One of the hymns we sang this morning at church was "O Savior, rend the heavens," #175 in the Hymnal Worship Book.

The second and third verses brought visuals to mind for me, all photos I've taken in the last couple days.

Drop down, you clouds,
and torrents bring,
to Jacob's line
rain down a King.







(This is one of four stained glass windows in our meeting space, made by Wilma Harder. It was also raining outside, and there are light-filled raindrops on the bush outside the window, though it's hard to see in the photo when it is this size.)

O earth,
in flow'ring bud be seen,
clothe hill and dale in garb of green.


(Our forsythia has buds flowering totally out-of-season.)

I've  got some photos of light despite the gray skies and rain today, but I'm also seeking light. Or rather, enlightenment.

A day or so ago I brought in the rosebud that had made it through several frosts. It's opening slowly and doing much better than the bud that I brought in earlier, which has stopped opening.

Here's the question -- looking at the rosebud, I realized it had green leaves. Yes, with burgundy stems and edges, but definitely green. This photo is of leaves that are still out in the herb bed, reflecting light in raindrops, a photo I recorded this afternoon.

These are the same rose leaves that I photographed back in September, the ones that inspired this prayer practice of looking for moments of light. At that point the leaves were burgundy. You can see them in the banner at the top of this page, and in this photo from September.

So I'm confused. These rose leaves were green in the summer, turned burgundy, and then turned green again. Is this normal? Unusual? This rose bush has been just outside my backdoor for about 23 years. Has this been happening every year, and I've been oblivious? Mysteries, mysteries.

To end, one more rose bud picture (from September), catching the light in multiple ways.

I spent four days on the road this week, traveling anywhere from four to eight hours each day. There were many moments of light, but I collected those images in my memory banks, rather than with the camera -- interactions of clouds and light, and of light and shadow on rolling hills and fall scenes, as well as many good conversations with my traveling companions.

One day we traveled during the “golden hour,” that hour loved by photographers when the sun’s rays are low across the landscape. Our golden hour lit the golden leaves still on many trees.

Other days were cloudier, with the sun’s rays breaking through open patches in the clouds, rimming the edges with light, and sending shafts down to earth. When the cloud bank thickened, we were left with rolling Pennsylvania hills, covered with a gray-brown afghan of bare trees, interspersed with an occasional bright yellow or red tree, still proudly displaying its leaves.

Yesterday it rained all morning as I traveled between Columbus and Fort Wayne. The clouds were soggy and leaking, but there was a golden undertone – russet fields of drying soybeans, tawny cornfields, thickets of trees with wet black trunks vivid against a backdrop of yellow leaves.

After Fort Wayne, the cloud cover began breaking up, so there were dramatic cloud configurations mixed with sun highlighting fields and woods. It reminded me of travels in Big Sky country in Alberta, with majestic clouds rather than our more usual gray blanket.

I tried to capture a bit of the drama at a stoplight, and by pulling off a time or two – this only hints at the beauty, because it proved quite challenging to find a good combination of dramatic clouds, shafts of sunshine hitting fall colors and a safe place to pull off the road. Perhaps it can remind you of your own dramatic memories of cloud and light.

Another rainy day – I have to look more carefully to find those moments of light. One came with the news that the biopsy on a friend’s mole had come back with the happy word, “Benign.”

Then there was the quiet light reflected in this bird bath.

And one more photo of rosebuds in the rain.

You'll notice that there are two rosebuds in the previous photo.  With predictions that temperatures will drop into the 30’s tonight, and in the spirit of “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” I brought one inside. It has a teensy bit of color showing. We’ll see if it opens, and whether the bud outside is able to keep developing.

I stood outside the library waiting for Judy this morning, and wondered whether there would be any moments of light today. I hadn’t bothered to bring the camera. It was a rainy morning and we were squeezing our walk in between rain storms.
I stood there, under gray skies and dripping trees, with no sunshine in sight. But slowly I became aware that there was a lot of light around me. The sky, though gray, was light. Bright headlights kept passing out on SR 15, and the windows in Umble Center caught the reflection of headlights waiting at the stoplight, multiplying them till it looked like a wild party was going on inside. The campus lights burned a warm yellow.

And the wet sidewalks reflected the campus lights with puddles of gold, and they reflected the gray skies with puddles of silver. Silver and gold, at my feet. More subtle than diamonds in the dewdrops on grass on sunny days, but a spirit-lifting light when I allowed it to seep into my awareness.

And rainy fall days like this tend to trigger a memory from my childhood days. I see the turn into Carter Rd, with wet leaves on the wet road. This is 10th St from this afternoon, outside our current home, so it's missing the curve, but this is close to what I picture.

And then I’m in our warm home. I can smell beef stew simmering on the stove, and bread baking, or maybe an apple pie. And Judy and I are at the piano, singing, “Joyful, joyful we adore thee, God of glory, Lord of love,” and working together on the music, one of us playing the right hand part and the other the left hand.
                All thy works with joy surround thee,
                            earth and heav’n reflect thy rays,
                stars and angels sing around thee,
                            center of unbroken praise.
                Field and forest, vale and mountain,
                            blooming meadow, flashing sea,
                chanting bird and flowing fountain,
                            call us to rejoice in thee.
                                                 HWB 71, v 2, Henry van Dyke

I must have absorbed these words at a deep level, because in some way, this is what I’m watching for and what I'm finding as I watch for those sparks of light – the invitation to praise and wonder, wrapped up in light and shadow and leaves and candles and grasses and puddles and clouds.

(this is Judy and me at the piano, from about the right time period, but given the position of our hands and the trolls above the keyboard, I suspect we are playing a duet version of The Hall of the Mountain King)