Summer & August 2023

1. Pomegranate Fruit: August 7th
2. National Night Out Neighbor's Tree: August 1st
3. Hibiscus Flower: August 14th


• This month I'm relying a lot on google photo collages

• June 2023 Summary

• July 2023 Summary

• Urban Wilderness-City Paradise Lectionary Blog for August

• Tuesday 01 August National Night Out, "A national community-building campaign that promotes police-community partnership" on the first Tuesday in August every year. Since 1984! These pictures are from the host neighbor's lovely back yard.

• First Full Sturgeon Moon of August was a Supermoon on Tuesday the 1st

• Mid-August Hibiscus splash

• Pomegranate progression from May through August!

• The second Sturgeon Full Supermoon happened on Wednesday 30 August, making it a rare Blue Moon. Earth Sky explains, "Look for the bright, round moon in the east shortly after sunset on August 30, 2023. It'll be highest in the sky around midnight. And it'll be low in the west before sunrise on August 31."

• Other names for August's full moon include Red, Corn, Green Corn, Barley, Herb, Grain, and Dog Moon. The 40 Dog Days of summer began July 3rd and extended through August 11th.

Five Minute Friday :: Replace

• Five Minute Friday :: Replace Linkup

Reuse, recycle, restore, replace?

As time goes on, some things get replaced, including clothes and household stuff you outgrow (physically and in terms of style) and those that plain wear out (physically and in terms of style).

Ideas sometimes need replacing. Convictions of a flat earth. Belief in your own infallibility. Toxic theologies of convenience. Mistaken fears of a wrathful god.

During the organic process of becoming, a butterfly replaces her cocoon with flight- and photo-worthy beauty. A plant replaces lovely flowers with ripe fruit. An artist, scholar, or baker replaces budding attempts at production with expertly finished projects.

But some things don't need replacing. A chipped cracked dish in a color and design that still makes your heart sing, but you have similar safely usable ones. A once necessary fence that has rotted and (surprise!) symbolizes the fact your garden borders and family boundaries have grown.

How about our own previous circumstances we hanker after, yet we haven't yet allowed God's transformative replacement happen in our current time and place? Kintsugi replaces cracked and chipped with unique newness. How much more wondrous is God's recreative replacement?

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Five Minute Friday :: Moment

• Five Minute Friday :: Moment Linkup

"Moment" carries the sense of a brief slice of time, maybe so short you can't clock it, possibly longer, yet still fleeting in human terms.

I love photographing creation's bounty, creation's moods, creation's momentary splendors. Since last spring I've captured pomegranates from flower through (almost) ripe, ready to savor mature fruit. As my header group shows, I've also been marveling at peaches and plums.

At any time of the year or time of a day I walk along the urban chain link fence that's part of the perimeter that needs to be secured at the end of a day, my viewing angle changes, light and shadows relocate and recolor their subjects. Although I particularly love early morning's feeling of expectation and late afternoon's of fulfillment, the quality of the light and the shadows at those moments of a day hold magical enchantment.

Isn't it astonishing that each moment is different as we follow a plant, flower, fruit, person, or idea? Not only is every increment along their timelines a bit different, every one appears different from each place in space we view them from. That's why every visual artist, every wordsmith, and every photographer brings the world a unique vision.

What moments do you especially love to photograph, paint, sketch, draw, or write about? When we participate in a Five Minute Friday we capture a moment in time—think about it!

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Five Minute Friday :: Leave

Departure platform and train tracks at Union Station, Los Angeles
• Five Minute Friday :: Leave Linkup

"Leave" is another prompt that can go in more directions than the conveyances we board to take leave. And hey, remember, we get only approximately five minutes to have our say. Our host Kate wrote beautifully about leaving her late mother behind and leaving her daughter at school—decades apart. What's in my heart?

Leave evokes a location or situation we depart for an already scheduled new one or maybe trusting God's Providence on the next venture because the current one no longer holds substance or promise. I've tried, I've cried, I've hoped, I've petitioned heaven. I've done everything possible to change myself and to view the context from a different perspective. It's all no go.

There are lyrical and literary traditions of taking leave temporarily or forever of places, of persons, of pasts. What vehicle carries us away from here to landing there? I can't place its silhouette, but I identify with Kate's airplane illustration. Planes are a frequent option, as are passenger cars, city buses, interstate buses, and, of course, trains. Back in the greater Boston area I took more than a few dozen commuter rail trips. I've sort of enjoyed a couple of longish roundtrip Amtrak journeys, and the ocean view stretch of Pacific Surfliner between San Diego and Los Angeles approaches the definition of magical. BTW, my footer image above Kate's is a tiled bench overlooking the Pacific outside the San Diego Santa Fe train station.

The passenger train long has been the American icon of adventure and departure. An icon of romance between persons, romance between a person and a place. There are elaborately embroidered legends and documented histories about trains.

But why am I fantasizing about leaving and trains? Because I'm seriously considering taking leave of where I am on a train, on a plane, a passenger car, an intercity bus. And why? Because I want to arrive at that next place.
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Five Minute Friday :: Watch

• Five Minute Friday :: Watch Linkup

Patterned after the church's liturgical practice of praying the canonical hours but in remembrance and anticipation of Easter dawn, there's a tradition of Morning Watch. The fourth and last segment of the night watch – the morning watch – happens from 3-6 a.m.. During this final watch of the night, darkness gently eases into the quiet early light of Easter dawn and God's Glory softly splashes over all creation.

This week my weekly lectionary-based scripture blog was feeding five thousand in Matthew 14:13-21 at "a deserted place, and the hour is now late." (Matthew 14:15) As time unwinds, sunlight retreats, evidence of civilization and active population wanes, we humans tend to assume declining hope, maybe immanent death. We typically hope, watch, and wait for new life on sunny days at centers where people interact, create community, do commerce, and generally demonstrate evidence of life. After all, our active watching has shown that's frequently the case.

Think back to your own experience and check out the witness of scripture. In all four gospel narratives, the very large and very hungry crowd of 5,000+ got fed so fully there were leftovers—completely unheard of for poorer people in that place and time! A beyond bountiful, life-restoring meal even happened as night descended, and while they still were in the desolate place they'd followed Jesus to.

A verse I often return to reminds us watching for daylight and established activity in order to welcome new life and new beginnings isn't always necessary:

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb. John 20:1

Our morning watch happens whatever the time of day, season of life, wherever we are, in whatever circumstance. Let's expect resurrection!

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