Church windows

Directions: Enjoy, as always, the surprise of colored light streaming down upon the back stairway. Think of all times these windows were rewards for opening neglected doors and peering into forgotten rooms. Ask, with George Herbert:

Lord, how can man preach thy eternall word?
                  He is a brittle crazie glasse:
Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford
                  This glorious and transcendent place,
                  To be a window, through thy grace.

 

I have a photograph

Directions: Go the town and the house where you grew up. Find the old photo albums. Open the one you never paid much attention to as a child. Glimpse the world as it looked when you were born. Marvel at familiar faces looking impossibly young. Resolve to take more pictures.

Memorial Day Weekend, 1982. Mama (age 26) and her younger brother.

Christmas 1982

January 1984. Me with my uncle and (future) aunt. They would marry later that year.

Summer 1984. The year my parents and I moved from Texas to Indiana.

Family

Directions: Finish the work you came to do. Pause for a picture with the first and last people who have made a home for and with you. Remember all of those who have come between. Say their names as you drive down Texas 6, away.

Celebrate

Directions: Accomplish something important and make plans for a new adventure. Invite friends to celebrate with you. Hand your camera to Grant so that you can play hostess. Once the guests have gone, brew a cup of tea and load the pictures. Be amazed that so many people would come to share your joy. Give thanks.

Signs of the time

Directions: Recruit 10-20 clever undergraduates whose brains have been addled from end-of-term writing and studying. Allot 1-2 pieces of sidewalk chalk to each student. Leave students to their own devices for the rest of the day. Return before the next rain. Consider whether you might legitimately incorporate hop-scotch into future lessons on essay-writing.

The Gettysburg Address, in sentence diagrams.

Sic 'em, Katniss!

"Sally Sparrow, beware the weeping angels!"

The TARDIS at Baylor? Sic 'em, Doctor!

Note: Despite my tongue-in-cheek intro, I cannot claim any credit for these pictures. I was just glad to have my camera with me on campus!

Fourth Floor

Directions: Begin on the ground floor.  Climb the stairs you have climbed most mornings for five years. Don't trip as you read the school paper or mentally go over your lesson plans. You'll be out of breath by the time the fourth floor is in sight, so stop to rest before you mount the last flight. Consider the way the sunshine falls in from the skylight, and the precise grace of so many wooden angles.  Think, "I never noticed how beautiful this was." Wonder what else you have missed.

Hidden graces

Directions: Wander out the front door. Turn right at Morrow, and walk a few blocks, past the modest houses and overgrown alley-ways.  Go past the house with the rosemary bush, and the the new oleanders.  Let the street slope down beneath your feet, and then stop, just across from the vacant lot, where the trees are tangled and dark. Step up to the guard rail hidden by branches. Look.