Category: sunrise

beauty, Being resilient, Blessings, Campfire's glow, Campfires, Creation, Darkness, Faithful Living, Having hope about the future, how nature heals, joy, Lessons from the Wilderness, Light, Losing yourself in nature, Outervention, Sitting around the campfire, sunrise, the vicissitudes of life, Watching the campfire, When the sunrise lights the clouds

The Light from Under

This Side of the River

The sun rose above a cold and hushed forest this morning, making the high clouds blush with anticipation. To the east, the trees’ backdrop was all crimson and fire, while to the west the underbelly of the sky was lit in rosy pastels. A gull floated high above the bluff shaded as pink as a flamingo. The browsing doe’s brown winter coat was tinged a dusky magenta.

I have always enjoyed the effects of things being lit up from below. This is nowhere more observable than around a campfire on a very dark night. As people lean forward to warm their hands, their faces take on a softened shimmer, mesmerized by the flick and spark of the burning wood. We are used to turning our faces toward the sun to momentarily appreciate its balm and warmth, but a campfire’s burning coals smooth out wrinkles of anxiety, bathing the heart in calming thought like

a reflection within a reflection. 

Light from above leaves sharp shadows. Light from below melds with shadow to soften the outlines. Life is like that sometimes. An unanticipated threat looms suddenly, glaringly lit by a fearful realization: an unexpected bill we cannot pay, a pink slip at work, an unwelcome, gut-wrenching diagnosis. The light is coldly enlightening-there is trouble afoot, and the shadows are long and dark. 

Making a nighttime fire in the fireplace or the backyard fire pit brings a different perspective. The light softly cracks the darkness, the flames invite us to quell our panic, to murmur with the nattering coals into the warm light’s crevices – not to forget our troubles, but to see them in a light less stark. Illumined, yes. But without the anxious shadows, warming our souls in the fire’s rhythms of flare and ember. I’ve never seen a more beautiful face than one watching a campfire, meditatively strengthening with faith and resolve to face the shadows and overcome them.

________

Thanks for the time you take to read my wandering mind. After seeing today’s magnificent sunrise, I decided to try a writing exercise on why I adore the softening effects of under-lighting. It isn’t easy to describe!

J.A.P.Walton, Ph.D.

Feel free to comment here or send an email: jpraywalton.writing@gmail.com

Being lifted up, Being resilient, Cancer, Creation, Creator, death, drought, Faithful Living, feeding the birds, floods, God, Hardiness, Having hope about the future, Heaven, help in hard times, Hope, how nature heals, How to get a hand up, Lake Michigan, Lessons from the Wilderness, Life's Storms, mortality, mourning loss, Nature, Peace, Perseverence, Prayer, Seasons, Storms, sunrise, sunsets, the vicissitudes of life, Things that are true, Threats from above, tides, vigil, Water, weeds, What nature can teach us, When God is Silent, When God speaks, when it hurts too much to pray, when time stands still, why nature is predictable, wilderness, Winter, wisdom

The Tide Always Turns

This Side of the River

We are in the second year of drought at the bluff, having come full circle from the high and destructive Lake Michigan waters of 2020 to lower levels which now grace us with an expansive beach. We happily embrace the protective nature of lower water, allowing the bluffs up and down this stretch of coast an opportunity to reach repose, a breath of time to quell the worries up top about losing homes into the lake.

Nature is like that, with its highs and lows, its unpredictability and fickleness.

And yet, much of nature IS predictable: seasons turning, tides that rise and fall on schedule, sunrise and sunset, baby robins in the spruce each June. The weeds will still poke their pesky way into the garden, the deer will eat the black eyed susans, and the toads will hang out underneath the bird bath.

Even so, nature is also filled with unwelcome surprises. No wonder we become watchful and wary, scanning for potential threats. The roller coaster of worry is real; one year you are flooded and caving in, and the next joyfully traipsing upon wide, sandy, pristine beaches.

Chaos tamed for a time by calm.

Likewise, the human experience runs an emotional gamut; carefree days can turn on a dime by a swift and surprising threat. A cancer diagnosis. A silent and devastating stroke. A deathly ill child. Life goes from calm back to chaos and we are caught frightfully unaware. 

