A Simple Miracle

Walking on water is not the miracle; the miracle is walking on Earth. While walking in the rain to take my sister's dog, whom I am dog sitting, back to his home. I felt the raindrops gently falling on my head and face. I felt the wind gently lifting the silver strands of my hair. I easily strode through potholes in the road filled with cool water from the morning showers. I saw the beauty of the dark, gray, skeletal forms of winter's trees against the pale gray of December's rainy day. I heard the flapping of wings as birds sought shelter in the boughs of nearby cedars. I sensed my breath as it easily flowed in and out rejuvenating my body. With each inhalation, I was granted the added bonus of the freshness of the air, having been washed by the shower, and dried by the gentle gusts of a southerly wind.

Once back at my house, as I climbed with ease the steps that lead me home, I entered my "temple" and with the enrichment from my short morning walk in winter's delightful day, I reflected upon the miracle of walking upon Mother Earth and the simple abundance of beauty that is my life. For this miracle, I am grateful.

Still Life Watercolors

Stepping Stones is so strangely beautiful this morning. The sun is eclipsed by heavy clouds just so where the sun can actually be seen to the naked eye without discomfort. The cloud, fog, or mist is a violet shade. Some of the trees nearby have lost their leaves and appear as eerie skeletons backlit by the hazy sunshine. They appear as form lacking substance next to their fully clothed neighbors yet untouched by the cold hand of late autumn. Stepping Stone and the valley seem from another world whose unusual beauty leaves the witness a little hesitant to return to the familiar world of color and substance. The violet grayness of the mist beckons the imagination to enter this world of monotones, where colors are subdued and the boundaries of forms are not sharply defined. All is hazy, soft and ephemeral as a painting whose artist touched the canvas with gently applied strokes of the brush, not yet delineating the many intended manifestations of finer detail.

But as I watch, a buck chases a doe and the still-life painting becomes a beautiful world of the everyday richness of Stepping Stones and beyond. And I return from the realm of the imagination to that of reality and see how very similar they are this morning. Only the artists have exchanged places.