On A Somewhat Positive Note

A friend recently texted to ask if I was OK because I haven't posted here in the last week.  I am as OK as anyone is who is sad and angry about what is happening in this country right now.  I have not written because all I had to write about were things that I didn't want to write about.  Lol!  More words about discrimination, families being torn apart, innocent people being treated like criminals, power and money prevailing over wisdom and service are not needed.   I have chosen to keep quiet.  I remember learning that if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.  I don't always adhere to that teaching, but I have in the last week.

And now I have some more uplifting things to share...

The first month of 2017 in pictures.  Its hard to believe that we are 31 days into the new year already.

And, today's post from Sifted Together.

A Little Cheating on Retreat

I am on retreat this weekend and am supposed to be "fasting" from technology.  I'm not doing terribly well with that.  I am addicted to posting my daily photos, and I really don't want to lose my blogging momentum.  I don't have the time to write a full post today, so I am sharing a daily devotion that I wrote that was published today.

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Today's devotional is written by Kris Baker, Order of St Francis & St Clare, at #cohdallas, a United Church of Christ congregation, based on the following scripture:

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem village, Judah territory— this was during Herod’s kingship—a band of scholars arrived in Jerusalem from the East. They asked around, “Where can we find and pay homage to the newborn King of the Jews? We observed a star in the eastern sky that signaled his birth. We’re on pilgrimage to worship him.” Matthew 2:1-2

A Word of Hope
Today is the feast of The Epiphany, the day when the three kings from the east, who had traveled afar over field and fountain, moor and mountain following yonder star, made their way to Bethlehem bringing their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the newborn king. The word epiphany comes from the Greek word epiphainen, meaning to shine upon, to reveal, to manifest, or to make known. On this day we celebrate the manifestation and revelation of God in Christ. We celebrate the Christ child who is the light of the world.

Are we not like those three wise men on a pilgrimage to find Christ? Have we not asked, perhaps many times, where we can find him and pay homage to him? As modern day Christians, our call is to keep our eyes and heart on that guiding star, on Jesus, the light of the world, and to let that star be our guide. That is not easy. Stars are sometimes hidden by clouds; clouds of fear, despair, insecurity, and hopelessness obscure the light. And even when we can see the stars, they often appear far beyond our reach. We need to remember that Jesus is never beyond our reach. He is with us in every step of every day. Jesus is the light that shines in our darkness. He is the star that, like the one that lead the wise men to Bethlehem, guides us through our daily lives. The three kings came bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh for Jesus. In the words of Christina Rosetti, "What can I give Him, poor as I am?...[I can] give my heart." That is enough. The only thing that Jesus desires of us is our hearts. In giving Christ our hearts and following Him, the light of the world, all things are made possible.

What do you see when you look at the stars? Do you see stars of hope, peace, love? Stars of compassion, justice, mercy? Stars of contemplation, prayer, action? In the words of Paul to the Thessalonians, "You’re sons of Light, daughters of Day. We live under wide open skies and know where we stand. So let’s not sleepwalk through life like those others. Let’s keep our eyes open and be smart." (MSG)

Prayer
Creator of the stars of night, help me to always trust in You and be guided by Your light. I pray that I will be a beacon of that light for others. Amen

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In other news, we had snow in Texas today!  There was only a light dusting where I am, but at home, apparently there was quite a bit more, enough to wreak havoc on the roads at rush hour.  I did manage to sneak outside long enough to snap today's picture of the day, "Where I Stand."

Brooke is at home dog sitting.  Today's snow was Piper's first time ever to see the white stuff.  Her "big sister" kindly sent me a video.

 I was sad not to be there. I hate to admit that  I felt like a parent who was missing a significant first in her child's life.

Obviously it it cold here in here in Texas!  Despite that, Weber was excited last night to get to drive the golf cart back to our cabin.  Apparently, I am not a woman who chooses a guy based on the "car" he drives. :-)

I am going to stop here and go repent for my rule breaking sins.  I wish you all a blessed Feast of the Epiphany.

This was a light on the foot path and the pattern that it cast.  Perfect for today!

No New Year's Resolutions

I don't make New Year's resolutions.  Instead, I prefer to think that I am setting new goals for myself in the coming year.  What's the difference?  A resolution is "a firm decision to do or not do something."  A goal is "the object of a person's ambition or effort, an aim or desired result."  I think my issue with resolution comes in the word firm.  That makes the idea of keeping to resolution sound so strict, so harsh, so inflexible.  To do or not do something is binary.  It's black and white.  By profession, I am a music theorist.  My nature as a theorist is to live in the gray areas of music.  Actually, I like the gray area of most things.  Its the place where I can look at something from multiple perspectives, see possibilities, make not so obvious connections.  Perhaps the bottom line with my attitudes toward making and keeping a New Year's resolution is that there is no creativity involved in the process.  Again, either you keep the resolution and are "successful."  Or, you don't keep the resolution and you have failed.  There has to be something between failure and success when it comes to New Year's resolutions!

Goals, on the other hand, don't feel so rigid.  It seems to me like in setting a goal, I am tasked with deciding what is important to me and figuring out what I can do to work toward reaching a desired result.  The path to that desired goal may not be obvious at the outset.   Reaching a goal requires constant and creative engagement from me through the entire process of working toward that end.  If I feel like I am not making progress, I have the freedom to re-evaluate both my process and the goal itself.  Flexibility.  Gray area.  Creativity.  That is the difference to me.  I need goals.

I have set a few goals for myself for 2017.

• To be more intentional with how I spend my time.
• To write regularly.
• To knit more than in 2016.

That's all.

I may need to amend or change my goals as the year progresses, but for now, this is where I am.

As part of my goal to knit more, I accepted a challenge from a friend to knit a Temperature Blanket this year.  With this project, temperature ranges are assigned a specific color of yarn.  Each day, you knit one row of the color that corresponds to the daily high temperature in your area.  I definitely did not knit even one row a day in 2016, so, if I persevere with this project, I will meet my goal of knitting more in 2017 than in 2016.

1/365 - Fresh Start

As digits change

The year's colors appear

One day at a time.

KEB 1/1/17

2016 in Nine Minutes

Another year behind me...the days seem to pass faster and faster!  I need them to slow down.  I have so much that I need to do, that I want to do.

One thing that I have managed to do every single day since January 1, 2013 is to take a photo a day, a photo that in some way represents my day.  Other than brushing my teeth, I'm not sure that I can say that I have any other habit that I have that I have done faithfully for 1461 days consecutively.  There probably should be others...

I used the Collect App for the iPhone to save each photo from 2016.  The app allows you to create a collage or a video of your photos.  This year, for the first time, I have created a video of all 366 photos.  It is amazing how a split second image from a day can transport me right back to that day, that moment.  I remember other things from that day.  I remember how I was feeling, who I was with, what the weather was like.  

Not all of the photos are good.  Not all of the days were good.  But lots of both were. That's life.  We need balance.  We need to be able to see and feel that ebbing and flowing of life's events and emotions.  And that's why I am so committed to this project.  It gives me perspective on my life.  As the video runs, I am reminded of how grateful I am for all that the past year brought - special moments with my family and friends, good food, quiet times, silly times, travel, illness, scary times, celebrations,  appreciation of the everyday, the beauty of nature in calm and storm.  The video is the Cliff Notes of my life in 2016.  Nine minutes of the 527, 040 minutes that made up 2016.

Happy New Year!

My hope for each of you is that 2017 brings you and those you love joy, hope, and peace.

Change Is Coming

As I mentioned in my post a few days ago, one of the many reasons that I have not been consistent in my writing here is because I am writing two other blogs.  I "met" Tracey almost three years ago through the Capture Your 365 community.  I say "met" because we have never met in person.  In the sharing of our daily photos in the CY365 forum, a connection formed between us.  Our communication moved from CY365 public gallery comments to personal email and text messaging.  In a nutshell, we discovered that though on the surface our lives appear very different, we actually share many common interests and experiences.  Two years ago, those commonalities led us to start writing a blog, Pixels, Plates, and Lols!,  together.  In it we discuss friendship, photography, and a lot of food.  This is another one of those people stories that I was talking about yesterday.  We wanted to find something we could do together to celebrate and nurture our friendship.

Tracey lives in Michigan and I in Texas.  We can't decide on a whim to go out for coffee, do lunch, or go on a photowalk together, but we can share our individual thoughts about and experiences with coffee, lunch, our cameras, and many other things with each other and with you through our blog posts.  Writing together is our way of sharing a long distance friendship.  And let me say, we have had A LOT of LOLs, both publicly and privately.  I think I can speak for both of us when I say blogging together is super fun.

As I sit here writing these words, I have just hit publish on our last post of Pixels, Plates, and Lols!.

Don't worry!  All is good with Tracey and me! Just as 2016 is coming to an end and 2017, with all of its possibilities, is about to be birthed, so our first blog together is coming to an end and something new for us is about to be born.  Though it was kind of sad knowing that when I hit "Publish" it would be the last time for Pixels, Plates, and Lols!, I know that things change.  Thankfully for us, this change is good thing!

