September 2015 – Life's Prequel

Appreciation

While the rest of the world may look cloudy or full of challenges, there is nothing quite like filling up one’s life with flowers.

And there is nothing better than giving flowers to someone who actually thanks you for them, profusely, without pretense or scheming to rob one’s life away.

The flowers are appreciated and celebrated.

She is definitely not getting them, and that is as good as it gets now.

So flowers are a great thing to give and to have them appreciated.

Simple. Colourful. Spectacular.

Connections

It’s a walk in the park with the air quite fresh to see

The Red Blood Moon Eclipse,

The most powerful pull the moon will have on our emotions for quite sometime.

This should impact our living and bring us to new connections, perhaps.

There is that shadow … is that the connection?

I’m not sure how that all fits in with my experience:

There are some things that one tries hard not to stay connected with, and yet bring grace to bear upon; not forgotten, but transformed, forgiven, claiming redemption by God.

Frank “Red” MacDonald

On my way to Edmonton, not restricted by the boss’ superior attitude, and refinding my roots, I stopped to pick up a hitchhiker.

It turned out to be a retired geologist needing to get home to Edmonton. And we talked for the whole trip. Lots of old haunts and issues came back to the fore. Uranium found in northern Saskatchewan and it’ll be mined, destroying lots of land and ecosystem, but providing a needed source of energy. And it’s disposal is more realistic as a method to speed up half-life decay is available!

Red was animated the whole trip and volunteered to have me take his picture. I’d loved to have been able to get out the camera and trip pod, and have the lights I used to have and all that jazz to get a fabulous portrait, but that’s all in the past, so I used my phone, with delightful results!

When Frank “Red” MacDonald talks, his hands lead the way if he is engaged, as he always was.

His smile was infectious and delightful. Smiles bring peace!

An End

Last evening as I drove home, a full sized four door white pickup truck followed me, and pulled up right behind me for the last mile or so, shining its lights in my mirrors, wanting to be intimidating? Well yes!

When I pulled into the parking lot and pulled up to back up, it drove right past me and out of the parking lot. So I drove the rest of the way to my own apartment.

There are some things that should not be made public, and others that show up people to be obnoxious and blatantly abusive. I’ve had enough of people taking advantage of me, and I am not going to be different each day: always trusting, always kind, always gracious, always hopeful, always seeing the best things possible for each person I meet. But I am done being taken advantage of, and I am taking a stand here.

Anyone who intimates that I am not an honourable person, anyone who takes advantage of me, anyone who decides to treat me unfairly … I am going to stand up and ensure that the truth of those people’s actions and words are made public, and I will consider all other options available to me.

I have never been violent against any other person, not mean, not degrading, not unjust … as far as I have been able. I have been a pacifist, but not absolutely. I hunted as a youth, and once since, to be responsible for the fact that I eat meat.

But there are ways, like Ghandi used, to bring to bear on people who are unethical, unjust, enough pressure that it is in their best interests to stop being unjust, to stop taking advantage of me, to stop trying to intimidate me.

And this blog, with photos most of the time, will serve to make public what people have done unjustly and unethically to me, and have persisted when I’ve given them an opportunity to mend their ways, to turn around with their behaviour and words toward me.

This sunset, then marks an end.

Its about time

An end that is beautiful.

An end that is long overdue!

Beauty in the Septic

One of the delightful things one can do with a zoom lens is capture different areas of the sky, and bring different things to bear more prominently at different zooms.
Early on in Germany, when I did my first intentional photography, black and white with a darkroom watching the images materialize before my eyes in the solution, I took a series of photos of a forest, of a trail, of a log on the trail, of the log up close (all so far with the log centered in the photo) and then one shot of the trail beyond the log.
I liked the imagery of one focusing in on something on the path of life, being more and more absorbed in it until one finally was able to look beyond it to the rest of the coming path.
The sunsets are spectacular for me in these past weeks.

I love this progression of one that I took recently:

There was a great spot on the horizon, a touch of orange amidst the hues of blue.

But closer the orange is still more powerful as to dominate at least half the photo.

And the final view, shows the sky on fire with oranges ricocheting off the clouds.
And there will be many beautiful sunsets. And I will play with many of them to say something of how God put the world together full of wonder and delights!
Of course, this is the greatest kind of light, specular light, making it’s way into each photos in spades and joy.

Desks

I work on computers.

Through the years I have built many desks to provide the best possible environment for my work.

Many different variations have come out of my efforts and the changing look of the computers I use for work.

This is the latest effort, not for me, and not all built by me, but for my son, and finished by him for his needs.

A little goodness, a great look, simple function.

Forgiveness

It was a mystery me to me, but it is simple, as in simple on the far side of complexity!

I’m talking here about forgiving.

The steps are easy enough to list: Decide, Plan, Do, and then Experience Forgiveness.

