#AdventWord #Mother

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We were traveling by pontoon boat down the Sierpe River that flows through the largest mangrove swamp of the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica into the Pacific Ocean. Me, several other photographers and our boat captain and a guide were all scanning the shoreline for birds, crocodiles, iguanas, snakes, monkeys–you name it. The Osa Peninsula is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet. I’m not sure who first spied the baby Green Heron (Butorides virescens), still covered with down, struggling among the mangrove and ficus roots along the bank. But no sooner had the shout gone up and…

#AdventWord #Declared/Sha’ir

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At the edge of the swamp, drink in the mundane beauty of tall grass, green and gold in its dying, a lovely copper choker of dead plants around its throat, all the more color full against a monochrome backdrop of nude limbs and twigs and trunks. Will we ever learn to cherish this divine home? “Sha’ir” is the Arabic word for “declared.” It is used to speak of Sufi poetry using earthly metaphors for spiritual experience. A Divine Invitation You have been invited to meet The Friend. No one can resist a Divine Invitation. That narrows down all our choices…

#AdventWord #Robes

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In the biblical story of the prodigal son, the wayward boy returns to his father straight from feeding leftovers to pigs in a field. We are not told what he was wearing, but… my sibs and I did that growing up on an Iowa farm. We called it “slopping the hogs,” and I assure you, we wore our crudest farm chore clothes to do it. It was as dirty a job as it sounds! We are told that the loving father greeted his son by immediately commanding a servant to bring the finest robe and put it on him. Maybe…

#AdventWord #Counsel

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“But ask the animals, and they will teach you, the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth,[a] and they will teach you, and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.”–Job 12:7-10 Dixie is a therapy horse, the very patient, calm, stable, non-reactive presence distressed children need. She came up to me to be petted. I happily obliged….

#AdventWord #Heed

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One October day in 2019, I turned north on Hwy 39, a.k.a. The Creole Nature Trail, headed home from the Gulf Coast of southwest Louisiana. The Pintail Wildlife Drive of Cameron Parish was on the right a few miles up the road, and I planned to visit before heading on home. But well before I reached the Drive, I spotted this Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) perched on top of a power pole clutching a large silver fish in its talons. As I am inclined to do upon such sightings, I hit the brakes and pulled to the side of the road….