The Joy is in the Challenge

I’ve been reading a book of Ojibway meditations written by Richard Wagamese. The photographs and short meditations are speaking to me of spirit, beauty, joy, and the magnificence of nature.

It is a beautiful book that tells me that…

The Joy is in the challenge of life

This is something I know but often forget. My soul didn’t come here to live a comfortable and easy life. It came here to learn and grow. Even when I’m not feeling like going out into the world and taking on big challenges I can challenge myself to learn and grow creatively.

Many creative experiments appear on the surface to be failures. But dig deeper and you will find that you learned something by doing the experiment, even if it’s something like, “That didn’t work.”

Choosing to find that joy is in the challenge

I came here to inhabit a body that would allow my soul to experience. So I am not my body. I came here to experience the grandest thought. So I am not my mind. I came here to experience the deepest feelings. So I am not my feelings. I am all of it: thought, feeling and experience. That translates to awe, joy, and reverence. For all life, for all beings, for all Creation. Knowing this, understanding this, makes living the hardest thing of all—but the joy is in the challenge, the gradual day-by-day becoming.” — Richard Wagamese, Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations

Today I chose to find that “joy is in the challenge of life” by using the photograph at the bottom of this post to create the image at the top of this post. I tried several approaches before I found one that surprised me and made me happy.

I’ve been playing with adding gold embossing to some of my photographs. So far the results appear to be a failure. But I’m learning and growing. I may never create anything that I like with this process. That’s okay with me.

Here are my first two trials. In the first I couldn’t get the gold to adhere to the photograph where I wanted it to adhere. In the second I got it to stick where I wanted it but found it difficult to control where the adhesive that holds the gold goes and managed to create some big blobs of it that are not attractive at all. Soon I’ll try again and see what else I can learn about the process.

To be struck by the magnificence of nature is to be returned again, in all-too-brief moments to the innocence in which we were born. Awe. Wonder. Humility. We draw them into us and are altered forever by the unquestionable presence of the Creator. All things ringing true together. If we carry that deep sense of communion back into our workaday lives, everyone we meet benefits. That is what we are here for: to remind each other of where the truth lies and the power of simple ceremony. — Richard Wagamese, Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations