To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty.

"To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same field it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Photos: (Top) Sunrise on St. Mary's Lake; (Middle) Pasqueflower and Glacier Lilies, Logan Pass; (Bottom) Grinnell Lake with Wild Buckwheat; All three photos were taken at Glacier National Park, MT, July 22, 2014

The Sacred Feminine is present in seamless flow and in the ISNESS of form-and-beauty.

I perceive the Sacred Feminine - Sophia in the Christian tradition and Gaia for the Greeks - in the experience of the seamless, streamlike flow of life-energy in which we are all immersed. I also find Her in the vivacious and voluptuous ISNESS of form and beauty that floats within that stream.

Meditation practice serves then to embody the spaciousness of the Sacred Masculine - God - who acts as the Backdrop or Sky-like Ground upon which the Feminine can manifest Herself in all of Her grandeur and goodness!

Photos: Beargrass and canoers, Glacier National Park, MT, July 21 and 22, 2014

Becoming a vast mountain meadow.

One of the most fulfilling experiences in life occurs when awareness expands to become a vast mountain landscape, while thoughts bloom echo-like as flowers in a meadow, arising seemingly out of nowhere from the seamless Ground of Being.

Photo: Pink Spiraea and white Beargrass near Iceberg Lake, Glacier National Park, MT, July 21, 2014

Melt the ice of your concepts so that the fluid water of free perception can flow.

"Lakes and rivers can freeze in winter, and the water can become so solid that people, animals, and carts travel back and forth on its surface. At the approach of spring, the earth warms up, and the waters thaw. What remains then of all that solid ice?

"Water is soft and fluid, ice hard and sharp. We cannot say that they are identical, but neither are they different - ice is only frozen water, and water is only melted ice. It is the same with our perceptions of the external world. To be attached to the reality of phenomena, tormented by attraction and repulsion and obsessed by the eight worldly preoccupations, is what causes the mind to freeze. Melt the ice of your concepts so that the fluid water of free perception can flow.. . . Simply allow your thoughts and experiences to come and go, without ever grasping at them."

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche,
Tibetan Buddhist

Photos: (Top) Ice patterns on Lake Agnes, Never Summer Range, CO, December 12, 2014; (Middle) Boat and reflections on Horsetooth Reservoir, Larimer County, CO, December 13, 2014; (Bottom) Indian Paintbrush and Iceberg Lake, Glacier National Park, MT, July 21, 2014

When we are filled with self-castigating thoughts, it is time to drop all story-lines and sink into the ground of our being!

All of us have times when self-castigating thoughts seem to hold sway in our lives. Perhaps we've said or done something of which we are not proud, or maybe our career plans are not working out the way we'd expected, and we are tempted to blame ourselves. During such times, I believe the thing to do is not simply to replace the "I'm bad" storyline with one that says "No, I'm good." Rather, this is the time to drop into SILENCE. We might say, in fact, that a perception of our basic goodness is rooted in the deep and loving silence out of which the goodness of ALL things is constantly emerging. In other words, our basic goodness, we could say, is simply a property of a DEEPER reality - that of the sacred Silence! It is only when we dissolve into the Ground of Being that we somehow - miraculously - reappear, washed and clean in our true and perfect identity. There is no way to explain how or why all things - including ourselves and our truest identity - appear out of this emptiness. In fact, that is actually the great mystery of life. It is like hiking into a canyon and hearing echoes begin to emerge out of nowhere, or watching the sun emerge from the mist!

