LANDSCAPES AND PORTRAITS

Garden Portrait, Jamestown, NC

I enjoy combining my interests in photography and gardening. 

And since we’re all self isolating at home, 

I decided to call in a landscape professional 

to enhance my small plot of heaven on earth.

But he said he couldn’t help me as my garden was portrait : )

SPRINGTIME RESURRECTION

Redbud and Dogwood, Jamestown, NC

In spite of the coronavirus pandemic, God is revealing himself right on schedule this spring with blooming redbuds and dogwoods, demonstrating that all things can be made new again.

DISTANT SOCIALIZING

Hello Neighbors, Chicago, IL

Now that we’re practicing Social Distancing we need to reverse the process using our technology and do Distant Socializing! 🙌.         🙌

WAKEUP CALL

COVID-19, NIAID

Early in my business career, it was commonplace to ask the front desk for a wakeup call upon checking into a hotel.  That was always very effective when the telephone loudly rang early in the morning instead of the usual clock radio calling us to action.  Today of course, we carry an alarm with us and don’t have to rely on the occasionally absent front desk clerk for a wakeup call.  But this new virus that is now circling around the world is sounding another wakeup call.  And although there are many things in life beyond our individual control, we do have control over our response.

Sadly, we humanoids rarely stop the treadmill and pause to be mindful, let alone thankful, of all the blessings we take for granted in this present day.  We’ve created vaccines for many of the old sicknesses that harassed the world prior to our births such as polio, measles, smallpox, mumps, leprosy, etc.  But when a virus morphs into a completely new and very dangerous strain, COVID-19, we’re left completely vulnerable until science can hopefully create another vaccine to checkmate it. 

Until that time, our government has taken the unprecedented action to begin asking or ordering citizens to self-isolate and observe social distancing to impede spreading the highly contagious virus.  This has resulted in all sorts of unexpected consequences such as masses of people hoarding toilet paper, breathing masks and hand sanitizer, spring break students still partying en masse on our beaches, social media posting all manner of dark gallows humor, parents and spouses immediately spending much more quality time together, children being home schooled and giving parents a greater appreciation for teachers, people suddenly having time on their hands to stop and reflect on their life’s trajectory and billions of human beings suddenly forced to confront their own self-centeredness and the common legacy we all share.  

When King Solomon had finished building the great temple for God in Jerusalem, he appeared to Solomon at night and accepted it.  But he had this caveat that when the people began to turn their backs on him and he withdrew his protection, the people would need to seek him, ask for forgiveness and change their behavior for him to heal the land.  He counsels us to be still and know that I am God.  The current plague of coronavirus gets its name from the spikes on its surface which look like a corona, Latin for crown that a king can be seen wearing.  This is a time of sober reflection for the entire world to rally around an unprecedented common cause affecting everyone on the planet.  It’s an opportunity for the entire human race to join together in defeating a common enemy that has the potential to either decimate us in a contagious pandemic or unite us in a contagious perfect love.

So beautiful from Pope Francis

Tonight before falling asleep
think about when we will return to the street.
When we hug again,
when all the shopping together will seem like a party.

Let's think about when the coffees will return to the bar, the small talk, the photos close to each other.
We think about when it will be all a memory but normality will seem an unexpected and beautiful gift.
We will love everything that has so far seemed futile to us.

Every second will be precious.
Swims at the sea, the sun until late, sunsets, toasts, laughter.
We will go back to laughing together.

Strength and courage.

REGAINING CONTROL

Toilet Roll Frenzy, COSTCO

As I was navigating a local grocery store aisle this afternoon during what I thought was a slow period, I noticed more people than usual were shopping and they were stocking up on basics including a disproportionate amount of toilet paper.  I mentioned to the young cashier that I could understand folks buying basic food items and sanitizers in light of the coronavirus pandemic, but not the excessive amount of toilet paper, given that the need wasn't related to the flu symptoms.  She just shook her head and said she didn’t get it either but that it had been this way since the beginning of the week.

Driving home I thought about the rapid events that have unraveled over the past few weeks as this country watched the inevitable Trojan Airplanes and Cruise Ships disembarking infected passengers from around the world, knowing that there could be no escaping such a virus at the height of our flu season.  We are now embedded in a world economy and no longer isolated.  And when people are confronted with outside circumstances they can’t control, they turn to the one thing that remains—their response.  Psychological studies have shown over the years that reactions like the toilet paper frenzy is a subconscious behavioral attempt to gain a sense of control over this pandemic uncertainty.  It’s a sort of survivalist psychology.