I hope that I have figured out an effective way to balance my collaborative writing with Tracey and my personal writing here, but don't be surprised if every now and then there is a bit of "sharing" between the two blogs. Lol!

If you are interested in following us on our new adventure, I will share the details here as soon as I can!  If, while you wait, you want to read the detailed story of how we became friends and starting blogging together, here is the link to our very first post on Pixels, Plates, and LOLs!. 

Enjoy!  And thanks for reading.

Where I Stand

Every month, the Capture Your 365 photo prompts include this one - "Where I Stand."  I have pictures of my bare feet, my sock covered feet, my feet in comfy shoes, funky shoes, and dressy shoes.  Throughtout these photos I can be seen with my feet curled around the base of my desk chair, propped up on the couch relaxing, standing side by side with the one I love, on rocks and mountains,  close to home, and faraway.  Each photo tells a story of where I was physically in that particular moment on that particular day.

This week I was prompted to focus on where I stand not through my camera, but through my heart.  I was faced with examining where I stand emotionally, spiritually, theologically, and morally, not though pictures, but through my actions..  It is much more diffucult to create an image of where the inner me stands than it is to show where the physical me has planted my feet.

The week began with awakening last Sunday morning to the devestating news of the attack on the Pulse Night Club in Orlando.  Such an attack is horrifying in its own right, but when I learned that the attacker specifically targeted  the LGBT community, it felt like salt being poured into wounds that were already quite deep and painful.  The LGBT community is my friends, my family, my church.  If such an incident were to occur here in Dallas, I have no doubt that someone I know would have been among the dead or injured.

I actually went to two different church services last Sunday morning, the Episcopal church, the church in which I grew up, the church in which my children were baptized, and the church in which I was married...twice. :-)  Sadly, the events in Orlando were not mentioned during that Sunday morning service.  I then went to Cathedral of Hope United Church of Christ, the largest LGBT church in the world.  There the events in Orlando were on the hearts and minds of everyone.  The response, however, was not one of hate, but of sadness for the great loss of life and a need to extend our love to a commuity that is grieving and in pain.  There was an outpouring of love for the victims and families in Orlando and for the LGBT community here in Dallas.  Yes, there was anxiety and some outright fear, but when we came together as a community a faith, that fear was lessesned a bit during that time when we all stood together in prayer and praise.

On Monday, I received emails from both churches.  The one from the Episcopal church sadi that the regularly scheduled Wednesday night Eucharist would be a Requiem offered for those who lost their lives in Orlando, but because the sanctuary was being used for another event during that time, they did not know yet where that service would be held.  Interestingly, I never recieved any further information about that particular service.  

From Cathedral of Hope came an anouncement that The Turtle Creek Chorale, a premier men's chorus here in Dallas, and the Cathedral of Hope Sanctuary Choir were going to offer a concert entitled "Songs of Healing" on Tuesday evening.  I was honored to be asked to sing as part of that concert.  In a time when I felt helpless, music was something that I had to offer.  

That Tuesday night concert was attended by 1600 people and watched by 500,000 more via live streaming broadcasts.  In addition to the gift of music offered by the collective musicians, those who attended the concert, through generous hearts, gave $18,000 to be sent to agencies Orlando who are helping the families of the victims with final expenses.  The people of Dallas showed their love for the people of Orlando.

This event was engineered and executed in forty-eight hours thanks to the hard work and commitment to the cause by many, many people, not the least of whom was the Dallas Police Department who sent sixty officers to keep us all safe that night.  For that ninety minutes, fear subsided.

I have no idea how many attended the service at the Episcopal church that I assume ocurred Wednesday evening in some undisclosed location.  

It should come as no surprise that because of Cathedral of Hope's position in the Chritian church and the LGBT faith community,  our head pastor was sought out by reporters for his thoughts and commentary on the week's events.  As ones who are proud of the work of our church and its leaders, we shared many of those articles and videos through social media.  I was no exception.

I was surprised yesterday when my Facebook feed included a "rant" against our pastor's words by someone I consider to be a good friend.  At first I was hurt.  Then I was sad.  I then felt God's hand on my shoulder and words in me ear telling me that this was my chance to show where I stand.  When I am hurt or upset, I generally have one of two responses - withdraw completely from the situation, or fire back in "unpleasant" discourse.  I knew that neither of these responses was acceptable this time.  The person who wrote the post in question is someone who I believe God intentionally brought into my life.  We have had several different, all positive, encounters prior to this.  And as I said, this is someone I consider to be a good friend, so withdrawing would be a personal loss to me.  And now more than ever, as is evidenced by the political climate in this country, I know that angry discourse is a coward's response.  It is a response from the head, not the heart.  The heart responds with love as its guiding force.  With God's help, I did my best to respond in love - balancing my love for my church, my pastor, my faith, myself, and my friend.  I received a gentle response saying that we could agree to disagree.  Indeed we could and that was ok.  I honestly believe that responding to the initial post was God calling me to articulate in a respectable way, where I stand not for my friend, but for me.

