Wise Words

Playing with Pictures

One of the wonderful diversions I get to explore on our yearly "snowbird" adventures on the Gulf Coast is my photography. As any long-time readers of these wanderings already know I have been an amateur photographer since I was 10 years old. In the winter I take a lot of pictures and play with pictures I have taken at other times in order to post them on a couple photo websites, Guru and Pixoto.

This year I have started experimenting more fully with what are called HDR pictures- High Dynamic Range. (See after pictures for a brief explanation.) I have an iPhone app that takes these pictures as well as another app for my Mac that can create HDR from other photos. So here are some of the ones I have played with recently, just for fun. Notice how they have a more "evocative" feel to them. That's Trey Ratcliff's word. His short description and link to his page are below. Enjoy.

Along Church Street in Bethlehem, PA at Christmas

Sunset in Alabama.

Alligator in the Mobile Alabama Delta.

Brown Pelican at Bon Secour

Close-up of the Metro-North train as it got closer than below.

MTA Metro-North commuter train in New Jersey

Another sunset picture in Gulf Shores, AL

From Trey Ratcliff web page:

HDR is short for High Dynamic Range. It is a post-processing task of taking either one image or a series of images, combining them, and adjusting the contrast ratios to do things that are virtually impossible with a single aperture and shutter speed.

Trinity Sunday

Pentecost Sunday

7th Sunday of Easter

Ascension Day

6th Sunday of Easter

Calendar of Saints: Catherine of Siena

Periodically I post a quote from a saint from the Episcopal Calendar of Saints that week. I connect it with a picture that I have taken as a kind of poster. These are meant to be meditative and mindful, playful and thought inducing. I hope they are helpful in your spiritual journeys.

Catherine of Siena (1347-1380)
Reformer and Spiritual Teacher
April 29

Catherine Benincasa was the youngest of twenty-five children of a wealthy dyer of Sienna (or Siena). At the age of six, she had a vision of Christ in glory, surrounded by His saints. From that time on, she spent most of her time in prayer and meditation, over the opposition of her parents, who wanted her to be more like the average girl of her social class. Eventually they gave in, and at the age of sixteen she joined the Third Order of St. Dominic where she became a nurse, caring for patients with leprosy and advanced cancer whom other nurses disliked to treat.

She began to acquire a reputation as a person of insight and sound judgement, and many persons from all walks of life sought her spiritual advice, both in person and by letter. She persuaded many priests who were living in luxury to give away their goods and to live simply.

Catherine is known (1) as a mystic, a contemplative who devoted herself to prayer, (2) as a humanitarian, a nurse who undertook to alleviate the suffering of the poor and the sick; (3) as an activist, a renewer of Church and society, who took a strong stand on the issues affecting society in her day, and who never hesitated (in the old Quaker phrase) "to speak truth to power"; (4) as an adviser and counselor, with a wide range of interests, who always made time for troubled and uncertain persons who told her their problems -- large and trivial, religious and secular.

-Link

5th Sunday of Easter

Earth Day

John Muir 

Naturalist and Preservationist

4th Sunday of Easter

Calendar of Saints: Father Damien

Periodically I post a quote from a saint from the Episcopal Calendar of Saints that week. I connect it with a picture that I have taken as a kind of poster. These are meant to be meditative and mindful, playful and thought inducing. I hope they are helpful in your spiritual journeys.

Father Damien (1840-1889)
Priest and Leper
April 15

In the 1800's, the Hawaiian Islands suffered a severe leprosy epidemic, which was dealt with largely by isolating lepers on the island of Molokai. They were simply dumped there and left to fend for themselves. The crews of the boats carrying them there were afraid to land, so they simply came in close and forced the lepers to jump overboard and scramble through the surf as best they could. Ashore, they found no law and no organized society, simply desperate persons waiting for death.

A Belgian missionary priest, Joseph Van Veuster (Damien of the Fathers of the Sacred Heart), born in 1840, came to Hawaii in 1863, and in 1873 was sent at his own request to Molokai to work among the lepers. He organized burial details and funeral services, so that death might have some dignity. He taught the people how to grow crops and feed themselves better. He organized a choir, and got persons to sing who had not sung in years. He gave them medical attention. (Government doctors had been making regular visits, but they were afraid of contagion, and would not come close to the patients. They inspected their sores from a distance and then left medicines on a table and fled. Damien personally washed and anointed and bandaged their sores.) There was already a small chapel on the island. It proved too small, and with the aid of patients he built a larger one, which soon overflowed every Sunday.

Damien contracted leprosy himself in 1885, and continued to work there until his death on 15 April 1889.

-Link

3rd Sunday of Easter

Calendar of Saints: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Periodically I post a quote from a saint from the Episcopal Calendar of Saints that week. I connect it with a picture that I have taken as a kind of poster. These are meant to be meditative and mindful, playful and thought inducing. I hope they are helpful in your spiritual journeys.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)
Pastor, Theologian, and Martyr
April 9

Bonhoeffer was born in 1906, son of a professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Berlin. He was an outstanding student, and at the age of 25 became a lecturer in systematic theology at the same University. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Bonhoeffer became a leading spokesman for the Confessing Church, the center of Protestant resistance to the Nazis. He organized and for a time led the underground seminary of the Confessing Church. His book Life Together describes the life of the Christian community in that seminary, and his book The Cost of Discipleship attacks what he calls "cheap grace," meaning grace used as an excuse for moral laxity.

Bonhoeffer had been taught not to "resist the powers that be," but he came to believe that to do so was sometimes the right choice. In 1939 his brother-in-law introduced him to a group planning the overthrow of Hitler, and he made significant contributions to their work. (He was at this time an employee of the Military Intelligence Department.) He was arrested in April 1943 and imprisoned in Berlin. After the failure of the attempt on Hitler's life in April 1944, he was sent first to Buchenwald and then to Schoenberg Prison. His life was spared, because he had a relative who stood high in the government; but then this relative was himself implicated in anti-Nazi plots.

On Sunday 8 April 1945, he had just finished conducting a service of worship at Schoenberg, when two soldiers came in, saying, "Prisoner Bonhoeffer, make ready and come with us," the standard summons to a condemned prisoner. As he left, he said to another prisoner, "This is the end -- but for me, the beginning -- of life." He was hanged the next day, less than a week before the Allies reached the camp.

-Link

• From a personal perspective: For many of us who came to Christian maturity in the late 50s to late 70s, Dietrich Bonhoeffer may be our quintessential religious "hero." His writings and actions together gave many of us a strong sense of discipleship. His understanding of grace shaped many an understanding of what we are called to live like when faced with difficult times. It was a challenge to us as we faced issues like civil rights and the Vietnam War. Admittedly many of us may describe it differently today than we did 50 years ago. But that does not change the basic power of what Bonhoeffer said and did. He will always be a challenge to what Martin Marty calls civil religion.
  
  When religion unquestioningly supports the powers that be- and is in turn supported by them- we are in a dangerous time. That has not changed. May Bonhoeffer for many years to come be that reminder.

Calendar of Saints: Martin Luther King, Jr.

Periodically I post a quote from a saint from the Episcopal Calendar of Saints that week. I connect it with a picture that I have taken as a kind of poster. These are meant to be meditative and mindful, playful and thought inducing. I hope they are helpful in your spiritual journeys.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929 - 1968)
Civil Rights Activist and Preacher
April 4

2nd Sunday of Easter

Calendar of Saints: John Donne

Periodically I post a quote from a saint from the Episcopal Calendar of Saints that week. I connect it with a picture that I have taken as a kind of poster. These are meant to be meditative and mindful, playful and thought inducing. I hope they are helpful in your spiritual journeys.

John Donne (1573-1631)
Priest, Poet, and Preacher
March 31

John Donne (rhymes with “sun”) was born in 1573 into a Roman Catholic family, and from 1584 to 1594 was educated at Oxford and Cambridge and Lincoln's Inn (this last a highly regarded law school). He became an Anglican (probably around 1594) and aimed at a career in government. He joined with Raleigh and Essex in raids on Cadiz and the Azores, and became private secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton. But in 1601 he secretly married Anne More, the 16-year-old niece of Egerton, and her enraged father had Donne imprisoned. The years following were years of poverty, debt, illness, and frustration. In 1615 he was ordained, perhaps largely because he had given up hope of a career in Parliament.

From the above information, the reader might conclude that Donne's professed religious belief was mere opportunism. But the evidence of his poetry is that, long before his ordination, and probably beginning with his marriage, his thoughts were turned toward holiness, and he saw in his wife Anne a glimpse of the glory of God, and in human love a revelation of the nature of Divine Love.

-Link

Easter

Great Sabbath

Good Friday