This morning when I woke up early and looked out the bedroom window I saw a bright
Moonlit Sky
with snow covered tree branches silhouetted against it. I quickly located my camera and made several photos of the sky from one of our living room windows. But the photos I made do not do the sky that I saw justice. I’ve tried and tried to get the soft muted color of that sky correct in the photographs I made of it, but they are not the same as what I saw. It was ethereal and haunting. The soft beauty of it took my breath away.
I was hand-holding my camera in low light, shooting through a window and most of my shots were blurry and showed camera movement. When I looked at the photos later in the day I wished that I had taken more time and care in making them, but the moment was gone, never to be repeated.
I try to remember that teaching in my daily life — each moment is precious and unique and will not be repeated. Still, I forget and get in a hurry or become impatient. When I forget, my photography practice gives me plenty of reminders. I’m glad of that, because it feels like a continuous spiritual teaching about the importance of slowing down and being in the moment.
Still, some of my mistakes this morning please me, especially this one where the moon somehow became a circle of white against the blurred sky and treetops.
Other Creative Mediums
Poetry has become something that moves me as much as photography. When I discover a poet that I enjoy, I try to buy one of his/her books or to follow them online. I subscribe to poet, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s “Poem A Day” newsletter. Every morning I receive a new poem to read and it always brightens my day. It is a lovely daily gift that I try to slow down to enjoy each morning. Today’s poem touched me because it spoke of something I too have been trying to do (get my orchid plant to bloom again). I thought you would enjoy reading it too…
Evidence
After almost two years
of growing only leaves,
the orchid that sat
on the back windowsill,
the one I have dutifully
watered and whispered to,
the one I had finally
resolved to throw away,
sent up a single spiraling stem,
shiny and darksome green,
and I who have needed
years to hide, to heal,
felt such joy rise in me
at the site of tight buds,
the kind of irrational joy
one feels when something
thought dead is found alive,
not only alive, but on the edge
of exploding into beauty,
and now it doesn’t seem
so foolish after all, does it,
this insistent bent toward hope.— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Poem a Day email
The poem inspired me to bring my orchid plant up to my dining room buffet photo studio to photograph today. I’ve been keeping it in front of a window in the unused downstairs bedroom because the temperature is cooler down there. It’s been two years that I’ve been trying to get it bloom. I moved it downstairs because I read that orchids like a cooler night temperature. So far, I’ve had no luck getting it to bloom. And I was just thinking last week that I might give up and put it in the compost bin. But after reading this poem, I’ll give it another year and like Rosemerry keep “this insistent bent toward hope.”
Do you also have an “insistent bent toward hope”?
May you walk in beauty.
My other orchid from greenhouse, still blooming
Another blurry sky photo of this morning
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