Category: Choose

Go One Step Further

Go One Step Further

From the Movie About Time: In a family wherein the men can travel back in time, in their own lives to make things different, better, hopefully not worse:

Dad toasts at Tim’s wedding:

I’d only give one piece of advice to anyone marrying. We’re all quite similar in the end. We all get old and tell the same tales too many times. But try and marry someone kind.

And this, Tim, is a kind man with a good heart.

Dad’s Secret Formula for Happiness:

Part one of the two-part plan, is that I should just get on with ordinary life, living it day by day like anyone else.

Part Two: To live every day a second time,

To live every day, almost exactly the same way, the first time with all the worries and tensions that stop us from noticing how sweet the world can be, but the second time noticing.

Tim’s Step further than Dad’s formula:

The truth is I now don’t travel back at all, not even for the day, I just try to live every day as if I’ve deliberately come back to this one day, to enjoy it, as if it was the full final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life.

 

There is much in life that is not even good enough to wonder about.

I watched this movie and in it heard people dear to me chortle at Charlotte’s horrendous treatment of Tim. Then I witnessed the worst thing I have ever seen between a child and a parent; something I’d suspected but now was confirmed.

The Light that shines in through the cracks

But there is the sweet wonder of life each day as the sun rises, even when buried beyond a deep, dark, stormy bank of clouds.

The storm aside, literally just set aside, knowing that every storm provides the light for fabulous photos, I know kindness, and that I am kind.

I know light, and I know I am a child of light.

I know grace, and boy do I know I am a child of grace and grace alone.

I know love so sweet it will heal you, and love so overwhelming it literally will kill you, and love so gracious it unconditionally welcomes you home, and love so pure it is an idea that will fuel peace for generations.

The fuel of days

What will fuel your day?

The Light that brings to light all that was hidden in shame in the darkness?

The light that shines through the cracks of our lives, so that we are not dark inside?

The LIGHT that shines on the fields, waters, trees and farms so that life continues having been fed?

The LighT that guides us out of the darkness, toward the light.

Are you ready to go one step further than others?

Life’s a mixed bag, no matter who you are. Look at Jesus: he was the Son of God, for God’s sake and look how that turned out.

Heart and Grace

Heart and Grace
There is an old piece of wisdom that when a beloved breaks your heart
your heart can be so broken …
so literally broken …
that your heart can stop
working
correctly.
It is a wonder that, after my heart stopped working correctly
pushing my blood pressure up to 210/120,
now I can see the beauty that I’d had not been able to see through all the abuse, control, isolation, critique, and threat of death ….
now
now I know grace as I have never before in my life seen …
beauty and grace …
there is not much more precious in life …
except love …
love even when one’s enemies will not be at peace …
love of one’s enemies though they still attack without mercy or cause.
Today I had to speak the truth of how ungracious a person could be …
And in return I was gaslit, yet again, by this person again, as by many others, who want me to respond with stupidity and anger, and I instead respond with words of truth and grace, so they call me crazy or mentally ill, because they do not know how to fight against graciousness and the ugly truth of what they do, of who they are, of what they’ve become … and all that responded to with grace …
but one day as in every situation of life, the light will shine through the brokenness of our hearts and spirits until …
until grace shines bright with truth …
the truth that love and grace always are the right thing to participate in … no matter the cost!
Now my blood pressure measured in twice at 125/73, not continually but twice, which is as low as it’s been for a long broken time now.
It used to be 90/60 for decades, but not recently any more …

still …

I love that my heart is able to love again, literally, love being alive.
I love seeing the light … the photography basic that makes or breaks the difference between a mere picture and a photo of worth.
I love loving.
I love biking, canoeing, skiing, camping in the wilderness where others seldom can travel or stay or even arrive …
I love being alive and able to sleep, to stay awake, to not have to struggle through critique every day, to know my financial life is mine even if it is far from zero on the deep side, to know I will be loved, to know I will be treated as a person worthy of respect, to know I will be listened to, to know who I am, to be able to speak of my life, my family, my parents (great people they are and have been), my experiences of caring for people, preaching well, bringing together families for funerals, providing not just computers but the ability to use them to live and love, to fly through even the worst of situations, to survive what would have killed almost all others, to manage risk well enough to always have more than one out, to save the business … not just once but twice and many times, to know that the grace of God counts also for me and for all others …
I love being able to be me
I love
and it is only by grace that I know that I can love, that I know, after what’s been done to me, how to love …
and only by grace do I know children need real love …
and only by grace do I know that I know how to love children, not just ordinarily but extraordinarily … to give children unconditional parental love, a love that gives life …
and only by grace
when the words of condemnation are still thrown at me, the words of Gaslighting, of dismissal as if I were not alive …
only by grace do I know that these words are not a reflection of me, but of the person uttering them …
only by grace do I know how to grieve for that person, those persons, who lie to me, about me, who attack me relentlessly without cause.

