Party in the Back

Sometimes, drama happens where you least expect it.

As the day transitions to night, I often lift the curtain on my front door for a glimpse of the western sky as the sun sinks toward the horizon. But a fleeting glance at the sky as I put papers on the back porch surprised me.

Though the sky's nighttime fire drama is usually in the west, on that night, the show was happening in the east as the sun cast its backlight on thunderheads. I decided it was worth a drive down the road, but not before stopping to take a photo of the house lit with splashes of yellow and pink in a sea of blue.

Even by the time I was a quarter mile away, the sky was already changing and some of the vibrancy was disappearing as light tumbled from the sky.

By the time I reached my "sunrise tree," the colors had faded to those of an Impressionist artist.

My "sunrise tree" is often the star of early morning shots to the east. In its customary pose, it still provided a familiar landmark, even some 12 hours past its usual opening curtain.

Instead, it made a curtain call on the day. I drove a little further east down the road, turned and looked from a different perspective - toward the west. Examining things from new angles makes a lot of sense - whether you're talking photos or life, I think.

Sometimes, space gives us the best perspective of all.

Sky High

From my vantage point, a summer sky (July 13) provided a beautiful backdrop to my trip to deliver supper and shuffle vehicles from one field to the other.

But, on the other side of the storm, an EF-3 tornado was romping through a rural landscape much like my own, toppling power poles, upending trees like Tinkertoys and tearing a family's get-away cabin into pick-up-stick-like pieces.

While I waited for the guys to get to my end of the field for their taco pizza supper, I took a photo of a sky that reminded me of an alien mothership, hovering over a neighbor's soybean field. A county away, a farmer was losing his soybean field to 165 mile per hour winds.

We give great value to eyewitness accounts. We want reports from the people who are there, recording history as it happens.

But as I watch beautiful Kansas skies, I have come to a realization. Our eyewitness account often depends on what direction we're facing. Context colors our experience.

Our experience may be standing right under the storm cloud as life tosses us to and fro at a whim. Or we may view the storm from a distance and not personally witness its fury. 

Life is like that, too. Unless we are personally experiencing the storm, we don't understand its every nuance. If we're not the ones being struck by the "lightning" of the storm, we can't really speak to the experience.

We can be empathetic. We can be sympathetic. But maybe our best response is just to listen to the eyewitness, no matter how tempting it is to add our perspective.

Picture Perfect Harvest Scenes

Randy & I thought this looked like an illuminated cross.

When I was in fifth grade, my parents took the whole family on a Christmas break trip to California. It was quite an adventure for a little Kansas girl. Now, when I think about it as a parent, I marvel that Mom and Dad put four kids in a car - one a toddler - and drove us halfway across the country for this big adventure.

We visited Mickey Mouse. We dipped our toes in the Pacific Ocean for the first time. We experienced Sea World and the San Diego Zoo. We drove across the border into Mexico, where we were not permitted to eat or drink anything and almost starved to death. (OK, that's what my 11-year-old brain thought since we didn't get to eat lunch until mid-afternoon. This Midwestern farm girl grew up eating at 12 noon on the dot!)

And we went to the Tournament of Roses parade, where I took roll after roll of photos of the flower-bedazzled floats. The thing is: They were all in black and white. Through the years, it became the family joke. (In my parents' defense, it cost a lot more money to develop color film back then, and it's not exactly like I was fast becoming Annie Leibovitz or anything.)

So, when I was snapping away yesterday afternoon in the wheat field, I told Randy that we were going to have a reenactment of the Rose Parade. However, this time, I was shooting in color. Yes, I shot 102 photos from about 6:30 to 9 o'clock last night. Randy is grateful for the advent of digital photography.

But, in my defense, it was just so pretty. As I delivered meals to the harvest field, thunderheads were illuminated by the sun in the western sky. Ripe wheat provided a foreground. (Randy thought I could PhotoShop Jesus in the cross-shaped cloud, and it would look just like heaven. But, alas, again no Annie Leibovitz around here and no PhotoShop either.)

I rode the combine with Randy after the guys finished supper.

From the combine cab - HDR photo treatment

The sunset was no less spectacular than the views from the supper hour.

Taken from the combine steps

Like an old Western movie, Jake drove off into the sunset.

And I watched and waited as the sun set over a Kansas wheat field.

No Hollywood movie type could have arranged a more beautiful way to usher out the day.

At one point, it seemed the sun was balanced on the highline wire.

It was a great day: The guys were able to start cutting early. There were no breakdowns. (Knock on wood and turn around three times.) And I got some pretty stunning, non-black-and-white photos of this beautiful place we call home. Who needs a trip to Disneyland or the Rose Parade?

Shine On

A Time to Think

Let God's promises shine on your problems.
 –Corrie ten Boom, author
From a Guideposts email devotional

I'm leaving this morning to go to Wichita for the Great Plains Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. Beginning mid-morning and continuing through Saturday at noon, laity and clergy representatives from all UM Churches in Kansas and Nebraska will gather to worship, learn, conduct business and debate tough issues. I'm Stafford UMC's lay delegate to conference, and I've spent the last few weeks reading a 115-page workbook and pondering a bunch of supplemental materials.

Though the theme for this annual conference is "Through many, One," some of the issues we'll debate have the potential to be as destructive and divisive as a thunderstorm when it unleashes its fury on top of us.

Still, I hope to find beauty, too, in the worship services and in my interactions with others, and yes, even in listening to passionate people work through issues to find solutions pleasing to God.

Taken Tuesday, June 9

I leave behind wheat fields quickly transitioning toward harvest under a hot summer sun and blustery southern winds.

Taken Sunday, June 7, but the flash made the green show up more.

And  I pray the conference, too, will ultimately harvest a spirit of cooperation through the Son and the winds of the Holy Spirit. 

This video is more for me than any readers I have today. I may need to hear the rush of wind through the wheat stalks and listen to the birds singing while I'm in the big city. Home is my happy place.

I'm taking a hiatus from the blog while I'm in Wichita. See you next week, when we'll likely start harvest, if the weather cooperates.