  Use your imagination and mentally stitch the two photos above into one long panorama of a sunrise. You're looking at Massanutten, the mountain ridge that bisects the Shenodoah valley, with its highest peak east of Harrisonburg and then dropping abruptly off. This is the view my father grew up with, just down the hill from my cousin's house, on the edge of the Eastern Mennonite Campus where his father was business manager for many years. It's a view that shows up again and again in my grandmother's paintings; it means home to my father, even though his view now is of the corn fields of northern Indiana. He has his own five-foot long photo hanging on his office wall, the feedmills carefully photo-shopped out. Morning fog is another way to do it.  Fauna to be found on Massanutten include bear, coyote, wild turkeys, rattlers, deer, and luna moths. Most of those I did not see, though there was a rumor of a bear on the James Madison University campus and I saw deer at the edge of Jewel's yard one morning. And this slightly tattered luna moth was perched on a post at the retreat center we visited the second Monday.   A mass of cloud dwarfing Massanutten.
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 More views from my cousin's backyard. Their house sits on a ridge with views of Massanutten to the east and the Allegheny mountains to the west. I've long thought that I would prefer living by the ocean to living by mountains. I love the way the light and color is always changing with the ocean. Mountains, on the other hand, just sit there. Or so I thought, until these past few weeks, watching the interactions of haze, clouds, light, and mountains. Glory! What a delight, to have the time to sit and watch the slow unfolding of sunsets and cloud dances.      
I went for a walk on the millrace path one bright morning earlier this week and found dewy jewels everywhere I looked. The beginning lines from the refrain of one of the songs we sing at church kept running through my head, "Fresh as the morning, sure as the sunrise..." One of my friends dislikes the way the refrain continues -- God always faithful, you do not change, He feels that it plays in to some people's perceptions that God is impervious, impassive, and incapable of being affected, avoiding change. The refrain keeps singing in my head though. For me, "you do not change" connects with "always faithful" and with the sunrise -- returning every morning, yet different every time, As I look around the created world, it looks to me like God takes great delight in diversity and change. So I will go ahead and take delight in this moment and in this dew that will be gone before midday, knowing that tomorrow morning will have its own sparks of light. 
Thich Nhat Hanh: Miracle of Mindfulness I like to walk alone on country paths, rice plants and wild grasses on both sides, putting each foot down on the earth in mindfulness, knowing that I walk on the wondrous earth. In such moments, existence is a miraculous and mysterious reality. People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child-- our own two eyes. All is a miracle 
Looking down or looking up, I'm finding sparks of light these sunny fall days. Rippling in water, reflecting from the dam pond, rimming clouds and flowers and leaves, when the sun shines, we're all soaking it in, storing up memories of light and color for the gray days that are just around the corner. And yet even those days will have their own subtle ways of catching the light. 
Night sky or swan feather?
The cygnets have hatched. A few evenings ago we saw them on the millrace, Mama sailing sedately in the lead, seven cygnets paddling hard to keep up, and Papa keeping a careful eye on them all from a rear position. We walked along the bike path, following them till they settled back in the nest, Mama apparently covering them all with her protective wing. And a final image, from the next evening, of a different sort of flock sailing across the rays of the setting sun. 
Creation is a song, a song that we can see, a sacred gift from God, let's join the harmony. This chorus has been singing in my head all week. We sang it at church Sunday, # 24 in Sing the Journey, to the accompaniment of a soft, steady drum beat. It was written by Doug and Jude Krehbiehl, inspired by the writings of Lawrence Hart, a Cheyenne peace chief and Mennonite, and by Cheyenne Spiritual Songs.You can hear Jude sing the chorus and first verse here. The verses celebrate many scenes from creation and I find they trigger a treasure trove of memories for me. I sing The rolling of the oceans, and I find myself standing on Goleta Beach watching the waves roll in, or floating in the warm waters of the second beach at Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio in Costa Rica. I sing the bubbling of a spring, and I am standing in the middle of the woods at Camp Friedenswald, watching the gentle simmer of clear spring water stir the fall leaves floating there. I sing the night sky filled with jewels and I remember a pre-dawn winter morning when I stepped outside to get the paper and the stars were strewn like jewels across black silk -- and then one star stirred to life and streaked across the sky. I sing a flock of beating wings, and I'm in a car with the family the week before Easter, traveling across Saskatchewan on our way to Edmonton, with the sky overhead a complex interweaving of rivers and rivers of birds migrating north, and the song A River of Birds, by Libana, appropriately playing on the tape recorder. And here's a few photos to go with some of the other phrases: 
Dancing prairie meadow....
And the last verse: Every glowing sunset, every outstretched leaf is witness to the glory of the One who sits as Chief. 
The long-distance views at The Pines Ranch in Westcliffe were delightful, but so were some of the nearer views (and someone with a sense of humor posted that MPH sign on the rather bumpy dirt lane). 
We're back home again in Indiana, after travels that took us east to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia and west to the Sangre de Cristo in Colorado. There were good family times and many scenic views, but between being in areas without internet access and a sometimes recalcitrant computer, I haven't been posting them here. Not that I stopped looking around me, or taking photos. I'll be going through them in the next week, and sharing some. In the meantime, here are a few moments of light -- and rain, which is feeling precious and beautiful here in drought-ridden Goshen. These come from the area around Westcliffe, CO, mostly looking east from the place we stayed at the foot of the Sangre de Cristos mountains. 
Origami cranes folded at the Advent retreat
The middle school Sunday school class decided to fold cranes for Heidi, and many others joined in over the months, folding and praying. 
