My "-ITY" Moment

This post will be a bit of a departure, as it really has nothing much to do with photography (though I'm posting a couple pics just to make it pretty).

A few weeks ago, the church sermon (and I don't remember the lesson) made me think about what are the most important things in my life. As I started thinking about my priorities, and writing them down, I began to notice that my list included a lot of "-ity" and "-ty" words, as if echoing the concept of "priority." So these, in no particular order, are what I believe to be most precious to me as I make my way through life:

* Integrity/Honesty -- being true to myself and honest about who I am, with myself and others

* Sexuality -- honestly exploring and expressing my true sexual nature/identity/desires

* Creativity/Fertility -- seeking ways to freely express my imagination and to "seed" my thoughts into the Universe

* Fraternity/Community -- building a circle of friends/lovers for mutual support, love, and joyful living

* Liberty -- promoting freedom of self-expression and self-identification for all persons

* Beauty -- discovering how gorgeous even the simplest objects or moments can be

* Divinity/Luminosity -- tapping into the immanent sacredness of all of Creation, Time, and Experience; connecting with "God" at every moment of my life

* Sanctity -- treating each person and experience as a sacred connection with the Divine

* Tranquillity -- finding "the peace that passes understanding" somehow, sometime, somewhere during my journey through life

* Unity/Humanity -- realizing that I am intimately connected to all Life, that ever has been, is now, and ever will be, and that this is my connection with the Divine

* Almighty -- seeking God; striving to connect with the Divine

* Mobility/Velocity -- actively moving ahead, at whatever pace is necessary, toward whatever the future will bring

* Equality/Inclusivity/Regality -- treating all persons as manifestations of the Divine, and refusing to allow anyone, including myself, to be treated as anything less than "God"

* Simplicity -- striving to focus on what are my priorities and to let go of other "busyness" that is not so important

* Sagacity -- learning to discern what is more important and what is less important to me

* Amity -- understanding the meaning of true friendship, and learning how to be a true friend

* Charity -- becoming an embodiment of Love and loving every person, every being, every moment I might encounter

* Collegiality -- forging a spirit of cooperation in my business endeavors

* Polity -- forging a spirit of cooperation in my communities

* Safety -- helping to create safe spaces and moments for all persons to express themselves in all honesty

* Felicity -- moving through the day with grace, compassion, and focus; finding my "flow"

* Sincerity -- giving each person, each moment, each event my undivided attention

* Humility -- truly understanding that I am no greater nor lesser than any other created being

* Purity -- discerning my complete inner truth and acting in accordance with it every moment of every day

* Familiarity -- realizing that we all want and need love, recognition, support, understanding, and so being open to loving, recognizing, supporting, and understanding others

* Responsibility -- embracing my commitments

* Reality -- giving up on living in fantasyland and opening my soul to the real truth of the moment

* Surity -- accepting the gift of knowing when it comes my way

* Gratuity -- thanking God for the gift of Life and all its beauty and potentiality

* Potentiality -- realizing that every moment is an opportunity to express the Truth of my existence

* Opportunity -- seeing that every moment is an occasion to live out my priorities

I guess one could say that what I've written here is my Spirituality.

Those who know me best may think that I don't live up to some of these priorities, and I'm sure I don't. Nevertheless, these are the ideas and beliefs I commit myself to, today.

For All Animals

Could I name them all,
My kindred spirits?

Wolves,

Husky dogs,

Deer,
Kingfishers--
these thrill my soul.

Dolphins,
Swallows

gladden my heart;

Seahorses,

Giraffes
amuse, and

awe.

Yet why these?

Is not the grizzly as noble,

The hummingbird as graceful,

The kangaroo as queer?

Do we all have our favorites?

You prefer cheetahs, swans, and starfish--

What do they have

in common
one with another,

each with you?

Is the connection mere experience--

The swallows, when I was a boy, built nests
beneath the eaves

outside my bedroom window--
Or a matter of aesthetics?
But I know no giraffes in person...

Something speaks to us--
The wolf's wildness to me, perhaps
The starfish's symmetry to you--

Maybe a longing
For something missing
From our narrow lives,

Something important,

And terrific,
Which we cannot name,
Yet still recognize

within,
at the surging of our blood
When we,

by chance,
Spy a butterfly
Flutter past.

