Still as silhouetted dragonfly wings is all that used to swirl restlessly in me. I hold my breath and so does the breeze; we both stop time for centuries.
The secrets from the ancient flier can only be imparted in complete silence; any ripple in the universe jeopardizes this which is rarely achievable in this life.
Perhaps this is my umpteenth time…
I recently had a supreme spiritual moment; not now, but when I was again freshly broke open, my soul exposed again to worldly poisons and decades-rotten ingested false notions.
It is only in these complete ruptures, it seems, can the bad get out and God restitch the seams. Perhaps it is true that the rock bottoms are needed to unclench the fist and open the palm for receiving.
I was mended with light again by His own loving hand. And inside me, this time, another something planted. I feel it in the silhouetted dragonfly wings suspended, except I think it is me that it and the breeze are sensing.
I feel our connectedness, the same serenity seeds inside of us. It’s hard to go back to the way it was when gratitude, which I’ve always had, are blooms in such surplus shooting up.
Overcasting the heart, the plagued cloud drew color and life; eruption ensued, torn from the burst deep inside. The salt rained on the open wounds. The gray swooped in, attempted final ruin.
But a survivor returned from his own near entombment, kissed petal lips to restore the hues,
and love rushed in again to ignite the blooms, imbued with goodness the only truth.
The excess overflowed, flooded the world, infused each connecting branch, bled the colors to combat all hopelessness.
The gray cloud retreated. Only depression was depleted.
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. (1 John 4:7-8)
Little tree on the mountaintop beneath sun’s celestial reach, planted purposely at the very peak or actively advancing toward dreams from a seed, more mighty to me than the mountain itself and all of the tallest trees beneath looking up.
Little tree on the mountaintop Biblically reminiscent, perhaps a Jesus story never told, or the Lord’s seemingly futile reach to have us remember this precious given life’s goals.
Who is changed upon the descent from the mountain? Some things seem to remain as shocking as Moses’.
Inner chamber protected, guarded. Scarred. Misused and abused before. Colors over decades fade. Doors and windows boarded.
The softness of you like dawn. Patience watercolors shared canvas in pastels. Gradually, I reach to try some, apply upon my soft shell.
Day by day, ébauche to a never-final coat. Overflowing well within now self-saturates. Self-love’s ducts unclogged. A Master peace of love: brought together, soulmates.
When it comes to my photography, editing to me is not perfecting, so I suppose I should call it altering; it is transforming creatively the tone, literarily, though that often comes from color changes, cooling or warming, fading or imbuing, really a canvas with my technology as the brush, though you would be surprised with the media I use, an old iPhone about to give out and whatever standard editing app it came with.
My lab is my mind’s eye in reverse, creating what my soul wishes to express, I but a medium myself. I play until the aha moment, always knowing that is exactly what I was looking for. Each starting photo, a message itself I collect from nature. Sometimes it speaks as is, especially when it is lit. Sometimes it lends itself, whispers, “Do with me what you may, May Child; my metamorphism is in your trusted hands. Make me the more you believe I am.”
Sometimes I feel the nature challenges me in this way to keep going beyond and beyond, rebirthing new ways, not godlike, but godchildlike, spending my days attune to the spirit in the petals and breezes, in the rays and the blades, in the insect and the web. I create with images I creatively capture, crouched down and over the barely noticed, shrinking further than Alice into the macroworld, still infused with wonder, perhaps even more so. With each alteration, a new message, perhaps divinely inspired.
I do my duties in the world so I can retreat––into the yard, into myself, into the absence of voices except my inner one and the whispers from butterflies and the birdsong, and I listen and listen for The One as I visit my many companions of the natural realm. Often, I bring heaven down. To earth. Though I find enough evidence that it is already here. All about us. And as much as I avoid the humans, I know the greatest purpose here is to love one another. My purpose the same but from afar. Bringing light and hope to you is how I try to do my part.
The things we edit…
Often, in relation, we edit by removing blemishes, by cropping out all the real, showcasing our best fake versions of ourselves and our lives, for behind the cameras lie the whole truths. We compete. We turn the cameras around onto the shells of our selves, lose the nature and others, snapshots of ourselves as the universe’s center, lenses in reverse yet outward, for our inner selves are not the focus.
There are pieces of heaven in each of us. Because we were each made the way He intended. What we make of ourselves from what we were given: that is the welcomed art of continued collaborative creation. Excavate the light within. Keep painting with your truest inner discovered colors. We should never settle for being done when we are each and all continued masterpieces in progress. May we never fade permanently to sepia or still life; though both of these are essential to the process.
I still believe we can beautifully alter all of this…
Ninety-three million miles away, yet upon the cobwebs of a flower, Sol’s ray reaches, haloes, frames.
How powerful that gentle, golden beam is when it finds and reminds us our insignificance
is more important and personal than we think it to be, for the Creator made sure the cold and darkness would always have returning light and heat.
We are turned away each evening, in a rotation beyond our control, perhaps to make possible the continuous rebirthing of new-day gratitude and hope,
to make possible these moments that universally lift up our gazes, to freeze-frame and coat in gold these nuggets of humble beauty appreciation,
like cobwebs on a flower that still me with revelation: in the tapestry and labyrinth of life, we are woven and connected by hidden common thread, and love could always, then and now, win.
Don’t tell me there is no divinity when I am looking heaven in the eye, infused with the essence, soul-transfixed, lifted, swirling upwards as colors become light,
and the ingress solicitously entices the spirit as form sublimes, shapeshifts until undefined, and passes through the full transfusion of serenity through the glowing portal in the after-pouring sky.
