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memory

The picture not taken

This morning on my run I often take pictures and post them (here), but sometimes I see something and want to take a picture, but just cannot bring myslef to do it. This morning there was another of those – the picture not taken. It wasn’t because I didn’t have a picture taking device; I had my phone (aka personal camera & computer) in my hand. It was because I just couldn’t bring myself to break the perfect scene and interrupt someone else’s moment by invading with my gaze.

It doesn’t mean I didn’t notice. I did. The pictures not taken have burned their images into my mind and made a memory. I’d like to describe a few of them and maybe you will be able to see a shadow of the moment in your mind too. -they are all scenes of the summer, and that means they are endowed with a little bit of magic.

 

1. The woman reading in the van, and her dog.

As I run, I go around the water’s edge for a mile in one direction and then I stop and look at my favourite tree – a big cedar, and I imagine it tells me of all the things it has seen, knows, the long view, and then I run back along the water’s edge. Read More »The picture not taken

Kith, Kin, and Kindred Spirits

I once had the opportunity to go back to the house where I lived during many happenings – life, death, nearly birth (I left the house 10 days before my first child was born), our wedding, … a lot. When I got there it was all I could do to walk the familiar corridors, feel the bumpy wallpaper, and enjoy the creak of the stairs as a rainbow of emotions welled up inside of me and the water that goes with the rainbow leaked down from my eyes. This was some 10+ years ago and I wasn’t sad. On the contrary it was a privilege to dance with those memories in that space again, and I was lucky that not much had changed yet. That might have been beyond what I could have handled – in that moment.

That story is relevant now, in a different way. It sets a context. As people grow, live, change, return, sometimes they have an urge to search, to seek and this happens in various ways. Through a pilgrimage or retreat. Sometimes people cross continents and oceans, going to far away places to seek a quiet repose, or to get in touch with something…

_____________Read More »Kith, Kin, and Kindred Spirits

Remember and celebrate

The repetition of experience re-minds us that “I”, more often than not, forget. We won’t remember unless we participate in some regular repetitive form of remembering, what is often referred to as a discipline, a practice, or a ritual. Daniel Budd

-from The Daily Stillness. (2 min read) I know this is the second post inspired by that website, and that’s ok. These few lines, combined with reading Kate Bowles post and all the comments, and getting ready for a run all made me think. Her post is completely beautifully written and the comments reflect on
reflecting (verging on metacognition, I love that) – about being left-handed. I am left handed so it is curious when people who aren’t take the time to consider it. This is not about left-handedness, but about taking the time to consider.Read More »Remember and celebrate