Changes

Given that this blog has mostly been a place to post photos, from now on, I'll be posting to a site that is more conducive to photos.

Future postings will be found at:

www.flickr.com/photos/parsonphoto

"Parson"... combining Parker and Dawson :)

Ok, the idea of taking a walk and picking up roadside trash and then arranging it on the ground for a picture is strange. Well, maybe not the picking it up part, but the portrait arrangement is a bit off. Yet, a few things struck me as I picked up these discards. All of them are fast food, junk food, or quick food items. In all the trash I've ever fished out from various roadsides, not once have a seen an empty bag of carrots, a milk jug, a spent tea bag, or an empty cashew container. Never has there been anything that once packaged something healthy. It seems that the vast majority of trash is the stuff that has negative impact on the body, similarly our roadsides and planet. Correlation or coincidence?

So, we have to ask ourselves - at least, for roadside trash - is the problem with disregard for Earth that we just don't really care about ourselves? On the surface, we can say that it is a disregard for others who do care about the beauty that lay at our feet. True. Yet, given the items disgarded, there is clearly a pattern of consumption of food trash where the packagings often become roadside trash. Maybe, we need to see these trashing culprits less so from a standpoint of "you're spoiling my beauty" to "you are spoiling yourself." Possibly, the lessons we need to begin teaching are basic care-for-the-self ones. I mean, if someone truly cared about herself, she would think to eat differently and the impact would be felt and seen in our surroundings.

And it is a much more involved and interesting discussion, but this whole argument may have impact on a larger and global scale, not just one of roadside trash. Over consumption is killing us, and we are addicted to it. We relish consumption of fossil fuels and things in general - which are usually produced and/or discarded in direct connection to carbon conssumption. What drives that need to have more, go more places, seek more things? Is there something naturally built in us to acquire? Just human nature?

Well, maybe.

Yet, it's an aspect of human nature I think we need to work against. Bottom-line, there is unhappines, lack of self-care and understanding, and contentment. Somehow, this is fuel for the spirit of consumption. Consumption will not work to bring us what we need, but like a drug, we think it will and seek more. Seeking more and more is the same for our soul as is junkfood for the body, yet it has an even greater impact on our planet. However, if true contentment were acquired - and this be our driving force - the global meltdown we are creating would be history. With true contentment, would we really need that new fridge, the latest computer or bigger and better home? Or, would we sit satisfied with what we have?

Really, all of these things we replace and purchase, purchase, purchase become a type of roadside trash. For those of us who don't throw the Kit-Kat wrapper out the window, all we acquire ends up somewhere. We just don't see it. (For some images of this global impact of our consumption search Google Images under manufactured landscapes.)

shadow image against snow

ice reflection

It's funny what you can find in the woods. And...all life is but a breath.

Little Children

I spend very little time taking photo's in any given week. Maybe just minutes. But my camera is with me all the time, and I'm always looking and being observant of what's around me. What is happening in nature? What kind of world are we creating? Where is God apparent? I'm always scanning and thinking about these images that confront all of us on a daily basis. Even if I don't take that moment to take a shot, I've been seeing through the eye of a camera. It's my way of living creatively.

It's also my way of living within the image of God. God is Creator, we are God's co-creators. Having an eye, ear or heart open to something creative in each moment is a means of living as an image-bearer of God.

In Walking on Water, Madeleine L'Engle referred to a study about creativity. 90% of all five year old kids score as being highly creative. By age seven that number drops to 10%, and 2% of adults score as being highly creative. Interesting. We're all born with it, or at least 90% of us are. Somehow, through criticism - "Flowers are not blue, Johnnie" - or innuendo creativity gets buried and covered over.

Becoming childlike, as Christ calls us, means reclaiming that sense of creative wonder we all are given. Each moment, is an opportunity for creativity. It doesn't mean getting a job in the field of art, but art can become a part of all of us in and through all we do. It's just finding what works for each one of us....cooking a creative meal, artistically arranging a room, coming up with a new idea.

The options and opportunities are all around us.

As is God.

You can find the coolest and most intimate things in nature -

even when you're out for a quick walk with your sons.

Thanks, God.

Durance Lake, Victoria

Choice

A world of choice, freedom, and opportunity. All we want, when and where we want. "Having it all" is a value and a right.

I think I would prefer less (or is that fewer?) decisions in life.

Autonomy Series: Roadside Trash

Autonomy Series: Emptied Ashtray

This begins a new series, Autonomy.