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A day full of sunshine, and enough warmth to melt the water in the birdbath on the south of the house, filling it with light. Perhaps this sparrow is also collecting sparks of light. 
When I was a seminary student in the 90's, I regularly drove the back roads between Goshen and Elkhart, and loved watching the change of seasons. I had an errand in Elkhart this afternoon and took the old familiar route, under a sun-washed sky. The trees are mostly bare and brown now, and the fields are tawny with corn stubble, and dry grasses, catching the light. 
It was barely 5:30 when I got back to Goshen, but the sun was dropping quickly. I'd hoped to find more scenes with sun and dry grass on campus, but traffic was backed up waiting for a train, so I recorded the sun-dappled sky instead. 
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 I needed a video camera to do justice to today's spark of light. I looked out my study window around noon, and the back yard was full of activity. The flock of sparrows flitting between the privet hedge, the arborvitae, and the birdfeeder are a familiar sight, though it isn't often that there are twenty or so hopping around under the feeder. 
This all looks quite peaceful -- you have to add the constant coming and going, and the sudden scattering every time a truck passed. And the four or five cardinals that were playing tag, and the nuthatch that danced down the trunk of the neighbor's silver maple, and the chickadee that swooped in to join the crowd at the feeder, and the pair of juncos that checked out the debris under the feeder, and the house finch with the wind-ruffled feathers.  And this goldfinch,puffing itself up for warmth. The cardinals were mostly too busy to pose, but this fellow did perch on the feeder long enough for a portrait. 
 And then the wind ruffled his dignity and he took off to join the wild rumpus.
Most of the leaves are down, the weather is turning colder, Thanksgiving is just around the corner. Must be the middle of November. But there are still a few stalwarts out in the garden. I picked swiss chard and brussel sprouts for supper, and enjoyed the interaction of light on the leaves and on droplets of water. 
 The bronze-gold raspberry leaves are still on the canes, creating graceful golden arches on the edge of the garden. And who knew that veggies can get downright pugnacious at times? The caption with this crabby cole is "Who ya calling sprout, kid?" 
Yesterday I was early for meeting my sister, so I stood in Schrock plaza and wondered how my search for sparks of light will shift as the weather turns colder and cloudier. My eye has been repeatedly drawn to the interplay of light and the colorful fall leaves the last few weeks. Most of the leaves are down now, and yesterday was a gray morning, though warm. I waited and wondered where I would find moments of light. Gradually the bare branches against the lightening sky drew my eye. 
 The sun was rising, and the clouds blowing away, revealing the nearly full moon they had been hiding. I'm not sure how the search will evolve -- I'm still holding the option that some winter days may be the time to bring out photos gathered during sunny, colorful fall days, or that I'll look for more metaphorical sparks of light in songs and writings -- but so far each day seems to have brought some special spark of light and delight. Today's sparks came as the sun began burning off the morning's heavy fog. The trees and bushes in the front yard may have lost their leaves, but they were bedecked with diamonds this morning. 
I wish i had been able to get my camera up in time to record the other image I received -- the flock of geese that came ghosting overhead, half hidden by fog, but undersides white with sun.
A friend recently asked how the blog was going and whether I thought I'd keep it up. Good, I told her. It seems to be an integral part of this prayer practice -- yes, there is being aware of the moments of light I encounter each day, but there is something essential about picking a few of those moments and sharing them in image or words. Or, to use Mary Oliver's words: "Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." First there's the paying attention, watching for the sparks that make me go "ooo -- look at that." And usually the "that" is something fleeting, unique to this moment. I'm finding I want to record images as I discover them, as the world has composed them, with the particular combination of light, shadow, object that happened to catch my eye. Perhaps that's why I like these "wind/leaf compositions," both seen in the gutter of a Kalamazoo street yesterday. 
It was a cloudy day, so there's not much light sparking, or even shimmering. The spark comes more from enjoyment in the moment of this particular but fleeting combination of leaves, road, shadow. I'm finding that part of the fun is the sense of discovery. What will catch my eye today? What will astonish me? Can I take a moment and receive that, with thanks? And then there is the anticipation as I load the photos into the computer and look at them on the bigger screen. What did I find? What was I able to catch in an image? What is the story I want to share today? And sometimes the astonishment comes with what technology is able to do. I was able to figure out how to recover the photo I accidentally deleted the other day, so here it is -- a different combination of leaves, road, and light. 
