Category Archives: Philosophy

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Last Chance

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Winter Solstice 2023 – my last post of this year. Where I live in the Northern Hemisphere, there will be more than 15 hours of darkness tonight. It is a time to gather inwardly, to reflect on the shadows of what has been, to practice being comfortable with uncertainty, and to hope bravely for the coming light.

I came upon a phrase today from a campaign to protect wild buffalo herds. “Place-based coexistence”. It makes me think of the place where I live, the forest that I see from my window every day and the life that is sustained here – the flora and fauna, the lichen and moss. We are all to be plunged into darkness tonight. We all breathe the same air, soak up the rain, turn our faces to the light. I want to be mindful of all that is turning together in the Earth’s orbit. I want to celebrate our interdependence.

I think about the relatedness of all Beings in this web of existence and reflect on my actions. Have I been kind, gracious, patient? I think of the quiet days of coexistence that passed while I gained the trust of two cats I was tending for a friend. After days of being stared at from the safety of the bedroom closet, I earned the company of a purring furry friend beside me in front of the woodstove while I read a novel. This has been a long year of waiting and hoping for relationships to heal and grow. I have spent more time in deep observation and reflection and learning than I ever have before, I think. I am grateful for that.

I think of the positive actions I have taken, the aspirational direction of my thoughts, the building, creating, and rising to which I have challenged myself – physically, spiritually, intellectually, emotionally. During this dark time, I want to gather the energy to do more of that.

Finally, I remember that these moments of my life that add up to a year are as ephemeral as soap bubbles. Although they glisten with a rainbow of colors and take my breath away in their flight, they do not endure. They may instruct me, but they must not enchant me and lure me from attending to the present. This is a very difficult lesson for me. I have a photographic memory (as I’m sure many Lens-Artists do), and I find it easy to slip into my mind and out of reality. When I find myself doing this, I can choose to focus on the breath that comes to me, new, every minute. With this breath, and this awareness, I can create new glimmering bubbles of love and light, a gift in real time.

I wish you the warmth of Love and the light of Hope in this dark night. Thank you, friends and followers, for journeying around the Sun with me this year. I look forward to another trip! Special thanks to Tina for the inspiration and leadership her post provides for this year end challenge. Please visit her blog HERE.

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Magical

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You might describe something as “magical” when it fills you with a sense of awe. Like that light that comes from the sun rising over the mountain and filtering through fog and frost to create diamond sparkles on every tiny filament of life – in the trees, on a spider’s web, on the rocks lining the river bank.

I recently heard a talk on the subject of Awe. Awe is a heart reaction to an encounter with the vast Mystery that we don’t understand. It pulls us out of our Egos, out of our selves and our realm of control, and surprises us in a moment. It is a fleeting and powerful emotion. The speaker quoted from a book by Dacher Keltner called Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. The author describes neurobiological findings caused by an awesome experience (including an increase in strength, a decrease in inflammation, and a kinder behavioral response to people) and catalogues the main sources of Awe in a study of 26 different cultures. The primary source of Awe in this study was not a beautiful sunset or the birth of a baby. It was Moral Beauty – experiencing other peoples’ courage, kindness, or strength in overcoming hard situations.

The second source on the list was Collective Effervescence: the feeling you might get at a wedding, or a concert, or a sporting event when you are part of a crowd of humanity in the throes of joy.

The third source is Nature, outside of us or within us.

The fourth source is Music; the fifth is Visual Design, for example in architecture or landscape.

The catalogue of sources of Awe goes on to list Spiritual Experiences; Life Experiences of Birth and Death; and Moments of Epiphany. Of course, none of these sources is really “magic” or supernatural. They’re all absolutely natural. We really don’t need anything other than the real Life around us and within us and our own Willingness in order to be lifted up into Awe.

Maybe Awe is the magic that we need to transform our world into a place of strength, resilience, kindness, and joy. I believe that magic is available at any time.

Please visit our host Ann-Christine’s beautiful post to view the magic through her lens. Click HERE.