(This prayer/poem is from We Thank You, God, for These: Blessings and Prayers for Family Pets by Anthony F. Chiffolo and Rayner W. Hesse, Jr. Available from Paulist Press.)

Consider the Lilies of the Field

This poem by Christina Rossetti came to my attention yesterday, and it is a wonderful illumination of the message from the Gospel of Matthew.

CONSIDER THE LILIES OF THE FIELD

Flowers preach to us if we will hear:--
The rose saith in the dewy morn:
I am most fair;
Yet all my loveliness is born
Upon a thorn.
The poppy saith amid the corn:
Let but my scarlet head appear
And I am held in scorn;
Yet juice of subtle virtue lies
Within my cup of curious dyes.
The lilies say: Behold how we
Preach without words of purity.
The violets whisper from the shade
Which their own leaves have made:
Men scent our fragrance on the air,
Yet take no heed
Of humble lessons we would read.
But not alone the fairest flowers:
The merest grass
Along the roadside where we pass,
Lichen and moss and sturdy weed,
Tell of His love who sends the dew,
The rain and sunshine too,
To nourish one small seed.

From Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862)

Going Inside

Sometimes, a nature photographer just has to go inside.

To get the picture you want, you have to bring your subject into controlled conditions, so that you can arrange the composition of the shot, set the lighting, experiment with angles, and avoid those pesky transients--breezes that disturb your setup, clouds that cast unwanted shadows, even insects that might alight in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It seems odd, doesn't it, to bring "nature" inside? "Nature" is wide-open mountain vistas, with eagles soaring high overhead and elk thundering over the ridges. It's streams chuckling through the forest to accompany the sweet singing of the songbirds. It's the crashing of the waves against the rocky shore, the calling of seagulls, the skittering of sanderlings through the foam. Such a pretty picture....

But "nature" is also the osprey striking a fish out of the water, the wolf swallowing a whole squirrel, the lion ripping a chunk of bloody flesh out of the antelope she has just choked to death. "Nature" is even the mosquito drinking blood from my tender veins. This is the part of "nature" we don't like to think about too much--but it is just as real as the lovely scenery and the cuddly animals.

So it's actually not so "odd" to bring natural subjects indoors to photograph them. It really is a matter of perspective. And as long as one does not try to pass off "studio" photos as ones taken in the field--that is, as long as when you use the photos you make it clear somehow where you shot them--then you can set the stage for some really fine photographic opportunities. You can concentrate on capturing the detailed parts of a flower blossom, for example, or you can focus on the interplay of light and color to create a strikingly beautiful image, even an abstract.

To nourish my spirit, sometimes I have to put myself in some really "odd" places too--where, perhaps, it might at first seem that the spirit is completely "out of place." It's hard to imagine, and I would never have expected it, but I've had some very "spiritual" moments on a track field, in a movie theater, at my office desk--even, on rare occasions, in church! Well, I jest a little, but the point is, the Spirit is at home everywhere, and no matter where I am, the Spirit is with me.

So, although I made the four flower photos in this post inside, under controlled conditions, I really feel that "nature" was with me in my studio. The Spirit was also there, perhaps nudging me to pay attention with all my senses, even my spiritual ones, so that I could portray something of the true spirit of nature in my photos.

Gilded with Light

When it's 110 in the shade, most people nowadays decide to enjoy air-conditioned activities, but as I've written before, photographers are sometimes an entirely different breed. So one HOT summer evening found me hiking solo (and sweating profusely) around the local park while everyone else was inside with an iced tea. And indeed, I must have been the ONLY soul out and about in the forest--even the elk had taken a dip in the lake to cool off!

I guess I didn't know much about elk, so I never expected to see them swimming, but there they were, including the largest bucks with the enormous racks of antlers. And what a magnificent sight it was! The sun was low in the sky, so the light was that special "golden" tone that photographers love and was sparkling off the ripples in the water. Because the elk were still in velvet, their antlers were glowing too, as if they were "gilded with light."

Once again, I can say that following the difficult path paid off for me. I think the photographs captured the moment pretty well. Of course, the images I have in my mind are more vivid still.