Thomas Merton speaks of the value of this silence and of this emptiness in the following words:

"There must be a time of day when the person who makes plans forgets his plans, and acts as if he had no plans at all. There must be a time of day when the person who has to speak falls very silent. And her mind forms no more propositions, and she asks herself: 'Did they have a meaning?' There must be a time when . . . the person of resolutions puts his resolutions aside as if they had all been broken, and he learns a different wisdom . . . The loud plane seems for a moment to deny the reality of the clouds and of the sky, by its direction, its noise, and its pretended strength. But the silence of the sky remains when the plane has gone 
. . . Our noise, our business, our purposes, and all our fatuous statements about our purposes, our business, and our noise: these are the illusion . . . We live, then, as a seed planted in the ground. As Christ said, the seed in the ground must die. To be as a seed in the ground of one's very life is to dissolve in that ground in order to become fruitful. But this fruitfulness is beyond any planning and any understanding of man. To be 'fruitful' in this sense, one must forget every idea of fruitfulness or productivity, and merely BE . . . [Here one has] a faith in what one cannot possibly imagine for oneself . . . One has profound hope in the incomprehensible fruitfulness that emerges from this dissolution of our ego in the ground of our being . . . We accept our emptying because we realize that our very emptiness IS fulfillment and plenitude. In our emptiness the One Word is clearly spoken . . . It is peace in our own unfruitfulness which God Himself makes immensely fruitful without our being able to understand how it is done!"

This day, may each of us enter this silence, this emptiness, this inner ground of our being, this vast and loving sky, and then watch in amazement to see the fruit of basic goodness that magically and mysteriously emerges!

Photos: (Left) Sunrise Lodge in last light, Mt. Rainier National Park, WA; July 25, 2014; (Top Right) Sunset over the Pacific, Patrick's Point State Park, CA; July 31, 2014; (Bottom Right) Sunlight shining through the clouds on the Blackfeet Reservation, near Browning MT; July 19, 2014

The persistent presence of noise interferes with what we are as human beings.

 

"By and large, silence is not a virtue or a valued commodity in our fast-paced world.  For us modern humans, especially those of us needful of, or immersed in technology, silence is virtually not an option.  We have swapped the natural sounds that have been part of human existence over eons of time . . . for artificially generated noises . . . More alarming than constant noise is that apparent sense of normalcy and perhaps the possibility that we NEED constant noise . . . I believe the persistent presence of noise interferes with what we are as human beings."

Joseph M. Marshall III,
"Returning to the Lakota Way"

Photo: Spirea and Grinnell Falls, Glacier National Park, MT; July 22, 2014

Mutual Seeing Between the Landscape and I

I visit vividly-hued lakes in part because their eye-like quality reminds me that the landscape is alive with sacred subjectivity.  I am seen just as much as I see! 

And this mutual seeing - when motivated by a desire to find the best in the one seen - is ITSELF beautiful, as these amazing lakes so wonderfully express.  In fact, the landscape's seeing is able to occur - at least in part - because it borrows MY seeing. 

To paraphrase that famous phrase of Meister Eckhart: "The eye through which I see the landscape is the SAME eye through which the landscape sees me!"  This insight enables me to realize that I AM NEEDED to help make the seeing landscape conscious!

Photos: (Top) Iceberg Lake, (2nd) Grinnell Lake and  (3rd) Lake Josephine, all in Glacier National Park (MT) The closeup photo (Bottom) is of a part of Crater Lake, OR;  All photos taken in late July, 2014

I thank You God for most this amazing day

 

"i thank You God for most this amazing

day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything"

"which is natural which is infinite which is yes"

e.e. cummings

Photos: Indian Paintbrush, Subalpine Fir trees and Iceberg Lake; Glacier National Park, MT; July 21, 2014

The one thing needful is to become the fullness of our being.

"How could there be any question of acquiring or possessing, when the one thing needful for a person is to become - to be at last, and to die in the fullness of his being?"

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Photo: Beargrass, Grinnell Falls and surrounding peaks; Glacier National Park, MT; July 22, 2014

Celebration, awe and wonder are the purpose of the cosmos.

 

The festive spirit at Glacier National Park helps reveal a similar quality of festivity lying at the root of our existence here on Earth. The purpose of creation is celebration, awe and wonder at the magnificence of Divine beauty and goodness. We are here precisely to give both God and Mother Earth a self-awareness of their own amazing glory.

Photo: Indian Paintbrush, Iceberg Lake, and the peaks of the Garden Wall; Many Glacier, Glacier National Park, MT; July 21, 2014

Radiating Spirituality

I'm convinced that the most honest, effective and unobtrusive way to share spirituality with others is to work on becoming transparent to Divine reality, and then simply RADIATING whatever degree of transformation one has been able to embody.  If the transformation of character is really there, it will naturally show.  If not, no amount of words, religious costumes or special institutional titles will ever make up for what one is lacking on the inside.

Photo: Wild Goose Island and alpenglow; St. Mary's Lake, Glacier National Park, MT; July 22, 2014

What is life? It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

"What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."

Crowfoot,
Chief in the Blackfoot Confederacy

These were Crowfoot's last words before he died of tuberculosis in 1890

Photo: Sunburst over the Blackfeet Nation, near Browning, MT; July 19, 2014

Why do we no longer focus on developing virtues - on OURSELVES becoming a "Work of Art"?

 

On the way to Glacier National Park, we stopped at the Little Bighorn Battlefield in southern Montana. I was especially impressed by the Indian Memorial (dedicated in 2003) and by the Park Service movie that details the events leading up to the battle in June of 1876 between George Custer's 7th Cavalry, and Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho forces, led by Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and others. Notable sections in the video include clips of interviews with Ernie La Pointe (Sitting Bull's Great Grandson),

and with Joseph Marshall III, who has written a number of books - most notably, "The Lakota Way."

 I was struck in the museum display by a paragraph explaining that Lakota Medicine Man Sitting Bull strove to live all of his life "according to the virtues of honesty, fortitude, bravery, generosity and wisdom." 

Joseph Marshall's books support this approach as well by telling stories that focus on the Lakota virtues of humility, perseverance, respect, honor, love, sacrifice, truth, compassion, wisdom, peace, knowledge, bravery, fortitude, generosity, tolerance, patience, silence, introspection, faith and selflessness. My question is this: how many times in our modern culture do we talk about "the virtues"? Almost never, it seems to me. We focus instead on accumulating material goods, our technological devices, pleasure and security. The Lakota way - along with indigenous culture in general, at its best - is more concerned with making a "work of art" out of one's character. Why, do you suppose, do we no longer strive to become OURSELVES such a work of art? Why do we focus so much time and attention instead on "things" or on external "beliefs" ?

Photos; Indian Memorial, Little Bighorn National Monument (near Hardin, MT, July 19, 2014); Chief Sitting Bull, Ernie La Pointe, Joseph Marshall III.

The richness I achieve comes from Nature, the source of my inspiration.

 

"The richness I achieve [in my paintings] comes from Nature, the source of my inspiration."

Claude Monet

Photo: Subalpine Spirea and Grinnell Lake; Glacier National Park, MT; July 22, 2014

The mountains help us become translucent to a vaster Reality.

At Glacier, I feel myself permeated by a festive spirit that helps put the trials of life in human society into a larger perspective. So often in our daily lives, we constrict around our problems and challenges, and around our own expectations and desires. In the mountains, these become translucent to a vaster Reality, one that offers us a sense of spaciousness and freedom.

Photo: Indian Paintbrush and Mt. Wilbur; Many Glacier, Glacier National Park, MT; July 21, 2014

The Story of Wild Goose Island

Montana folklore tells this story about Wild Goose Island on St. Mary's Lake in Glacier National Park:

"In the middle of St. Mary Lake in Glacier National Park is a small island halfway between two shores. Many moons ago, there were two tribes living on either side of the lake. While there was no direct warfare between them, the two tribes avoided one another and had no dealings one with the other.

"All this changed one day when a handsome warrior on the near shore saw a lovely maiden from the other tribe swimming toward the small island in the middle of the lake. He was instantly smitten by her beauty and leapt into the lake to swim to the island himself. They met on the shore of the little islet, and the maiden was as taken with the warrior as he was with her. They talked for hours, and by the end of their conversation, they were betrothed. After extracting a promise from his beloved that she would faithfully meet him at the island on the morrow, the warrior swam home to his tribe, and she returned to hers.

