Keeping the Faith

(Plus see my note at the bottom about my gratitude giveaway!)

I keep seeing references to 2020 being like the movie “Groundhog Day” and I can relate. My sunrise experience the the last three months has been a lot like that - lots of clear, cloudless skies or completely overcast skies, week after week, day after day without the more glorious experiences I previously took a little for granted.

Thinking about that movie and in particular about his escape from the Groundhog Day repetition, I keep thinking of “The Fool” card in Tarot. (Note to readers, I am NOT in any way an expert in Tarot, what follows here is just my musing about what being “The Fool” means to me.) I’ve drawn “The Fool” card A LOT so I’ve had many chances to ponder the sense of innocence, of beginning again and of believing that the next time around may not look like the time before. In the movie he begins to explore, to tinker, to try new things and in the end the outcome changes - we really never know why.

Yesterday I woke to solid cloud cover outside my window. Part of me wanted to go back to sleep reasoning it was a weekend (busier at the lake), it was cloudy and windy (double whammy to good photo opportunities) and I was just plain tired. Fortunately for me, my head doesn’t really run the show and my body was urging me to get in the car even as my mental calculation was deeming it to be less than optimal.

By the time I got to the lake it looked like this and I knew there was a glimmer of hope:

Can you see it? That tiny slit letting the light through near the horizon, but just in the right spot, the tiny bit of pink and red very faintly showing up in the clouds above? That’s the color of hope when you are looking to photograph the sunrise.

I sat down on the shore in the dark and listened. A large flock of snow geese was somewhere out in the middle of the lake. I couldn’t see them but I could hear them clearly. I listened and I waited. One little pied-billed grebe came by and a group of American Coots was diving for green slime under the water down the shoreline a bit.

About twenty minute later it started, one little ray of gold and red, growing and expanding, like music starting to accelerate and grow in volume:

Then with the crescendo three minutes later like this:

It lasted another two or three minutes and then it faded away as the sun disappeared behind the clouds, but it was there and I was there to witness it.

Though the snow geese left before the light came up, both eagles came gave me a fly-by and there were loads of ducks on the lake. More buffleheads and canvasbacks than I have ever seen (though not close enough to photograph).

It seems to me that faith is believing in the possibility that what comes next may not be what has come before, that this moment is not the same as the last one and that somehow there is always the possibility grace may intervene. If there’s one thing I should have learned over the last eight years it’s that there is always hope and glorious surprises do happen.

The state of our country looks a little like that dark, cloudy, windy morning and yet there is a slit on the horizon. There is an opening for beauty and grace and just enough of a glimmer to give hope and faith a toehold within me. I’m hoping for that glorious sunrise and hoping it comes soon.

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I’m offering a gratitude giveaway for Thanksgiving on my Facebook page, but I know some of you aren’t on Facebook so you can also enter here! On Friday, 11/27 at (roughly but not before) noon I will select one person from the comments on Facebook and here on this Substack post. That person will receive an 8x10 print of one of my photos on canvas, shipped directly to them or a digital download of a photo they can print however they choose. Two other lucky winners will receive a digital download. Three chances to win!

To enter, all you have to do is comment on this post with either a link to a specific photo from one of my social media pages OR a category of photo you prefer (e.g. sunrise, foggy sunrise, bird, owl, blue heron, eagle, etc.). If the winner chooses a category, I will intuitively pick a photo to print/download.