And once the frenzy begins and gains momentum, everyone else is driven by the fear of a shortage which manifests into a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Soon social media kicks in to fan the flames of hoarding from images of long shopping cart lines and empty shelves surrounded by crazed shoppers wrestling bags of toilet paper from each other!  Then there is the hapless woman in Australia that attempted to hurriedly order a bag of 48 rolls and incorrectly hit the “Buy Now” icon for 48 bags instead, translating to a sixteen-year supply for her family and a bill for $3,264.  The good news is that due to the frenzy, she was able to sell the excess at a nifty profit to help finance her daughter’s education.

Just within the past week two phrases in the news have bubbled to the top of our lexicon—social distancing and self-quarantine.  But social distancing hasn’t gone too well in the big box toilet paper aisles and the threat of self-quarantines and locked down communities has fueled the flames of hoarding shoppers.  All of this frenzy in spite of the fact that the supply chain was working fine.  Gallows humor, grim or satirical humor in a desperate or worrying situation, has also surfaced such as the emergence of a quarantini drink that has replaced the martini, only you drink it alone.

As one muse opined, “Rumors, fears, and conspiracy theories have been spreading faster than the virus.  People will do what they do, especially when it comes to doo-doo”.

WHAT IS NOT

Lion Man, Germany

Sekhmet, Egypt

We Homo Sapiens are the only animals on the planet that have the ability to envision something that is not seen or has not yet been created.  Imagination is considered to be the ability to think of what is not. 

In the introduction of her book on The Lost Art of Scripture, Karen Armstrong introduces Lion Man.  He is a small ivory figurine that was found in a southern German cave just before World War II.  The cave did not appear to have been lived in and may have been used only for rituals, given that the figurine was found in a remote chamber and had the body of a man but the head of a cave lion.  He is considered to be 40,000 years old and may be the earliest evidence of human religious activity.

Armstrong notes that “The imagination has been the cause of our major achievements in science and technology as well as in art and religion…neurologists tell us that in fact we have no direct contact with the world we inhabit.  We have only perspectives that come to us through the intricate circuits of our nervous system…We are surrounded by a reality that transcends—or ‘goes beyond’ or conceptual grasp.”

That insight prompted me to validate something I had learned years ago that less than one percent of all light that passes through our eyes can be processed by us.  Our eyes are miraculous, containing 100 million cells called rods and cones inside the retina, but the cones can only see a very narrow band of wavelengths on the light spectrum.

And I was also reminded of the Egyptian pyramid wall art that most of us have observed over the years which is still being recovered in the vast desert sands.  In that culture over 4,000 years ago gods and goddesses were represented as all of the fundamental necessities required for sustaining life.  The goddess Sekhmet, daughter of Ra, was believed to lead and protect the pharaohs during war.  She is depicted with a lioness head and is known for her fierce character. 

Hybrid creatures depicted on cave walls and in other art forms over the millennia “seems to reflect a sense of the underlying unity of animal, human and divine”, as Armstrong observes, “and shows that from the very beginning men and women were deliberately cultivating a perception of existence that differed from the empirical and had an instinctive appetite for a more enhanced sense of being, sometimes called the Sacred.”  We occasionally have these inspired moments of joyful euphoria in music, dance, poetry, nature, love, and religion—especially when we experience something beyond our experience—something heretofore that is not.

USING OUR GIFTS

Lost Everything, Chicago, IL

By the grace of God, we’ve all been given certain gifts in this life to use as we are so motivated.  These gifts are as far reaching as the diversity of the human race.  I would challenge anyone who claims that they have no special gifts.  All it takes is the time to stop the merry-go-round and meditate on our abilities and the activities that we enjoy in life.

The parables that Jesus related to the people and his disciples always had a deeper meaning than the story that unfolded in the telling.  On the surface, his parable of a man who was going on a journey seemed to be routine enough.  He called three of his servants together and gave the first a total of five talents (an ironic term for money), the second received two talents and the last was given one talent, each according to his abilities.  These talents represent any gifts or resources we have received in life that we can use to enhance the lives of others less fortunate.  The first two men doubled their money while the last one literally buried his talent.  The master rewarded the first two men with more responsibility and they shared in his celebration, but the third who did nothing was ordered to give it to the one that now had ten talents and he was dismissed.

All of these men had the opportunity and free will to use their abilities responsibly, but only two of them used their resources to improve the state of the enterprise.  That analogy also applies to using our individual free will and talents to improve the lives of those within our sphere of influence, either directly or through charitable organizations we trust.  I’ve read that if all the volunteer time and resources donated by individuals in this country were abdicated to the government, it would be overwhelmed. 

In the final analysis, it all has a lot to do with how we as individuals have helped the poor and underserved, not how we’ve empowered the government to do it for us with other peoples’ money.