MarcoClicks Weekly

Coming to terms

On this bright, chill day, I am attracted to images of age and growing old. Today there's no tinge of sorrow to it, although I confess there sometimes is, perhaps often. But today feels like something akin to the warmth of quiet insight that can come from simply observing reality, just as they say...

You see, I can conjure the debilitation of getting older, I've experienced it already, if gently. Yet, I also notice there is a growth of my skill. So as my eyesight fades, my ability to guess the letters improves. Or i say the word I can find rather than the one I seek. Not the same, perhaps, but good enough for this moment.

My worship can extend to my loose folds of skin, back spasms, wrinkled hands. It can move on to a more internal non-physical vision. How pleased I can become with who I truly am and what is in truly front of me. How pleased to touch and softly hold this moment and then let go.

Blessings

Marco

Indoors

If we look closely, before the momentary blossom blinds us, we can sense that there is much to explore here. Yes, we know there is more to come. There is the bloom that is folded in upon itself, yes, and we know, we expect more.

Oh, this bloom is patient in ways that we do not understand and, sadly, it seems unlikely we will emulate. It paints this moment, our moment, as profoundly sufficient, without our ever-present need for more.

So in this moment, what is here is small, tender, easy for our eyes to miss. Yet if we are attentive, we will notice the texture and the blush of color among the quiet openings of this bloom. It does not require anything of us, simply to see what is in front of us in this moment. That's all and it is enough.

Marco

Cold

This time of year is when we make our own warmth, within our homes and hearts. We watch the water dance into ice while continuing its flow. It seems simultaneously to encompass both solid and liquid. How can I do that? How can I stay fluid and moving and connected while still harboring my old and frozen places?

Part of it, I suspect, is remembering that these two states are really an endless series of in-betweens. We have little reason to expect to live our life at either of these ends - we are more likely to inhabit the regions in the middle.

With that in my heart, I wonder why I berate myself for the frozen places when I might choose to see them as thawing. After all, both states are present and all the ones in between. And I wonder whether I can shift myself so that my practice of gratitude contributes to the melting of these familiar and frozen places. My heart says that as I come to accept the cold, the warmth that I make - my own warmth - grows. It's the same practice, yet again...

Blessings

Marco

Quiet tumult

Without the wild wind, yes I can hear the quiet. It resembles silence, a cousin perhaps, yet it has grown in a different direction. And yet without the wind, why would I observe the ripples on the water? And that's what attracted me to this image in the first place, if not to the moment.

What's here for me, what attracts me, is the difference between the image before us and the reality of that moment, which lives now only as a memory. How do I balance these? I shudder as I remember the emotional frame within which this image began. I can feel how it contrasts so powerfully with the slow and contemplative moment my camera found. Such distinctions!

Oh, the need to rationalize these two - where did that come from? Perhaps it's sufficient to notice this complexity, how the same moment (I suppose it's the same one) can convey such unique feelings, points of view. Perhaps we can use this insight to see a single moment, a single life, through so many lenses. And we can decide that's a blessing.

Marco

Boundaries

The cold has marched ahead, about as far as it is going to go this day. What a mix of salty wind and fierce trees singing with it. Yesterday the gentle ponds that cradle this place were tranquil in the false calm of late December. Now we see those ponds are captured by the cold's advance and no surprise.

We live on a razor's edge distinction between water almost frozen and ice. What is the difference? Nothing and everything - after all, just a single step and you are present at that change of state. That moment, that boundary defines the transition.

In a human life, perhaps the boundaries are more subtle, more vague, redolent of emotion and reeking of thought. So perhaps we are less attuned to seeking out, feeling, understanding those distinctions. Or perhaps they are better experienced, witnessed, without words, simply by looking deeply. One might profit from doing more of that.

Blessings,

Marco