I had taken my camera out of the car to download some pictures, unfortunately, so I had no way to capture my house in its moment of divine beauty. And so instead I drove home and rushed out to the deck to shoot the rays there; I knew they wouldn't last long enough for me to get back to the top of the spit and catch them bathing my house.
One of the many blessings of photography is the way it keeps you so squarely in the present. What is here? What is now? Because the beauty of an image is so dependent upon the light, and because light is always shifting and changing, we come to understand over time that carpe diem has to be the name of the game. There might be a place where once I saw an amazing burst of beauty, but chances are that no matter how many times I return to that spot and wait for that moment of beauty to re-occur, it will never happen in quite that way again.
I suppose it's a bit like being a parent: the miracle that is your child's first word or your child's first step will never happen again. To be sure, there will be other miracles, but those particular ones, once past, are gone. And if we spend our time looking inward, grieving missed opportunities, or looking ahead to what we imagine might be the next significant developmental milestone, we might miss the miracles that are right here in front of us. And so we learn to release the moments of the past, stop dreaming of the future, and watch instead for what is beautiful and miraculous in the now of the present.
So -- the weekend is here. Presumably you are somewhat released from your normal daily grind. Will you take some time this weekend to be present, to observe? What wee miracles will you see?
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