In the Frame

Local librarian and FB friend Tomi posted two pictures of sunset (or was it sunrise?  sometimes it’s hard to tell), one zoomed out, the other closer in, of the same scene – the Highlands in the quietude of day’s end (or beginning), mists clinging even as they dance and shift.

Tomi’s own take on the contrast between the two pictures is that the wider perspective includes more color and less drama.

My own response is to think that perspective makes all the difference in life as well as in the photographic images we create.

It’s the same scene, but our focus changes everything, so that the fallen tree trunk in the foreground of Tomi’s photographs takes on mystery or sorrow or loss or ominous threat or curiosity in close-up, but disappears into a morass of other details blurred from a distance.

Both vantages are in the frame.

Both are true . . . simultaneously.

A tree fell in the field one day and for some time and some time yet to come, there it lay, and will, always in the frame, but seldom remarked upon.  Does it need noticing in order to be?  No.  But in the noticing, something changes in me.


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Photos by Tomi Herold

Snow Man Melting

I know he is a snow man because he’s got no curls – dead giveaway in the world of children to know a girl when you see one.

I ponder him across the street throughout the day yesterday as he gets smaller and smaller and wonder
          [is there science for this?  Surely.]
at his shrinking in the midst of such snow – for the snow kept coming all day yesterday – .

What makes him small?  Why does he shrink?  He isn’t melting – at least I don’t think so.

The morning, as usual, brings clarity – of a sort.  I see the snow man, shorter than yesterday in contrast to his pre-snow self – for the new fall added some inches around him and he became shorter only by being buried in the stuff of his existence, seeming to disappear from my eyes – with an amused snort, I return inside, mystery solved and all’s right with my world.

Perspective²

In one 360◦ turn in Edinburgh, could you see around and into buildings,  you would see statues of philosopher and father of secular humanism David Hume; father of the United States’ brand of capitalism Adam Smith; the Duke of Queensberry, author of the well-known boxing rules of sportsmanship; and John Knox, Reformation preacher and father of modern presbyterianism as practiced in Scotland and the US in particular.  The same land that in many ways birthed Western modernity’s secular humanism also gave it presbyterian Calvinism.

If you stand inside St. Giles Cathedral, you will see the statue of John Knox.  The iconoclast has literally himself become an icon.

Window at rear of St. Giles
Reads "Gifts, Sweets, Souvenirs"

Standing outside St. Giles at the rear, you will see the St. Giles gift shop and above it, in the glass of the windows, painted signage indicating that gifts may be had.

Reformer Martin Luther rejected the sale of Papal indulgences, a fundraising mechanism for the then-Pope to secure the necessary monies for the completion of the Sistine Chapel.  That, among other things, led to a Reformation and split from the Roman Catholic Church that has yet to be fully (some would say even partially) healed.

Flash forward to our own time, and see a central geography of worship for the Presbyterians that sells trinkets to support care of yet another building, a behemoth of ancient architecture preserved for its beauty.

Of course, no one is threatened with the fires of Hell should they not buy a post card of St. Giles (so far as I know).

Perspective

Ailsa Craig . . .

men in tweed on bicycles with helmets on their heads . . .

older men in navy blue suits with vests, clutching SmartPhones to their ears. . .

all bring me lessons in perspective.

Even the word brings to mind wildly varying concepts . . . Google a question about perspective as relates to objects in the distance and you get both an explanation of why the moon seems to follow us as we drive (Following the moon) and an article responding to someone seeking advice on how to get past the hatred and disappointment in her marriage - I think the common tag must have been ‘moving’.

***

Ailsa Craig

I drive more than 5 miles and do not pass Ailsa Craig from sight when I’m going along the coast towards Girvan.  Ailsa Craig remains alongside me from the time she comes into view over the crest at Turnberry until the last cross street before I pull up to the Crumlish vacation home where I’ve been a guest these last weeks, but the buoy that’s in front of her but so much closer to the shore passes from my view measures in yards, not miles.

Distance brings perspective.

Physical distance brings changed as well as better-focused perspective.  So too does cultural distance.

Some time ago I was thinking about aging as it shows itself in the silliest of ways – things like wondering when I stopped updating the decorating of my home and why, realizing I am become the fresh makings of a little old lady whose home appears frozen in some long-ago past barely imaginable to the young ones who might stumble in.  I was really feeling my age.

And then I saw these Scottish gentlemen all about, riding their bicycles dressed in their old-fashioned tweed suits, but with state-of-the-art bicycle gear, including helmets and those in their dated navy blue suits with vests, speaking into their Droids or SmartPhones as they headed home for some neeps and tatties (how’s that for a stereotype?).

None of us are all one thing or another – neither old nor young, fresh or outdated, even good nor bad.

And call me stone-age, but I quite like how my house is decorated.

What's So Super About Tuesday?

Yesterday while Republican presidential candidates engaged in all the usual campaign activities and voters in Tennessee, Georgia, Vermont, Ohio, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Alaska, Massachusetts, Virginia and Idaho turned out to choose their primary favorites, the day wound through its usual course for the rest of us.

I have to confess that I am so disconnected from it all, so out of touch with any sense that what’s on the airwaves has anything to do with me, that I actually wondered throughout the day what all the cars were doing in the Volunteer Fire Department parking lot behind my house.  Only this morning as I write this does it occur to me that the VFD is our local polling place and that people were voting.

I suspect I’m not alone in this disconnect: in this place where voter turnout is usually high, especially for presidential elections, no one I saw yesterday sported the usual sticker showing that they had voted; no one I spoke with even mentioned the primary happening in our midst.

Thus it was not electoral politics, but ‘life on the ground’ that occupied my attention and focus yesterday.

I talked with family and got a report from my son about his first day on the new job and when he and my grandson will be coming for a visit.

Bible study in the morning with the gals was a time of learning and thoughtful discussion and reflection.

Prayer needs were exchanged and prayers offered throughout the day.

Time was spent with a friend in need.

Like every other day of the week, Tuesday was its own gift, for which I am grateful.

My prayer for all those who would be president this day is not only the usual for their increased wisdom, goodness and kindness, but also that they too, even in the midst of the pressure cooker that is electoral politics in these United States, had a Tuesday that was its own gift, filled with family and friends and opportunities to serve others.