The sun slides toward the horizon on a July afternoon, striking tiny grains of pale shell, turning a black sand beach into a starry night. I don’t get all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico from my home in northeast Louisiana very often, so I linger in the fading light. The beach is littered with shells. I know from experience that the original tenants of most of them have died and, in the exemplary efficiency of nature, they now shelter thin-striped hermit crabs (Clibanarius vittatus). As evening falls, the shells scoot across the sand, in search, I imagine,…

Excerpts from Song of Myself There is that in me–I do no know what it is–but I know it is in me. …I do not know it–it is without name–it is a word unsaid, It is not in any dictionary, utterance, symbol. Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on, To it the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me. …Do you see O my brothers and sisters? It is not chaos or death–it is form, union, plan–it is eternal life–it is Happiness. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,…

Be ready to live. Like buds on a rosebush in late November in the Chicago Botanic Garden. Be ready to die. Like the flower on the same rosebush in late November in the Chicago Botanic Garden. Because to be ready to live and to be ready to die is to actually live in and savor the moment. It is to be in tune with one’s surroundings. To be present to the present, with no regrets and no fantasies of a perfect future holding us back. Our Advent hope calls us to action in the present. Carpé diem. It’s the only…

Make beauty. I know, many of us grew up believing that making beauty was the sole province of only a very few, innately talented people called “artists.” What a sad deception. Since Adam was invited to name the animals, humans have made beauty. We do it by drawing on cave walls and painting with oil on canvas and sculpting, of course. But sometimes we do it by seeing it–even in the mundane–and calling it into existence. I love to photograph construction sites, like the one above in downtown Chicago. A construction site offers a million configurations of form and color,…