The sequence hymn at Trinity Cathedral yesterday morning has continued to draw my attention, the words above being the first stanza (1).  Although I consider myself a student of the Episcopal hymnal, I cannot say I have ever even noticed this hymn.  It certainly takes a confident music program to include a piece so unfamiliar in the congregational singing on a Sunday morning.  It's an example to my mind of a just-right combination of words and music, each one improving the other and producing something very special in the process.  The singing of that hymn both takes me back and urges me forward.

I go back, in this instance, a single day -- to the early morning walk Belle and I enjoyed on Saturday after Tal left for fishing with his son.  The air was damp and  slightly cool.  There was a drifting fog that made the little part of the world in which she and walked dreamy and soft.  In this photograph which I made during that hour I can see, I think, what the poet, F Pratt Green, was striving to express.  I cannot get out of my mind the line: "future needs in earth's safe keeping."  What a beautiful safe-keeping box this scene is.  Serene, but alive.  

So much goes on out of our sight.  I never ceased to be surprised, for example, with the emerging crocus in the dead of winter.  When everything is silent, brown, still, the earth is pushing to the surface those wondrous first flowers, long before spring.  What we need is being prepared.  Indeed.

I am also urged into the future, wondering about more than what is forming up, rallying for its moment to break forth from the earth, as rich as it is.  There is activity going on in me and in Tal and in us all, as well.  What was born with us that we've not yet discovered?  What is being nurtured that I don't yet perceive?  What might those hidden stores actually be capable of producing?  Will I be brave enough to let something new and different break the surface and come to light? 

I'm extending an invitation to myself to find out. What about you?

(1) "For the fruit of all creation," Hymn #424, The Hymnal 1982 (New York: Church Publishing Incorporated)

The first year I went to the Kanuga Photography Retreat was 2006. April in the mountains of western North Carolina was pretty near heaven.

My first DSLR was new, a Rebel XT with a Sigma 30mm 1:1.4 lens. I didn’t know much about how to operate it, but the instructor for the small group I was in, Kathy Eyster, made short work of that situation. I could make a list of the essential things I learned that week; I wasn’t the same photographer – not even the same person – when we said our final goodbyes and headed for home.

During the critique for our first assignment Kathy found something to commend about the work each of us had done. One admonition, however, was delivered universally that afternoon. “Watch your edges.”  We learned, all of us at once, that it isn’t enough to know your subject and to get it in the frame. Noticing what else is in the frame, especially the extraneous detail lurking along the edges, was a trait Kathy wanted us to make our own as soon as possible.

I have thought about that April week in 2006 a lot over the past three days. Wishing I were involved in some photographic pursuit, I have been engaged in yard work, and our edges?  Well, they’ve become a mess!

We moved in last August, the former owner kindly having had the yard done just before the closing. In September the development set about to repave our street. Then the fall and winter came. When we began tending the yard with the arrival of spring -- with the exception of the concrete drive way and sidewalks, Tal and I did not mind the edges.

As I planned this week, I boldly added this item to my list:  edge the street. Tuesday was to be the day. I gathered my tools. A mechanical, hand-operated edger. A long, double-spiked tool just like the one my dad used to get weeds out of the lawn. A pair of gloves.

My estimate of the time involved was a morning or an afternoon. Is that cosmic laughter I hear? Bermuda grass is strong, strong enough, I’ve learned, to break up asphalt in less than one growing season. Tuesday in the late afternoon a neighbor, having notices my sweaty struggle, had mercy on me and arrived with her electric Black & Decker edger. When I resumed work on Wednesday morning I was able to make myself a good, clean line. But, it was up to me to tear out the grass on the street side of that line.

It’s Thursday afternoon now; I finished just before noon. After a shower, a nap, some lunch, the only question I have now is whether to wash or to burn the gardening clothes I wore and kept wearing as I tended that long edge.

I fully intend to take better care after all this. It’s like Kathy said. Photography software oftentimes makes it possible to fix what went unnoticed in the field and intrudes into an image. But, it’s lots easier to get it right in the camera.

Same goes for that yard out there.

I started this day -- this first Monday in July -- the way I start each day. I put on a pot of coffee.

The coffee maker we are using is an old Krups.  It dribbles on each and every pour and neither of us can explain why we moved it when we relocated very nearly a year ago. 

In the late fall the handle broke on carafe for the KitchenAid we liked so much. It was old enough that a new carafe could not be procured.  So, some eight months ago I dragged out the messy Krups and we've used it -- along with a dishcloth, sponge, paper towel -- ever since.

I've threatened a new coffee maker.  We've both admired the Keruig brewers many of our family and friends use.  What could be nicer than a fresh cup of coffee with every cup?  The octane or the flavor or the specific roast we desire no matter what anyone else preferred?  It sounds odd to say, but I take delight in the groaning whirr the Keruig makes.  Reminds me of the lion guards in "The Wizard of Oz."  Oh-we-oh.

But, here I am, still running 12 cups into the carafe and scooping half a cup of ground coffee into the cone filter, assembling all the moving parts, and waiting ten minutes or so.

It isn't that I like the old so much.  It's that full pot -- and all the full pots of memory.  Like the one out of which my very first cup of coffee came at the South Carolina United Methodist Camp.  Observing that momentous decision, before my friend poured the camp director had the cream and sugar moved away from where I was sitting, saying if I were going to learn to drink coffee on his watch I would learn to drink it right.  Black. Have never looked back.

Like the one years later in a nameless café in Alexandria, Virginia, where I and several of my seminary friends went after being up almost all night finishing our systematic theology papers.  The night was so cold our glasses fogged up when we stepped inside.  The waitress wanted to hear all about life on "The Hill."  The aroma of that coffee and the atmosphere of the place are a part of me.

I could go on, but will spare you and me both. 

Tal and I might make the move to a single serve brewer one day.  Most likely that will be when we don't want more than one cup each morning any more and don't relish any leftovers becoming iced coffee later in the day.  In the meantime, however, maybe we could invest in a coffee maker that doesn't leave a little sea of coffee on the counter with every pour.  

But, no matter what, I suspect that when I think coffee for the remainder of my days it'll be a pot I have in mind no matter how the brew comes my way.