Prayer, reflection, and taking the time to consider. Prayer and reflection clarifies my priorities, while consideration helps me evaluate all that MIGHT matter for what really matters.

It is home and sustains us with familiar elements, smells, sensations, patterns, night-time views, and physical laws, wherever you go.

Today I’m feeling a bit bogged down by opportunity given my focusing on the deadlines inherent in those opportunities. Gratefully centered indeed is a much happier place to be. Will pivot a bit more toward gratitude to let a little more happiness shine in.

Indeed one thing I appreciate about photography is that when done right, a well conceived photograph accentuates what is extraordinary within the ordinary. I believe the difference between the two comes down to focus – with focus and attention, we see the extraordinary within the ordinary.

Time and opportunity. Often I get greedy and want more of both, but today, this moment, I have enough.

There is worldly success and real success. All real success is rooted in sincerity.

My elderly parents come to mind first – grateful for their continued health and presence now into their 80s. They are a key part of my personal history and offer a time-limited window into the foundational history that came before. Also with my children as their impressionable ages are also time-limited.

To be, appreciate, and share.

It is through nature that we receive all that we need to be sustained.

I am the infinite complexity that results from all that I work for, have been willing to fight for, have been willing to sacrifice to protect, all the struggles, disappointments, triumphs, failures, successes, and all the individuals and ideals to which I identify.

I was once close enough to a mortar blast to hear the whistling before impact – far enough to be safe, close enough to emerge all the more grateful!

It’s that place where my body, mind, and spirit find safety, nourishment, replenishment, and growth.

Centered, well and ready to get to work!

The opportunity to appreciate and learn from the rest of the natural world more fully – reflecting for a moment on the cicada path – lives 17 years underground to emerge from its shell and fly for a few months. Although I can’t put it succinctly quite yet, but surely there is a lesson there.

While I tend to compulsively pursue opportunity to metaphorically climb higher, I desperately try to avoid failure, creating a bit of unhealthy tension on most days. I suspect if I can allow myself to “fail” more I will come to know that in the good fight there is no failure.

Myself and the world are one and the same. I can’t ignore the world, while serving myself and I can’t ignore myself while serving the world. My deepest intent to serving the world is to nourish myself. Is that selfish or selfless? Indeed I see it as both. I’ll leave how I serve the world for a future reflection.

A completed task always bring forward such a sense of lightness and ease – no doubt related to the lifting of a perceived burden. But when I choose the right type of burden, the lightness and ease also comes with a sense of growth and satisfaction.

Today. With daily maturation, I am renewed and new every day. The day also with its infinite complexities is also new every day – new challenges and new opportunities with each passing moment. Today, I am acting on today’s opportunities and challenges for the first time.

Suspect it was for “impact” in many shapes and forms. It was a regular occurrence at that particular location in Afghanistan. That one just came particularly close.