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.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Today marks the grim 100-year anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire: March 25, 1911, in New York's Greenwich Village. Due to heartless labor practices and negligence by factory owners, 146 people died in under 20 minutes from fire and leaping from the building's 9th floor in desperation. Most of the dead were females; most in their late teens and early twenties.

http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/

Near the End

Near the end
of this cold March day, mark
how the tall straight trunks
of tulip populars in mass -
leafless from winter
and ranged up the slope -
enbark and furrow
the last slant of light
to a ruddy-gold glory,
before dusk, before night

A non-moral paradigm of the fallen nature of existence

Recently I experienced a non-moral paradigm of the fallen nature of existence, certainly including my own. On a Saturday morning this winter I left home by car before dawn to explore west. After I crossed the Blue Ridge and Shenandoah River, I noticed in the car's rear view mirror the light from the rising sun. Two horizons figured significantly in perspective here. The sun had emerged above the plane of the coastal plain east of the Piedmont, but it had not yet cleared the Blue Ridge itself, to be seen directly and fully in the sky by me west of the mountains. Thus hidden, in a sense, the morning sun nevertheless burnished the broken clouds overspreading the ridge to a ruddy luminosity. I turned off the highway onto a smaller country lane paralleling the Blue Ridge and Shenandoah to seek a back-east view conducive to an attempt to capture this moment of glory in a photograph. As I stood in the snow at the fence to a farm pasture, through the viewfinder of my camera I carefully framed and focused the scene with ridge and clouds and light. When the composition seemed right to me, and the color at peak in the sky, I pressed the shutter button. No image appeared in the display on the back of my digital camera. Puzzled, I pressed again. Again, no image, meaning no photograph. Baffled but stubbornly persistent, I pressed the button a third time. Still no image, no photograph. Frustrated, I pressed one last time to no avail, then checked the camera settings more closely. Deflated, I discovered the camera had no media card, so no image could be recorded. As it happened, when I had used the camera the week before and taken the media card out to transfer images to the computer, I neglected to reinsert the card into the camera immediately after the transfer. Hence, a malfunctioning camera, or to be more accurate, photographer. And so on this Saturday, west of the sun, east of my foolishness, I missed a moment for photographic beauty. When the glory passed from the clouds, I ruefully chuckled at my mistake and loss, tucked myself and my memory of the view back into the car, and continued through the gray morning.

Christ of the Birds

Amid the crumpled grays and browns
of these late December leaves,
scattered and muted on cold-laden grass,
juncos come in mass, hop the ground here about,
for seed, for moisture, for life in itself –
their slate-colored bodies instantiating
a beauty so subtle, a glory all but hidden,
small and flitting through the dull
of this dusk-fallen hour.
Christ of the birds of this world
came down, came down,
to birth, to death, to winter among us,
wanting sorely to be graced,
as even juncos under heaven.
Christ of the birds, Christ of all creatures,
come again, come again.

3 Advent 2010.

Cold rain over night, with temperatures close to freezing. Now at dawn fog settles in and fills the spaces between houses and trees, between heaven and earth. To this world, God, you came to us in Jesus, vulnerable as a child, tender as a hope. Thus you bless this cold and fog, thus you bless us, with blood and bone of your love, with life both now and ever. May we, with cold and fog and all elements of this world, kneel in thanks and praise before this lowly child, savior and lord of all creation.