For the Coffee Table Book – Issue #9

Work is love made visible…

You work that you may keep peace with the earth and the soul of the earth.

And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret…

And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself and to one another, and to God.

Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.
And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.

-Excerpts from The Prophet, Khalil Gibran

A vegetable farmer in Mantalongon, Dalaguete is shown going down the heights of Osmeña Peak.

Pencils…

Of all the writing instruments, none is more profound than the pencil.

If one is not satisfied with the form, slant or curve of the characters laid down on paper, one could always begin anew. Erasing those graphite marks is not a problem.

With the recent advances in pencil technology, we see different lead classifications: HB, 1H until 8H, 1, 2, 3, etc… Then, we have the mechanical pencils. I just wonder why the erasers of these mechanical types suck… So I stick with the old faithful eraser bar. And these mechanical pencils always require a batch of refills. Who knows when those fine leads will run out, or even break?

So it is with life… We write the scripts of our lives. In aspects where we want to have a different scenario, we could always erase the script, and begin anew. Just like the pencil types, we approach life in many different ways as we go through the different stages, as we face different situations.

The old eraser is just like the faith we cling into, graces that heaven outpours, and Love unlimited. We may have different formulas but faith always assures us, graces always fill us and Love always cleans us and allows a new sheet for us to again write on.

We must always have the zest and perseverance with our struggles. As such, we need extra helpings of hope from people around us for us to always have that reload of zest and encouragement. No matter how rough the course (even if sometimes we succumb and break) as long as we have hope, like the mechanical pencils, we would always have reloads and refills.

We are all called to erase those unwanted scenes and terms in our script. We may have used ink in our writings in the past. No worries! All we need are clean sheets of paper. Begin anew. And this time make sure to use pencils…

(originally scribbled on 22 Dec 2006)

Miss N, I will send something for you soon…

Back to the River

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
- Psalm 23:1,2

We come and go just like ripples in a stream.
- John V. Politis

 

Many a calm river begins as a turbulent waterfall, yet none hurtles and foams all the way to the sea.
- Mikhail Lermontov

Leisure is a form of silence, not noiselessness. It is the silence of contemplation such as occurs when we let our minds rest on a rosebud, a child at play, a Divine mystery, or a waterfall.
- Fulton J. Sheen

Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.
- Luke 12:27

Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining,
Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day,
Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining,
Buds that open only to decay…
- Flowers, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The artist is the confidant of nature, flowers carry on dialogues with him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously tinted nuances of their blossoms, every flower has a cordial word which nature directs towards him.
- Auguste Rodin

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.
- All Things Bright and Beautiful, Cecil F. Alexander

Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside.
- Honore De Balzac

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
- Henry David Thoreau

Men are like trees: each one must put forth the leaf that is created in him.
- Henry Ward Beecher

However far the stream flows, it never forgets its source.
- Nigerian Proverb

It has been quite some time since we have done some river trekking, thus the title. Featured here are some creatures and scenes from the nooks and crannies of Inghoy (ing-hoy) River in the municipality of Alegria, Cebu… This was a short trek, as this served as an ocular inspection. You’ll see more of this river’s beauty in a few weeks – we will be exploring it further upstream where three waterfalls await…

 

The Page of Mysteries

Friends, I have added a new page in this site. This is to promote to bring back the Holy Rosary in Catholic homes and in response to the testimony of Fr. Thomas Thekkumthottam, OSB.

Please take time to visit the Page of Mysteries. May the images help you reflect and rediscover the love for the Holy Rosary.

Some Colors of the Night

I like the night. Without the dark, we’d never see the stars.
- Stephenie Meyer, Twilight, 2005

When I ventured back into photography some years ago, night and low-light photography has been my favorite field. I was taken by the majestic colors of dusk and dawn and the unseen colors of night. There was a time when I used to go out very early in the morning before the sun is up and around mid-afternoon to wait for the golden hours.

Night and low-light photography requires patience – you may not always get it in just one shot. A photographer has to contend with the difficulty of achieving focus, the presence of flares, and incorrect exposure settings. Add to that, the reciprocity failure that every film user like me has to put into consideration. This is the challenge that I like about this field of photography…

It has been quite a while since I ventured out into the night to take some photographs. The long artistic drought ended when fellow photographer Al Michael and I decided to visit the Marcelo Fernan Bridge to take some pictures in the night. We also hoped to capture the sunset but we were quite late…

The sun was already dipping when we arrived and add to that, the sun was covered by clouds.

 

When there was little light left in the sky, I set up my tripod underneath the bridge (there is a public park under the Marcelo Fernan Bridge in both Lapulapu and Mandaue sides) and took some shots. This shot turned out to be the most worthy…

 

When we were done in the park, we decided to go up. This is the end of the bridge connected to the main road going to the economic processing zone. The light trails will lead you there…

 

Before we called it a night, the old bridge on the other side of the island became envious, and decided to show off her beauty. She sent sparks towards us, twice!!!

The first one was quite weak…

 

Trying to outdo herself, she exerted all her efforts, and eventually, she succeeded.

I hope you now understand why I love this field of photography…