Those who carry the vessels of the Lord

Those who carry the vessels 

of the Lord

are those who undertake,

in reliance on their way of living,

to draw the souls of their neighbours

to the everlasting holy places.

Gregory the Great

Easter Rising

He rises clothed in the young colours of dawn
John O'Donohue

The young colours of another dawn, a year ago in Orkney. A boat anchored in the bay, waiting to 'cast its nets on the other side', the black shadow of a rook in the shape of a cross.

Simple Enjoyment

Thomas Aquinas said that 'Contemplation is the simple enjoyment of the truth'. I am reading about reclaiming the mystical way, and this elegant line resonated for me. It is like an icon that I can keep on looking into and discovering more. And enjoying.


More and more I am aware of the inadequacy of language to express my experience of soul, God, mystery, the Divine Imagining. And yet I love language and can't resist trying to frame my experiences in it.  But maybe it's one reason I've become so obsessed with photography, as each image is an icon, each image holds a truth, many truths. The truths I find will be partly informed by my context when I took the photos, but that won't stop others from finding their truths. Maybe that's what's so amazing about icons - so much truth to be found.

The book I am reading is Both Alike to Thee - Reclaiming the Mystical Way by Melvyn Matthews. Reclaiming it for the Church, for us, but also reclaiming mysticism from trendy, New Agey shallowness.

The images this time are of silent prayers at St Paul's, Beaconsfield, WA, and sycamore branches (with rooks flying overhead) at dawn in Orkney in April 2010.

Lichen, reindeer and me

Beauty shines forth in so many places and things. But I wonder who else sees beauty in lichen, apart from lichenologists and reindeer, that is? And me.

Dogged, with teeth-gritting determination, ekeing nourishment from barren cracks and crevices and bringing life and colour to wintry ledges, lichen are the mininmalists of plant music, the extreme athletes of extremophiles, to mix a few metaphors.  These qualities alone fill me with wonder, but it's the variety and patterns of lichens that paint the thousand words I feel. Colonies of tiny white discs with little indentations in the middle - a little like corpuscles - flatten themselves against rock surfaces, others tuft and crackle from a central point and form knobs and cups on the ends of brittle death-grey stalks, still others radiate like pressed flowers of gold and ocre.


Lichen clings to gravestones and ancient standing stones - in the midst of death there is life, to rephrase the Book of Common Prayer - and their grey-green wisps tuft dryly on fence-posts, like bristles on a witch's nose.  On more sheltered ledges and crannies, varieties of species nestle, forming little garden communities - if octopuses had gardens on land, I'm sure they'd be lichen gardens, as the sea creatures would feel right at home amongst the coralescent textures that spike forth.










Their communities celebrate the struggle for survival - to survive they need nourishment and they can live alone, but they thrive in the company of others. And while belonging is positive, it isn't necessarily easy. There's tension at the edges of our spaces - a bristling neighbour, a spiky friend, a flat and sullen acquaintance - but together we survive and thrive, we shine forth and 'spike forth', like lichen.

All of the images were taken on Orkney last April. The standing stone is at the Ring of Brodgar on the 'mainland' (main island), while the octopus' gardens are on North Ronaldsay, the northernmost island of the group.

Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through

to illuminate a small field

for a while, and gone my way

and forgotten it. But that was the pearl 

of great price, the one field that had 

treasure in it. I realise now

that I must give all that I have

to possess it.

(The beginning of 'The Bright Field', by R.S. Thomas, quoted in the previous post)

The image was taken at Loch Lomond, on a sparkling day in April last year, just as the Iceland volcano stopped flights to and from Europe and delayed my return to Australia for a week. How sad.

Turning Aside

 

Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after 

an imagined past. It is turning 

aside like Moses to the miracle

of the lit bush, to a brightness

that seemed as transitory as your youth

once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

From 'The Bright Field', R.S. Thomas

These images greeted me a year ago on Orkney. The sun seemed to laugh the day into life, painting the clouds with ocre and purple and dusting the sky with gold leaf and indigo.

'You make the gateways of the morning and evening shout for joy.' Psalm 65:8

Trinity

I took the image 'Trinity' or 'Clouds of Glory' that is in the previous post on a Sunday morning in March, when Cyclone Carlo was poised off the coast of Western Australia. We are desperate for rain, and hoped Carlo would bring us some - not destructive winds or floods the eastern states have had, just a day of soft, soaking rain, the kind we used to have.

The morning was quite dark, the clouds rather menacing, but such a magnificent display that I had to break out the new camera that was sitting beside me, asking to be used.  I took a number of shots from slightly different angles and was pleased I had captured the shapes and shades and angles of the clouds.

It was not until I got home and uploaded the photos onto the computer that I noticed that one of them had caught the three waterbirds heading east into the rising sun, their wings forming three crosses on the turbulent clouds.

A Thousand Words

A Thousand Words

It’s not the technology or negotiating the instructions: anyone who starts a blog must know that the hardest part is deciding what to call it. What element of my identity do I want to highlight? Do I want to be wildly original so that readers will be intrigued to visit?  Or is it just a place for me to dwell in cyberspace, and for the few who may stumble across it?

My first thought for a title was ‘Fearfully and Wonderfully Made’, a fragment of the beautiful and evocative Psalm 139. It seems such an affirmation of the human person, an awed sense of wonder at ourselves and whatever made us, for everything is fearfully and wonderfully made, with an intricacy that astounds and takes my breath away. The psalm continues: 'You have searched me, O Lord, and know me' - to be so thoroughly known by whatever I conceive that to be: whether I call it God or the Ultimate Mystery, or whatever, being known means being utterly accepted and loved.

My second idea was a favourite line from a poem, but which poem, how to choose? e.e. cummings‘ ‘leaping greenly spirit’ seemed apt for how I view the world:

"I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes."

Then there’s my passion for photography, which is a major reason for setting up a blog, and I thought of some of the titles I have given my photos. The one I have attached I called on one occasion ‘Trinity’, for the three water birds heading into the eastern risen sun; another time I called it ‘Clouds of Glory’* to draw attention to the spectacular cloud formation that looks like great balloons of water waiting to burst upon the parched Perth summer soil.  But that does sound a bit pretentious to be the name for my space, and one wouldn’t want to sound pretentious, would one?

Naming the blog is a glimpse at how I see myself and a chance to name some quality that I feel reflects me. It’s probably lucky then, that many of my postings will be photos – each one will save me a thousand words. Now there’s a good name…….

Gabrielle, April 2011

*From a verse of Wordsworth’s ‘Intimations of Immortality’:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:  

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,  

Hath had elsewhere its setting,  

And cometh from afar:  

Not in entire forgetfulness, 

And not in utter nakedness, 

But trailing clouds of glory do we come  

From God, who is our home.