beauty everywhere

By a series of nosings-around I came to flickr.com, which was boasting this quotation this morning:

I hate flowers. I paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move. - Georgia O'Keefe

I want to say for the record that I don't want to be that kind of photographer. Sadly, at the moment I think I am. I'm shy of asking people to share themselves with me in such an intimate act. Sometimes I photograph animals, but it is people which fascinate me; people personally, people emotionally, people aesthetically.

The curve of a hip, the curve of a smile, the places where we are all the same, the spaces where some of us are so different...people are beautiful. All people are beautiful somehow, even the cruel ones whose beauty is in the skill or talent or grace of their cruelty, even those whose beauty is less commonly accepted or understood...the joy of art is that you can find anything in anything, and what you find, you can share. Some artists choose to find ugliness everywhere. I choose to find beauty.

conference truth

I have been attending conferences since I was 14 years old. My first conference was in New York City; we were housed at the 92nd St. Y and we spent our days in meetings with Very Important People (UN-type-people. International Leader Type People.) ...and with each other. Our nights were spent staying up way too late perched on beds and curled in corners of those impossibly tiny rooms, talking and laughing and working a million knots out of shoulder blades and backs and feet and hands. In the intervening years (over half of my life, now) I have learned a lot about conferences, but none more profound than what I learned in New York, years ago:
the true conference content is not the material, not the handouts, not the workshops, not the experts. The true conference is what happens between workshops, at lunch, after dinner, at 2AM. The true conference is the connections between people. Everything else is commentary.

I am at a conference. It is morning. I am very tired, and the conference programming (which I will not skip) begins in half an hour.

...and the sun is shining; all is right with the world.

tractors on parade

There were tractors outside my window this morning. Lots of tractors. Blue ones and red ones and green ones (lots and lots of green ones). They apparently are dairy farmers. They apparently want equity with US grain farmers...but I'm not sure how. And apparently they realised that a long line of tractors stretching down the 417, down the exit ramp, and streaming into downtown toward Parliament was a good way to get attention. It must have been quite a sight this morning, with everyone finishing their morning chores and putt-putt-putting down the small agricultural roads to the large agricultural roads to the highway. There's an incredible feeling of power in knowing you're not alone.

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Update:
Here's the CBC news story.

curbside bouquet

Odd how context means so much.
you can use this noncommercially only and with attribution, please

flying buds

Every year it comes, and I am grateful.
you can use this noncommercially only and with attribution, please

empty spaces

There is a space in my house on top of a shelf that I have been trying to keep clear. I wasn't trying to defy nature--it's not intended to remain clear forever. It was supposed to remain clear until I finish my work year and bring things home. The four objects on my altar at work were eventually supposed to fill that space: a small tree, an empty bowl made from a dried out cantaloupe husk scraped thin that I rescued from the church rummage sale, a chalice made with stones and glass and metal and tea lights, and a small ceramic bowl for a water ritual shared by a group from seminary. I added objects until it felt right, and one day realised: earth, air, fire, water. Not by design, but by working for balance. I like it so much that I want to bring it home.

Then came this party. I invited people, about a third of them came, and my place was stuffed with people having conversation and good food and some of them brought gifts too. The first one was a few stems of lucky bamboo which I put on the altar-to-be and next thing I know it's crowded with tulips and candle and a guide to local restaurants and two funny and sweet cards.

And maybe that's the way of the world, then, a good way to start this fourth decade: you keep spaces open and the unexpected falls into them...but you can do some inviting along the way.

I am grateful for the friends, and the community, and for the tangerine and yellow tulips that just exactly match the socks I've been knitting. I am grateful for people who show up, share themselves, choose connection over isolation. I am grateful that I have learned to let the process work for itself. And I am grateful that I do not have to get up at six in the morning tomorrow. Make empty spaces, invite goodness. Be lucky. Amen.