Greening Quietness - At Kookoosint Fishing Access, Near Plains, Montana

"...Drop thy still dews of quietness,
  Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
  Thy beauty of Thy peace...."

 -From "The Brewing of Soma" by John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-92) and also adapted to hymn "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind"

 (And you can click HERE for a bit more on Kookoosint Fishing Access in Sanders County, MT.)

Leaf Retrospective - Missoula, Montana

I liked this little leaf so much, I noodled around with black & white possibilities - which turned out well enough that I wanted to share this alternate view, plus a keen thought on creative perspective.

"Writing has laws of perspective,

 of light and shade just as painting does,

 or music. 

If you are born knowing them, fine. 

If not, learn them. 

Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.”

-Truman Capote (1924-1984)

On Being Aware - Missoula, Montana

The following quote on our habits of sight - and a few others from the good Baron - provoked a solid "Yes!" from me. 

I have noticed that amidst circumstance's overwhelm, there will come a time of pause - even if it's the eye of the storm! -  when we can stop and choose how we see. If we will, we can see the bigger picture - not as a head-in-the-sand false optimism, but in the clear light of hope and generosity.
 
“To romanticize the world is 

to make us aware 

of the magic, mystery and wonder 

of the world; 

it is to educate the senses 

to see the ordinary as extraordinary, 

the familiar as strange, 

the mundane as sacred, 

the finite as infinite.”

 -Novalis 

(aka Baron Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg 1772-1802,

As quoted in "Bildung in Early German Romanticism" by Frederick C. Beiser, in Philosophers on Education : Historical Perspectives (1998) by Amélie Rorty, p. 294)

& for those who will wonder: This tenacious little leaf was small as a trim, smallish index fingernail.

Springing Closer - Missoula, Montana

"Here and there even in our world, and now and then, even in ourselves, we catch glimpses of a New Creation, which, fleeting as those glimpses are apt to be, give us hope both for this life and for whatever life may await us later on." - Frederick Buechner, Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation