Surveyors

Volunteers with the Portland Tree Inventory. (A one-shot blip, SOOC.)

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In appreciation of your kind comments and stars for my cloud shots, I offer this passage from my journal.


CLOUDS (07.31.2011, Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola)

I'm looking through the windows and glass door of the Pearl Bakery after the early service at Trinity Cathedral on a lovely cool bright midsummer morning. The sky is mostly clear blue, with a small cloud here and there.

I notice a cheerful little eiderdown puff sailing southeast just above the tall silvery glass condo building with the windmills on top. As it floats along the top of the building it sinks behind it as if playing peek-a-boo.

Although the trees at street level are motionless, the clouds are moving swiftly and I don't have to wait long before the puff reappears on the far side of the condos, no longer compact, beginning to attenuate.

As it travels, it elongates. Thin places form where the sky shows through. Before my eyes, like the Cheshire cat it evaporates until wisp by wisp it melts into the air, leaving flawless azure.

This is the day the Lord hath made.
Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

I'm eager to finish reading Richard Freeman's book "The Mirror of Yoga," which I've been studying and copying into my journal for four months. But I was so moved by the death of this little cloud, its transformation and transcendence, that I needed to honor its brief existence. I believe it pleases God when we notice and applaud the wonders of creation, especially those that are ephemeral and often pass without notice.

As if to thank me for my attention, from the perfect blue backdrop of sky behind the condos, another puff emerges and sails gaily by.