I am not perfect; I am a sinner and saint simultaneously since baptism in May so many years ago in the Lutheran Church in Pine River,
a sinner by my own choosing
and a saint by the grace of God alone
and always both at the same time …
and so are those many others that would throw their condemnations at me, accusing me of what they have done,
ignoring or forgetting that I have loved and sacrificed and forgiven some of the most horrendous things one can suffer at the hands of one’s spouse …
and I know I am certainly not anything like what those who lie have accused me of being.

I am not perfect, but I am, by grace, capable of giving others life.
and that is what I will do until the day I die
whether that is brought on … this or next year,
or whether my death is an event of old age many years from now.

Today a young woman held the door for me, actually she returned three steps to catch and hold the door for me and I thanked her and said I must look old
to have a young person hold the door for me, and she explained her mother told her, yelled at her, that she was to hold the door for others, so she returned to hold the door for me, and I recounted how this never happened for me until the last few years, and she kindly said I did not appear to be quite that old, but she did want to be kind as her mother’s words echoed in her ears.
And I thanked her, for her holding the door and for her kind words.

Words
Words can give life, literally helping one to breathe and thereby hope
or they can cut the life out of the other.

How have your words, my words, been today?
Have they given life by giving truth and grace,
or have they ripped hope from one’s heart …
breaking one’s heart.
Or do our words, clear and unmistakably true and filled with grace spread out to others, healing old wounds and gracefully dancing around the broken cracks in life through which the light gets in so that the other feels and knows that they, if not perfect, are still made whole by grace.

Grace, hope, love …
and heart.
One knows heart most of all.

Marry someone kind, with a good heart. Be a person of good heart. Teach children by example, how to be kind, not to lie to get ahead or to escape a false fear, but to be kind and gracious even in the face of terrible failures and disappointments,
Because,
God is gracious enough to also make you and I saints.

My wife … is kind and gracious.
But the stress of my ex is so great … it breaks hearts.
Breathe
breathe so that grace can return.
breathe
and stay warm this cold winter, even if there is no shelter or hope or … or even if there is no more heart … breathe and trust that the Grace of God will carry also you and me through what is to come.
Let this be winter of dark hours after sunsets be not of death, but of beauty, of grace, of good hearts, and always the dark nights resolving with sunrises of hope.

 

Morning Seeing Dimly

Morning Seeing Dimly
Morning on the Lake with hardly a clue where the rest of the world is.

 

 

 

The view from the door, promising a wonderful photographic morning

 

 

 

 

The ‘home’ birch.

 

 

Wiffs and Waffs.

 

 

 

 

A small hint of something out there.

 

 

 

 

The sun begins to give a clue it exists.

 

 

 

Is that blue sky there?

 

 

 

The sun is there.
 

Or is it there?

 

 

 

 

 

Or there?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The trees start to appear.

 

 

 

Ducks flying into the fog.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A birch wood of years gone by.
 

Birch and Reeds with Nuttin’ Else.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The point out the door, after the return, and the fog is lifted – ing.

 

 

 

There will always come a time when we will see clearly, as the light shines

and the truth will be known and the truth will makes us free.

What is worth showing?

What is worth showing, yet alone keeping?

I wake to the rain at 5 am. It was forecast to start at 8, an hour after sunrise, so there go my plans for a canoe outing to take sunrise photos. I’m not up for working the camera in the rain on the lake in a canoe, without the equipment to protect the equipment that I do still have.

So at 6 I’m up, doing maintenance things, and the rain has stopped, so I still head out, still in bathrobe, to catch just a few photos as the sunrises. There is little spectacular light large, but there are all sorts of images in the light to be taken and considered. But what is worth even looking at, yet alone keeping.

Well here are representatives of what are the results, just the jpg’s. The raw files are too large to post. And each photo is shot in a shutterspeed bracket set of 3. The camera’s correct exposure guess. 2 stops darker (faster shutter speed, same aperture as set, same ISO) and 2 stops lighter (slower shutter speed, same aperture as set, same ISO). Not all the bracketing results in three usable images, yet alone good images, as you can see from some of the selections.

Representatives of all the shots (27 of 164):

The first three are a complete set of bracketed shots:

One had an interesting effect, though, but not worth much more than curiosity as I moved the zoom during the shot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then the question is what really is good enough of these to keep, to share, to show?

And that is as much of photography as working the camera to the light and the dance of life.

Here are the keepers, already seen above.

 

 

Regrowth after the chainsaw’s work.

 

 

The morning invitation: go out and see.

 

 

Reeds, Reflected, Resting

 

 

Autumn is coming

 

 

Clear to the bottom

 

 

Using a zoom

 

 

The forest floor, freshly rained on

 

 

All the view

 

 

A little red goes a long way
 

Bend in the wind like grass, or break in the wind like trees.

