Keren Dibbens-Wyatt's Blog, page 27

January 16, 2017

16. Snow

 


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I don’t know about you, but I can’t see snow coming down thickly without thinking of Narnia. It always fills me with a magical tingle. Mr Tumnus may be out there somewhere, walking through the trees, his umbrella hooked over one arm and tail over the other, with no idea of the adventure he is about to have. The air is thick with the sharp taste of possibilities and imagination.


Photo and text © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017


 


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Published on January 16, 2017 08:03

January 15, 2017

15. Connections

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Our first fortnight of The Eye of Horus is done. In it we have seen the value of connection in our contemplative seeing. Human beings have an inbuilt desire to connect, to relate, to make things into sense. I like to think this is a mirroring of the Lord bringing order out of chaos, brooding over the waters. We yearn to have order, purpose, belonging, connection.


We are psychologically disposed to see faces and find patterns in the most random seeming stimuli. The clever word for this is pareidoilia, if you like that sort of thing. Turns out it is normal to see faces in clouds, even if South-American Catholics sometimes get a bit over-excited when Jesus appears in their tomatoes, this is perfectly human, it’s how we are wired, to see patterns, to make a connection with the things around us. I drive my husband mad with the things I see in my toast, like the toast bunny above. I also have a photo of when Donald Trump appeared in my toast, but I won’t scare you with that.


So, in my contemplative poetic ramblings to go with the photographs, you will have seen me make reference to characters in books I’ve read, ascribe the shape of an arrow to a formation of water droplets in the atmosphere, be reminded of comedy songs by the roundness of a plate, and apply scriptures to the flight of a small bird. This is evidence that I am not only seeing what is there, but that I am sitting with what I see, and linking it to other thoughts and ideas as I ponder. This takes a little time, and adds layers of meaning to a seeing. It doesn’t follow, of course that all those thoughts are holy, but as we set our minds and especially our hearts more and more on God and his Word, the greater the likelihood we will find our contemplations wandering in his direction, learning to see and hear what creation is shouting out to us about our Maker.


In some ways, contemplating a piece of creation or a moment caught in a photograph is a bit like staring at a painting and seeing what it brings to you. Two of the most powerful ways we use connections like these are in the fields of memory and innovation. Both our processing of the past and our creating paths for the future come from our ability to make connections. Our very brains use pathways of synapses, neurons firing off one another in a chain reaction to create original thoughts and come up with ideas, likewise we reach down these pathways to recall and relive memories or to file them away.


As we make all these links in contemplation, we need to do so with an awareness of our processes, with an understanding that a lot of these things come to the surface from our subconscious, from our ways of seeing and interpreting the world around us. Our background, race, social standing, education, gender, prejudices etc. will come into play. Again, this is natural, but we do need to be honest with ourselves about our own cosmology and how these lenses affect what we see. Part of contemplation and its fruit is to challenge those very things, but we will come back to that later. For now, we are simply happy to “only connect.”


 


“Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its highest. Live in fragments no longer.” E. M. Forster, Howard’s End


 


The next fortnight or so we will be looking at seeing with a sense of wonder……


 


Photo and text © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017


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Published on January 15, 2017 07:44

January 14, 2017

14. Ladybird

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Easy to spot, the scarlet and the black, and your dots matching the tiny spores of mould we can’t quite reach to clean. I wonder what you are doing, coming to see us indoors. Perhaps you have come to read with us, like the ladybirds of my childhood, now being revisited, or perhaps you are the refugee from a house fire, or maybe this is simply a flying visit, and my Lady will pick up her skirts and petticoats, and remind us that even the round may have their assumption day.


Photo and text © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017


 


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Published on January 14, 2017 08:41

January 13, 2017

13. Plate

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Forever spinning in my mind, however still you seem, like the earth which stands so immovable and yet the world and Monty Python tell me is spinning at 900 miles an hour. That my stationary status is, at best, an illusion. But I like my flat and solid terra firma, and sometimes despise the force of gravity that would cause you to fly off your handle and smash, even though I paradoxically know at the same time, it is exactly what stops me from doing the same.


Photo and text © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017


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Published on January 13, 2017 11:38

January 12, 2017

12. Curtains

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Caramel light pools in the room in spots and puddles, as though the palest honey were dripping through from the other side. I see always your sweetness, and its being given me to taste, and see that it is good. Behind the divide, I hear the faint buzzing of the work that brought it to me, and am grateful.


Photo and text © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017


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Published on January 12, 2017 11:24

January 11, 2017

11. Little Bird

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Seeing you there, sat tight in the branches, unaware of my eyeline, or of the creator, watching your every swoop, feeling each tiny beat of the seed-small heart in your brown feathered breast, I wonder. Am I really worth more than you? My heart swells with love even as yours does with song, soft and sweet. Despite your muted markings, you seem like a pearl of great price to me, lost in a maze of kelpish magnolia branches, and at the moment of sight, I’d willingly sell all to keep it.


Photo and text © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017


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Published on January 11, 2017 09:17

January 10, 2017

10. Sundog

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Worshipped if we turn two letters around, and see you as false gods, as you are false suns, rainbow reflections in crystals of ice. Better as the glimpsing of haloes, the side panels of the sky’s dressing table mirror, each image calling back to one before. Or maybe Anne’s Gog and Magog, hounds of hell now sanctified and guarding heaven’s hearth.  Bright eternal wedding bands, frozen spectrums, and a sign of ancient vows, as well as proof that even light can be fractured, and that angels do have wings.


Photo and text © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017


 


 


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Published on January 10, 2017 09:15

January 9, 2017

9. Reach

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Striving, yearning for the touch of sky, aching with blue. We all desire to be heavy with colour, and climb towards it. But to grow is the journey, and pushing will only make our stems weaker, and our leaves unhappy with their slow un-blue greening. Let the river of sap make its own way, and pay no attention to those who worry about vertigo; for it is just as good to look down as it is up, soil and sky, earth and heaven are sisters to our souls.


Photo and text © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017


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Published on January 09, 2017 09:12

January 8, 2017

8. In Flight

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A world turned upside down, for you the work of moments, for us a lifetime’s wisdom. That everything can become other in a split second, or turned “right” way up again as swiftly. That it doesn’t matter which or why, only that we fly. That balletic grace is given even to the smallest, dullest wings.


Photo and text © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017


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Published on January 08, 2017 09:08

January 7, 2017

7. Tinsel

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Glistering parade of gaudy gold fit only for fools like me, who care simply to see the sparkles as the worth. The light and its source are where the treasure lies, not in who reflects it in the softest yellow, locked in a dark Fort oblivious to knocks.


Photo and text © Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2017


 


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Published on January 07, 2017 08:06