When we are open to beauty, it is more likely to appear to us. When we share that gift by pointing it out to others, we find we have even more of it to celebrate.
Trebbe Johnson
When I looked up who is Trebbe Johnson on the internet I found her website https://trebbejohnson.com/about/ and learned some about her. You might want to look into her work more deeply?
I certainly agree with the quote above from her. Many times when we are out and about, Bob with his camera and me with my iPhone, I will point something out that I think would make a great photo. He is so good at capturing those ideas! He is very good snapping photos on his own, too! Imagine that!
Every year we try to get to the Moler race track at least once during the summer. It is a quarter mile clay oval racetrack. We call it ‘eating dirt’ since the dirt flies over the fences and often into the stands. Helps us get in touch with the amusements of our country neighbors. This year I spotted this fellow dressed for an evening at the track. I like his hat with buttons, his hair pulled into a ponytail, his overalls and food for the next race.
At racetrack by r m dutina
Then my Wish-I-was-her image.
Hope she is always this confident! r m dutina
This was amazing. Duckweed, frog and leaf shadow. How does he capture these so nicely?
r m dutina
The busy bees!
r m dutina
“You planted these, here, just for me?” asked the goldfinch.
r m dutina just out our front door
Glory bee by m l dutina
Keep watching for treasures in plain sight! And always give thanks.
always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I have been noticing spider strings in the morning sun. These are not “webs” as such, more like hunting lines? I suppose the spider drops out of the trees because these begin high in the air) and drops down into the grass. The sun catches the gossamer line and glistens in my eyes.
Makes me wonder how all the birds frequenting our feeder miss those lines as they come flying in? We have decals and a blotter marker that leaves a residue that the birds can see so they do not crash into our sliding glass door. Does the spider have something like that in its silk?
I forgot to write about all this until this morning when I put the sprinkler on our clump river birch and then the new Mallow shrub. High heat this week and no rain in the forecast, ugh. Trying to unwind the hose and blech! a spider string was caught in my hair. Now I am wrestling the hose, (and I eventually turned the hose storage roller over on its side), trying to get the string out of my hair and remembering that I did not write about all of this.
In high school I did a science project with Becky about spiders. She was an artist and her family lived in a large house with an old stone basement. We sprayed a piece of cardboard with hairspray, captured a spider web . And repeated the process. Not all the captures were successful. We used the good ones as our displays to discuss the various kinds of silk a spider uses in construction.
Likely the most maddening encounter I ever had with a spider occurred at our last address on Siesta Drive. We had bird feeders (as usual) on our front porch. One day we came home from shopping and wondered how the hummingbird was holding this strange position on the porch.
Upon closer inspection, Grr! A spider had captured it and killed it. I was furious that our little friend had fallen prey to the natural order. Then I began to wonder what size spider could do that? I went inside to get the broom. Believe it or not I found that spider hiding along the edge of the porch. I drove it out into the open and beat it to death with the broom. Not exactly proud of that moment, but I felt justified at the time.
Silk so strong. Arachnid so mysterious. I am not afraid of spiders but like many people I do not like when I get their silks in the face. Walking a trail at the Nature Center I am always sort of relieved when Bob goes first and knocks the hunting lines away.
So with all my unscientific lingo but strong interest I guess I could have the title Citizen naturalist?
A man without God is trusting in a spider’s web. Everything he counts on will collapse.
When it was first published it was quite controversial. Many have found solace and understanding of the Trinity from this book and the subsequent movie.
“So what do I do now?” asked Mack. Jesus replied “What you’re already doing, Mack, learn to live loved. It’s not an easy concept for humans. You have a hard time sharing anything.” He chuckled and continued, “So yes, what we desire is for you to ‘re-turn’ to us, and then we come and make our home inside you, and then we share. The friendship is real, not merely imagined. We’re meant to experience this life, your life, together, in a dialogue, sharing the journey. You get to share in our wisdom and learn to love with our love, and we get …. to hear you grumble and gripe and complain, and …”
The Shack Page 174-175 by Paul Young
The subtitle on the book reads “You are never as alone as you think.”
If you have not read it check your local library. Or try to get the DVD or movie through Hoopla at the library. It will certainly have you thinking about your relationship with the Trinity and their work in your life. Well worth your time and in my opinion, something to give you a good long think!
The most difficult thing about the Christian concept of the Trinity is that there is no way to perfectly and completely understand it. The Trinity is a concept that is impossible for any human being to fully understand, let alone explain. God is infinitely greater than we are; therefore, we should not expect to be able to fully understand Him. The Bible teaches that the Father is God, that Jesus is God, and that the Holy Spirit is God. The Bible also teaches that there is only one God. Though we can understand some facts about the relationship of the different Persons of the Trinity to one another, ultimately, it is incomprehensible to the human mind. However, this does not mean the Trinity is not true or that it is not based on the teachings of the Bible.
The Shack is just one interpretation of the Trinity. No one person knows for certain how to teach and understand the complex nature of what we worship.
LORD, help our lack of understanding. Lead us deeper to Your heart. Help us learn to live as loved. Amen.
Recently we went to a special exhibit at Cincinnati Art Museum. These were paintings by Pablo Picasso entitled Out of Bounds. The museum notes, “The year 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), perhaps the most innovative and influential artist of the 20th century. The Cincinnati Art Museum is celebrating his legacy with an unprecedented exhibition, the first to examine Picasso’s lifelong engagement with landscape. Picasso Landscapes: Out of Bounds brings to our galleries paintings and sculptures by the artist from some 25 public and private collections across the United States and Europe.”
I have never ever cared for his cubist styles. A few of the items in this exhibit showed he really could paint in styles I liked! Well, at least twice.
He could have been an impressionist!
Some of the items looked as if they were drawn by a child with crayons. I should have taken a photo for you!
Here is one of Bob’s favorites.
There are likely folks around the world who like his art along with many collectors. Give me an impressionist any day!
I mentioned I would get back to the shell on my soul collage.
“The nautilus and the ammonite are similar organisms. Both are aquatic molluscs with spiral shells. Ammonites, however, have been extinct since the K-T event that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago while the nautilus still roams the seas. There are numerous other differences between the two creatures, most of which are minor.”
Since childhood I have been fascinated by shells. Grandma Rush used to bring them to me from her bus trips to Florida. I likely found some on an eastern seaboard beach with my Dad before age 10. Even the land snails I found along the banks of the stream in Kuhner’s field fascinated me with their shells.
The nautilus creature makes a larger shell as it grows. Then it closes off the old chamber where it lived. Once when we were traveling the east coast we found a nautilus shell that had been cut open in a shop. Bob let me get it. For years it was hanging in my office. It was very fragile and got broken on the edges when not packed soundly for moving. From another vacation I now have a small cut open nautilus in a stained glass piece. In Hot Springs, Arkansas we found an ammonite in a rock shop that had been cut open. Again, Bob said, “Get it!”
Ancient to Arkansas to Ohio
Inner ancient chambers
Why are these special to me? When I was learning about the Center down silence, the nautilus showed me a way to do that. Instead of growing outward, to enter meditation and silence I need to travel from the largest chamber to the smallest, dropping things that hinder my listening to God along the way. Also note, the smaller the chamber, the fewer things it will hold.
During the retreat when I finally was able to come to stillness, a stop, I sensed the Lord saying that I had not been going to that quiet place enough with the Spirit for about 6 weeks or so. That is why I was so tired and drained. It was a gentle enlightenment and I immediately knew the wisdom of the statement. I forgot to drink from the Living Water, daily. I failed to enter the center down silence. Before retreat I was so hungry for silence. No wonder! I had not been there consistently for a long time. Yes I checked off boxes, did devotional readings, even read Scripture and Christian books. But no concentrated peeling away of distracting layers and just listening.
God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”
Psalm 46:1,4,6 NIV
How could I skip going to the Living Water God offers me? The Word says the heart is deceitful above all else! I am so easily deluded. Help me, Jesus my Redeemer, to rest in Your holy place daily.
