Images of Grasses

When I was at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge (Dorchester County, Maryland's eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay) earlier in the summer, I was entranced by the grasses, and by the grasses and water. Such varieties of grasses: textures; heights; colors; densities. I took several photographs. I could spend a long time observing the many grasses in their varied contexts of time and place, of light and air, of weathers and seasons. I wonder if I could produce a set of quality photographs. I would like to try. It would take extended time and effort. Yet the possibility stimulates and pulls me.

And related to this, I think some artist ought to compose "A Symphony of Grasses," or at least an extended tone poem, to evoke the textures, heights, colors, densities. I would only need to learn more about music and grasses. Ah, but for another life.

A Copious Blossoming

Here in mid April, certain trees, especially cherries and pears, from renaissance in root and branch body forth clouds, not high and insubstantial but near and tangible, in multi-hued layers of white and pink, with splashes and points of green and orange, even petaled hints of bluish-gray, and through all a copious blossoming of glory.

Rain to Ice to Rain

After yesterday's storm with sleet and freezing rain, I went out early this morning, with great care, to walk around the neighborhood. While it was challenging due to the slippery conditions, it was lovely to see the play of emerging light on form and color as twilight yielded to the first of sun. Yesterday rain from the clouds turned to ice and froze on exposed surfaces, especially the trees. Today, as sun dazzled the branches, ice returned to rain under trees.

Home Site

We have no special site for our home. We live in a modest townhouse complex amid comfortable single family homes in a suburban neighborhood in northern Virginia, the neighborhood being part of a growing county, and the county being part of the expanding metropolitan area around Washington, D.C. There seems no end of people, buildings, vehicles, and roads. Our home itself is at one end of a set of several townhouses, with other sets of townhouses close by, making up our little community within a larger, then that within a larger. The back of our home faces east; the front faces west; and the side which is the end of the unit faces south. Toward these three exposures we have ample windows. Just beyond our back doors and windows is a screen about five yards deep of trees and shrubs between us and the grounds of a day school for young children. There tulip poplars, beech, big tooth aspen, and hollies provide all manner of greens, yellows, and bare gray trunks and branches through the months. Then just beyond our front door and windows, along the townhouse complex's streets and parking areas and here and there in the little yards, is a scattering of maples, cherries, and oaks; and so more greens, yellows, and grays, as well as pinks and reds and browns, through the year. In all seasons, during the course of the days, especially when more sun and blue than clouds in the sky, both outside and inside we enjoy much light rising early in the back, moving in fullness around the side, and setting late in the front. We have no special site. Yet we do have these quanta of filtered light, exterior and interior, texturing with splendor the hours and days, the ordinary, if only we see.

Early on the First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday

Early on this refreshed and refreshing June morning, clear and cool, the sun pours glory from the eastern horizon upon roads and buildings and fields and rocks and all manner of life. Even the long westward shadows of houses and trees seem to heighten, not lessen, the effulgence of light which we see most sharply and intensely in the things of this world, a profuse multiplicity which yet coheres in this streaming luminance. Thus met and loved in beauties, one original, one derived, are the divine and the created.

God is First the Answer to Our Being

"Revelation is not mere information. Revelation is God disclosing his intimate self to us as a lover to his beloved." Ruth Burrows, OCD, in Love Unknown. || God is not first the solution or answer to the truth. God is not first the solution to the good. God is not first the answer to the beautiful. God is first the solution or answer to being. And being is not abstract, not monistic, not quality-less. Being is irreducibly personal and intrinsically relational: the triune God. Hence, God is first the answer to our being, and that is why our rebellion against and repudiation of God, of our relationship with God, lead to untruth, sin, and chaos, and ultimately to death. God in and through Christ restores our being -- personal relationship with God -- and in and through the Holy Spirit nurtures that relationship such that truth, goodness, and beauty fruit in and from us.

A Measure for the Day

Considering the world around me -- near and far, today and tomorrow -- how can I live daily in greatest benefaction and least detriment, in even the smallest things?