At least we don’t get eaten in the real sense. In the rest of the animal world, there is constant peril from predators. Truth is, everything must kill to eat; the food chain is merciless in its hierarchy. Once, at our old home at Trout Creek, I was delighting in a male cardinal at the bird feeder in the middle of winter. His cheery, cherry mantle was lovely against the frosty snow. Without warning, a blur of steel blue swept down from above and grabbed the unsuspecting cardinal in a flurry of red fluff. A hungry sharp shinned hawk, an accipiter (a bird that eats other birds) was now somewhere nearby squeezing the life out of that wretchedly beautiful, shapely, lovely cardinal. All that was left were red feathers strewn across the snow. Delight into mourning in a flash.

Gain, loss. Hardy, sickly. Peace, fright. Life, death. We live into it, learning along the way that this is often how life works. We cruise along when things are good then, without warning, we find ourselves on our knees in sobs and suffocation and despair. We aren’t alone in this cycle. Fear and despair and mourning accompany the goose who loses its lifelong mate; the nesting wood duck forced to flee a marauding raccoon with an appetite for eggs; the trees bulldozed for yet another development; the doe who watches the bobcat steal her fawn. 

Is there any good to come of it? I believe there is.

Our own crises awaken a buried sense of mortality when our blithe notion of timelessness evolves to a new understanding and esteem for the value and brevity of life.

It often helps us turn back to God our Creator for help, comfort, and mercy. In the animal world, life goes on. New chicks are born. Survivors of the floods stand against next year’s droughts. The dust of death and the ash of mourning are followed by the songs and sun of a new day; mourning slips into morning.

And that is what IS predictable. We will fall and we will rise up. Life’s vicissitudes will flatten us with fear then extend hands of help and hope in the form of neighbor and Creator. If you are in a season of despair, take courage. The nature of nature is to help you back up to heal and stand against the next thing that would steal your peace. Be assured. The rains end the drought, and the tide always turns. 

Thanks for reading along.

J.A.P. Walton, Ph.D.

jpraywalton.writing@gmail.com

Image by Tom Ferguson from Pixabay

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Autumn, beauty, Blessings, Creation, Creator, Darkness, Faithful Living, God, joy, Light, Nature, Pilgrimage, Praise, Religion, Seasons, sunrise, sunsets, Uncategorized, vigil, wisdom

The Light that Counts

This Side of the River

I have been thinking a lot about the nature of light as autumn days descend into their routine darkness. Three years of grief, lament, and difficult decision-making have finally yielded to time, and my heart again swirls with light, and words, and reborn delight. It is like coming up for air after a long, deep dive. It is like coming out of shadows into soft, arms-wide-open light.

I have never liked to drive at night-especially on rainy nights. I am oversensitive to oncoming headlights, and I must rely heavily on the white lines on the pavement. Faded paint is my nemesis. Headlights cast a garish glare, a harsh light that overpowers. Pity the deer or driver confused yet mesmerized by the twin moons flashing by.

The world’s light can be blinding.”

As a student of the sunset, I find myself trying to find words for the varied nature of light and color at day’s end. Most times, the sun is simply too bright to peer at directly, so strong in fact it is dangerous. I often think of God as this kind of fascinating but dangerous light-one direct look and you’ll fry. After all, Moses could not look upon God and live. Light like that can kill. Still. Jesus is God, and we can look directly at him. 

Think of it this way. The setting sun presents a giant, fiery orb low to the horizon that burns its image into the eyes that watch it. But turn away from the spectacle and discover that all things the sun touches in its last minutes of the day are warmed and softened by the sun’s reflective glow. Not gaudy or brash, but luminous, suffused, burnished and aglow. The sun’s last rays are reflected and golden instead of white hot. Captivating. Lovely.

Jesus confused people when he taught that seeing him meant you had also seen the Father because no one had ever seen God. Until Jesus that is, a perfect and perfectly beautiful reflection of the Father, like a setting sun on a sandy shore or bank of trees. Perhaps that is why we have this marvelous Creation at our fingertips-that we might get a tiny glimpse of God’s light in the things and people around us.

God-given art and love.”

People who “die” but come back to life speak of a transfixing light that beckons irresistibly. It is a light you can trust. They describe it as a soft, white, shimmering, welcoming light aglow with an abiding sense of love and rightness. It is the same type of light I look for in this life because light is part of God’s very essence. Now, when THAT light shines on our secrets and shame, it is fearsome. But, Jesus said, “I AM the light of the world.” He was, and is, and always will be the light of God that overcomes the darkness of all that is lost, broken, sad, and sinful. He reflects God’s great love and mercy to us as that resplendent, radiating, captivating light that says, “Come to me and I will give you rest.”  May the light that counts shine in your life today.

Thanks for reading,

J.A.P. Walton

jpraywalton.writing@gmail.com

Affirmation, beauty, Birds, Creation, Creator, Faithful Living, Forest, God, Hope, joy, Light, Nature, Praise, Silence, sunrise, Trees, Uncategorized, wilderness, wisdom

Litany of Praise at Dawn

This Side of the River

Yesterday I was awakened at dawn by an oriole’s soft, sweet whistle. He’s been haunting the hummingbird feeder, and seemed to be quietly reminding me it was time for breakfast (we pull feeders in at night to outsmart greedy raccoons).

With hot coffee in hand, I stood with the trees to watch the sun arrive, lighting up the treetops, then soon angling down to swathe the forest floor. With a penchant for keeping my nose in a book far too late at night, I rarely catch the sunrise anymore. But, yesterday, it caught me…in wonder and hope.

How rare it is to greet the day with God’s creation, and for the confirmation that, for today at least, life goes on.

I was treated to a feast of birds at every point of the compass- the oriole and the hummingbird, the pileated and red-bellied woodpeckers, those ancient cousins. A pair of indigo buntings timidly nipping a few sunflower seeds, and a scrum of blue jays laughing and nattering in the maple.

In the lane, a doe limped across my way, hindered by a broken ankle. I tenderly told her to take her time, because time would heal the pain. Not long after, the turkeys started gobbling… why the word for bolting down food is used to describe a turkey call I will never know.

The point is that dawn reveals the vitality and fecundity of the world, particularly when you are in a place that is undisturbed by the human awakening of car, horn, bus and garbage truck.  Why would God make such beauty, with its threads of genetic similarity woven into complex cloaks of myriad colors and distinctive sounds?

Why wasn’t one bird, or even three enough?  How did God know when to quit creating?

I guess I liken it to the simplest delight we get when we see something we think is beautiful. It catches our eye, pauses our hurry, and interrupts our breath.  Perhaps God created beauty to arrest our souls that we might, even for a moment, think and thank the creator, to marvel in this glory, which is his glory.

Glory comes in many forms, but the best is in a litany

of praise that rolls off our tongues. 

May your days be filled to overflowing with eyes to see, and ears to hear.

 

~J.A.P. Walton

Birds, Creation, Creator, Darkness, God, ice, joy, Lessons from the Wilderness, Nature, Outdoor Adventures, Silence, Starry Skies, sunrise, Uncategorized, wilderness, Winter

The Joy of Paying Closer Attention

This Side of the River

On a short trip to the Bluff to retrieve our old RV, we spent last night at Crystal Lake.  Stars were molten silver in an inky sky that capped the iced-over lake from end to end; a crisp, clear, late winter night. This morning, up before the sun, hot coffee in hand, I walked down to the shore to await the wakening world. How odd to see all the docks, lifts, and boats so lifeless, drawn high up on the sand.

There’s ice all the way to the opposite shore, with visible pressure ridges all along the drop-off where the coho and rock bass are down, deep and drowsy. The ice shifts, warming up its voice in a throaty “boom, boom” that carries for miles like a tympani  solo at the symphony.

A peachy pink blush caresses the eastern end of the lake and the stars begin to fade. I can see the water ripple just underneath where ice meets shore. There are tiny minnows swimming there in just three inches of water, and I shiver to imagine how bone-dead cold it would be to swim with them.

Quickly now, the world awakens, yawning into the dawn.  A cardinal flutes in salute to the sun, adding to the crows’ staccato calls like novice oboe players. The chickadees flit overhead in the birch tree, jabbering like teenagers. Honking geese are somewhere out over the ice, while a downy woodpecker trills a nasal ‘thwank-thwank’.  And the ice booms on, the bass rumbling accompaniment as yet more voices join the song.

Then a car rushes past, spoiling the music. Someone headed to work, I suppose, listening to the radio, oblivious to the music the sunrise has wrought in this icy paradise. And I smile to think of the thousands of mornings I too hurtled half-awake through the dawn to work. Though I always was, and still am thankful for that work, how joyful it is now to slow down and pay attention to the beauty orchestrated by God in nature. It is gratitude as deep and wide as the mystery behind the dawn.

Thank you for listening along with me.

~J.A.P. Walton