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Empty Spaces

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“Form is emptiness, emptiness is form” states the Heart Sutra, one of the best known ancient Buddhist texts. The essence of all things is emptiness.”
― Eckhart Tolle

The space between atoms. The space between stars. So much of the Universe is made up of distance and empty space…at least in one perception. But perhaps our Big Brains can turn that around and imagine that spaciousness is a thing that something can be full of. Vastness. Expanse. Capacity. Potential.

I have been silent on this blog for a few weeks. I have been doing some Grief work and spending more time in the company of humans than in the company of my camera. I went to visit my brother at his new home on the coast yesterday. I had Patti’s Challenge in my mind as I walked from his house to the beach, and I brought my camera along.

If you’ve ever spent time along the shores of an ocean on a completely cloudless day, you will have had a glimpse into the spaciousness of our position in the Universe. No matter how much you may have filled your immediate environment with Stuff (things, people, thoughts), there is still empty space available to contemplate. There is still an expansiveness available. I find a hopefulness in that, and it feels natural and healing. Especially in a time of catastrophic chaos and dire predictions.

I wish you Peace, Lens-Artists, and the Beauty of seeing possibility through your lenses.

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: On the Edge

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I have to admit that I am on the edge of exhaustion and barely hanging on. I am currently helping with two family members’ moves, planning a Retreat for my spiritual community, and preparing for a house guest. My body aches, my mind is running in circles.

I am also on the edge of complete excitement and hopefulness as all of these events bring opportunity, new life, and joy.

So, I will give my best effort, keep showing up and put one foot in front of the other.

I don’t want to fear the edges. There’s a lot of growth and beauty there, and a lot of learning potential.

Thanks, Patti, for the invitation to be curious about the edges! See her post HERE.

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Recharge

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The guest host for this week, Egidio, creates a very relatable and inspiring challenge showing how he feels Recharged by being in Nature. I completely agree, shouting “Yes!” to every quote, every landscape, every story in his beautiful post (do visit and see for yourself!). Nature is my first choice for re-connection to Life Force. But when I’m really depleted, especially by all the busy-ness of the hamster wheel that is my brain, I not only have to be in Nature, I have to be in my Body.

My first approach to getting into my Body in order to Recharge is meditation and yoga. My breath reminds me of the gift of Life and focuses my attention on the renewal that is available every minute of the day.

photo credit: Dharam Kaur Khalsa

I gaze at the forest outside my bedroom window and enter into the time warp of slow breathing and mindfulness, becoming aware of every part of my body as I stretch and balance on the mat.

When I am ready for a full-body Recharge, it’s time to step up to more input from Nature and sensory stimuli. Kick off the shoes, run barefoot in the cool ocean water, breathe in the salt spray, be dazzled by the sunlight on the water, and when possible, bring along a Friend.

To be honest, though, I am not a runner. My full-body, joyful, sweaty exercise is Dancing. I go to a couple of Ecstatic Dances each month so that I can be immersed in a musical journey of my own movement and rhythmic response. I feel music in my body in the most instinctual way, having had only a smattering of dance teaching but enough observation to imagine worlds of cultures emanating from my imagination through my arms and hips and feet. My over-worked brain lets go of logic and embraces mood, emotion, attitude, and community bonding. In this freedom, I am Recharged, Reborn, Re-imagined. At the end of the night, though my feet are throbbing, my “batteries” are full and pulsating with Life.

I don’t have ANY photographs of Ecstatic Dance. My hands and eyes and imagination are focused on being in the Moment, alive and active and engaged. I am not the observer with a lens. I am the Art in Motion. You’ll have to imagine the cosmic lighting, the moving bodies, the charged atmosphere of angles and surprise that might create a visual image. Better yet, go find some dancers who are welcoming and JOIN IN! You may get a battery jolt you’ve never experienced before.

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Fences

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Rustic or posh, a fence is a statement of cultures that value ownership and control. They say, “Mine, not yours”, “Here, not there”, “Out, not in”.

Perimeter fence of cemetery at Wounded Knee, South Dakota

Are those interfaces places of conflict? Have you seen statements of protest placed on fences or boundaries? Or perhaps statements of love? (I don’t have any images of padlocks with lovers’ messages, but I know they’re out there.)