"Oh, what an uproar they met upon their return. Neither tribe was happy at their meeting, and all were determined to break the betrothal instantly. What to do? The man and the maiden had no doubts at all. In the wee hours of the morning, each swam out to the little island to meet one another to flee to a new land where they might marry. However, as soon as they were discovered missing, warriors from both tribes set out in pursuit, to bring the renegades back by whatever means necessary.

"But the Great Spirit was watching, and took pity on the young lovers. He transformed them into geese, which mate for life, so they could fly away from their pursuers and so that they would always be together. When the warriors arrived on the island, they found not a man and a woman, but two lovely geese walking among the small trees and bracken. At the sight of the warriors, the two geese stroked their necks together lovingly and then flew away, never to return.

"From that day to this, the little island at the center of St. Mary Lake has been known as Wild Goose Island.

Photo: Sunrise on St. Mary Lake, with Wild Goose Island; Glacier National Park, MT; July 21, 2014

Beautiful things are able to grip us because they have their own innate subjectivity.

It may be hard to believe, but the colors at Glacier National Park really ARE as vivid as this photo depicts. The bright red shales, teal-colored lakes and multi-hued wildflowers all contribute to the superb, gem-like quality of the park. Such grandeur reminds us that beauty has the capacity to grip our attention and hold us in its embrace. In other words, beautiful things aren't just "objects" that WE decide to behold. Rather, they possess a subjectivity all their own. All creatures - even lakes, rocks and vast skies - are indwelt by a spiritual presence that wants to speak to us and inspire us. We might even say, in fact, that the reason why beautiful things grasp us so intensely is because they want to know and celebrate themselves within OUR vision and awareness. Indeed, the ultimate calling of each and every human being is precisely this capacity to serve as the self-awareness of the Cosmos.

Photo: Red shale rock, Iceberg Lake, and surrounding peaks; Many Glacier, Glacier National Park, MT; July 21, 2014

Love is its own merit and its own reward.

 

“Love is its own merit and its own reward. Love needs no cause, no fruit besides itself; its enjoyment is its practice. I love because I love; I love that I may love. Love is a great thing; as long as it returns to its beginning in God, goes back to its origin, turns again to its source, it will always draw afresh from it and flow freely."

St. Bernard of Clairvaux,
12th century Cistercian monk

Photo: Lewis Monkeyflowers growing along the Garden Wall; Glacier National Park, MT; July 31, 2013

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We need a new religion grounded in an evolutionary-ecological worldview.

 

"When I consider how much misery religion has brought, and how much human and natural capital is consumed in producing and maintaining it, I am not easily convinced that its positives outweigh its negatives.  So, I often think we need an entirely new religion.  At least, I think this until I remember that the kind of affective connections to the earth and its living systems, the feelings of wonder and awe at the beauty and bizarre surprises in our universe, the kinship some people feel toward their fellow living travelers in this earthly odyssey - all have long been part of the human experience.  It seems to me, however, that it would be much easier to develop sustainable societies if religions were firmly grounded in an evolutionary-ecological worldview . . . Even though I am a naturalist, . . . I can think of no better term than 'miracle' to describe all I perceive.  Even the bizarre fact that I am here to perceive it, reflect on it, and share my musings strikes me as nothing less than miraculous.  In this, I fully understand the impulse of scientists and others who fall back on religious terms to express their deepest feelings of delight and wonder at all they sense and know."

Bron Taylor,
"Dark Green Religion"

Photo: Lewis Monkeyflowers just below Siyeh Pass, Glacier National Park, MT; August 1, 2013

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Extreme weather baptizes and washes us clean of the stresses and ego-concerns of life in society.

 

I took this shot on the most challenging day I've ever spent photographing in the outdoors.  The clouds really let loose, and it poured all day long.  I had trouble keeping the camera dry, and got water inside the monitor screen, damaging it for a week afterwards.  But the day was amazing!  Like John Muir, I felt like I was being baptized in the storm, washed clean of the stresses and ego-concerns of life in society.  On the way back to the campground, I saw a grizzly bear in the distance, but my camera was much too wet by then to be usable.  What memories!

Photo: Wild Buckwheat flowers and Grinnell Lake on a rainy day; Glacier National Park, MT; August 2, 2013

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