Some people claim that they can actually see auras, the energy fields that every living person supposedly produces. I myself have never seen an aura, and I don't know if I believe in them, but if they do exist, I would imagine them to appear very similar to the "glow" that I observed around the elk that sweltering but golden evening.

Spiritual "Grooming"

I don't know if bees do it, but birds (or at least ducks and geese) do. So do cats, dogs, chimpanzees, and many other mammals. Anyone who's ever been to a farm, a zoo, or a pond or ever seen a nature show knows it's true. And while it may seem contortionistic or perhaps, in some sense, "gross," it's a necessary survival mechanism.

I'm talking about the art of "grooming." Ducks, gulls, swans, geese and other water birds "preen" to evenly distribute the oils that make their feathers water-resistant, cold-resistant, and buoyant. Songbirds clean their feathers to remove any dirt or debris that might interfere with flight. Cats and dogs will lick their own fur to remove dirt and old, dead hair. Baboons and other primates take the art one step further, making grooming an act of cleanliness (removing insects, fleas, or lice, for example) and an act of social bonding. Instinctively, these animals know that even in the mildest of climates and most benevolent of habitats, they must care for their bodies if they are to survive.

As members of the "animal kingdom," human beings are no different. Over the course of history, we have discovered that certain grooming habits can make life more pleasant for ourselves: for example, brushing our teeth regularly can help prevent toothaches, gum disease, and other painful conditions. And we continue to learn, and teach our offspring, more and more about taking care of our own bodies.

But as many people believe, we humans are also spiritual beings and thus need to pay as much attention to our spiritual grooming as we do to our physical care. For some, this is not an odd concept: prayer, meditation, quiet times are routine parts of life, allowing the individual to connect with something outside her/himself, or to examine his/her motivations or actions, or simply to refresh her/himself with Divine Energy. But for most people, "care of the soul" is probably not a daily matter--we (yes, I include myself in this group) may attend religious services weekly, but in between we may never utter a prayerful word, never ponder a divine thought. Yet we expect to make spiritual "progress"--to get closer to God--and become frustrated/angry when we don't!

Perhaps it's only human beings (OK, some humans!) who expect positive results to arise out of thin air. It would never cross a duck's mind to think (as much as a duck can "think," according to our definitions) to neglect its daily hour or two of self-examination. And if animals have souls (and there are many people who believe that they do), who's to say that the duck's preening or the cat's licking is not also a spiritual exercise, is not also a method of calming the spirit in order to permit a perception of the Divine?

Can those of us who neglect our daily spiritual grooming really say that we're the more "spiritual" species?

Seeing What's Hidden

When hiking through the woods or across the meadows with camera/tripod on my shoulder, I try to tune in to any wildlife that might be nearby. Unfortunately for the photographer, but fortunately for the various animal citizens of our world, Nature has granted them the ability to blend in to their surroundings. So the photographer needs to move very slowly, in general, and to maintain a really close lookout--for baby elk blending into the dead fallen oak leaves, a turtle or frog covered with duckweed, a great blue heron disappearing into the shoreline reeds, or a nesting songbird. Can you see them all here?

Maybe some close-up views will help:

It's not easy, is it? Even with the aid of a zoom lens and some judicious cropping, it's sometimes tough to pick out the reality from the illusion.





Especially when the truth is hiding under a lot of muck!

But it sure is amazing once you actually discover it there! Once your eyes are actually opened to discern what's really there.

Spiritual seekers can certainly relate to this photographer's dilemma. Every moment of every day, we are bombarded with stimuli--things we see, hear, taste, feel. Messages that seek to reveal the truth and enlighten us, and messages that seek to hide it and fool us. We filter out a lot of these messages, just because there are way too many--but how do we know what we might be overlooking? And even when we do pay attention, are we able to discern Truth? Are we able to see the beautiful emerald frog hiding beneath the slime? As the great guru Jesus is reported to have said, "Hear, if you have ears!" Or if you have eyes, open them up and see!

Truth may not be pretty--it may be a plain brown toad sitting on a dead stick--or what we want it to be, or where we expect to find it, but it is always there somewhere, just waiting for us to discover it, like the tiny toad sitting quietly on the forest floor as we walk past and, if we're attentive or lucky, glance down for a moment of discovery.