In the Hush of a Sunrise

What I love more than the colors themselves, is the quiet and assuming way they present themselves. Without chatter or clamor, not an echo is spoken to draw the slightest bit of attention. You either are awake for the experience or you are not.

The presence and gifts are available everyday—without condition.

I thought of Vincent Van Gogh this morning. I didn't know him, yet I have a sense that when he painted, his brushstrokes were also an outward quiet expression of creation. His paintings not presented with the condition that someone must love them. They were created with the same universal beauty of a colorful sunrise. They had to come out. Channeled as a hushed expression of all that is right and true.

I have the same experience many times with my writing. The words spilling out, doing their best through me, to paint in phrases of sunrise. Quietly resting on a page to be read and taken in fully—or not.

Once in a while I will go back and read something I have written. More times than not I think, "Who wrote that?"

Just like in the hush of a sunrise, God did.

What Isn't Said...

It's six o'clock in the morning. Gently being nudged to open my eyes by the hand-rung bells echoing from the Carmelite Monastery tower. At last count, twelve cloistered nuns live in a beautiful peaceful setting complete with ocean views—behind the white walls of their sanctuary. Sounds nice.

I've made friends with one, Sister Roberta. She walks Maggie, the black Labrador Retriever, twice a day. Maggie is the service dog to another sister who is wheelchair bound. Sister Roberta is our resident 'town crier.' She loves to schmooze with the neighbors, mostly those who have children. It's very sweet, the relationships she has created with them. I'm not sure how I was brought into her circle of grace, but I like it.

One day a few years ago another sister I had never met was out walking Maggie. Sister Roberta had flown north for her annual trek to visit her family. Maggie, who knows me by now, is pulling the sister over my way to receive her ritual pat on the head. The sister and I began a neighborly chat. The ease of that conversation turning quickly into (this happens to me all the time) full disclosure. Not me, her! She was relatively new to the Carmelite order, and in particular our neighborhood Carmelite Monastery. She was a divorced woman, and after her daughter turned twenty—at fifty years old, she turned to her calling, God.

A bit in shock by this news, I put on my best poker face and continued the conversation/inquiry. I had no idea you could do that as a Catholic. She spoke about how, in a go-ahead-and-read-between-the-lines manner, that she was the only one of her 'kind' at this particular order. I was getting the feeling that she wanted someone to talk to, and there I was. Outside the walls, outside—where no one was listening?

Her subtle hint of not belonging didn't deter me from wanting to know more about the peaceful life inside those walls. Eyes wide, I was yearning for stories of peace, joy, tranquility, inner freedom, a life free for love. Yes, I went to their website. And it's all there spelled-out in the things that matter to the Carmelites, but I wanted to hear it chanted in the sister's words. With starry eyes I ask her about life inside the Carmelite Monastery. "Don't you just love it in there?" Except for their outfits (better known as 'habits'), I dream it's this joyful endless sleepover with your sisters. Praying, eating, gardening, more praying, singing at mass, watching a sunset and maybe a little dog walking.

Her response, "I love God." With a musical-note upward-emphasis on the word God.

She didn't have to say another word. I totally understood what wasn't being said. At that moment, and rewind a bit to her previous statement of being the only one of her 'kind', my idyllic fantasy of running off to the sacred spaces of nuns and monks were squashed. No matter where you go, there you are. And so are other people!

Honestly—it's probably more magnified inside those walls. As for the Sister, I saw her once or twice more walking Maggie in Sister Roberta's absence, but she avoided me and my corner-of-confession like the plague. I wasn't going to tell anyone. Besides, God was already listening.

As the universe would have it, I 'coincidentally' just ran into Sister Roberta, who, by-the-way, I haven't bumped into in months. Making her neighborhood rounds, walking the evening walk with Maggie by her side. As if 'someone' heard what was being written, but not being said.

I Saw Me—In You

Have you ever caught a DNA glimpse of your parents, siblings or children in you? In some families I have seen that unquestionable repeating of physical pattern, yet in others—not so much. Once in a while when I look down at my hands, I'll see my mother's hands or I will look at a photograph of my children and recognize my nose or the shape of one lip as identifiably me. For the most part, however, I have found my physical self to be uniquely me—often joking that I must have been left on my parent's doorstep. And as far as my children are concerned, one born a blue-eyed blond, the other one with a copper-top, I've wondered "Where did my genes go?"

My life as a portrait photographer has offered me the opportunity, in close range, to roam the landscape of people's faces. Very intimately during the post production phase in the computer "light-room" applying what I call, "Photoshop kindness." Never pushing that beyond what feels natural, the camera not as forgiving as our eyes. Not only do we see what is in physical form, we also see with our senses, experiences and our hearts. Adjusting for the harshness of life, smoothing over the contours of skin and form, seeing below the surface and peering deeply into the "window of the soul." The eyes.

It is an occupational wonder looking into someone's eyes. I have studied my own, fascinated by the range of color, the spectrum of layers in the iris bursting out like fireworks from around the pupil. The limited category for eye-color on a check-this-box document, falling very short of what I see. I wish for more boxes to choose from. How about a box that says "Other" with a line where you would write in your own descriptive color—mine, would be amber.

My dad's eyes are blue. Baby blue. Icy blue. His features—Germanic in lineage, and up until yesterday I never saw anything of me in him—that is to say, in a physical sense. I arrived in the Latin package, wrapped in olive skin, high cheek bones and skinny legs. While we were chatting it up at lunch, I held his gaze in mine (like we are supposed to do—always look someone directly in the eyes), listening deeply when I drifted off to somewhere I had never been before. The shape of his eyes. Circling the rims sent me into a momentary lapse in listening—his eyes were in the shape of almonds. The same shape as mine. How had I never noticed that before Dissuaded by quite-the-opposite in colors—maybe? All I know is that my dad, in his eighty-something year, was sitting opposite me, and in a strangely beautiful moment of recognition, I saw something of me—in him. What I refer to as a God moment.