Day to day and doing the work and getting to that honest point – that, for me, is always about – and always will be as long as I do this – refining and refining and refining and refining the truth… constantly being as truthful and honest and raw and real as you can be. –Michael Keaton
On a cool January morning in 2015, I headed into the Kisatchie National Forest on ATV trail that leads to a longleaf pine plantation about three-quarters of a mile in. I had parked a few yards behind me, answered a phone call, then started walking, and was still fiddling with my camera, checking the settings as I walked. Suddenly a deer burst out of thick cover to my left and ran across the road in front of me, all rimmed in early morning light. Do you see it? Of course you do. I pray I will have enough time on…
I have just learned of a Jewish woman named Etty Hillesum.* She was held for a time at the Nazi transitional concentration camp Westerbork, then ultimately died at Auschwitz. While she was at Westerbork she kept a diary, and the excerpts I have read convey a woman of extraordinary spiritual maturity. She found safety in the arms of Divine Love even as she was fully aware and embraced the reality of her situation, a reality surely among the most precarious and horrific humans have ever experienced. I believe she understood what I have been groping towards for years, namely that…
From Secret Placesby RumiEvery day the sun risesOut of low word-cloudsInto burning silence. Divine Love: The only constant in the universe, ever faithfully creating, adapting to and wrapping itself around everything old and new under the sun.
A gift of music of music, earnestly played–or prayed–for the healing of Earth. The site is a quarry, a huge scar on the face of earth created by bulldozers carving out fill to broaden the nearby highway from two to four lanes. But in a sacred act of loving resistance, Earth stopped the bulldozers with turquoise water from a spring hidden in the limestone depths. I have participated in the resurrection of this place, not only by going there to play music, but also by documenting photographically the return of vegetation and critter life. The story is a chapter in…
Edge & Essence 