partridgefoot

backlit maples

I don't think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. It is best read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better. Or that has been my experience of it. Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural. This is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine - which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes.

-Wendell Berry

Partridgefoot - in motion

backlit maple leaves

backlit maple leaves

mckenzie bite

victoria, bc

reflection

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the humminbird
Equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums,
Here the clams deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young and still not half-perfect? Let me keep my mind on what
Matters, which is my work,

Which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished,
The phoebe, the delphinium,
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here.

Which is gratitude, to be given mind and a heart and these body-clothes, a mouth
With which to give shouts of joy to the moth and the wren, to the sleep dug-up
Clam, telling them all, over and over, how it is that we live forever.

Author: Mary Oliver

reflection