Thursday, January 31, 2008

Look Down!

I sincerely apologize for any confusion created by this post. It was not all that long ago I extolled, in this very blog, the virtues of looking up. Well, I am deeply humbled now to acknowledge that sometimes you just have to look down.
I went back to the river a couple days ago to check on the ice and get some pictures in different light. However, the light was so flat that there was just nothing picture worthy. As I was turning to leave the river bank and return home without a single picture, something whispered to "look down." It was a weird suggestion since, you know, it's so much more virtuous to "look up." Nevertheless, I obeyed, looked down, and found a whole world of wonderful, beautiful, fascinating picture subjects - ICE! Not the ice in the river, but instead the ice on the bank of the river. In the process of forming (whatever that process is) each block and each sheet and each piece had taken on its own personality, its own identity with a pattern specific to itself. And the patterns were wonderful!
From ice hieroglyphics to trapped air bubbles to entombed leaves I couldn't stop shooting. It was all so intricate. Each piece played with light in its own special way, all vying for the attention of the camera - "shoot me, shoot me!"
So, the lesson is, there is beauty ALL AROUND us - up above, down below, in the air, in the ice, everywhere! Moses 6:63 - "And behold, all things have their likeness, and all things are created and made to bear record of me, both things which are temporal, and things which are spiritual; things which are in the HEAVENS ABOVE, and things which are ON THE EARTH, and things which are IN THE EARTH,and things which are UNDER THE EARTH, both above and beneath: all things bear record of me." (caps added for emphasis) I haven't tried anything under the earth yet. Maybe I need to check out a cave or two. In any case, thank God for the beauty of the earth. All of it!

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