Tag: black and white photography

Living with Mental Clutter

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BW Rose

After running to and fro and working like crazy over the last few months, I decided to work from home this week. I needed to not rush through the morning. I needed to not spend much of my day talking, talking, talking. I needed to use the time usually spent in commute and hustle and bustle out of and back into the house in silence and with far less movement.

With my guys gone during the day, I spent a lot of time alone. I thought I’d spend the extra time writing—or at least making sense of the clutter and chaos in my home office. 

But I didn’t. 

In my spare time, I chose to binge watch a series on Netflix, play around with planner tools, and sign books. 

I have far too many thoughts crammed into my head to write or think clearly. Unlike the physical clutter in my office, I can’t easily organize the mental clutter into files or keep, give away, and toss piles. Decluttering the mind requires a bit more intentionality—prayer, meditation, journaling, discipline, and the ear of a trusted friend. It certainly takes more than a day or two.

Since I am lacking the bandwidth to deal with any of it right now, I decided to live with the jumble of thoughts, words, and feelings for a while. 

That’s simply the best I can do at the moment. And, you know what? That’s okay. 

About the Image: The rose featured in this post was given to me by my 8-year-old cousin, Mikayla, for Mother’s Day. It happily lived among my sunflowers for more than two weeks.

NPM | Black and White | Eternity

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orchid everything beautiful

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. —Ecclesiastes 3:11

Ecclesiastes 3:11 is one of the most beautiful verses of Scripture to me. On the heels of the popular “To Everything There Is a Season” poem of the first eight verses of Ecclesiastes 3, this verse reminds us that everything serves an ultimate purpose and happens when it should.

I’ve spent many days wrestling with God over the the whys and why nots, so I understand this knowledge is not always comforting, especially when we face horrific circumstances. The last part of the verse acknowledges this limitation of our humanity—our inability to comprehend God’s ways–and gets us off the hook of trying to explain the unfathomable. We need only trust His providence, long-range divine vision, and Sovereignty. 

I find the middle of this Bible verse most potent. God has set eternity in our hearts. This explains our thirst for water from an unearthly well. For we were never meant to have all our yearnings satiated in this life. We were created in the image of God, created to commune with Him “in the garden,” and, therefore, with the innate desire to spend “our always” with Him.  

NPM | Black and White | Joyful, Faithful, Patient

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butterfly joyful in hope

For this third week of National Photography Month (NPM), I am sharing some of the monochrome photo inspiration “cards” I made during Sheila D’s September 2021 Creative Gathering. I divided the month of creativity into thirds—days 1-10, abstract photo art; days 11-20, doodle art; days 21-30 black and white photography. The common thread was scripture. I shared one of the photos for a #ThursdayTreeLove in January.

In light of the recent racial violence committed by one individual against Black citizens in Buffalo, New York, I am sharing images that feature Bible verses that can provide solace and hope. I will not comment (much?) on them. Sometimes the world is so absolutely crazy that I am convinced we need only the voice of God. Everything else is just…noise.

 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. –Romans 12:12

Seeking Light

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Sunflower BW 02-27-22

Sadly, the only cure for grief is to grieve. —Mark Lemon

This was spring break week for our university. Thankfully. I desperately needed time to “just be” and sit with my grief.

I needed to sleep as much as my body would allow. I needed to escape the usual colors and sounds of life because at the moment everything seems too bright and too loud. I needed to take one-day-at-a-time and not bear the weight of grief through meetings, planning, students, and other interactions. I needed to call my mom in the middle of the day just to hear her voice. I needed to clear my desk and shoot a million photos of the sunflowers friends delivered along with gift cards to Olive Garden because no one feels like cooking or even deciding on a menu. I needed to draw sunflowers and tweak the poem I wrote about my dad five days before he passed. I needed to move through my day without purpose. I needed to feel safe in my grief and not feel the need to excuse myself or apologize for being inattentive or not completely present. I needed to look through family pictures and savor the memories. I needed to listen to the same Daryl Coley song over and over and over and over because it is the only song that soothes my soul right now. I needed to sit in silence with God and be filled by His presence.

I needed to seek light…in my own ways.

#ThursdayTreeLove | Simply Rest

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Rest

About the Image: I designed this image for Day 23 of Sheila’s 30-Day Creative Art Gathering (September 23, 2021). January has been trying [understatement], so as we head into the weekend I am heeding the scriptural counsel to simply rest.

I am joining Parul Thakur for #ThursdayTreeLove every second and fourth Thursday of the month. If you would like to play along, post a picture of a tree on your blog and link it back to her latest #treelove post.

#ThursdayTreeLove | Song for Autumn

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BW Tree

Don’t you imagine the leaves dream now
how comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of the air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees, especially those with
mossy hollows, are beginning to look for

the birds that will come–six, a dozen–to sleep
inside their bodies?

