Things Unseen: Or is it you, God?

      
     

Or is it you, God?

New growth
of longleaf pine
Golden eye
of aster
Flaming leaf
of sweetgum...

How do you know my name?

Or is it you, God?

Garden Goodies: Allen Acres

              
                

Coral Honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens)

  

Musings of a Plant Nerd

   
    

Anatomy of a Flower Head

Do you know the difference between "a flower" and "a flower head"? I didn't, until just a few years ago when I got serious about photography again and began documenting Louisiana wildflowers.

What looks like "a flower" and is often called "a flower," is instead a "flower head." What look like "petals" on the flower, in this example, the big yellow blades, are in fact "ray flowers," each with its own stamen, which you can see in this photo.

What looks like the center of a flower is actually a cluster of "disk flowers," again each with its own stamen. Or is that a pistil? Or...?

Here's where it gets complicated and my knowledge runs out! Stamens, pistils, filaments, styles, and on and on. Botanists have a name for every part and surface. And most of them have to do with reproduction. Welcome to the sexy world of wildflowers!

By the way, this Rosinweed (Silphium gracile) is particularly good for showing off anatomy due to its large size. And the glorious stand of over-my-head plants covered with flower heads in all stages of development that yielded this shot on a hot day in July flourished in the #KisatchieNationalForest along a gravel forest access road in the vicinity of Dry Prong in central Louisiana.
      

Photographer's Journal: Mamou

   
     

Mamou (Erythrina herbacea)

Aka, Coral Bean.

So... I was on my way home from.... what? Can't even remember. Some kind of meeting down in center of the state. Oh, yes, a Together Louisiana meeting in Alexandria.

I had my camera with me and had very little time, but, you know, really just needed 15 minutes in the woods....

So as I'm passing through the #KisatchieNationalForest where it overlaps Highway 165 for a few miles, I'm looking for an access point--preferably one I've never explored before. And sure enough I spot what looked like an unimproved access road that I had never noticed before.

Turns out, it was really short, just a "driveway" really, except into the forest, not a homestead. But enough of a driveway to get my car safely off the highway. And low and behold, glancing around I immediately spied this gorgeous, fresh, bright red Mamou spike right there on the edge of the forest. And around it, Monarda (aka Bee Balm)! But that's another post.

I rarely do this, but this image is straight out of the camera, #SOOC in photog lingo. This Mamou spike was perfectly fresh, with no spent florets, not hidden by foliage but proudly standing out at this exact angle at about head height. The light was perfect. For once I had no problem focusing the camera!  That left choosing a depth of field to blur the background into this lovely dappled green, and... voila! there you have it. This one just might have to be printed and framed.
  

Photographer's Journal: Atchafalaya

          
              

Inner Mystery

Louisiana has two wonders of the world: The Atchafalaya Basin and the Kisatchie National Forest. The fact that neither are on the official list makes not an iota of difference to me.

Whenever I have a little time for myself, be it 20 minutes or 2 days, if at all possible, I will stop at or head to one of these two places. Both are enormous. I have every confidence that I will do this for the remainder of my life and neither tire of them nor make a dent in discovering their wonders.

If I live long enough and my health holds, God willing, I will produce two books: Kisatchie Splendors and one about the Atchafalaya. The title of the latter hasn't revealed itself to me yet.

During Spring Break, the week after Easter, I took two days to wander the Atchafalaya. This shot is from the edge of a backwater of the Mississippi River along Highway 131 south of Vidalia.

Things Unseen: Love Like That

                
            

Curvature

"Even

After

All this time

The sun never says to the Earth,

'You owe me.'

Look

What happens

With a love like that,

It lights the whole sky."

--Hafiz

Photographer's Journal: Life & Love R One

          
        

Life & Love R One

 from the Song of Songs:

I belong to my love, 

and his desire is for me.

Come, my love,

let us go to the fields.

We will spend the night in the villages,

and in the early morning we go to the vineyards.

We will see if the vines are budding,

if their blossoms are opening,

if the pomegranate trees are in flower.

Then I will give you 

the gift of my love.

The mandrakes yield their fragrance,

the most exquisite fruits are at our doors;

the new as well as the old,

I have stored them for you, my love.

--New Jerusalem Bible, 7:10-13

Things Unseen: Dare to Love

   
       

Dare to Love

In a world filled with hate, we must still dare to hope. In a world filled with anger, we must still dare to comfort. In a world filled with despair, we must still dare to dream. And in a world filled with distrust, we must still dare to believe.

--Michael Jackson

And in a world filled with violence, we must still dare to love.

      

      

Things Unseen: Silently Drawn

         
           

Silently Drawn

Let yourself be silently drawn

by the strange pull of what 

you really love. It will not

draw you astray.

--Rumi

 

Things Unseen: Emerald Prayer

    
    

Emerald Prayer

Birth day. Death day.
Between days,
   crying laughing,
   laughing crying...

