the mark haley holler: Knee Gazing

Great Egret visited our pond!

It used to be houses had windows to let in light and air. These days, I'm thinking the purpose of
windows is to remind us of the world outside of them. I'm looking out the window right now, and I think my view is extraordinary. There's a red tree and a variety of green trees, a blue sky, and a huge puffy white cloud. When I'm trapped washing dishes, I can at least see my garden and my hummingbird feeder. Yes, windows are nice.

I didn't have to go out the door
to see him.

Here's what I can't see through my window; what I actually have to breach the door and maybe even climb a fence for. Tadpoles. Orioles who, despite being orange for Pete's sake, are actually really adept at invisibility. Damselflies. One thousand baby fish. Water spiders who may possibly consider me a snack. Arachnophobes, beware. There will actually be two pics of the eight-legged variety somewhere in this blog.

Lady beetles are always available to add color.

I used to spend a lot of time on what is sometimes called navel gazing. This is not to be mistaken for Naval gazing, which I think is the perusing of handsome sailors in uniform. Navel gazing is the ruminative contemplation of who am I? Where did I come from? While a certain amount of introspection seems necessary for self-improvement, I find what I'm beginning to think of as knee gazing to be more rewarding. Knee gazing requires getting up, going out, and actively looking for the microcosms to be found at or below knee level. It is taking a walk, but slower, with a camera maybe, and definitely wearing a pair of jeans that you don't mind getting dirty.

But Sheep Sorrel
is just as good.

Here's where I have a confession to make. I got lucky. It's likely I never would've discovered knee gazing if it hadn't been for the man I married and the sons I had. I had plans for what I was going to do with my life. Literary plans. Urban sort of plans. Hipsterish plans, if you can believe it. Okay, you can stop laughing any time now. I might've managed my editorial ambitions. I might've been happy that way. I might've even owned a chihuahua. But I wouldn't have found the world that opens up with flower petals and breaks free on bird wings. I wouldn't have taken the journey that follows the ever changing rivers. I wouldn't have travelled with pockets full of snail shells, seed pods, and mushrooms. I'm glad I didn't miss it.

Aw! Look at the cute orange baby spiders!

I don't know about the phrase, "God has a plan for your life." It seems to me that the implication there is that there's only one way to go and you can't meander any. I think it is more like God knows the map of your life, all the ways you might turn, all that those turns might bring. Faith to me isn't a GPS telling me to turn right in fifty feet, and making me back up if I missed it. Divinity is more like Google Earth: you're visible to God wherever you go. And isn't that more freeing? Choose the turns as they come, with whatever is true, noble, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, praiseworthy in mind, and you can't go wrong. Even if you forget to think about those things, you can pick up wherever you are. No need to backtrack.

Common Blue Damselfly is hardly common.

For me, in between all the normal whatsit like bank balances and the behavior of boys, I like to ponder what is true in the creation of the Creator. I like to see things working the way they were made to work. I like to wonder what they might've been like back when creation was new and excellent. I like to know that tiny fish in a pond don't mean anything much except that the promise is being kept: "As long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease." And I get to be in that for a while. And I'm vastly content.