Mary Oliver, “Song for Autumn”

After this week’s rainy start, autumn graced us with sunny skies and cooler temperatures. Those of us who dwell in the Deep South appreciate the respite and the acknowledgment of the season, but we know in a matter of days—or even hours—we will be back to mid-summer heat and another season of storms.

I take three or four 5-15 minute walks throughout the workday. I walk to ruminate, to reset, and [especially] to move my body—which suffered much during the year and a half of Zoom. Lately, during my walks, I’ve been noting the subtle but sure transformation of the trees—the changing colors creeping into the dogwoods and maples, the thinning canopy of the black walnut and the oaks.

Today’s tree comes from one of my just-before-autumn walks. It’s not the most striking tree on campus, but there is something arresting in its stance against the cloud-filled sky.

We are some weeks away from the fullness of the season. We will blink one morning and find everything bursting in autumn glory and blink again and find only the bare structure of trees. This tree represents the in-between, a tree dreaming.  For once, I am appreciating the slow change, and not rushing toward the glory.

I am joining Parul Thakur for #ThursdayTreeLove every second and fourth Thursday of the month. If you would like to play along, post a picture of a tree on your blog and link it back to her latest #treelove post.

Let’s Make Lists: Seven Things to Remember When You’re Overwhelmed

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Sweet Girl

From Endless Dreams by Kim Anderson

We survived another week and made it to the weekend, y’all! Pat yourself on the back for not completely “losing it” during another week of life during a pandemic.

When I arrived at work Monday–by the hardest–I wasn’t sure if I had the strength to get to Friday. I thought about leaving work at 10 a.m. that day and starting over next week. There was nothing particularly challenging about Monday–or this week for that matter. It’s the weight of all the stuff we’re all carrying. I feel it. You feel it. Everybody’s feeling it, and we’re doing the best we can.

That we made it to today is a magnificent feat, so yes, applaud yourself and treat yourself to a big bowl of chocolate almond ice cream or whatever decadent treat your heart desires.

I had a different plan for today’s list, but since that list will take energy I do not have, I decided to postpone that post and close out the blog week with a list posted by Blessing Manifesting some days ago, “Seven Things to Remember When You’re Overwhelmed.”

  • You’re allowed to step back and take a break. (Yes, even when there is so much to do)
  • It’s okay to ask for help.
  • You can get through this.
  • You are more capable than you know.
  • Just take things one step at a time.
  • Don’t underestimate the power of closing your eyes and taking a deep breath. (I mean a really deep breath. The kind you feel moving through your whole body)
  • You don’t need to have everything figured out right now.

And now, I’m going to take Dominee’s advice and make a cup of tea and breathe.

Have a restful weekend.

About the Image: The adorable card above came from Rhonda R., one of my former students. It was given to me many moons ago, but I rediscovered it recently while organizing my “to be blogged” files. The image is from Endless Dream by Kim Anderson (pseudonym/brand name of Bertram Bahner). The collection features 100 [previously] unpublished photographs of children.

Dream Week | #ThursdayTreeLove and a Musing from My Younger Self

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Double Trees

Today was every bit as intense as I expected. It’s just after 9:30 p.m. in my part of the world, and I just completed my last work task for the day. As I reviewed today’s schedule last night, I knew I had to figure out something  for #ThursdayTreeLove. I had the tree, but what about my theme for the week? 

Happily, I remembered that I wrote some “dream” poems in my long-ago youth. I quickly scanned a couple of my notebooks and found three or four poems! Here’s one of them:

"Dream" [© Chandra Lynn]

Dream
	controls my thoughts, my actions;
	rules my day;
	eventually brings pain
Like
	an addictive drug,
	a world of fantasy,
	a smooth path,
Leading
	away from reality.





I was such a daydreamer back in the day, always preoccupied with my own musings and getting in trouble every now and then for not staying on task. I’d probably still spend my days in my fantasy worlds if it weren’t for pesky things like work and dishes.


I am pretty sure I wrote this poem as a creative writing assignment, but I don’t recall much more. For the life of me, I can’t remember what this type of poem is called. Google failed me. Can you help? 




About the Trees: The photo above (in black and white and color) features one of the black walnut trees on campus [donated by the Ecology Club in 2003]. I suppose, adults shouldn’t daydream their way through the workday, so I escaped to this tree for a few moments a couple of weeks ago.


I am joining Parul Thakur for #ThursdayTreeLove every second and fourth Thursday of the month. If you would like to play along, post a picture of a tree on your blog and link it back to her latest #treelove post.
					

		
		
			





			
				



	
	

					
Photo Inspiration | Immortality
			


	


				

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Immortality




About the Image: This photo features vintage postcards my Love Notes friend Fran B sent last year. I am in awe of the handwriting and the well-preserved ink (and postcards themselves) after so many decades. If you look closely at the postmarks, you can see the postcards were written and mailed in 1950, 1944, and 1909 (112 years ago!). I will eventually write a longer post about them, but for now, please enjoy the photo with an appropriate line from an Emily Dickinson letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson.