This morning I received another lesson on impermanence. I woke up just before sunrise and when I looked out the bathroom window saw the almost full moon floating above the trees across the pond. So I dashed to the living room, picked up my camera and shot a few frames of the beautiful moon-lit morning.
Then I went back to bed to see if I could get a little more sleep. But I wondered about the exposures I had used to shoot the moon (I love saying, “Shoot the moon!”).
Photographing the moon is tricky. If your exposure is set for the rest of the frame, the moon is over-exposed and blown out with no detail. Setting the exposure 2 full stops less than ideal exposure for the rest of the image gives a beautiful moon but the rest of the image is very dark. It’s tricky to get it all looking good. I decided that I should try taking 3 exposures of the exact same scene and combine them to create an HDR image.
So I got up a few minutes later to try again and got a
Lesson On Impermanence
Do you see that cloud bank hovering behind the trees in the photograph above? Well in just a few minutes that I lingered in my bed thinking about the moon, the cloud bank moved to cover the moon. And on top of that the sun rose, and the world looked entirely different. I would not have an opportunity to try again today.
“Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.”
―
That’s life for you. No matter what is happening; no matter how it seems that it will never end; no matter how uncomfortable or wonderful it is, it’s sure to change in the blink of an eye.
Becoming comfortable with impermanence is a life-enhancing skill. Navigating the waves of change with skill becomes easier the older I get. I’m contented to do the work that’s mine to do right now and celebrate life as it unfolds around me. I am learning to cherish life in all forms (though spiders still make me cringe and loving the corona virus is a stretch).
Dancing with change
“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”
―
So I cultivate these qualities of cherishing all life, accepting and embracing impermanence, and doing what I can to nourish my life and the lives of all beings. Change is the eternal dance of life. Think back to what geology teaches us about the earth. Huge seas once covered the area that surrounds Lake Superior. Jon and I saw a sign once high up on a ridge at Temperance River State Park telling of the seas that once covered the area. Fossils of sea animals are found in desert rock. Wooly mammoths once walked in the world and dinosaurs of all kinds flourished and lived in a world we can hardly imagine.
Sometimes change happens slowly, but sometimes it happens in the blink of an eye.
The changes we are living through now are happening very quickly.
“Exquisite beauty
is often hidden
in life’s fragile,
fleeting moments.”
― Taste the Wild Wonder: Poems
Remembering a different world
I was thinking back to the Pate de Verre class I took at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum February 29. It feels like a totally different world now. Though I’ve seen a photograph of the finished glass tile that I made (the tiles had to be fired after we created them), I am not able to pick it up from the Arboretum because of the stay-at-home directive.
What a luxury it seems now to gather together with a group of people in the same room to make art!
A photo of all of the glass tiles we made in class Feb. 29. My tile is the pink one in the upper right corner
That time will come again
There is peace in accepting what is while continuing to work on behalf of all beings. No matter what is happening for you right now, I hope you can cultivate love and acceptance one breath at a time through each daily lesson in impermanence.
My wish for you today is peace and joy in embracing what is in your life at this moment.
May you walk in beauty.
Reflections in the pond just after sunrise
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