Much more important than showing you the photos is to ask you to try entering that center down silence for yourselves. Even Monica Brown understands! Look at the CD cover of hers I found in my favorite colors!
Will you try this for 21 days? Just listening for that still, small voice. It makes all the difference in the world! Give yourself to listening. Quiet your thoughts and heart. Sit still. Be quiet.
This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says:
“In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.”
What a glorious retreat I had at the Sisters of Charity convent in Delhi. Oh my! The Lord enabled me to peel back the layers of surface-ness and enter the silent place with the Holy One. There is so much we do not understand or realize about that quiet place.
That quiet place is so restorative and life-giving. I did my usual retreat practices. Listen for the Voice from the quiet place. Try to obey what I was told. Read books as they came across my path. I took notes and tried to digest and experience what the words said, what the Voice said. I will attempt over a week or two to show you the holy places I was led to, the things I learned.
First I heard,
"Peel back
Let layers flutter open
Rest, be revealed."
23-6-4 opening prayer time
And when I went to the art pastels I am trying to learn how to use this is what came forth.
Please ignore black prongs from holder
I used too much fixative when I was finished and the paper wrinkled, oh well. The river of living water lies in that lower, interior level. I determined to peel back my upper, outer layers and rest while being revealed. I had to return to these instructions more than once.
The retreat leader introduced us to the musician Monica Brown. I was totally unfamiliar with her work. The theme for the opening and continuation of the retreat was the songs entitled “Quiet my Soul” and “In the Silence.”
Once I found the music on my iPad I listened to these lovely calls to the Presence of the Holy One repeatedly, especially at bed time or at times my heart and mind got distracted from centering.
Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
Matthew 28:20 NLT
I am praying that this sharing will help you to enter into that place of quiet and restoration with the Holy Trinity.
For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. But you refused
Isaiah 30:15
That last phrase has always made me pause. I DO NOT want to be one who refuses! Other translations say, “But you would not.” This retreat I knew I was running on empty and of absolute necessity in need of returning and rest, quietness and trust. May you, too, set aside time each day to drop down into that ‘center down silence’ of restoration, rest, quietness and trust. Linger and be restored.
Seems this did not post correctly the first time, so here it is again!
I recently purchased a note card from the Printery House as Conception Abbey in Missouri. The image is the Good Shepherd carrying a sheep. the back reads:
The image of Christ as Good Shepherd is deeply rooted in the Gospels: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? (Luke 15:4, cf. Matthew 18:13). The symbolism is of this icon hinges on Christ’s saving Passion. This image of a shepherd carrying a sheep on his shoulders, borrowed from secular art of the Greco-Roman world, is now combined with the imagery of the Paschal Mystery: the resurrected Christ, who bears the marks of the nails, brings back sinners who were lost and now are found. The cross is seen in the background as a sign of Christ’s victory over death. Jesus is not only the shepherd, but as the Passion symbolism indicates, he is also the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29).
About the same time as the card arrived I was looking through a devotional called Forward Day by Day. For many years I used this as my morning devotional guide. The Scripture readings for each day are listed and a short meditation written by various different authors each month. This page read as follows.
John 10:14I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.
At historic St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Chestertown, Maryland, where I served years back, someone installed an oversized window with an image of Jesus carrying a sheep around his neck. I never liked that window. It did not fit the space stylistically, historically, or size-wise, but also, I had never been a fan of the passive image of Jesus as Good Shepherd.
That was the case until I visited the sheep ranch of close friends. They invited me to watch the annual sheep branding, which you will be relieved to know is by spray paint. The sheep also receive oral inoculations for various diseases. The shepherds funnel the sheep from a holding pen through chutes, but because sheep are antsy, the shepherds sometimes must wrestle a few. The sheep will fight and buck and wriggle and strain.
The passive sheep around Jesus’s shoulders has surrendered, given himself over to a shepherd that he trusts will lead and guide and even carry when necessary.
MOVING FORWARD: Have you surrendered or do you still fight and buck and wiggle?
Rob Geizelman Forward day by Day Wednesday March 29, 2023
I really like the MOVING FORWARD question: Have you surrendered or do you still fight and buck and wiggle? What sort of sheep are you? Have you surrendered to Jesus? Do you ever allow Him to carry you?
