Neighborhood Wolves

Walks with Wolves

We got a a treat in the neighborhood this evening as the owner of the wolves walked them around the block. This one was crouching at my dog JT coming his way before I called him off. Do not think JT knew what he was able to get into. It was neat as the wolves not walking howled and howled.

Green Ditches

I have eaten to the root my field of a hundred acres. I now want the lush weeds the other side of this fence. I live to scrape the living green from the scenery. I am never content in my field of a hundred acres. I dream of the lush weeds the other side of this fence.

First Shots

Some days when you go on a photo outing, your day is often over long before you realize it. In this case, today I sat for over an hour and waited for woodpeckers and owls to emerge who never did. This was the first shot I bent and snapped on the walk into the hammock.
At that point, I could have turned and returned home, as this was the only one from a hundred I picked to blog.

The nerve center

in the converted bedroom the computer desk now resides. Technology abounds for the technologically ignorant. But we plod and persist. The ipod touch ever present for music from Pandora and any messages on Facebook. The note pad for thoughts. The two computer laptops, the monitor unhooked, waiting a tower. The remote with TV just to the left. The books, mainly reference, the old Mizpah book first in line, the angel calendar and the coffee mug with the Duncan Doughnut coffee from the Kreups machine.
The frantic hand raised to the heavens for help too.

Back Forty with Floyd

A mile of walking and I arrived at a good spot to take a stand under the cypress trees. Sitting against the old cypress trunk, two barred owls called out, two pileated woodpeckers cackled and cracked bark. Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon cued up so I decided to spend the next forty minutes listening and waiting to see if the hammock would accept me and reveal the hidden. With the heavy 180mm with the TC201 resting in the lap, camera bag off the back, the lunatic, was resting upon the grass.
The wind was strong, the sun going in and out of cloud cover. The owls never flew, the pileated stayed just out of reach as Floyd ended and Heartbreak Hotel cued. I walked to a new spot, spotted the pileated and got off a fleeting shot, their red hammer heads flaming in the sun.
On the walk back, the same thoughts transpired, the silent prayers. Less gall and bitterness today. Floyd has that mellowing way.
At least for forty minutes.

Remembering the gall

Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. Lamentations 3:19

For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity. Acts 8:23

In my wood wanderings, the understory was lush with berries. In my hunger I picked a handful of what I perceived to be sweet, but tart wild blueberries. In the first chew all perception was at once realized by the puckering and spewing out.
Not all is as it seems in the beauty. Dwelling in the fields of gall, eventually one acquires a taste for the bitterness. First he spewed, then he chewed, then he swallowed to wallow in the bond of iniquity. My nature is to gravitate to the wormwood. I am tart of heart and full of gall apart from grace.
I suspect you are as well. We all dwell together in this thorn ridden field that yields tempestuous fruit. It is a common fall. The question is, have you come to the place where the emetic has been offered? Have you taken of the truly sweet fruit of life, or do you secretly eat the gall when you are thinking no one is in this wilderness understory but me?

Mine Eyes

Mine eyes have seen THY salvation. Luke ii.30

In the love of Christ His followers have ever found great joy. It is their light, the daystar dawning in their hearts, the renewing of their inward man, their joy of faith, the believing that makes them rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. Bushnell.

Horcace Bushnell, Congregational clergyman and theologian. April 14, 1802- February 17, 1876.
It was said of him by Dr.Munger, He was a theologian as Copernicus was an astronomer; he changed the point of view, and thus not only changed everything, but pointed the way toward unity in theological thought.
He argued in Christ in Theology(1851), that spiritual truth can be expressed only in approximate and poetical language, and concluded that an adequate dogmatic theology cannot exist.
He would be ran out on a rail today as well.

What have you seen that has been so overwhelming as to change your point of view in entirety? Paul along the Damascus Road, the walkers on the Emmaus Road, Mary peering in the tomb. Sudden and life turning. We the rational shun visions and dreams. We read the black but never the white between the words, the shapes the white forms.
Take a moment from your mundane and ordered life and pray to be granted a glimpse into something that shall overwhelm and change your course.

Jonah's nightmare

Later that night Jonah awoke to a Deliverance Experience. Suppose this was a mudfish. It was on the bank of the boat ramp at Alligator Lake the other morning along with a large garfish. Cannot figure how they got so picked over. Must have been Lord Micco Aura and his minions.

Ode to Light

Are you ever drawn to look upon heavenly swirls?
Today upon the swirls came thirty-one Sandhill Cranes,
Then they were gone and I continued surfing the curls.

Moon over Venus

I really am going to miss Picnik after April! These two were reworked there. I like the mirror frame. It will be time to purchase a photo editing program and get serious. The top shot taken on the S95, the bottom on the D5000. Tonight. January 26,2010.
And the Mizpah for today which I have neglected?
Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Romans iii.24.
I am crucified with Christ,-
With Him nailed upon the tree;
Not the cross, then, do I bear,
But the cross it beareth me.
Solemn cross on which I died,
One with Him, The Crucified. Dr. H.Bonar.

Many lessons to learn along this journey. One is the letting go of bitterness and frustration at wanting to be doing this and that. The impatience, the fear, the trusting in myself....To get back to the cross, the justification, the moon and Venus below.

Fifty beyond Seven

by john clare

at seven beyond fifty the realization that I'm here hits me
Looking about the things I did at seven still intrigue me
The bike, the boat, the drawing pad and oils, the sandpile.
From twenty to fifty I set them aside for a time
But always kept them close just for this time
When no one really minds that you
stay in your sandpile and quietly play
with the bike, the boat, the oils, scribbling silly lines,
digging toward China.
And living in a past that left you half a century ago.