Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography on August 1, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Here are two buildings I visited recently in France. The first is a church and the second is a castle.
In both cases I was struck by the beauty of the arched ceilings and looking at them both together I here I see how different they are and remember how different it felt to be inside each of these buildings.
How do you think the physical space created by the building you are in affects what you feel?
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography on July 26, 2014| Leave a Comment »
What do you see?
I saw the gable ends of a couple of blocks of flats.
I saw a woman looking out of her window and a man with a rugby ball in his hand standing on his balcony.
I saw the see through the arches.
Then I looked again……..
I saw a mural.
This provokes two thoughts for me –
Firstly, how often do we take the time to really see what we can see? What’s familiar is often worth a brand new look.
Secondly, how much attention do we pay to the creation of our lived, physical environments?
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, narrative, perception, personal growth, photography on July 20, 2014| Leave a Comment »
In the A to Z of Becoming, the second “C” is CONNECT.
We connect all the time. This week, think of two ways in which we connect – connecting to others – we are highly social creatures; who could you connect with the week, and what kind of connection would you like to make with them?
Secondly, we connect up our experiences and our perceptions. This is one of the ways we make sense of our lives – by creating narratives of connections which help us to make sense of life.
This photo is of a labyrinth carved into the prison wall in a chateau in the eighteenth century. As we connect this labyrinth to others we know, as we think of other castles we have visited and we think of the person who might have created this particular labyrinth we create many stories.
Have you a story to tell from the connections in your own life to this labyrinth?
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, photography on July 19, 2014| Leave a Comment »
In Bordeaux there is a spectacle well worth waiting for – le miroir d’eau. It’s a large area which fills periodically with a thin layer of water and once the movement in the water settles down it make a giant mirror. The absolute best time to see it is just after the lights are turned on in the streets and surrounding buildings.
Really, it qualifies for the adjective “spectacular”
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, perception, personal growth, photography on July 15, 2014| Leave a Comment »
As I watched the fireworks for the July 14th celebrations at Chateau d’Oleron, the moon began to rise over the horizon.
As it rose, the light it cast over the sea grew stronger…
And slowly changed from gold to silver….
As well as being beautiful, this fascinated me. Moonlight is reflected light, even though it looks like the moon is shining with its own light. Then the reflection of that reflected light on the water stretched for miles an miles.
The fireworks were spectacular too! But the constantly changing moonlight was completely amazing.
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, photography on July 14, 2014| Leave a Comment »
What makes something seem beautiful to you?
Here are two photos I took this week which are completely different but both seem absolutely beautiful to me.
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, photography on July 12, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Previously I’ve photographed sunflowers in the full brightness of a sunny day, but the other day I decided to take a photo much closer to sunset.
See how the colours and the light seem quite different…..at other times.
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, photography on July 8, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, perception, personal growth, photography on July 6, 2014| Leave a Comment »
The A to Z of Becoming has been very popular over the last 26 Sundays (if you want to see any of the posts, search “a to z” using the search box on this blog homepage). A number of readers have asked me what will happen now that last Sunday was “z for zigzag”. The answer is Part 2 starts today.
Ready for another 26 verbs?
Well, let’s start again with A. This time, A is for Amaze.
The French concept of émerveillement is a core value for me in daily life, and one of the connotations of that word is amazement. So the verb for this week is “amaze”.
We can think of this from two different perspectives –
Here’s one of the many things which amazes me, and I hope it will amaze you too…..
These are impressions left in the rocks by prehistoric people who were probably amongst the first inhabitants of Scotland. Look what happens when we flip this image up the other way
So, this amazes me in two ways.
First it I find these marks and indentations quite astonishing. To think how many thousands of years have passed since someone made them. And how did they make them? And why did they make them?
Second, I noticed that looking at these rain-filled indentations from one side of the rock made the water look concave, but from the other, they look convex. Luckily, I could capture that with my camera.
Isn’t that amazing?
It sure amazes me!
So, why not think about amazement this week and be prepared to both be amazed, and to amaze!
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, health, life, perception, personal growth, philosophy, photography, psychology on June 25, 2014| 1 Comment »
I took this photo the other day in the garden at the Centre for Integrative Care. It provokes certain thoughts for me, because in this view I see an abundance, a flourishing, a diversity of green Life and I see a place to facilitate its full enjoyment, a place to pause, to slow down, to be present.
So, here’s what I’m thinking today……Life is for living, and that living has at least two important aspects – the full enjoyment of Life, and the creation of uniqueness.
Whatever other reasons we might find for being here, we all, moment by moment, have the opportunity to fully enjoy this Life – that captures for me the sense of émerveillement du quotidien which I often to refer to, that sense of wonder, of seeing and experiencing everything as if for the first time and for the last time. It captures the teaching about slowness, of mindfulness and of being present in the NOW.
If there is one quality of Life I’d focus on it’s change. Change is constant. Nothing, but nothing, stays the same. Life is a continuously unfolding, creative, emergent process. We are creative creatures. We create our perception of reality. We c0-create our daily experiences with others, and with the world in which we are alive.
So, when I look at this photo I see these two phenomena – a full enjoyment of the flourishing diversity of Life, and the creative expression of the Universe.
Heroes Not Zombies 