Monthly Archives: March 2014

Tom's Photos

A Dancer’s Focus

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Canon EOS 6D f/5.6 1/320 ISO12800
Canon EOS 6D f/5.6 1/320 ISO12800

I love dance, and I am awestruck by the beauty of dancers and their art. In fact, you’ll see a theme of dance in the artwork around our home. One of the things that struck me this past Saturday night was the focus that dancers have to maintain. It’s similar to the focus required of actors on stage. In fact, the few times I saw dancers break focus that night stand out in my memory because they were so glaringly obvious and so clearly detracted from the performance when they happened.

This is one of the photos I shot of Megan that night and I loved the way it captured her focus at the end of one of the team’s routines. I then reworked it with Apple’s Aperture software (which I received as a gift this past Christmas and which I’m still trying to learn). I thought black and white gave the picture more of a timeless quality. I also love the way the light in the background swirls around and above her creates an almost halo-like effect . I decided to give it a bit of a green hue in homage to the school’s colors.

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Chapter-a-Day

Starry Thoughts

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DM Register Man Walks on MoonHe determines the number of the stars
    and calls them each by name.
Psalm 147:4 (NIV)

I was a child of the Apollo missions. Born in 1966, I was a toddler when Apollo 11 landed man on the moon and came to age at a time when being an astronaut was top on every boy’s list of what he wanted to be when he grew up. In fact, the front page of the Des Moines Register from July 21, 1969 is framed and hangs in the hallway just outside my office.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve alway had a fascination with the stars. As a child I loved it each year when the family would vacation in the boundary waters of northern Minnesota far from the lights of the city. I would sit with friends on the end of the dock at night and stare up at more stars than I’d seen in my entire life, occasionally to the eery glow of the Northern Lights. Even last week as Wendy and I cruised the Caribbean we spent part of each evening out on the verandah looking up at the stars and marveling at immensity of God’s creation.

It became news last week that scientists have discovered a host of new planets, a handful of which they believe to have similar life-sustaining properties as our Earth. I thought about that this morning as I read the lyrics of Psalm 147 and the thought of our Creator God knowing each star by name. Whenever I contemplate the enormity of the expanding universe I find myself feeling very small and insignificant. It helps to remember that not only does God know all of the stars by name, but Jesus said even the number of hairs on our head are known (of course, in my case, God spends less mental energy on that number as time goes on!).

This morning I find my heart humming the words of a modern psalm: “God’s eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me.”

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Theatre Journal, Wayfarer's Journal

An Honored Role

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This past Saturday night I had the fun and privilege of participating in a father/daughter dance with my friend Megan for the third straight year. Megan and her family became our friends through theatre. In 2006 when Wendy directed The Christmas Post, a young Megan was on stage with her mother and brother, and her dad was the show’s accompanist. Back in the spring of 2010, Megan’s dad passed away and it happened that she was, at that time, capably playing the role of my character’s daughter in the show K.O.L.D. Radio, Whitefish Bay.

Megan joined the PHS dance team, Forte’, when she got to high school and at the team’s annual home performance the girls always do a dance with their dads. It’s been my honor to be asked to play the role of her honorary dad each year. Talk about dancing with the stars 🙂

Thanks to Wendy for her exemplary job behind the camera!

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Chapter-a-Day

Meditation Contemplation

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IMG_3474…and I will meditate on your wonderful works.
Psalm 145:5b (NIV)

Meditate (med-i-teyt) v. to engage in thought or contemplation; to reflect.

Wendy and I have a great relationship, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t irritations with one another. You learn things about yourself in marriage as you, with all your unique quirks and foibles, enter into a 24/7/365 living arrangement with another person who has their own unique quirks and foibles.

One of the things I’ve learned about myself through Wendy’s irritation is that I have a penchant of getting so engaged in thought or contemplation about something that I virtually shut out the world around me. This happened again yesterday morning before we headed to worship. I was on the computer and engaged in a task. The computer was not working and I was myopically focused, angry expletives flying hither and thither, on successfully shutting down a rogue application that was freezing my computer. Apparently Wendy asked me multiple times about the problem I was having. She was just a few feet away, but I didn’t hear her and it had little or nothing to do with my hearing issues. I was so deeply focused on my computer issue that I shut everything else out around me.

I thought about that little incident this morning as I read of David’s commitment to meditate on God’s wonderful works in Psalm 145. The discipline of focusing our mental energy and spending time in reflection is ultimately a good thing. The real question is the object of our meditation. Where do we concentrate our thoughts? What do we think about in the privacy of our heart and brain? Upon what do we reflect? I can easily lose myself in meditation upon silly things but often give less energy to meditation on eternal things.

This morning as I head out into a new work week, I’m contemplating my meditation and committing myself to be more aware of how I’m spending my mental energy. My goal this week is to engage more in reflection on worthy things and catch myself before I get too focused on things that ultimately don’t matter.

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