Inside Looking Out / Outside Looking In / Early Morning Reflection

It was still fairly dark outside. I was in my kitchen and noticed something moving to my right. It was my reflection in the window.

Winter Solstice 2013 / Picasso painting with light / Woman Turning Toward the Light

I stood out on my porch as the sun rose at 8:01 this
Winter Solstice morning.  There was melting snow
on the ground below.

Later I checked some of my favorite webcams for
Winter Solstice Day images.

Yosemite Valley:

Big Sur:

Laguna Beach:

Mendocino:

Ocean Beach (San Francisco):

Then I found this photo of Picasso painting with light:

One never knows what one is going to do. One starts a painting and then it becomes something quite else. It is remarkable how little the 'willing' of the artist intervenes. 
(Pablo Picasso)

Woman Turning Toward the Light (1985, chalk pastel drawing by am):

Celebrating Cesar Chavez's 86th Birthday on Easter 2013 / "... the enormous invulnerable beauty of things ..."

(1927-1993)

Occupation:  Farm Worker, Labor Leader, Civil rights activist

Religion:  Roman Catholic

Words of Cesar Chavez:

Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.

It is possible to become discouraged about the injustice we see everywhere.  But God did not promise us that the world would be humane and just.  He gives us the gift of life and allows us to choose the way we use our limited time on earth.  It is an awesome opportunity.

What do we want the church to do?  We ask for its presence with us, beside us, as Christ among us.  We ask the church to sacrifice with the people for social change, for justice and for love of brother and sister.  We don't ask for words.  We ask for deeds.  We don't ask for paternalism.  We ask for servanthood.

Cesar Chavez, Coretta Scott King, Dorothy Day

My words:

Although I do not belong to an organized religion or spiritual tradition, I am grateful to those people who do belong to them and practice them with love and compassion, those whose hearts are not closed to those who don't share their experiences.  Through their teachings, they have brought grace to my life and the lives of many of us who belong to something beautiful, too, in the experience of not belonging to an organized religion or spiritual tradition and yet not being alone either.  

From "Nova," by Robinson Jeffers:

Meanwhile the sun shines wisely and warm, trees flutter green

in the wind, girls take their clothes off
To bathe in the cold ocean or to hunt love; they stand laughing
in the white foam, they have beautiful
Shoulders and thighs, they are beautiful animals, all life is beautiful.
We cannot be sure of life for one moment;
We can, by force and self-discipline, by many refusals and a few
assertions, in the teeth of fortune assure ourselves
Freedom and integrity in life or integrity in death. And we know
that the enormous invulnerable beauty of things
Is the face of God, to live gladly in its presence, and die without
grief or fear knowing it survives us.

(am's italics)

(am's photo of the landscape where Robinson Jeffers lived and wrote his poetry)

Now it's time to thank this blogging community for all the inspiration you give to me and to go meet for breakfast with another diverse community of friends.  Some of us belong to organized religions or spiritual traditions. Many of us don't. We are fortunate to have found each other.

IMANI / FAITH

One can make a day of any size and regulate the rising and setting of his own sun and the brightness of its shining.
-- John Muir (1838-1914)






















Imani, which means "faith," is the theme for New Year's Day, the 7th day of Kwanzaa. New Year's Day is the 7th day of Christmas.

Shanora: I hate him.

Queen Esther: O, don't hate him, child. You won't find no strength in hate.

Chimbuko: That's right.

. . .

Chimbuko: It's a new day and a new year.

(from the movie "Harambee," directed by Fracaswell Hyman)






































Scroll down and listen to Mavis Staples sing "Have a Little Faith"

. . . These are trying times that we’re living in
Have a little faith I say
Have a little faith, my friend
We got trouble everywhere around the world . . .

Photos:
Yosemite Valley on October 1, 2008
Big Sur on October 4, 2008
My porch before dawn on a rainy Pacific Northwest New Year's Day 2009

MEMORY

I believe that my old friend and I spent a night on the beach shown in this woodblock print soon after he returned from Vietnam on December 8, 1970. We had driven from the small cottage we rented for $110 a month in the hills of Redwood City. Late in the day, near sunset, after parking the car on a turnout on the coast highway, we walked across the headlands and made our way down to the beach. Of course, this was illegal. We were on private land, but it was getting dark, and we decided to sleep at the bottom of the cliffs, in a safe place above the tide line. My old friend and I gathered driftwood, and he built a fire in the sand in a sheltered niche. As the smoke rose, we heard a shriek. When we looked up, there was an owl in the sky. It didn't seem like an auspicious sign. I felt as if we were in a Robinson Jeffers' poem. The night was cold and windy. We didn't sleep well. In the morning, we walked back up to the road where a highway patrolman was waiting for us. He asked us what we were doing on the headlands. He pointed out that we had been walking on private property but didn't cite us for trespassing.

No artist comes closer to my experience and vision of California than Tom Killion, whose woodblock print is shown above.

Many thanks to wood s lot for his link to POETS ON THE PEAKS: SNYDER, MUIR, KEROUAC, WHALEN