No difference, you know.

Draw a circle
   around this moment.
Say an emerald prayer.

   
         

Photographer's Journal: Devil's Eyebrow

               
              

Coming Down Was Easy

Actually, coming down wasn't exactly "easy." Mostly dry stream beds in the Ozark Mountains are never "easy"! But the climb back to the top where our cars were parked was definitely harder, and this aging hiker was somewhat embarrassed to bring up the tail most of the way up.

And that blue sky reflected in this spring-fed pool? Yup. We couldn't have asked for a more glorious day.

It was a fantastic field trip led by my Google+ friend, Eric Hunt, at the Arkansas Native Plant Society meeting last weekend. We are in the Devil's Eyebrow Natural Area, a well-named treasure in the Ozark Mountains just a few miles west of Eureka Springs, Ark.

Highly recommended, folks.
 
   

WATERLINE: lan...

By Bette J. Kauffman

Book Preview

The Hurricane Katrina WATERLINE book is for sale! Go to Blurb and check it out. About a quarter of the book can be viewed via "Preview."

Photographer's Journal: Gateway

     
        

Gateway

This photo is so deceptive! I could barely stand in this opening between huge rock walls to shoot. The wind was cold and hard in my face, so strong I could barely be still enough for this handheld shot, even on a bright, sunny day. But in the distance, clouds are rolling in. More glories of the Oregon Coast!
     

Brother, give me a word...

The Haystack, Cannon Beach, OR

Freedom

God created us in his image with the capacity to love, and love requires freedom. And with our freedom, we have the capacity to do great evil as well as great good. God took a tremendous risk in making us.

-Br. Robert L'Esperance
Society of Saint John the Evangelist

Let Go

     
 

Let Go

 

If we’re not paying attention, we can find we’ve accumulated a vast treasury, truck loads of fears and anxieties, trunk loads of resentments and grudges, crates of unrealistic expectations and boxes of presumptions and unreasonable demands. Remember to leave all this baggage behind, to travel lightly on the way. Remember to travel forgetfully and follow Jesus.

-Br. Mark Brown
Society of Saint John the Evangelist

Things Unseen: Two Breaths, One Body

      
        

Two Breaths, One Body

I am the One whom I love

And the One whom I love is I--

Two breaths and spirits

sharing one body.

And when you see the One,

you see us both.

--Mansur al-Hallaj

   

Things Unseen: Becoming Love

     
     

Becoming Love

You Are Love Becoming Love

--Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, November 26, 2014

Your True Self is who you are, and always have been in God, and at its core it is love itself. Love is both who you are and who you are still becoming, like a sunflower seed that becomes its own sunflower. Most of human history has called the True Self your “soul” or “your participation in the eternal life of God.” The great surprise and irony is that “you,” or who you think you are, have nothing to do with its original creation or its demise. It’s sort of disempowering and utterly empowering at the same time! All you can do is nurture it, which is saying quite a lot. It is love becoming love in this unique form called “me.” 

It seems to be a fully cooperative effort according to St. Paul (Romans 8:28), and according to my own limited experience too. God never forces himself or herself on us or coerces us toward life or love by any threats whatsoever. God seduces us, yes; coerces us, no (Jeremiah 20:7; Matthew 11:28-30). Whoever this God is, he or she is utterly free and utterly respects our own human freedom. Love cannot happen in any other way. Love flourishes inside freedom and then increases freedom even more. “For freedom Christ has set us free!” shouts St. Paul in his critique of all legalistic religion (Galatians 5:1).

We are allowed to ride life and love’s wonderful mystery for a few years—until life and love reveal themselves as the same thing, which is the final and full message of the risen Christ—life morphing into a love that is beyond space and time. He literally “breathes” shalom and forgiveness into the universal air (John 20:22-23). You get to add your own finishing touches of love, your own life breath to the Great Breath, and then return the completed package to its maker in a brand-new but also the same form. It is indeed the same “I,” but now it is in willing union with the great “I AM” (Exodus 3:14). We are no longer absolutely one, but we are not two either! (Think about that if you can.) 

--Adapted from Immortal Diamond: The Search for our True Self

 

 

Happy 2nd Easter!

    
    

Easter 2015

If we really "got" Easter, this world would be a different place! See my sermon for the 2nd Sunday of Easter here: Transformed by the Risen One?

 

Things Unseen: Courage

         
      

But You Can't Keep Me Down

Camellias - the South's blessed testimony to resilience and the beauty of woundedness!

Last Saturday morning I had a few minutes at St. Thomas' to wait for a friend to arrive for our trip to Camp Hardtner for a Congregational Vitality Institute day--a wonderful one, too, BTW!

The many camellias planted among the trees between the church and Bayou Dr. were clearly damaged by our icy weather, but blooming beautifully anyway.
  
 

Snow day!

        
           

Being

Today's question: How do you picture a day spent "being"--as opposed to "doing"?