John and I are spending a weekend away, in celebration of our 30th wedding anniversary -- there's a spark of light right there! Our anniversary is actually the first of August, but we were busy celebrating Beth and Jesse's wedding that week. Earlier today we visited the Kalamazoo Institute of Art, to see their exhibit of Japanese pottery. There is also an exhibit of etchings, titled Shimmerings of Light, Mysteries of Shadow, which strikes me as an excellent option if I ever want to rename this blog. Today's photos come from the buffet lunch at Saffron's, an Indian restaurant whose flavorful dishes provided an inward spark of light. My mouth is still happy. 
We also enjoyed the decor. Each booth had its own artwork, all variations on a blend of traditional and contemporary. It's hard to tell in the photo below, but those diamonds and circles are mirrors, each reflecting light in its own way. 
 More reflections here, with the interaction of light and water and glass. And here's a different sort of interaction of light and water and glass, seen across the way. . . a little apple light. 
We got enough snow to stick last night, though it has melted by now. I spent the morning at Pathways Retreat Center, and was able to spend some of that time looking for sparks of light generated by melting snow and ice. 
During this morning's walk I stopped to record the progress on the solar water heating project for Goshen College's Recreation-Fitness Center. As I took the photo, my eye was caught by the light reflecting from the glass insulators on the nearby telephone pole. They hardly show in the photo, and I've never noticed them before in all my many times of walking past, but for some reason this morning I was intrigued by the variation in colors and had to go over for a closer look. 
The sunlight streamed in the front window all morning, and then it turned cloudy around noon. I already had plenty of material to draw on for this log of sparks of light, but when the sun came out briefly about 4:30, the scarlet leaves on the Japanese maple called to me. Despite yesterday's strong winds, most of the leaves on this little maple are still holding on, and they've gone from a deep burgundy to brilliant scarlet, especially when the afternoon sun is shining through them. 
Forty-five minutes later, the back yard looked like this -- the Japanese maple is on the right. 
Today was a blustery day, and the mix of clouds, sunshine and leaf blizzard this afternoon would have made for some interesting pictures. Unfortunately I spent most of that time at a meeting in a room with no windows. Hopefully we were working towards light of a different sort, but that's another story. Instead, I offer two word pictures and a couple photos from this past month. When I drove uptown for the meeting, the wind was blowing strongly and there were leaves waltzing everywhere. As I turned east on to Clinton, leaves from the courthouse trees swirled from ground level nearly to the top of the brick buildings across the street -- where a flock of pigeons continued the swirl, the underside of their wings flashing white in the afternoon sun. Back here, John reported that there were so many yellow maple leaves from campus trees being blown down the driveway across the street that it looked like a golden river.  Here's a few leaves that weren't quite so active, from the archives I've created in the past month or so. I keep being entranced by light seen through leaves. 
And the leaves in the last photo, below, were a little too active. I cropped the picture and then, in an inattentive moment, deleted it instead of saving it. There the leaves were, still on my screen, but the underlying data was gone. I'd pull out some words of wisdom about the need to be present in the moment and to pay attention, which is undoubtedly true, but on the other hand, it seems rather fitting that a quickly taken photo of an ad hoc still life, long since blown away, has now also mostly vanished. Most of life is as fleeting as that. If we tried to retain it all, whether as computer files or memories, we'd be so weighed down we couldn't move. Better to let the wind blow where it will, and the leaves to swirl and dance and flow like a river. And if we record a few images along the way, why, that's a bonus. 
Those gray November skies have arrived, but there is still plenty of color around. A brief interval of sunshine mid-morning illuminated the goldmound spirea (seen here more or less at chipmunk eye level) and the burning bush in the front yard. 
And these leaves from the burning bush show where it gets its name, even after the clouds have covered up the sunshine. 
On a lighter note, you probably know someone with male-pattern baldness. Here's a recently discovered phenomenon -- maple tree-pattern baldness. (with a tip of the hat to Judy, who made the initial diagnosis.) 
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