Noticings From the Last Week

Color, My Back, 6 Days, A Small Grief, and the Bench plus a goofy video

I am not sure I can pin down just one theme from the last week in what I’ve been noticing.  There’s been a lot.  I’ve been noticing color a lot.  I’ve been noticing that my back has been bugging me and so I can’t exercise like I normally would.  I noticed how much six days can change a place from extraordinary to everyday.  I was grieved by something I could have missed.  And I noticed some big changes with the bench... So here goes...

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Color

Goodness there’s been something about the contrasts and brightness of color recently for me - notably purple/pink and green.  Several places I’ve been drawn to the vibrancy of colors this Spring.  I don’t know if the colors have been more vibrant or I’m just seeing them more vibrantly but here you go, especially the “carpet” of purple surrounded by the bright green of the grass illuminated by the morning sun.  Also our first iris has bloomed in our front yard...

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My Back

Not really any photos with this other than the fact that the tweak of my back has pushed me to be walking more and not doing the other exercises I like to do.  So it has basically been walking and yoga.  Hoping running and more high impact stuff will be coming in the next few days.  So how about a Scout photo for this

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Six Days

So I have been on the road a lot in the last week.  In just the last 7 days, I’ve been up and back to Columbus and to Wooster 4 times.  I’m done with I-71 for a while!  Anyway, last Monday it was seeing the solar eclipse in Wooster and then yesterday it was taking my son back to college after a quick visit home for the weekend.  But as I arrived yesterday right about the same time as when the eclipse was, I noticed how much different things looked and felt.  It wasn’t a time to stick around and soak in the moment like the eclipse day was but instead it was drop off, load a few things in the car to take back, and then hit the road.  But here are two photos from roughly the same place same time six days apart.

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A Little Bit of Grief

One of the mornings walking at WW, a tiny bit of blue caught my attention as I walked under a tree:

Do you see it?  The little blue robin egg...

I stopped and tapped it a bit and saw that it wasn’t broken but was fully intact.  But as I looked up in the tree above, there was no nest that I could see to where it had fallen.  Was it picked up by some other bird and then dropped?  Did someone pick it out of a nest and then leave it here?  How did it get there?  Regardless, I was a bit sad as I saw it.  I wonder if the mother robin noticed it missing.  I wonder if something happened to her.  I wonder.  But I said a little prayer over it and then moved on for the rest of the walk.  We can grieve for the big things and also for the little things.

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And the Benches

Well, the benches disappeared for a while after a bunch of rain that we got and they are only now starting to reappear.  With both, there were points that I couldn’t even get to where I normally photograph but instead had to receive them from a bit further away.  So, here’s Bench A (as I’ve named it so far):

And Bench B:

And how about first photo of bonus Bench C!!!

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Friends, I hope that these noticings have been an encouragement to you. We need these moments for ourselves each day. Noticing beauty, joy, hope, life, light, grief, color, so much. So much.

This morning, the Center for Action and Contemplation’s email was about “The Transformative Power of Art” and there was this quote from Lourdes Bernard:

Art invites audiences to consider the spirituality and transformative power of images. Engaging art offers respite, contemplation, even as it shares powerful, inspiring, or difficult stories. Art images are real and alive and have the power to change us and cause change.… They can shift our perspective on what we thought we knew and understood about a subject. Too often, art is considered decorative, and it is significantly more than that. Engaging with art means we have to slow down to allow a new experience to enter which perhaps cannot be accessed in another way. It can be an expansive experience.¹

I don’t know if what I share qualifies as art but this quote and the whole of the reflection spoke deeply to me about why it is important we create this ourselves and/or we gracefully receive the gift of art from others.

So what are you noticing today?

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Bonus Goofy Video

If you made it this far…A friend tipped me off to this geeky cool exercise thing where you follow the path of the characters in The Lord of the Rings as you run/walk/bike/etc. As you progress, you get medals to mark your progress. My first one arrived the other day and I may have geeked out a little bit…

Grace, Peace, Love, and Joy,
Ed

1. https://cac.org/daily-meditations/the-transformative-power-of-art/