Swan Diving Tips

(Small watercolor study)

Summer time is fast approaching, bringing the sounds of splashes as divers of all ages jump off rocks or diving boards into deep water under the warm sun.  A significant comparison exists between an actual swan diving and a human performing a swan dive. If you've seen swans dive, all that occurs is their rear end raises up above water while their upper body disappears below the water surface.  A bit inelegant for such a beautiful bird.  But if you've watched Olympic divers executing breath-taking maneuvers and flawless entries into the water, you see a display of finesse, art, power, and supreme focus.  

For most of us, bobbing along with our heads under water and all else above is not in the category of difficult.  But when you witness the flawless execution of Olympic perfection in the human body, you are seeing a combination of certain elements that enable such beauty in form and movement.

What are those key elements?  They are persistence, practice, perfecting the fundamentals, keen awareness, and staying focused. Then those elements are repeated over and over again.  These key elements are not only necessary for an Olympic diver doing the swan dive, but for any one of us who desires to develop our lives in a flourishing trajectory that makes a difference for ourselves and others.

So step off that diving board or edge of the cliff.  Take a deep breath. And dive.  Again and again and again.  With persistence, improvement, awareness, and focus.  

          

The Apostle Paul encourages us to "Give your complete attention to these matters. Throw yourself into your tasks so that everyone will see your progress."  To "throw yourself" entails being in these things, practicing, advancing, growing, and exercising yourself in your tasks.  It is to be devoted and absorbed in them.  Beauty and grace will adorn your life, like an elegantly executed swan dive!

Live bravely and beautifully!

Exquisite and Precarious

"North Cascades"

9" x 12"

Watercolor study

On any given ordinary day, we get up, get ready for work, check cell phones and schedules, put the key in the ignition, and go about our daily lives per as usual.  All the while incredible works are going on without our thought or involvement.  The planets keep orbiting in precise alignment, our hearts beat, and all nature keeps up its intricate balance and activities.  

The Roman statesman and philosopher, Seneca, commented on all this phenomena:

"This swift revolution of the heavens, being ruled by eternal law, goes on unhindered,  producing so many things on land and sea, so many brilliant lights in the sky all shining in fixed array....Even the phenomena which seem irregular and undetermined---I mean showers and clouds, the stroke of crashing thunderbolts and the fires that belch from the riven peaks of mountains, tremors of the quaking ground....these, no matter how suddenly they occur, do not happen without reason."

(Scottsbluff, NE)

As huge and complicated as this universe may seem, it goes on with a regularity and order. When you stop to ponder this, it is truly amazing!  Biochemist Michael Denton observed:

"Earth's location, its size, its composition, its structure, its atmosphere, its temperature, its internal dynamics, and its many intricate cycles that are essential to life-----the carbon cycle, the oxygen cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the phosphorus cycle, the sulfur cycle, the calcium cycle, the sodium cycle, and so on----testify to the degree to which our planet is exquisitely and precariously balanced."

(Tetons, WY)

Don't let the mundane, everyday plod of life diminish your awe and wonder at the beautiful and magnificent created world in which we are privileged to spend another day.  Notice and keep on looking for those moments and details that can awaken you to the grandness and beauty of life!  

"For the LORD is God, 

and He created the heavens and earth

and put everything in place.

He made the world to be lived in,

not to be a place of empty chaos.

'I am the LORD,' He says,

'and there is no other.' "

---Isaiah 45:18

Here's poetic challenge to that end from a stanza in William Blake's Auguries of Innocence:

To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower, 

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.

Live bravely and beautifully!

Patience or The Gentle Art of Fishing

"Jacob's Joy"

(Small watercolor study)

Patience is one of the hardest virtues for us to develop.  We want what we want when we want it...which is yesterday!  Our selfish predisposition finds it very trying to have to wait, continue to wait, and then wait even longer.  We don't like "hurry up and wait" situations. But time is one of the important ingredients in so many things...the aging of wine, cheese, growth of trees, gardens, and crops.  Time has the element of development in it.  The process is essential to the product or outcome. 

The sport of fishing provides opportunity for exercising patience.  You don't usually bait your hook, cast the line, and then immediately reel in the catch of the day.  Lots of factors go into a successful catch....time of day, weather, type of fish, type of insects hatching out, the type of rod and reel, color and size of lures, etc.  Fish don't plan on getting caught, so you have to be one step ahead of them in figuring out their habits and actions.  You often have to cast again and again before that successful setting of the hook and hauling in your desired catch. Many times there can be an ensuing fight from that fish that will wear you down until that creature finally ends up in your frying pan.

The daughter of Henry van Dyke, former Princeton professor, pastor and ambassador to Luxembourg, wrote this loving memory of fishing with her father:

"The best times of all, were the summer months when we left the hot, dusty city and went down to the little white cottage on the south shore of Long Island.  Here he first taught us the gentle art of fishing, and how well I remember the morning he spent showing us how to catch the minnows for bait in a mosquito net (for catching bait was always part of the game) and then how he stood with us for hours on the high drawbridge cross the channel, showing us the easy little twitch of the wrist that hooks the fish and how to take him off the hook and save the bait."

Fishing takes patience and so does life.  It demands that you show up to the page, the easel, the instrument, the gym or wherever you need to be to practice and work on your passion, to "move the ball" ahead in your life.  Stay in the chase.  Little by little progress is achieved.  

Here's a poem on time by Henry Van Dyke:

Time is

Too slow for those who Wait,

Too swift for those who Fear,

Too long for those who Grieve,

Too short for those who Rejoice;

But for those who Love

Time is

Eternity.

Live bravely and beautifully!

Intoxicating May and WW2

Lilac Intoxication

(Small watercolor study)

Lilac Air

"A cloud of intoxication

slowing our steps

or mine at least

gathering in the nectar

breathing springtime in

The white and purple

different shades of scents

matching somehow the colors

richly, urgently calling me

to linger in the dew of fragrance

falling down on me

---Raymond A. Foss

What a welcome month May is for many of us!  The cold winter spell is broken and the earth is bursting out of it's wintry seams with all manner of growth and fragrance.  Newness of all things is in the air. Birds are chirping, singing out their arias with exuberance.  Baby calves are staggering on wobbly legs.  Plows open up fields of rich, dark earth.  School teachers and children alike count the days to the school year's end.  All this continues in spite of the world's nightly dismal news of nuclear threats and nations in turmoil.  

(Small watercolor study)

My first memory of lilacs comes from a walk with my grandmother who happened to be visiting from far away.  She encouraged my five year old self to stop and inhale the rich fragrance of some lilac bushes along the sidewalk we were walking.  That moment has lasted all through the years in my childhood memories.  She had personally experienced the horrors of war in other parts of the world.  She had suffered loss of her husband and young baby sons.  Her ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat in WW2 and she endured 3 1/2 weeks lost at sea on a small, crowded life raft for 3 1/2 weeks on the Atlantic ocean.  But through it all she kept a strong faith in her God.  She didn't grow bitter and lose life's joy.  I look on her life as fragrant...like the lilacs we walked by that one May evening in a small town in western South Dakota.  My grandmother's example has encouraged me to appreciate the fragrance in living in spite of adversity and sorrow...to trust in the all-wise and loving God who someday will right all that is wrong with our world.

Live bravely and beautifully!