The Quiet Beauty of Ordinary Life

In the contemplative photography classes I teach, we often explore how beauty quietly manifests in the ordinary, mundane, and everyday world. As children, we knew this instinctively. With childlike curiosity, we expected to be surprised by color, light and shadow, texture, shapes and forms, and patterns. The world felt alive with discovery simply because we were fully present to it.

Many of my students initially arrive with a strong interest in the technical aspects of photography — cameras, lenses, composition, exposure, sharpness, and editing. And while these things certainly matter, something beautiful often begins to happen over time. They gradually discover that contemplative seeing itself is what allows us to truly connect with the beauty around us.

Instead of constantly hunting for images or worrying about technical perfection, we begin learning the ancient art of receiving what has always been there. We slow down enough for the world to reveal itself. In contemplative photography, the universe is not inert or lifeless. It has agency. It is continually offering us moments of surprise, wonder, tenderness, and presence — if only we are quiet enough to notice.

As we grow older, however, we begin to assume that our particular ideas about beauty are fixed and universal, when in fact they are fluid, cultural, and constantly changing. At any given moment, there are far more varieties of beauty in the world than a particular culture or period of history is willing to recognize. There is beauty in steam rising from a morning cup of coffee, in a beam of light slipping through the curtains at dawn, and in Black-eyed Susans and Queen Anne’s lace lining a quiet rural road. And yet we often move past these moments without truly seeing them.

Part of the difficulty is that many of us lose contact with the phenomenal world — the world received directly through the senses — unless someone helps reveal it to us again. Art has always served this purpose. Throughout history, artists have used attention, skill, and imagination to help others notice forms of beauty that might otherwise have been overlooked or dismissed.

Perhaps this is one of the quiet gifts of contemplative practice: it gently returns us to a state of openness and curiosity. It reminds us that beauty is not reserved for the spectacular or extraordinary. Much of it lives quietly around us — and within us — waiting to be noticed.

The image I chose for this post was created in Agra, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. There is beauty here in the ordinary dignity of a human life quietly being lived. The beauty is not dramatic or ornamental. It lives in the stillness of the moment — an elderly man seated in a worn doorway, absorbed in reading the newspaper. Nothing appears staged. Nothing is trying to impress us. And yet the image carries a deep sense of presence, tenderness, and humanity.

As I continue learning how to slow down and pay attention, I find myself more and more expecting beauty to appear in ordinary places — and surprisingly, it almost always does. I hope you’ll join me in looking a little more carefully at the world around you this week. In anxious and restless times such as these, learning to notice and document beauty may be one of the quiet ways we begin to heal our hearts and reconnect with a sense of child-like curiosity and wonder.

What Rayond and Lucy Knew

Most of my strategies for remaining calm and serene once depended upon reassuring myself—and others—that the worst-case scenarios would never come to pass. But lived experience has taught me something different. Contentment is not found in denying the possibility of storms, but in learning to trust that we can endure them.

I have learned this slowly, through trial and error, and by making my own fair share of mistakes over the course of my life—mistakes whose consequences can still make me shiver when I think about them too long. And yet, even those failures have become teachers. Over time, I have come to see that some of our deepest disappointments are not interruptions of the journey, but part of the journey itself. With support, honesty, and compassion, even wounded places can soften into sources of wisdom.

Perhaps wisdom lies not in pretending storms will never come, but in quietly preparing for them. When the winds begin to howl and the rain comes sideways, fear can narrow the horizon and convince us that everything is falling apart. But fear is not always a trustworthy narrator.

I often think of my grandparents on my mother’s side, Raymond and Lucy, who lived in the Southern Appalachians, survived the Great Depression, and later sent sons off to war with no guarantee they would ever return home. Like so many families across Appalachia and throughout the United States during those years, they lived through severe poverty, uncertainty, food insecurity, and economic hardship. They understood instability in ways many of us have been spared. And yet they continued forward—working, loving, grieving, praying, and caring for those around them as best they could.

When I remember Lucy and Raymond, I am reminded that human beings are far more resilient than fear would have us believe. We forget how much strength has already been placed within us through sorrow, friendship, resilience, and the care of those who have walked beside us. And we forget the simplest truth of all: after even the longest night, dawn still comes.

There is usually far more courage within us than we can remember in difficult seasons. Perhaps we should hold more lightly the expectation of a smooth and untroubled life. There will be detours. There will be losses. We may need to stop along the way and steady ourselves before continuing on. But this is not failure. It is part of being human.

At this stage of my life, I would not say that I have mastered the art of living. But perhaps I have learned something quieter and more forgiving: how to limp my way, with a little more wisdom and tenderness, into the next chapter of my life.