But in the end the mortality rate is 100%.

 

 

And then there is the possibility of using software to improve the photos, or to make HDR images from the bracketed shots. But that for another time.
On to the grind.

Simple Light Going Places

Simple Light Going Places
As I watch the crescent moon through the screen door, coyotes howl and moose call (bulls in rut), and the ever haunting loon cries allowing the beginning of the night to commence with a sense of fullness even in the solitude and loneliness of a quiet lake.
Geese in formation fly overhead, already the norm now for more than two weeks, and that much earlier than normal. Will it be a short fall? Or a long fall and pleasant winter?

The view to the lake is familiar and simple.
With only the zoom that changes perspective:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The quickly disappearing spectacle of light overhead demanded attention, the greatest pseudo urgency for hours of quiet:

 

So moving that the jet trails spanned from the southern to the northern horizons almost too fast to capture both.

But there it is, someone moving out of the light into the light.
Spreading a trail of light, a beacon lit by the golden light of the setting sun reflecting off the shiny aluminum skin.

Where are you going tonight?
Parents: do you know where your children are?
Children: do you know where your parents are?
And parents do you know where your children are going?
And going to be tomorrow?

Sanctuary

Sanctuary
How can I keep from singing?

 

 

 

From there we retreated to our own little sanctuary in the middle of the sanctuary, watching out of the window as the light gave way to darkness.

The promise of all truth and Grace is that the sun will rise; what is done in darkness will be exposed by the light to be known for what it is.
On this promise, generations have lived Grace, beaten at every turn but still standing by Grace alone, yet forgiving and trusting that truth will be known. Truth will be known. Truth will come into the light and expose the death of life that has hidden in the darkness.
As sure as the sunrise, the light will come.
This promise provides sanctuary from the onslaught and attacks relentless.
This promise provides sanctuary from false words that rob life from all met by them, and with that grows hope; and that is a hope that no darkness can destroy.

With that hope, no matter the attack, how can I keep from singing?!

 

Bright Light after the Storm

Bright Light after the Storm

Sitting, relaxing, having sat at the fire roasting sausages to compliment the fresh corn on the cob, invited the neighbours for roasted marshmallows, canoed across the lake against the wind and back without any wind – yes the wind died out exactly as we reached the far shore! –and, as dusk took hold and the clouds darkened, retreated into the camper,

so sitting, relaxing, reading and writing until

the skies shook, the trees quaked and swayed and the camper rocked in the wind that hit hard …

so we set the awning low, pulled in the chairs, set the red hot coals and logs apart in the fire ring, and set the generator under cover safe from the

pouring bullets of rain that pounded everything.

And then, secured we shut everything down, except the one battery lantern, and crawled tired and satisfied into bed to sleep …

And at that moment the rain stopped hammering and the wind rustled the leaves gently and we slept soundly though to the break of dawn

To rise to the fresh wind, the bright light and the clean air

– Cleaned of the smoke from the BC wildfires that set in like haze over the past few days to dull the light –

With a view spectacular out the door of our shelter from the elements.

Lit Birch on Blue Water

The Ring for Fire, Damp, against the bright morning light on Birch on the Shore

 

The basic necessities of life well provided by Grace alone:

Air, clean water, food sufficient, clothing appropriate – mosquitoes being the greatest challenge – , shelter from the weather and from threats to one’s person by four legged and two legged animals, meaningful labour – though the pay is paltry – , and love – both to be loved and to love another with full trust that one will not be betrayed with blatant lies but indeed supported to be the best one can be and that one’s beloved will receive support and encouragement even inspiration to be the best she/he can be.

And still the abuser and bullies are free without constraint … and in response to them I say simply: by Grace alone I am not only still standing, I am flourishing, able to be grateful for Grace which gives me and mine breath, and not only breath but ability to be in the beauty of this marvelous universe.

A quiet summer night’s light

A quiet summer night’s light

The moon is back, hidden beyond the clouds for a few nights, slivered by an eclipse partial here.

While the moon only reflects the bright light of the sun, our efforts are to create new light from an old source, transferred into energy to be transported by wires wherever we want it’s power.

Seen in perspective our lights seem just as large, but let nothing fool you so far, ours are tinsy tiny specks of fossil fuel with a little nuclear thrown in to make us all glow.

The greatest vision takes the expanse of the sky and places it just so that we like how we see it all.

The moon is back, the summer sky at 2245 still light, the land still visible, and wind calm … even the mosquitoes are subdued.

What’s that mean?

What does that mean for us?

As we approach 150 years since confederation, with years and years before, the wilderness celebrated, are the biters holding back for a feast anticipating the crowds? Or have they gone away like the moon, to return great enough, lest we forget.

How will you see the light?