I went to the lake early yesterday morning and had a good paddle for an hour. I was off of the lake by 7:30. It was a tad windy, which made it that much more fun. One of the joys of life is paddling without a destination. I simply enjoy whatever the lake and the weather have to offer. Most of the critters were hunkered down and I didn’t see as many as usual. I did flush one great blue heron and plenty of ducks as I paddled along the shore. I discovered one of the limits of my paddling technique. I prefer to paddle on the right side of the boat, pulling with my right hand and turning the paddle with my left. However, when the wind is coming broadside from my right or even quartering, it can blow hard enough that all of my paddling energy goes to keeping the boat straight. It is far easier in those conditions to switch and paddle on the other side of the boat.

But this is not a blog post about paddling. In fact the only thing I intended to say about paddling is that for the second time in recent weeks, I went paddling and forgot to take my camera with me. Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that there are fewer photographs than once was the case. When I started the blog, my goal was to include one photograph that I took myself in each blog. The photographs were a kind of discipline for me to look more closely at my world and to pay attention. What I quickly found, however, was that even though I take photographs nearly every day, they often are not on the topic about which I decide to write. I often write about events that are far away. In many cases, I will use a picture from the Internet to add to my blog.

I see no need for hard and fast rules, but I have been less inclined to use photographs taken by others in my blog. If the goal of the blog is to observe life more closely and to learn to write about the things I see, the experiences I have, the people I meet and the faith I witness, then illustrating my words with others’ photographs seems to detract from the purpose of my writing. What I do hope to do is to become more disciplined with my photography. In addition to my phone camera, I am back to carrying another camera with me when I head to work, so perhaps I can reconnect with the camera as a device for a spiritual discipline of observation.

Over the years I have used this blog to illustrate my commitment to particular disciplines in my life. As opposed to the style of some other bloggers, I write every day. I get up and I write an essay day after day. I do this because I believe that discipline is necessary to the craft of writing and I want to teach myself to be a better writer. Whether or not I am improving as a writer remains to be seen, but I have been faithful to the discipline. It is part of my general approach to life. I find life to be most meaningful when I make a commitment and stick with that commitment.

Recently we received news of another couple of our friends, who, after many years of marriage, are going through a divorce. I try not to be judgmental of the decisions of others and my role as a friend is to be supportive of my friends, but I find that I simply do not understand the choices that some of my friends make. Maybe it is simply a matter of luck. By some unique set of circumstances I met the love of my life at an early age. After we got to know each other and became married, I have never wanted to be unmarried. Sure there have been times that were more difficult than others, but the shared joy has been wonderful and there really is nothing better in this life than the gift of growing old with someone you love. I know that our circumstances could change. An illness or accident could result in one of us having to live alone, but for now, being married is the path to the future that is most appealing to me.

I am that way about my faith as well. I enjoy some challenging conversations with some friends that seem, to me, to be spiritual tourists. They collect experiences from many different faith traditions and pull them all together, but are constantly on the lookout for something new. I’ve always been a Christian and I am at home in that faith. I do not feel a need to collect other spiritual experiences. I’d rather invest in discovering the depths of my own faith. I have deep respect for those whose religion is different from mine. I believe that Native American spiritual traditions have a lot to offer the world. I have studied and learned from the prayers and faith stories of Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus. But I have always looked at these other faiths as an outsider. I am not particularly compelled to adopt the spiritual practices of others. Instead, I am interested in deepening my spiritual practices within my own faith. Ancient traditions of prayer and meditation appeal to me. The study of scriptures and the context from which they arose fascinates me. Understanding traditional liturgies and crafting new ones seem to go hand-in-hand.

I once had a teacher who devoted the core of his academic work to the study and translation of a single book of the Bible. He claimed that any book of the bible would be worthy of a lifetime of study and that such a study, properly done, could not be completed in a single lifetime. I now know what he meant with these words. A lifetime is all to short to explore all of the meanings when you seek the depths of faith. Like our marriage, which seems to me that now, after nearly 40 years has been all to short, I find that a lifetime of commitment to the Christian faith is too little to really get to know all there is to learn.

So some days when you read the blog you just get words. And you get lots of words on familiar subjects as I continue to look for depth upon depth.

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