In Awesome Wonder

This morning was cold, cold and beautiful. I did greet the rosy-fingered dawn – that child of the morning. The landscape was all white and pink with burnt oranges and deep dark blues. I sat by my window looking out, looking at the day starting, all still and quite, all fresh and new. And I just enjoyed it, just took it in, it was not made for me, it would have been there had I still been asleep, it would have been there if I was to busy to see it. So much of life’s pleasures are this way. Ours for the taking if we would just take them, ours for the having if we would just come to them – enjoy them on their terms and not on ours. Enjoying what we have, and seeing it for what it really is. Sometimes it is hard to see – it’s weird, when looking thru the lens I see things differently. I lose something in that lens, I don’t know if it is awe, or respect or just what it is. So sometimes when I find beauty, when I see it, when it makes me breath deep, when it takes my eyes off of me, when I just want time to stop so I can see all of the sky at once – I leave the camera at my side. Not because I’m afraid I’ll destroying the moment, not because I don’t feel that I can do the scene justice – and here’s were it gets hard to explain – there is no because – I just don’t think to take a picture. It’s not always this way, sometimes I’ll hit the brakes and pull over and stand on the side of the road for 20 minutes taking shots, sometimes I stay up late and take long exposures of the night sky – and sometimes - sometimes I’m there, and the shot is there, and my camera is there, and that is enough.

It’s not something really deep or transcendental or hand waving or whatever. No – just that sometimes life is best enjoyed for what it is right now. The pains and trials of right now, the humors and smiles of right now, today is today. It is what you have, it is where you are. Humor and beauty surround me – so often I miss them. The world is a beautiful and marvelous place, beautiful and marvelous and terrible and wonderful. It is all of these things regardless of me – the sun rises and sets, the rain falls in the desert where there is no man. God is that artist who needs no audience, He creates for His good pleasure, to please Himself.

O Lord my God! When I in awesome wonder
Consider all the works Thy hands have made.
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.