Visiting the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception

Karen and I spent several hours early on Saturday exploring the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, inside and outside, in northeast Washington. It is a magnificent edifice. The works of sacred art in the Great Upper Church and in the lower Crypt Church instantiate a panoply of theological ideas, human experiences, colors, and forms in great beauty. It was a splendid visit. We look forward to returning to the basilica to absorb more of that which cannot be fully, humanly absorbed.

Textures of Glory

It is mid October, with a great brilliance spreading above the eastern horizon early on this clear, cool morning. The branches of the tulip poplars, in the screen of trees which stand between the sun and the back of the house, stir in the breeze and enleaf a spectrum of greens and yellows, variously shaded and then illuminated. Such does light's dazzle, playing through wind and foliage, briefly but truly instantiate textures of glory.

Vision and Simple Pleasure

Mid day on a January Sunday, and we drive the cold miles of the toll road to visit family for the afternoon. Along one stretch on our right a wintered stand of mature tulip trees -- tall, straight, and well-spaced -- ranges across the rises and ravines through which the highway paves. My heart and spirit lift with the trees every time we pass this way.

We must inculcate in ourselves vision for and simple pleasure in these little instances of quotidian beauty scattered variously around us, else we miss them, we miss them, to the fading of heart and spirit.

Summer Rain

Summer rain --

against the inscrutable screen

of beech and big-tooth aspen,

fractal leafing seeming endless --

silvers the massed cloud down

to earth, to soil and pavement,

and all creatures here below,

of life sore beauty-parched.

Eastern Redbuds

Mid April, and long down the lane the eastern redbuds in bloom, prior to leafing, mist the gray dawn in purple understory.

A Kind of Wild Beauty

On an early morning drive to the Blue Ridge today, I stopped near Paris, Virginia. Clouds thickened down the ridges and valley, and a chill easterly wind drove hard rain across the land and pond, the surface of the pond being pushed relentlessly to the western edge. Such a wildness to the weather and morning -- all a kind of wild beauty amid the unfurling and flourishing of spring.

A Few Glorious Moments

A few glorious moments this morning just as the sun emerged above the horizon, after overnight rains, with high remnants of clouds dark gray above, but brightly illuminated underneath with stunningly pink-to-red-to-orange trailers toward the earth. A sky saturated with creation's splendor.

All a Kind of Praise

A brisk but glorious morning, with bright sunshine, trees greening, redbuds and dogwoods blossoming. I spent a good hour and a half early today slowly traversing a gravel country road in Fauquier County, Virginia, east of the Blue Ridge, with a farm and a lovely creek nearby, and a bald eagle flying over head at one point. All a kind of praise.

A Festival in Winter

A wet snow had fallen a couple of days before, in advance of a bitter cold front scudding in on fierce, northwesterly winds. In the early morning, the wind still blustering, under a gray-metaled sky with a thin band of ruddiness eastering along the Blue Ridge, I slanted across fields and lanes at the state arboretum in Clarke County, through snow now compacted and hardened to crust and ice.

Painfully cold at first, I lost most sensation in my ears and extremities after a while, such that I adjusted and moved past the worst of the pain. Nevertheless, I sought some refuge from the bitter wind by taking a path among scrub brush. The tall bushes and saplings cut the wind noticeably, and I felt more comfortable. The cold became distinctly more bearable, and I began to be able to focus more closely on the surroundings.

Amid this severe beauty, I continued on the path into a wooded area, even more sheltered from the wind. Now it was just cold, around 20 degrees Fahrenheit, but tolerable. I stopped to observe, to watch and listen, in the calm at my level, while the heights of the trees, 40 to 50 feet above, swayed and rattled in the wind. I became aware of other movement and sound around me; and I wondrously realized there were at least several dozen cedar waxwings flitting around me in the woods, clustering on tree branches and fallen logs to eat of berries and drink of snow. The whir of glossy brown wings and bodies, basically unconcerned with me, took over my senses while I stood as still as I could.