Imagine the choice we have in planting fences or flying without boundaries.

Thank you, Dawn Miller of Lingering Visions, for inspiring this challenge.

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Simplicity

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“If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

The presence of water.

A healthy diversity of insects.

Plants that produce food.

Yesterday, I went walking with a friend who writes biology curriculum for Montessori schools. We went to Iron Mountain in the Cascade range, one of my favorite places to climb for a stunning view of volcanic peaks. However, we didn’t climb much. We walked quite slowly, noticing the incredible biodiversity of plant life. She identified orchids smaller than my pinkie nail (Twayblade orchid), and we took lots of photos.

“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.”
― Albert Einstein

I often think of Life as incredibly complex – this great, interconnected web of diversity and specialization. However, when I slow down and sit with it, Life is as simple as being breathed. We are as we are.

And that’s what I might say to a six-year-old.

Many thanks to Mr. Philo of Philosophy Through Photography for this challenge. May we live simply and simply live.

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Spiritual Sites

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“Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” – Exodus 3:5, NIV

Sand art – a labyrinth? a mandala? – at Nye Beach, Oregon

Tina leads the challenge this week with an amazing array of Spiritual Sites from around the world. Spirituality is truly universal. I went to a workshop at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship here, and we tried to come up with a definition of spirituality. What we landed on was “the dynamic of being in the process of being in relationship and being aware of it”…or at least that’s what I wrote in my notes. For me, that just means that I am trying to be aware that I am in relationship to EVERYTHING, and I want continually to try to make these relationships more harmonious and mutually beneficial. At the top of my awareness is my family relationships. That’s where I began my spiritual journey, as an infant. Ancestors and family members are often honored at spiritual sites. There is a church in California where I was married and where my sister, my husband, and my parents are buried. It is a very meaningful place to me.

From an early point in my spiritual journey, I was also aware of the sacredness of Nature. Since 2014, I have been particularly aware of my relationship with Wilderness.

“A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” 
– The Wilderness Act of 1964

(Gallery top left to bottom right: Headwaters Wilderness, WI; Black Canyon of the Gunnison Wilderness, CO; Guadalupe Escarpment Wilderness sign, TX; Sturgeon River Gorge Wilderness, MI; Sage Creek Wilderness, Badlands, SD; Ojito Wilderness, NM; Drift Creek Wilderness, OR.)

The first overnight backpacking trip I did in wilderness was at Strawberry Mountain in eastern Oregon. After two nights camping in the wilderness, we reached the summit. I was immensely happy! The relationship I had formed with my hiking friends, with the alpine lakes and trees, with mountain goats and wildflowers, and with my own mind and body, made me feel the energy of being alive and dynamic in the world in a gloriously spiritual way. I sat down in the lotus position on holy ground…and my friend snapped this photo:

May you reverence your connections to your inner and out worlds and find peace, love, and joy in your spiritual journey.

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Finding Peace

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“The Earth is so beautiful. We are beautiful also.
We can allow ourselves to walk mindfully, touching the Earth, our wonderful mother, with each step. We don’t need to wish our friends, ‘Peace be with you.’ Peace is already with them. We only need to help them cultivate the habit of touching peace in each moment.” – Thich Nhat Hahn, Touching Peace

“Breathing in, I calm my body.
Breathing out, I smile.
Dwelling in the present moment
I know this is a wonderful moment.”
– Thich Nhat Hahn, Being Peace

Tina’s challenge this morning is the perfect sequel to Ann-Christine’s “Alone Time” challenge last week. Finding peace in the present moment is a beautiful thing to experience, to savor through a photograph, and to share with others.

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Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Exposure

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Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
– Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”
– Helen Keller

“I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.” – Igor Stravinsky

I find that photographic terms morph in my mind to concepts. Being exposed and captured in the Raw is a very vulnerable state. But in the kind hands of an Artist, that’s how beauty can be shared.

Thank you, Sofia, for opening up the possibilities, for inviting the dark as well as the bright, for acknowledging that neither is “right”.