At the Cincinnati Art Museum we recently saw a collection of photographs by Georgie O’Keeffe. I was struck by this quote from her. If you have ever seen her paintings of flowers you will have a better understanding of the quote.
“Well – I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my floweryou hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower – and I don’t,” O’Keeffe scolded. For the artist, her renderings of flowers were about detail, light and shade, and formal juxtaposition. though many critics read other meanings into these works, O’Keeffe maintained that they signified only the artistic potential not with pencil or paint, but with her camera.
2006.6.1074, 2006.6.1071, 2006.6.1072 on museum wall
200 paintings of flowers and over 2,000 paintings during her career. “In the 1930s, she wrote of her desire to paint the humble flower enlarged and up-close. “I’ll paint it big, and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it,” she wrote. “I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.”
Her first quote was proven true by my visit to this exhibit.
What is it?
For years and years I saw this painting and believed it was a morning glory. This exhibit set me straight! It is actually a Jimson Weed.
So when I paste it in with it’s automatic caption you can see it is listed as
2014.35 Georgia O’Keeffe
Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, 1932
Oil on canvas
48 × 40 in. (121.9 × 101.6 cm)
Framed: 53 in. × 44 3/4 in. × 2 1/2 in.
What do you think and see of her flower?
How does this relate to Christian life? Throughout the old and new testaments we are referred to as similar to flowers. But if a flower is captured on a canvas it does not fade like a real flower.
Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For, ‘All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord endures forever.’ And this is the word that was preached to you.
1 Peter 1:22-23 NIV
Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart. 23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. 24 For,
“All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, 25 but the word of the Lord endures forever.”[c]
Flowers and grasses do what the Scripture says, but we are born again from IMPERISHABLE seed. We are not like those real flowers or flowers on canvas. We are born again through the living and enduring word of God. That is what the word says. Who am I to argue with it?
I recently purchased a note card from the Printery House as Conception Abbey in Missouri. The image is the Good Shepherd carrying a sheep. the back reads:
The image of Christ as Good Shepherd is deeply rooted in the Gospels: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? (Luke 15:4, cf. Matthew 18:13). The symbolism is of this icon hinges on Christ’s saving Passion. This image of a shepherd carrying a sheep on his shoulders, borrowed from secular art of the Greco-Roman world, is now combined with the imagery of the Paschal Mystery: the resurrected Christ, who bears the marks of the nails, brings back sinners who were lost and now are found. The cross is seen in the background as a sign of Christ’s victory over death. Jesus is not only the shepherd, but as the Passion symbolism indicates, he is also the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29).
About the same time as the card arrived I was looking through a devotional called Forward Day by Day. For many years I used this as my morning devotional guide. The Scripture readings for each day are listed and a short meditation written by various different authors each month. This page read as follows.
John 10:14I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me.
At historic St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Chestertown, Maryland, where I served years back, someone installed an oversized window with an image of Jesus carrying a sheep around his neck. I never liked that window. It did not fit the space stylistically, historically, or size-wise, but also, I had never been a fan of the passive image of Jesus as Good Shepherd.
That was the case until I visited the sheep ranch of close friends. They invited me to watch the annual sheep branding, which you will be relieved to know is by spray paint. The sheep also receive oral inoculations for various diseases. The shepherds funnel the sheep from a holding pen through chutes, but because sheep are antsy, the shepherds sometimes must wrestle a few. The sheep will fight and buck and wriggle and strain.
The passive sheep around Jesus’s shoulders has surrendered, given himself over to a shepherd that he trusts will lead and guide and even carry when necessary.
MOVING FORWARD: Have you surrendered or do you still fight and buck and wiggle?
Rob Geizelman Forward day by Day Wednesday March 29, 2023
I really like the MOVING FORWARD question: Have you surrendered or do you still fight and buck and wiggle? What sort of sheep are you? Have you surrendered to Jesus? Do you ever allow Him to carry you?
Treasures in Plain Sight, A Christian Blog 