The cedar waxwings and I were in a stand of hackberries. The common hackberry tree produces a green fruit in summer that ripens reddish brown to purple in autumn. After a hard frost, the small berries are particularly sweet. Hence the congregation of waxwings, for these elegant birds dine largely on fruit, especially in fall and winter. Fruit constitutes such a significant part of their diet that they are known as frugivorous birds. They favor hackberries, when available, greatly.

And there, in my stillness, I stood, I watched and listened, for an indeterminate time. A half hour? An hour? A quarter of an hour? In that moment, that space, I could not tell. I lost track of time, of cold. I knew only the flashing mass of cedar waxwings at feast among the trees and snow.

Old Waterford Road

My wife, Karen, and I found a break between rains this morning for a lovely drive out of Leesburg VA up Old Waterford Road (much of it gravel and narrow) to historic Waterford VA. The fall colors are at or near peak, inducing wonder at the glory curving along land and sky and foliage. Adding to all, the weather was strange and wild, with warm and gusty winds in front of an approaching cold front. Gusts strong enough to crack and blow a 25 to 30-foot tree down onto the the road at one point, some time a short while before our coming, and leaving little space to pass. I drove carefully far to the left on the road, crunching over the very top branches. The sight and experience so impressed me, I was lost in amazement. (It doesn't take much to do this to me.) Karen, more level-headed and civic-minded, despite her suffering with a cold, suggested it would be a good idea to move the tree from the road. Conceding the sense and sensibility of this, I parked as far to one side of the road as I could and slowly (barely) dragged the tree off the roadbed as far as I could, with Karen clearing broken branches and debris from the road. None the worse for wear (surprisingly), and a bit chuffed with civic pride, we drove on in the splendor of the morning, glad to have been of some slight service to a greater good.

Like Water Striders

Like water striders, we skim along on the surface of glory we scarcely fathom.

A Glory in This Day

Well into July, there is a glory in this day seldom experienced around here this deep into summer. We have traded winds from the southwest for winds from the northwest, a pattern not unheard of but infrequent for our summer weathers. In the low 80s, humidity is tolerable. Clouds and sky have not hazed into each other in nondescript color. Rather the clouds, white and light gray beneath, insubstantial as they would be were we flying through them, but seemingly massive and dense from earthly vantage, slowly move in sharp relief against the clear enamel of cerulean sky. Leaves of tulip poplar and bigtooth aspen and beech, on fractal branches from sturdily rising trunks, play their solid and varied greens on the breeze, under the pure light. A cardinal flits about, feathering the trees and grasses with bolded red. Today these created things body forth glory and praise without trying - simply by being. The kingdom of God is near.

Some Thoughts on Beauty, Meaning, Value

The idea and the reality of beauty involve meaning. Beauty gives meaning. It infuses things in specific and existence in general with meaning. The meaning it engenders and infuses is not so much rational meaning, as existential meaning. Beauty participates in and even, in a sense, answers the very reason for being. When we perceive beauty, we understand, whether intuitively or consciously, that we are made for beauty. We are made for a world with beauty. The experience of true beauty in the world as we know it may perhaps be infrequent or even rare. Yet it is for such that we are made. It is for such that we live.

That beauty gives meaning to existence in general and to things in specific leads to another aspect of beauty. Namely, beauty gives value to life and to specific things in life, with value being the worthiness we recognize in something. Value is indeed the close correlate or derivative of meaning. That is, when we apprehend that life or things have meaning, the realization leads us to the implicit or explicit valuation of those things and even of existence itself. We value things that have meaning, and to the extent we see life in general as having meaning, we value life in general.

Hence, beauty, inasmuch as it infuses things with meaning, suffuses things and existence with value. We value beautiful things and beautiful aspects of existence. We find them worthy. We find them worthwhile. Because we value beautiful things, we want to apprehend them, make them, conserve them, foster them, enhance them, and praise them.