a week in the life of...

I spend quite a bit of time looking at these scenes.

I will probably continue this pattern.

Is there any hope?

You bet your glass of milk there is!

there are many ways to look at situations, people, lives.

hopeful, hoping, wrecked, wrecking--every feeling in between.

a greater part of our life is completely centered on feelings.

-those hard words spoken

-finishing the job

-holding a door

-friends

-music

-food

choices

all based on how they make us feel.

if you could detach from your feelings, would you?

many of us drown them

the life we lead ebbs and flows over feelings

running to and away from...

do our feelings equal our life?

how do you feel,,

how is your life?

all photos all the time?

So...I shoot all of the time. I don't write all of the time though, I wish I did.

Want in one hand and wish in the other...

This may as well be a photo-blog.

I shoot and process photos that inspire me just about every day.

Sharing them with you will be a delight for me, an invitation, if you will,

into my heart/mind/spirit.

please be gentle...or not ;)

hear today and gone tomorrow?

I think a ‘mid-life crisis’ is on the horizon. Usually this involves fast cars or motorcycles, and fast women. I’m not feeling that. I feel a sense of urgency with my life, my actions and what I will leave for my sons. Now that the dust from the stirrings of my youth has settled, life and a sense of direction seem to be becoming focused. I want to make sure the influence I have on my boys is rightly placed.

I wonder why writing is so hard for me. I enjoy reading...reading good writing. Maybe pride? It becomes quite a disability. I suppose it is pride that stops me from doing a lot of things. Dancing. I would love to be a good dancer, but there’s good old pride. Don’t want to look like a fool. Maybe the fools have it right. At least they get to dance.

A few years ago God placed ‘writing’ on my heart. Ever since I have been running away from that challenge with photography. Wow, He sure is patient! Lately it (the calling) seems to be creeping in again. That ‘still soft voice’ is stirring. I have been following an amazing magazine for the last few months-’The Sun”. Amazing grouping of poetry, fiction and true-to-life writing with awe inspiring photography. The only thing is- something seems missing. There is plenty of passion and creativity. I guess it would be missing Hope. The hope in the resurrection?

“He has placed eternity in our hearts.”

Maybe it would be a fun project to start a magazine. I would probably take the same name (out of complete respect) and change the spelling. “The Son’. A magazine with excellent writing, photographs, poems and personal testimonies. A magazine with hope.

The thing is, and it’s a big thing, it might involve writing. I mean-me writing. We’ll see?

(family) the delight of a father-is in the doing

(or the lament of Time)

It has been said that children spell love with: T-I-M-E

I had experienced an amazing occurrence last year,

right about this same time. My eldest son caught himself in a place

not to be desired and needed some time with his Father.

This is a normal human dynamic, though not extraordinary, it was to be.

See, the feelings one will store, like an old farmer whose crops did not yield; fearing for his family and the winter to come, can be lost in the hollows of a broken heart. It is a fathers nature to father, just like it is one’s nature for a tree to be tall, or a duck to return to its young or a marshmallow to taste sweet.

Simply put, with Kody home, all of the stars of my heart were in line once again. Not to say that time spent with mother was ill-fitting; on the contrary, it was best-fitting. (he was where he needed to be at the time he needed to be)

With that journey’s course run, I am left with the lament of a heart longing to be united with it’s purpose, once more. It is rather hard to describe the melancholy of relationship that occurs from the unraveling of two; nay four lives, weaved so seemingly tight: you can still see the tears at the ends. One could gather a pile of rags and lineaments and neatly hang them out to dry; they would still be their resembled selves: the once to-gether assembly of fine linen.

This journey has in it elements of rejoice and lament. To gather and experience one without the other is, in essence, to not have any of either. We need both to find the balance between the natural and (dare I say it?!), the super-natural.

Blah, blah, blogging, blog-

I was not a good blogger in 2009. It’s not that I don’t have any photos or (gasp)
anything to say, but it seems to be a matter of time management.