As if all these things weren't enough to make one question the goodness of life, on our way to Cathedral of Hope this morning we received a text from a friend saying that the building had been evacuated because of "suspicious packages" left on the premises.  The worship service was moved to a safe spot outdoors, away from the packages.  Amidst the Dallas bomb squad and a number of other police officers, worship went on.

I have written here many times that I am not a risk taker; yet despite all that was going on, it never crossed my mind that I should not attend the worship service at Cathedral of Hope this morning.  Another opportunity to show where I stand.  This morning I stood with my closest friends, surrounded by lots of love and police officers.  And it was good.

As it turned out, the "suspicious bags" were harmless, clothes and a cell phone.  We were able to return to the building, and the air conditioning,   There was an amazing sense of community as we all held hands and sang, "How great is our God" after breaking bread together.   Love will conquer hate. It may take awhile, but love will win.

As is the case with our "village" of friends, we headed to brunch after church.  On the way, I checked my Facebook feed.  There were lots of posts about the morning's events at church.  Hidden amidst all of that was a notice that my friend, with whom I'd had the exchange yesterday, had tagged me in a post.  In it, she said that she had misinterpreted the article that was posted, responded without fully processing what was said, and after some time to let it settle, now understands what was really being presented and what I was trying to say in my response.  Wow!  The Spirit is at work!

There was a huge lesson in this for me.  First of all, I neither retreated or responded from the wrong place when faced with, what was for me, a challenging situation.  Nor did I judge my friend, because I have done the very same thing...replied to someone or something without taking time, without listening to God guide me through to the place where I should be.  I also learned from my friend how to admit when I have made a mistake.  I hope that I have the courage to do as she did the next time I find myself having jumped to a conclusion too quickly.

So as a new week dawns, where do I stand...

• Still deeply saddened by the loss of life in Orlando
• Grateful for the healing power of music
• Proud to be part of a community of faith that not only talks the talk, but walks the walk
• Thankful for the support of the Dallas police department throughout this week
• Truly blessed by friends both far and near
• Certain that love conquers hate
• Confident that God is good.

A Magical Day at the Norfolk Botanical Gardens

A week ago today I spent an amazing Saturday with four awesome photography friends, and several supportive family members, on a photowalk at the Norfolk Botanical Gardens.  Most of us had never met before that day, yet from the moment that we all gathered at the front entrance to the gardens, it felt like we had been lifelong friends.  The excitement with which we all met that day was like a bunch of teenagers at a sleepover.

With cameras around our necks and camera bags on our shoulders we set out to photograph the beauty before us.  At least that was the premise of our day.

I don't know about any of the others, but once we started walking and talking and smiling and laughing, the photos that I was taking were really of little consequence.  I was more interested in talking to and enjoying these woman, completely being in each and every moment.  Most of what I know about photography seemed to escape me on that day.  I didn't pay nearly enough attention to camera settings and light angles and composition as I normally do.  I realized that although we were on a a "photowalk," the time with new friends was way more important than the photos that I may or may not "get."

I'm not sure how many photos I actually took.  What I am sure of is that the ratio of good ones to bad ones was far less than it usually is.  I am perfectly OK with that.  As the day went on,  it became patently obvious to me that this day was about the journey, not the destination.

Even behind the cameras, the pure joy on everyone's face is evident!

And even just behind there is excitement over what is being photographed!

Here is the star of the above shot!

 Some serious shooting...

Our tour guides, photo op spotters, bench testers, and most importantly, loving supporters...

The fun lasted all day long!

I managed to get a few decent shots.

The Norfolk Botanical Gardens were full of beautiful blooming flowers...

...and lush green...

...and other awesome things to look at!

Though many of my photos are poorly exposed, composed, and focused, my memories of this day are perfect in every way...clear,  exactly what I had hoped for, and will forever fill my heart with light and joy!

Thank you to everyone who helped create this magical day - Garnett, Amy, Kay, Sherri, Andrea, Sarah, Weber, Ray, and most of all Katrina Kennedy and Capture Your 365!