2023

Can’t believe how many Christmases it’s been since we made this for Shift Worship. Still blows me away that Phil memorized and delivered every word of my script without a single hiccup. And then did it again for Easter! Merry Christmas season everyone!

I was more detailed with the prompt on this one, but still impressive-looking golden-hour light and a bit of drama about whether the ducks will make it. I’m guessing yes.

After the snow yesterday

—Sara Rian from We Are Carried (@sara_rian_books on IG)

To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us. ― Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage

Friday nights are back.

I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

The sky tonight from my little freckle on the earth.

“Eventually we realize that not knowing what to do is just as real and just as useful as knowing what to do. Not knowing stops us from taking false directions. Not knowing what to do, we start to pay real attention.” — David Whyte I would add that not knowing what to do is when we finally get around to asking for help from a qualified source. “And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of David my father, although I am but a little child.

Saw this big horn on top of Pikes Peak yesterday. He didn’t care.

The Man Who Knew Too Much Alfred Hitchcock, 1934 Just watched the original British version with Peter Lorre as the heavy. Charming 30s clunkiness from early in Hitch’s career. The orchestra scene was simpler, but delivered on the rising tension. What surprised me based on the relative restraint of the American remake was how the ending of this one turned into a shootout with quite a high body count. It also didn’t go easy on the kidnapped girl, who looked truly traumatized in the end even when her dad was telling her she was fine.

Didn’t mean to stalk these people through the woods tonight, but the shot turned out okay.

Indeed

Hiking is back. Had never been on this side of the second reservoir above Palmer Lake before. Was curious: Did this little tunnel happen on its own when the rocks fell just so or did a couple of county guys spend an afternoon with an excavator putting it there?

Coco’s new batch.

Goodwill Sunday One man’s creepy doll is another man’s bargain. Stopped by our local Goodwill to look for … something … and found everything else.

A single shot of the earth and the moon taken by the Korean lunar orbiter Danuri.

“Salamanders in a carnivorous pitcher plant” - Nature’s Pitfall by Samantha Stephens © Samantha Stephens | cupoty.com

Let There Be

Ikiru, Take 2

I did finally watch Ikiru last night. It’s an amazing film, of course. I somehow never realized that “Parks and Rec” borrowed it’s opening premise from this film, with Leslie Knope finding purpose in becoming the irresistible force pushing the creation of an Indiana park through the unmovable object of city hall bureaucracy. The soulful Takashi Shimura is impossible not to feel with as he absorbs the news of his terminal diagnosis and reacts first by abandoning himself to all the pleasures of distraction he had faithfully avoided and then, finally, by deciding to use himself up in “making something” meaningful as his way of emulating the irrepressible, glittering energy of young Miki Odagiri’s character.

Downtown Saturday night