September 2024

Flowers from Inglewood and Torrance

• Urban Wilderness Lectionary Project – September 2024

• I've little to report for September, the month that's traditionally been my main New Year because that's when we returned to school back in the day.

• You may have noticed I'm continuing to blog some of my best and favorite art from both near and distant pasts.. Having separate blogs and websites for different endeavors was logical, and for sure I'll keep my professional design and music pages. But with this website's subtitle Theology • Ecology • Liturgy • Life; what could be more theology-, ecology-, and liturgy-enhancing, more life-giving than the colors, patterns, pictures, paintings, and designs I've been doing since the dawn of time?

• Please stay tuned for my October rundown. Thanks!

Simple Farm

Farm Scene Blues

Sky Horizon

Several times I've blogged and used elsewhere both whole and snippets of this Sky Horizon in different versions; here it is by itself.

Kitteh Love

Desert Sun

Desert Moon

Afternoon Fog

In Winters Past

The Winter's Passed – Rhapsody for Oboe – by Wayne Barlow inspired this illustration of Winter Still Here. The music description says it expresses the joy of winter ending!

There are some beautiful performances on YouTube; I quit linking to YT because so many vids are here today, gone tomorrow.

Cat Yard

Delights USA 20

• Delights USA 20 •

Five Minute Friday :: Advantage

• Salad from unsplash

• Five Minute Friday :: Advantage Linkup

Advantage flea and tick medicine. Advantage credit card. The advantage of greater height, of speaking the language—different things are advantageous at different times in different places. A trait that's an advantage in some settings sometimes becomes a disadvantage in others. Tall in height? Can't get into that small space.

Since last winter I've been doing a kind of gap half or three-quarters of a year. Time to breathe, to reflect on the pasts, to dream of some futures. To live a clean break from years that – of course – I learned from and took advantage of, but that I need to admit were altogether far less than I was worth and worthy of. Particularly related to that intentional interval between what was and what will be, at the end of most days I thank God for the gifts of that day. Most of those turn out to have given me an advantage, sometimes over other people(!), often an advantage over my previous self.

In either intro cultural anthropology or anthropology of religion (both were with same wonderful professor) we studied The Ritual Process by Victor Turner. People sometimes refer to almost any inbetween as a liminal time (and in some ways almost any inbetween does position us on the limen or threshold), but in a ritual and liturgical sense, liminality isn't simply an undefined interval; it's an intentional opportunity to be stripped of dysfunctional and unneeded aspects of how I was and who I was before, an emptying that prepares me to take on ways of being that relate to the next chapter. You are a different person after the liminal time than you were before it: you've been undone and you get redone!

This is a free write, so I'll continue by mentioning the early church demonstrated our identity before baptism and afterwards in a far more dramatic way than even most contemporary churches do at the Easter Vigil. Still, although the length of the liminal liturgical interval is brief, baptism is an excellent illustration. FMF host Kate wrote about the advantage of hope Christians possess; baptism bathes us in the hope of Jesus Christ's death and resurrection. How's that for an advantage?

About my header image: we have the advantage of cost-free photographs with legal reuse rights. And I have the advantage of love, love, loving salads! So much that I want to illustrate almost everything I write with a salad.

# # #

Nebraska Sun

Farm Scene

Helion

• Helion History

World Rhino Day

• World Rhino Day Website

• I drew this Rhino at the San Diego Zoo.

Sun Tree Music Summer 2024

Sun Tree Music Summer 2024

• Wednesdays
12:15 - 1:00
• August 2024
• City Delights Plaza
• In the CBD

another day on the bay

1 breaking day
2 singing rivers
3 along the coastline
4 invoice blues
5 molto adagio
6 pasteboard extras
7 blue ribbon winner
8 line dancing
9 beach trip
10 breaking bread together
11 nightfall
12 nightshift
13 daybreak

Five Minute Friday :: Matter

• Five Minute Friday :: Matter Linkup

Matter has substance. Matter is of concern and import. Matter has weight and density. Matter has influence. Any physical matter, any relational matter, any matter of any kind has heart. Matter comprises Creation

The heart of the matter is an interdependent creation.

Heart of the matter is keeping covenant together. Meeting the demands of the commands; grace and forgiveness when we don't.

Forgiveness is the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is forgiveness.


• Written by Don Henley, J.D. Souther, and Mike Campbell, "The Heart of the Matter" was a major Don Henley hit.

I got the call today, I didn't wanna hear
But I knew that it would come

I'm learning to live without you now
But I miss you sometimes
The more I know, the less I understand
All the things I thought I knew, I'm learning again
I've been tryin' to get down to the heart of the matter
But my will gets weak
And my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think it's about forgiveness
Forgiveness
Even if, even if you don't love me anymore

These times are so uncertain
There's a yearning undefined
People filled with rage
We all need a little tenderness
How can love survive in such a graceless age
The trust and self-assurance that lead to happiness
They're the very things we kill, I guess

And my friends seem to scatter
But I think it's about forgiveness
Forgiveness
Even if, even if you don't love me anymore

I've been tryin' to get down to the heart of the matter
Because the flesh will get weak
And the ashes will scatter
So I'm thinkin' about forgiveness
Forgiveness
Even if, even if you don't love me anymore

The heart of the matter is keeping covenant together. Meeting the demands of the commands; grace and forgiveness when we don't.

Forgiveness is the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is forgiveness. The heart of the gospel is forgiveness.

# # #
• Stained Glass heart is from the extraordinary windows that face the street at the now disbanded First Church, Glendale, California. Judicatory offices are in the building, and they use the downstairs space for worship.

• Heart cutouts are from students at the (now relocated) day school that was on the same campus.

Sun Country Tulips

Sun Country Living • Naturals & Botanicals

Victoriana

Dwelling Place, Living Space!

• Dwelling Place, Living Space!
• Life. Style.
• @suntreeriverdesign.com

Sun Birds

Lavender Birds

Fish Swim

Malibu East :: August

• City Delights 11
• Delights USA 22
• Summer in America 16

Malibu East :: July

• City Delights 11
• Delights USA 22
• Summer in America 16

Malibu East :: June

• City Delights 11
• Delights USA 22
• Summer in America 16

Malibu East :: May

• City Delights 11
• Delights USA 22
• Summer in America 16

City Left Behind

The City as Left Behind
Delights USA 5
Summer in America 3

Apple Pie

Five Minute Friday :: Preserve

• Five Minute Friday :: Preserve Linkup

In life events, in eats, in seasons of all kinds, I relish bittersweet. But… as summer subsides, as winter readies to roll in, it's all bitter without a hint of sweetness.

Summer has a reputation for long warm days, casual clothing, informal socializing, and – best of all – garden glory with bright flowers (of course), but even more, peaches, blackberries, strawberries, corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, along with a literal plethora of sunkissed leafy greens—O, my heart!

Summer's waning days bring a knot to my gut.

How can I preserve summer not only in memories, not just in pictures or words on a page, but keep and preserve estival delights in physical, earthbound form?

It's almost mid-September. Winter awaits us (or we wait for winter) in the global north. Summer soon will depart, but there's something we can do to preserve summer's sunny bliss.

You can preserve some glorious fruit as actual "preserves!" Do it yourself, buy some at the farmer's market or the grocery store. Gift jars to everyone you know.

When days get shorter [nights longer], summer will be there with you. See smell taste the berries, the preserves. See smell taste saved preserved summer!

The sweet is back!

And in those preserves, trust the promise of another summer when winter's gone.

# # #
• Strawberry Preserves by Bicanski
• Chocolate Cream Cake with Berry Preserves by Couleur

911 23 Years

One World Trade Center – 1 WTC – with reuse rights by Ken Lund on Flickr.
The photographer included some history from wikipedia.

Where were you then? Where are you now?

I couldn't say anything any better than I did for WTC year twenty-two in 2023.

Municipal and liturgical observances have dwindled, but I was heartened to see 911 hashtags trending on Twitter as well as some tweets outside of Critter Twitter that's my main reason for being there.

Where were you then? Where are you now? How are you now?


We are afflicted in every way but not crushed,
perplexed but not driven to despair,
persecuted but not forsaken,
struck down but not destroyed,
always carrying around in the body the death of Jesus,
so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.

2 Corinthians 4:8-10

World Trade Center Transportation Hub by Ken Lund on Flickr

Summer Morning