Skip to main content

Perspective

I have recently returned from a trip to Portland, Oregon and the shift in climate, geography and responsibilities left me deeply puzzling the notion of perspective. We can't really see our own lives subjectively. We are so caught up in the motion of thinking, feeling, believing, existing, that we fail to step back from the busy edge of identity and truly enjoy the splendor of our own beauty. It is not only the wide vistas that we miss, but also the simple mundane magnificence of the moment by moment splendor of living. I have been pondering this idea of perspective for sometime. In fact my longest standing prayer has been, "Help me to see this differently". I wonder at our human experience and our audacious belief that our subjective truth is reality. I wonder at our rigid adherence to a limited perspective, preferring rightness over risking our own solidified self image. Perhaps we could challenge ourselves to wrestle with our imagined world in favor of the infinite possibilities of a world unknown.
Here are a few photos to illustrate a subtle shift in vantage:
Seer seen:
Seen:On first glance:
On further consideration:From a distance:and up closeFrom above:
And a few feet lower:A blossoming canopy:
A world of color:

Comments

Wind said…
I feel like I just consumed the richest, most luscious feast! You truly fed me with your gaze. Thank you for that incredibly ecstatic bite of life!

Popular posts from this blog

Coraggio

When everything looks bleak and the darkness cramps against the cold, it takes courage to simply look out from imagined isolation toward the wide horizon of beauty available in every moment.  It takes courage to lean into the sea of life and trust the tide. When weary limbs no longer support us, it takes courage to trust our inner buoyancy and float.  It takes courage, in the face of darkness, to remember the light and sit in all our apparent blindness and listen, silently, to the still, small whisper within.  It takes courage, in that dark hour, when nothing else remains.  Eyes closed.  Eyes opened.  A glimpse, a memory, a fleeting vision of a light so bright it blurs the borders of things seen and things perceived into a comprehensive wholeness of being.  It takes courage.

tree digging

Yes, I know it doesn't look like much.  It was only about 5 inches in diameter and 8 feet tall.  The root ball was no more than 3 feet deep.  But it was a sweet red-bud tree that we planted the year Bodhi was born, his placenta was buried in it's roots and like many of the trees in our neighborhood, it died (see this post to understand why) . I can't say that I mourned its death in a tangible way, rather it produced in me a sort of unnameable melancholy.  I am a woman who loves the spring.  I nearly live for it.  When the first signs of life emerge like a haze of hope, I drink in green with the passion of a desert crawling woman sipping at an oasis.  I gorge.  This year has been hard.  Our neighborhood isn't leafing out in native splendor, instead the tired trees seem to begrudge the effort, only offering a tender shoot or bud occasionally.  The north side of many trees appear to have given up all together, too tired after a long winter...

grief

Grief is defined as a deep or intense sorrow. I have been thinking a lot about grief, about it's wide and sticky reach, about the watery quality of it's absorption and the agonizing effort of swimming to shore. Intense sorrow happens. It is a part of life. Yet we press against it. We try to eradicate it. How? We encapsulate our grief in a story, thus effectively removing us from the immediacy of the pain. The mind promises salvation and begins to tell a story, over and over and over. We listen to the inner ramblings, the constant diatribe, the neurotic attempt to avoid the experience. When someone is hurting we listen to their story, we talk about it, we recount our own story, but we certainly don't jump in the waters of sadness, instead we sit on the bank of our familiar longing. Once, when I was floundering in deep grief, my youngest brother knelt next to me and held me for over an hour. He didn't speak. He didn't commiserate. He just jumped in the ...