November 28, 2013
Well my goodness, hasn't this been a time? The last two months have been so very full. People have come to visit. Prayers have been answered. Some difficult situations have been weathered. Lots of time has been spent absorbing Mother Nature. Old emotions and false beliefs have knocked on the door demanding attention. New spiritual practices have been learned. And most important, new awarenesses have been seeded or planted.
I have a deeper appreciation for us all being in this together.
November 5, 2013
Trying to take pictures of the cottonwood trees in their orangish golden glory taught me some things about our lives. The Jemez here in New Mexico is a wondrous place. After you pass the Indian pueblo; you get to the red rock park, where the visitor center is. The trees are evident along the river as the road takes you towards the town of Jemez Springs. However, the road is running along the bottom of the canyon, so you don't have many opportunities to look down on them. It's difficult, at best, to take pictures of the many characteristics of the red, white and chocolate walls of the canyon; but to try to get that with a good representation of the many cottonwood trees is quite difficult. And the road is just two lanes and traveled heavily enough that you just can't stop anywhere. And then, too, I neglected to take into account that most of the views are to the west and so in the afternoon most of the pictures would be into the sun.
So, what did this teach me about life? How often do we try to see our lives through a single picture? Taking my pictures, I wanted to be 100 feet above the ground and able to move the sun at will. Well, in our minds we can manipulate the pictures of our lives any way we wish. And sometimes that adds confusion and sometimes that helps. But, I saw very clearly that I could not possibly take even 100 pictures that would truly give someone the experience of what I was seeing. One, no one else has my eyes. And does even a movie have that personal interaction of feeling the trees say: "Look at me! Let me catch your attention." And when we try to describe something in our life, we can only give a snap shot. Even a movie can't capture all the thoughts, feelings and decisions that go into creating our lives. And, yet how often do we think we know someone, or even ourselves? If we are not able to look at our whole life, and maybe multiple lives; can we really know ourselves? And I'm just talking about driving through the Jemez. What about hiking it and truly getting to know the details? How closely do we even look at our lives? How often are we just driving through?
