Snow by the Athabasca
Waking at the fresh hour of 9 the light snow falls everywhere around dampening the sounds, covering the views and clearing the mind … and making the photography some of my favorite: not cold at -2, not too wet, and diffused, specular light everywhere!
Path into the WoodsDeeper on the Path
Knotty Tree
Pines with a View to the Foothills
Pines and the Athabasca River
Up River
Down River
Path Down River
Path in the Pines
Path in the Pines 2
Quite often in life, how you orient yourself determines what you see, how you perceive it, and what you can do with it.
The same path, with a different perspective, is … enticing.
See the world as God’s invitation to engage and enjoy and provide care and beauty to others, all others.
And sometimes, taking a better view of the same thing produces a whole new understanding, and perspective.
This post was delayed, due to to a memory error. I’d tell you about it but I’ve forgotten what it was, something to do with WP Memory Limit.
Yesterday, driving in the early morning heavy fog, the sun started to poke through just ever so slightly and this flew by.
I stopped, pressed for time or not, to catch the light.
Can you catch light, really? Waves or particles, with bare hands, and hold it tight to own it?
Never, but one can take the light of the world through the yuck of crude meanness and, as Leonard Cohen taught me to say, celebrate the light that gets in just because of the cracks. Actually Chet Hoversten taught me to say it, in more Lutheran theological language, which has served me all my life: the Grace of God is not earned, but enters our lives, in spite of and just because we are broken people, and this Grace and favour given as a free gift, never earned, not even for believing the right things, transforms our lives, sets us free, establishes that God is for us no matter what, and then this Grace allows us to surrender and ask: so with this absolute freedom, given by none other than God, what am I going to do (what are we going to do) with this … this freedom, this life, this Grace, this unconditional forgiveness:
Are we going to try to control it and foist it on others: That is to create our own hell out of it, just saying.
Or
Are we going to try to codify it and foist it on ourselves and others: That is to create our own hell out of it, just saying.
Or
Are we, am I, going to simply ask each morning and each moment, how can I extend this Grace unmerited to as many people as possible this day, this moment?
Photography is easier, and more difficult: you can capture the light, and then share it. And as many know the worst weather often creates light that is the most spectacular, by being specular, and it makes possible some great photography.
Now, I was running hard, and just had fun, so this is not the BEST photography, it’s just fun, to be enjoyed:
The view that caught my eye
The second readjustment that my rushed timeline allowed
The third readjustment
The fourth and final take of light breaking in upon us
The fourth and final … and I had to jump out of the freezing, fingers throbbing cold, without even time to put everything back in the cases and move on, hoping there’d be another take for the light. But within a few km the sun broke clear through from 2 hours in the sky and all that was left was to make the next deadline.
And later that night, falling asleep in my chair more than once I put the exposure bracketed files together with HDR and tweeked. So this is light and software and playing around with reality.
Not suggested to be done with God’s light in our lives. It already had endless exposures bracketed for us to see, and assembly by software or however is simply not helpful, nor needed to notice the awesome, amazing Grace …
For each of us.
