossoms a foot wide.  But they sometimes seem to bloom with something else as well — with egrets. 

Here is part of a cattle egret flock that settled high in one of the magnolias:

(Click to view full size.)

Great Horned Owlets

This is one of the Great Horned Owlets that we have been watching grow up, ever since one of them fell out of the nest and we had a dramatic owl rescue.

We have learned that crows habitually harass owls, so one way of locating the owls is to listen for the crows.  Here is one of the young owls, older now and able to fly, high in a tree, staring at me and ignoring the crow.  We were told that it is very unusual for the owl and the crow to sit together companionably like this.

Please click on these photos to view them larger — and notice the owlet's big yellow eyes.  I have read that if Great Horned Owls were as large as human beings, their eyes would be the size of oranges.  (See the Nature Conservancy.)

The same young owl, this time with the full moon.

Owls mostly do not get good press in the Bible, but here is a passage from Isaiah portraying the owls as honoring God:

See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland.
The wild animals honor me,
    the jackals and the owls,
because I provide water in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland,
to give drink to my people, my chosen,
    the people I formed for myself
    that they may proclaim my praise.

(Isaiah 43:19-21)

All Creation Rejoices

Christ the Center of the Universe

This is a photo of the cross at the back door of the Gainesville Cenacle, with lily photos digitally added, and superimposed on NASA space images.

Nature's Freshness

Dove in Nest

I was excited to notice a pair of doves building a nest right outside my bedroom window.  Unfortunately they didn't share my excitement at being so close to me, as I was constantly opening the curtain to peer at them, positioning the camera to take pictures.  They have now moved to quieter lodgings.

"There lives the dearest freshness deep down things," writes Gerard Manley Hopkins in "God's Grandeur."  But sometimes this freshness requires being undisturbed.  How much longer will we be able to say, with Hopkins, that "nature is never spent"?

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Faithful Witness

Moon Rising Behind Bare Branches

Psalm 68 calls the moon a "faithful witness in the sky."  Amid all the uncertainties of our world, she keeps rising and setting.  She waxes and wanes and waxes again.

(This photo, taken March 2, is of a waning moon.)

Far more faithful than even the moon is the love of God toward us.

Thy steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens,
    thy faithfulness to the clouds.

(Psalm 36:5) 

Belonging to God

New video from the Cenacle Sisters:

The text is drawn from the writings of Saint Therese Couderc, the Cenacle foundress.

If the words go by too fast, pause the video for reflection the first time you view the video, then watch it straight through the second viewing.  (It's a very short video.)

New Year 2013

Last night close to midnight I went out on the second-floor porch to watch the fireworks.  Although fireworks here (the New Orleans area) are habitually shot from all over our neighborhood, last night's display surpassed any I had seen, including those celebrating the turning of the Millennium. We had been hearing them, and occasionally seeing them, since late afternoon.  But when the clock struck midnight they were nothing less than awe-inspiring.  

I didn't know where to look, because they came from everywhere except the lake--even blossoming almost over my head!  I could imagine the Second Coming or the end of the world being something like this, with Glory coming from all around.

May the year ahead live up to this display. 


(Needless to say, the photos do not do justice to the experience.)

(Click to view full size.)

Keep Thou My Feet

Louisiana Fog

(Click on photo to view full-sized.)

Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.

- Blessed John Henry Newman

Chicago Skyline

When I am in Chicago, I never tire of photographing the skyline.  Its appearance can change from moment to moment.  Here are just a few of its faces:

 

Happy New Year!

And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us:

and establish thou the work of our hands upon us;

yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.

(Psalm 90:17 KJV)

Autumn Beauty

Sunlight on Virginia Creeper

Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all.

- Stanley Horowitz

Made in Wisdom

Squirrel Nibbling on Mushroom

(Click to view full size.)

O Lord, how manifold are your works!
In wisdom you have made them all!

(Psalm 104:24)

Orchids and Light

Orchids in Different Light

The artist Evelyn Dunbar has said:

We are each gifted in a unique and important way. It is our privilege and our adventure to discover our own special light.

Your special light is not quite like anyone else's light.  When our particular light is a true light, it flows from and participates in the light of God. 

In an essay called, "The Light Within," the Quaker Thomas R. Kelly writes:

Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn lives, warming us with intimations of an astounding destiny, calling us home unto Itself. Yielding to these persuasions, gladly committing ourselves in body and soul, utterly and completely, to the Light Within, is the beginning of true life. It is a dynamic center, a creative Life that presses to birth within us. It is a Light Within that illumines the face of God and casts new shadows and new glories upon the human face. It is a seed stirring to life if we do not choke it. It is the Shekinah of the soul, the Presence in the midst. Here is the Slumbering Christ, stirring to be awakened, to become the soul we clothe in earthly form and action. And He is within us all.  (A Testament of Devotion)

Fractal Mandala

Mandala on Number Seven

(Fractal created with Mandelbulber, highly edited in PhotoShop)

I am departing from photography here to transform a Mandelbulber fractal into a sort of rose window mandala.  In the Bible the number seven (as in the seven petals of this rose window), is generally symbolic of completion. 

And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.  (Genesis 2:2-3)

For other mandalas, see:

"Urban Mandalas"

and on this blog, "Hubcap Mandalas."