Seeing

Words fail sometimes.  And I felt like the words in my post Choosing Life were a bit of a failure.  Let me try again.  This time with someone else's words instead of my own.

Seeing

by Leland Foster Wood

Let me see

Thy beauty, O God

Let me not dimly pass

By flaming bushes
And by sparkling streams,

By mountain crag and peak;

Mid bursting of the spring

Or mellow autumn tints
Or winter's white solemnity

Let me not gaze at sunsets uninspired

Or morning skies unmoved,

Nor look in human eyes

With sharp unseeing sight of selfishness.

Let me see thy beauty, O God

In nature, and in thought

In sympathy and kindly deed,

And all the upward striving of mankind.

Bunny Spotting

Some people are bird watchers.  Others identify flowers.  Me?  I'm a bunny watcher :)

 

 

Choosing Life

Today is an incredible day in California.  Spring is here in full force.  All the trees are budding, pristine white and pink, like curls of white chocolate, freshly shaved.  A warm breeze floats over hills, rustling the palm trees above my head.

Spring is here, but am I present enough to experience it?  Am I aware of the beauty and the wonder of life that surrounds me?

If I don't take time to truly see, the sun shines for nought and the trees bud in all their glory with no one to appreciate.  If I don't take time to truly hear, the bird songs are lost to the wind.  If I don't take time to experience, all this incredible beauty goes to waste.

And God, He tries to speak, but I shut my Bible too quick.  He whispers truths, but I turn on the noise of my daily tasks.  He beckons me to come and drink of His living water, but instead I start supper.  He points to the flowers, the hills, the birds, asking me to stop and meditate on His creation, but I hurry along to the store.

But there comes a point when I can no longer ignore His invitation to truly experience, truly live, truly worship.  His call pierces through the static like loons calling over the dark waters of my home away from home.

And I remember that I have a choice to turn off the static.  Each morning I have a choice, as Allie so aptly put it, to climb the mountain with God, or stay huddled at the bottom.  I have the choice to follow His voice in the direction of people, places, words, and feelings.  I have a choice.  So I choose, yet again, to turn off the static, to put away the clutter in my day, and to deeply experience life.

The thief comes only to steal and destroy.  I have come that they may have life and have it more abundantly.    
- John 10:10

Caitlin

My dear friend Caitlin is, without doubt, one of the most beautiful people I know.  She is certainly exquisite on the outside, as these pictures show, but her true beauty glows from deep within her soul, like  a iridescent gem created by pressure and heat and with an overwhelming flood of God's cooling grace. 

Recently, Caitlin has begun a battle with cancer.  But what inspired me the most when I visited her a few weeks ago was her continual spark for life, beauty, and for exuberantly loving all of those around her.   While many of the following pictures focus just on Caitlin with no one else in the picture, I want you to take note of the fact that in each one, she is interacting with other people.  And truly, that is the best time to photograph her, because that is when the love of God shines out of her the most.