The first Sunday in Lent, I preached on being Broken, Blessed and Beloved. One image from the sermon was that of the sea turtle. At a difficult time in my life, I heard a message from God that yes, the way was not easy, but it served a purpose, just as some kinds of sea turtles need to make the difficult journey across the beach from nest to the ocean in order to be properly oriented to reach the deep sea feeding grounds, and if female, to return years later to the same beach and lay eggs. I wore a sea turtle pendant that Sunday, and sent it home with Heidi, who was entering the hospital for an experimental treatment that week. This spring I commissioned this little turtle from Wilma Harder, of silver and sweetwater agate. 
Eggs from our Easter morning feast -- the last time Heidi preached for us.
Christ the Light Giver -- icon from the chapel at the Hermitage retreat center
 I began this blog nine months ago partially in response to the news of Heidi's cancer (see the first entry Watching for Light, on 9-29). With Heidi's death Sunday, I have been going through the photos I've taken these past nine months, looking for ones that speak to me of Heidi. There are none of Heidi herself. I have been taking very few photos of people, since it hasn't seemed right to post those without asking permission and that added an extra layer of work to a blog entry. So even though interactions with people are often the source for sparks of light in a day for me, I have not emphasized that here. Instead I have focused on nature, and on objects that in some way show a spark of light, either literally or metaphorically. Sometimes it is a physical object that illustrates an interaction or an event that was a spark of light. With the latter, I often have told a little about the event. I decided to put together a slideshow of photos that speak to me of Heidi -- sometimes due to comments that she sent me, or because the object pictured is from an event related to Heidi, or simply because the photo seems to fit in some way today. I put this series of photos together, but instead of doing a slideshow here, which may take too long for some computers to download, I have divided it into five segments, one for each day until Heidi's memorial service Saturday, beginning today.     
A lovely 24 hour retreat at the Hermitage last night and today, a gathering of spiritual directors for three sessions led by Marlene Kropf on Into the Silence. And last night we participated in the Hermitage's monthly Taize service. Except for the sessions with Marlene and the worship services, our time was spent in silence. Silence in terms of speech with other humans, that is. I spent an hour last evening, and another this morning, wandering through the woods and fields. It was far from silent. The birds and frogs were greeting this warm spring weather with loud hosannas. I heard, and in many cases, saw chickadees, hairy (or possibly downy) woodpeckers, a red-bellied woodpecker, crows, redwing blackbirds, robins, cardinals, mourning doves, a rooster, nuthatches, and sandhill cranes. A single crane flew low over the retreat center this morning, not far from the bench where I was sitting and watching birds at the feeder. I'd like to share some of the sounds I heard -- the flutter of bird wings at the feeders, or the clatter of the sandhill cranes, or the loud chorus of spring peepers on a nearby pond, but there seems to be some hitch in loading that sort of file. So here instead is a memento of something else I enjoyed - being able to spot last year's bird nests in briar patches and bare branches. 
I came back home to more warm temperatures, and a tornado watch -- it must be spring. But this same turmoil also makes for some magnificent clouds. I glanced out just before sunset and then had to go outside and watch this light show sail past to the north of us. 
Epiphany was January 6, but I'm still pondering it and probably will continue to do so, because watching for sparks of light is an Epiphany practice. In a short reflection piece for Alive Now! called "Looking for Christ in the Boring," Sarah Parsons gives the short version of one of her "ordinary, boring days" and then retells it, with an eye for the Christ moments she encountered. She writes: These Christ-sightings are an Epiphany message for me. Christmas says Christ is here, born into the world. Epiphany says it's up to us to find him, and it may not be easy. We may have to walk a long road, follow strange guidance, and encounter Herod-like dangers. . .When I expect Christ to enter my day with lots of fanfare and, at the end of the day, bemoan that 'nothing happened,' I wonder if I am getting Christ wrong somehow. Christ originally entered the world in pretty ordinary human style, even more humbly than most humans do." Our invitation is to stay awake, pay attention, notice the ways that God is present in the place where we are, in all its ordinariness. In what started out as a gray Indiana day, my attention was caught by the changes in the sky, from the midday sun beginning to break through the clouds in the picture above, making me think of a dark-winged angel, to the blue skies and fleecy skies of the later afternoon, catching the light of the setting sun. There were other moments of light as well, of encounter and relationship, but those are not always mine to share. Read Sarah's full article for her examples of ways she encountered the light of Christ in her boring day, once she opened her eyes to look. 
Three layers of clouds
The clouds cleared enough in the late afternoon that we were able to catch some glimpses of the last sunset of 2011, seen at various points on campus -- glimpses of light through all the paraphernalia of the ordinary. 
And to close off 2011, this closing blessing from Philip Newell's Celtic Treasure:
The blessings of heaven, the blessings of earth, the blessings of sea and of sky. On those we love this day and on every human family the gifts of heaven, the gifts of earth, the gifts of sea and of sky. 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. 
I nearly didn’t go out for a walk this morning. I didn’t have a walking partner and it looked cold and gray. But I wanted the exercise, so I went. Just before I left the house, I saw a little blue in the sky, so I grabbed my camera. Good thing! The sky was amazing, full of fast moving clouds lit by the rising sun, and with fascinating shadows cast by other clouds. And always changing. It wasn’t the most aerobic walk I’ve ever had, because I kept stopping to take photos. The slide show below is in chronological order, over about a twenty minute period. If you are familiar with the Goshen College campus you may be able to tell when I'm facing east and when it's west. When you see the branch of maple leaves, you've been through the whole cycle. |
My approach to contemplative photography --
"Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." Mary Oliver in "Sometimes" Categories
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