Starting Advent:
We wait, taking in the celebration of light, looking through the lens of Grace that Jesus makes clear, hoping that this time, especially this time, God will come to us and set things right, before there is no more time to set things right,
That truth will be heard, the lies uncovered, life reset before the twilight zone came to visit my world.
But the world always resists Grace, since Grace comforts those disadvantaged, and disadvantages the comfortable.
There are things to see.
There are things to say.
There are truths which are being played with, and in the end the next generation learns that the lies are better than the truth.
It is like photography, everything is simple, even beautiful: until you realize something is being sacrificed: something precious; something basic and fundamental; something that seems …
Something so fundamental that there is nothing left if this is sacrificed.
We visited the mountains, to help me recover from acute bronchitis that just would not go away.
In the parking lot, a brand new camper compared to the ancient one we were using, having to fix it so it did not kill us.
There is something refreshing about breathing the mountain air.
But when it’s full of CO it puts a throbbing headache in the way and had I not opened the door so often that night ….
So this seemed a better option but not possible for us.
There were beautiful things,
beautiful light and snow on pine trees and clouds,
if you raised your head, which is always really hard to avoid.
On the way I caught the fog, again and again, and coming out of the fog is marvelous, for photographers, because the light … the light plays with reality to make it seem different, special.
It’s not always special; sometimes it’s just ordinary.
And then the sunlight hits the fog while the road flies by.
But then … then
It hits you.
And there are lots of shots that show its beauty that just hit you.
As you stop the light hits the trees.
And all that can be played with making it even more …
It looks great, even if it is not real.
But the picnic table is real.
Simple real in the early, early morning hours just as light starts to peak around the mountain air.
And Pyramid Mountain never looked so good, as the camera pushes through the darkness and the software reveals what the human eye could barely see.
And the software can make it look more than surreal, more than a cloudy mountain top with pines and fog, but how can more be really more when the reality is quite enough plus some?
Even if you have to wait a few hours for the sun to shine clear amid the clouds and shadows of late afternoon.
Simple skiing, now that’s real with the real mountains and clouds and snow laden pine trees … and the clear mountain air healing the bronchitis.
And that makes the waiting of Advent a waiting for truth, the truth God revealed on Christmas.
John the Baptist knew crazy but he never knew crazy, not crazy like I’ve had to suffer since ….
Breathe the fresh air.
