365 Project Day 38: Seeking

Canon 5D Mark ll, 50 1.2L, 2.0 aperture, 1/125 shutter, 400 ISO

I flew out of the house just before the last light of day was gone. Not for my image of the day, not for any other reason, but to find the beauty. I had to. I was suffocating.

Sometimes I feel like the clouds, the cold, the utter exhaustion of enduring winter are going to smother the life from me. To top it off, it was Monday. What is it with Mondays? So hard on me, on my house. All the voices rattling off the lists of things to be done, things that aren’t done, things that feel too hard to do. Shhh, I say. Hush now.

It was cloudy and cold nearly all day. A sudden rain storm appeared just before sunset and then retreated as fast as it came. I threw on my coat and hat and grabbed my camera, gasping for air. Raining or not I was getting out there. I had to feel something, to find the beauty. Then, at nearly the end of my drive, I saw it. Creeping on elbows in soggy earth, I neared the edge of a glimmering puddle of fresh rain water. It had trailed down the drive to this very circle, this place at my fingertips. There, I found the beauty my soul craved. A circle of water clinging to the shimmering reflection of the sky. I breathed out a sigh of relief, and then in again, feeling the cold seep into my jeans and the elbows of my wool pea coat. Breathing again. Alive.

I feel Ann Voskamp says it so eloquently in her book “One Thousand Gifts”, this pursuit of beauty. ” A hunter trying to capture. And none of the shots are close enough, wide enough, radiant enough for the hunter. What is this that I feel sitting here, coursing through me relentless, hot ardent? I have to seek God beauty.”. Yes, that is it. God beauty. She goes on, ” Nature is not God, but God revealing the weight of Himself, all His glory, through the looking glass of nature.” So good.

May you find the beauty today. He is near.

Psalm 19:1-4  ~ “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”

Clearer