Tag: musings

Be Still

Color Photography, Thoughts and Musing

If you haven’t guessed by now my dear readers, I really crave quite places and time to think and reflect.

Our modern world is full of artificial concerns, pressures and deadlines . Sometimes we just want to collapse and think about nothing. The word amusement literally means to stop thinking. However, I believe it’s more fulfilling in these quiet times and places to push back those modern world concerns and contemplate deeper levels of thought. It’s not that our world suffers from too much thinking, we suffer from the lack of free thoughts.

It’s more than just learning the structured teachings of learned masters. It’s more than equations and mathematical prowess.

cogito, ergo sum ( I think, therefore I am) – René Descartes

The popular phrase was one that we learned at a very young age. I have forgotten if it was in history class or literature class. But it wasn’t until recently that I began to realize the full implications of what seems to be a simple concept.

If my thoughts are what makes me then what happens if my thoughts are not my own? What if I allowed my thoughts to be influenced by distraction from the media, or peer pressure, or any number of competing ideas? Like a virus, some ideas can come in from a outside source and replicate themselves in our hearts and minds. If our thoughts are no longer our own then we are no longer ourselves. We become a copy of whatever ideas are planted.

“For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee.” – Proverbs 23:7

This is why it’s so important to be able to take time and contemplate the ideas we are exposed to. Our minds have a natural filter that must be cleaned and refreshed on a regular basis. If bad ideas are allowed to linger for too long without active examination they can be absorbed by the subconscious and work their way into our hearts.

Take charge of your quiet time and don’t get so busy that you forget to check your filters.

Beneath Dreaming Tree

black and white photography

There is a place in my dreams where a lone tree stands bridging heaven and earth. 

As nighttime falls and the land sleeps the clouds come dancing by.

Stars sing in chorus to the nightbird’s lonely cry. 

A maiden enters my dreams.  Her green eyes pierce the night and she takes my hand. 

Rise up you sleeper she whispers softly.  

This dream is short and our time has come.  

Our thoughts and hearts are one.

But all too soon will come the dawn. 

And our dreamworld will too soon be gone.

For sunbeams shatter dreams and the life that will be.

We loved and laughed with warm embrace beneath that single tree.  

Til golden light erased the night and stole my dreams from me.

Beneath the sun I toil, the dream still in my head.

With hopes that my dream returns to me, when tonight I go to bed.

The River Awakens 

Color Photography, Thoughts and Musing

Morning in the mountains of Appalachia can be spectacular.  The fury of old man winter is no match for the warm southern sun. Fire bursts over the mountains and the frost shrinks back little by little until nothing is left.   

The Kanawha River blazing with the light of a new day begins to shake itself free of its icy cage. The river has work to get done today.  Barges must be moved and energy has to be produced.  Downstream there’s hot steel to be quenched and tempered.  It’s a very busy day ahead for the mighty Kanawha River. 

Cultivate Life

black and white photography, encouragement, Thoughts and Musing

This old barn near Summerville West Virginia always seems to have something to offer my lens.  I  was raised in agriculture.  I  look at the old barns and think about the life that was housed there. Not just grain, hay and farming supplies but the people who worked the land. I can hear the ghostly echoes of conversations about life and love,  business and pleasure.  I can hear the footsteps of young people who think that they’re up to mischief but really are just learning about life.  People who share work are investing in each other.  Work parties often ended in generations of close friends.  You may not have barns where you live but odds are that you do have people.  I want to encourage you to reach out to a neighbor and offer to share in some work.  You’ll be surprised to see how large your family really is. 

What Our Hands Say

Color Photography, Thoughts and Musing

Nighty-three percent of communication us non-verbal.  Out of that non-verbal percentage our hands  do a lot of talking.  It’s our hands and hearts that forge our reality.  One of my favorite images was this touching moment between my father and my nephew.  “C’mon paw paw. It’s time to play.” Was the words spoken  but “I love you ” was the message.