Deciding is not as easy as it seems. You will probably need to come back to this again and again. And your spouse has to be number one in your life. It is not possible to forgive your spouse if you do not put them number one. It’s going to take so much more when keeping them in any lower level of priority.

Planning is complicated by the fact that you need to keep up whatever you do for the rest of your life. But you need to plan so that each gift will touch her heart.

Doing is easy at first, but it may get to be nearly, if not actually, impossible. And you will feel the cost of the accumulation of giving long before you feel the forgiveness, the wiping away of her offenses, leaving you seeing how wonderful a person she is.

And then you suddenly one day will look at her and only see how great she is. In spite of all the abuse she is continually doing to you.

And this is as wonderful as the day you fell in love with each other, but this is not a gift of hormones and nature; this is the result of REALLY tough work on your part. So enjoy the feeling. And to keep it up you will need to keep up the giving and forgiving.

Forgiveness is no longer a mystery; it’s just plain hard work!

All in a Night’s Work

There are times, too often, when I sleep not a wink between the hours of 2 and 4.
Last night was one of them.
And having arrived at 10, unloaded the truck until 12 and talked on the phone until 1, I had a few things to put in order.

This table, from IKEA, won my heart and I knew I would buy it
despite the fact I had plans to build my own table, had bought the wood, and hardware, and had the time planned to do it all.
So why? I had to ask myself, and it dawned on me before I picked it up and put in on my cart along with the two bookshelves I had gone there to get. Well I’d actually gone for one shelf, a Billy, blond, but the cost was $99 and these while were 2/3s the width, 7/8s the height, and slightly narrower, I decided two of them would be better than one Billy. So for $58 two shelves came home with me.
But the table. What was it?
I built a house a decade or so ago. And put in kitchen cupboards … from IKEA in Minneapolis, since they were from there 2/3 the cost of anywhere in Canada and it was too pricey to ship from California.
And after the dust settled, and I’d assembled and mounted the cabinets and finished the house, they were one of the huge success stories of those building years: they cost about $2k compared to other cupboard installs that would have cost anywhere from $4k to $9k, were easy to install correctly (comparatively) and they looked fabulous! and the design of the kitchen was terrific, big enough, with lots of drawers and doors in the right places!
And to fit with the rest of the house that had pine doors and pine trim I choose the pine cupboards.

This table has the same finish! As do my dressers!

And the pieces for the other table are here, ready for working into a table, assembly required!
And it should be quite the table too, with a leaf to insert to extend it from 48×32 to 48×48.

Already in place, the functional, pine, lovely kitchen table that has so many emotional connections with it already!

All in a nights work!

Renewing

There is nothing quite like renewing friendships!

And this is a bit like going back in time and renewing one’s memory
of all that was, good and bad, out of the past.

The present becomes a new framework through which one is able to see all things mirrored back at you.

The risk is that the present overpowers all vision and leaves things blurry into the future.
But the beauty of the present is usually worthy of one’s attention, even if momentarily one can lose the focus on the future.

The visions of beauty are not surprising, it’s just without much preparation or connection with so many people, the places of celebration are often deserted, inviting, beautiful but empty of everything worthy of life’s purpose: people: friends and family.

Colour Blindness and Darkness

There is little that’s heard
and so much to say.
The radio reports a male’s voice about his mother
being beaten by his father, and verbally abused continually, only when he was drunk.
Horrendous … and we meet this with numerous efforts … still hardly enough.
But there is little to nothing said or believed about how
women too often manipulate, control, deride, blame and verbally abuse
the men closest to them in their lives.
And when the woman owns the house, is the sole guardian of the children, and is the boss at work …
the opportunities to manipulate, control, deride, blame and verbally abuse multiply out of control.

And the justice system, well focused at protecting women from violent men,
is so blind to the women that bring false complaints about their men being violent, when this is just yet another lie, a manipulation, a power trip, a derision, a blaming, and real life abuse of their men.
The justice system takes these men, and judges them, convicts them, punishes them (tossing them out of their home, cutting them off from the abusive women and their own children that rely on them) and intimidates them (actively disrupting the process of justice that would serve them well and bring them a voice, a fair hearing) … convicted and condemned without a trial.

The light of truth is obliterated by the deadwood of lies, the colour of the life cycle which could be a delight is hidden beyond the darkness of death.

The signs are everywhere, of God’s gifts of beauty, streaming to us in real life through the huge bandwidth of our eyes and brains.

Even the leaves are weeping at the injustices, even the leaves are weeping at the misplaced condemnations, even the leaves are dancing with colour promising, though the darkness will set in, new life will emerge, new life will emerge!

Among the maze of life turning towards the winter cold, the small birds still sing and seek and dance with joy.

Where are you?

Do you seek to give every abused victim a voice?

Can you tell the difference between a real complaint of male violence against women, and the complaint that is further abuse?

How can you see behind the curtain?

How can you see past the deadness of manipulative abuse, to see the light of hope and love?

Where is your joy today?