I wrestle with this idea; If I wanted the life I crave--I would seek it.
Sometimes the way I travel through life is like my book regimen. I will find a good story and yearn to read it, then it comes out in the theater. Insert dilemma; books are better than movies, every time--will I choose better or easier?

It is important to organise and write our ideas. I would love this to be only about photographs, but something happens (to our souls) when we write. (maybe even when we read, too-but that’s another post)



















recent challenges have been to persevere through grace



many friends have been on the edge of decisions that will alter their lives significantly

























john
noelle
brian
kyle
abe
brandon
kate
jason




in true relationship exists vulnerability-
this is how you know-
you will get hurt-
it’s ok though



this might be what our father goes through
sharing in the joys and pains of true love
and he says we are all worth it


























love joy peace patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness and self-control

what then must I do?

black friday

the endless pursuits of ourselves
it resounds so deeply in my soul
these actions (self pursuit) are all I used to know

the money spent on this day could change the world
but why would we want to change a world in which we have grown comfortable?
like the abused wife who won’t leave because...
she thinks she deserves it, or knows no other way out?

‘comfort can no longer be comfortable for those who seek what is not at the market’

life, liberty and the pursuit of....happiness (or comfort)
how do we escape the idol of comfort?

I have been wrestling with obvious need in the world (poverty)

not the people who cannot afford a house, or a new car
the people who don’t have base human needs met:
food
shelter
clothing
water
and compassion

sometimes it’s hard to look past my obvious wants.
but if I sit still long enough, the sight of this need is staggering

Tolstoy writes of this struggle in ‘What then must we do?”
not too far in the book we are introduced to this plight against poverty.
His dilemma is how to advance the cause to end poverty.

early in his struggle he quotes our Lord “The man with two coats should share with him who has none, the one who has food should do the same.” (Luke 3:11)

I am almost convinced we are not called to end poverty.
I am convinced we are called to administer grace and mercy to those in need
regardless of place or disposition of life

The problem lies in, once again, my comfort

helping others that i do not relate with is uncomfortable
unless i make an anonymous donation
(which sometimes threatens my comfortable lifestyle)

what are we to do?
act
period. we are called to action.
this might actually help us more than those we seek to help

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation"

Ah, the blog. To blog or not to blog? That is the question. The answer,?
Is anyone going to read this? (and ultimately, does anyone care?)

It’s not necessarily journaling. My good friend Abe is an amazing journaler. If he did not journal, he would not be the same, yet has a hard time putting it on the net.

Why? Am I afraid to find out that no one cares? Or worse, that my life is proved to be hopelessly boring?

I am reading about a guy whose life is to be made into a movie. He has discovered that they must elaborate, because he says, most of his life until now has not been an exciting story.

So he started writing a better story with his life.
-biking across the U.S.
-climbing Machu Picchu
-falling in love (and for the first time saying the words)
-forming a mentoring program for fatherless kids

This story-less life has led him to write, so to speak, a better life story. At what point do we realise the movies of our lives have gone straight to DVD?

All the signs are usually there, usually in low box office numbers.
Our friends and co-workers. Our families and the people we avoid. Are they all telling us indirectly--our story sucks?

O.K., so now what. Most of us know that. You see the guy at the Conoco, loading up ‘the cube’ (a 24 pack of Coors Light). He knows it. People at work, working for the weekends. Families checking out on each other, living separate lives.

The guy in the book says the the protagonist (the main character in the story) needs an event that forces story to occur. Car crash, death of someone close, kids in trouble, you know, the life stuff. What do we do when these things happen? I suppose it goes one of two ways; you look at life as either precious or random. Maybe not so philosophically eloquent, but nevertheless, growing greater or lesser due to these events.

But, he says, also you can force the turn yourself. He forced himself into a seemingly impossible trek, to become fit. Through this he also found love. A great chapter in the story of his life? Yes.

So I’ll maybe use this blog to help reveal the ebb and flow in my story. Realising through the display of my work, maybe, how to better write the plot.

-s