Welcome! I am a contemplative thinker and photographer from Colorado. In this blog, you'll discover photographs that I've taken on my hiking and backpacking trips, mostly in the American West. I've paired these with my favorite inspirational and philosophical quotes - literary passages that emphasize the innate spirituality of the natural world. I hope you enjoy them!

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In the Spirit of Wildness,

Stephen Hatch
Fort Collins, Colorado

P.S. There's a label index at the bottom of the blog.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Christ disappears as an object and instead gazes out through our eyes, bathing the world in warm, radiant love, dissolving the boundaries of all things and making them One.


In the warm glow of the trees and landscapes in mid-autumn, we find an embodiment of the calm, radiant light of Christ. While it is natural at first to see Christ as an object of worship - after all, we DO want to emulate him - eventually he begins to disappear as an object of awareness and instead looks out AT THE WORLD through OUR eyes and inner vision, bathing all things in the radiant light of love. This radiant love then dissolves the sharp boundaries between things, making them permeable to one another and - ultimately - One. It is because of Christ's humble self-emptying that he disappears as an object and becomes instead the enlightening gaze that causes all things to be united in love. The same occurs with us as we learn to empty ourselves of all self-importance and begin to join - through our loving vision - all the world into One.

Photo: Cottonwood tree and red cliffs, near Livermore, CO; October 21, 2013

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