What the Heart No Longer Wishes to Carry

For as long as I can remember,
I have carried a great weight
without fully noticing
what it was doing to me.

I moved through the years
shouldering invisible burdens—
anger,
resentment,
old disappointments,
small humiliations,
regrets that replayed themselves
long after their season had passed.

At first, each thing seemed light enough.
A slight.
A grievance.
A hardened memory tucked quietly away.

But over time,
the mind became a kind of overfilled suitcase,
stuffed with psychological odds and ends—
nothing heavy by itself,
yet together
like walking the Appalachian Trail
with a backpack full of stones.

And now,
standing at the threshold of older age,
I find myself wanting
something simpler.

The years ahead
do not ask me to carry more.
They ask me to travel lighter.

So I am learning, slowly,
the ancient art
of laying things down.

Not denying what has happened.
Not pretending the wounds were unreal.
But loosening my grip
on all that no longer serves life.

Lao Tzu whispers of water and yielding.
Thomas Merton reminds me that the rush and burden of life can obscure the heart.
Mary Oliver keeps pointing toward astonishment and attention.
And Ryōkan, with empty pockets and a quiet smile,
seems to ask:

Why carry what can be released?

Perhaps there comes a time
when we empty the suitcase completely
and keep only what is essential:

compassion,
love,
presence,
fearlessness—

and enough openness
to walk gently
through whatever days remain.

The World Needs Your Wisdom

Where are you in this moment?

Can you sit quietly for a little while and let your gaze rest gently upon the world?

Perhaps allow the edges of things to soften around you.

For a few brief moments, set down your longings, your fears, your endless becoming— and simply be here.

Can you feel a deeper truth inside, just beneath the surface?

The world is aching for the wisdom you carry.

Domestic Life in an Age of Spectacle

I have to confess that there are days when my greatest pleasure in life is simply staying home and looking carefully at the life we’ve created within these walls. I sometimes wonder what it is in me that prefers my own front porch, or the rocking chair where most of my reading takes place, to galas, movies, museums, or wine tastings. And yet, I see nothing wrong with turning my photographic gaze toward my own home above all other places.

There was once a time when I imagined a different kind of fulfillment. I wanted to become known for something, to be considered an expert in a particular field, to possess unlimited financial freedom, or to earn the admiration of my peers. But ambitions like these are inherently fragile, forever vulnerable to disappointment, changing circumstances, and the unpredictable turns of life.

What I have discovered instead is that the ordinary rhythms of domestic life steady me when the wider world feels hostile, chaotic, or beyond my control. I find genuine meaning in emptying the dishwasher, watering our plants, refilling the bird feeder, or lingering over the beautiful images in the latest issue of Leica Fotografie International. These simple rhythms of home do not feel insignificant to me. They remind me that much of what gives life meaning is quietly woven into the ordinary fabric of our days.

And I do not believe this inwardness is a retreat from reality. If anything, my photographs have become quietly political in their own way. They attempt to articulate what is precious in ordinary life — the very things worth protecting from corruption, cruelty, greed, and indifference. In their own quiet language, they push back against compromised politicians, oligarchs, power-hungry tech-bros, and the machinery of endless domination and spectacle.

Rallies and marches matter. Public witness matters. But increasingly, I suspect many of the most consequential struggles unfold elsewhere — in courtrooms, committee rooms, subcommittees, schools, libraries, local communities, and around kitchen tables where people quietly choose decency again and again.

And yes, there are days when I choose to stay home, do some reading, watch something on Netflix, repair the copier, and feel deeply grateful that there are brilliant and courageous people in the world fighting important battles on behalf of all of us.

Domestic life reminds me daily what is truly at stake. And in its own modest way, it continues to call me toward contributing — however imperfectly, however quietly — to the making of a more humane and civil society.

In Praise of the Ordinary

The environment I grew up in continually suggested that it was within my power to achieve an extraordinary life. Whatever the hurdles, I was taught that through hard work, discipline, and moral seriousness, I could overcome nearly anything and carve out an exemplary and honorable path.

I could excel in the classroom, become an Eagle Scout, contribute meaningfully to society, find a suitable life partner, and earn the respect of my peers. Most importantly, I was determined not to disappear into the anonymity of an ordinary existence. Through a deep commitment to the Protestant work ethic—discipline, perseverance, self-denial, and moral uprightness—I could somehow avoid disappearing into the blur of ordinary life. I was asked to believe that—whatever obstacles stood before me—I was destined for an exceptional life.

What no one ever told me, however, was that despite our unique ways of moving through the world, most of us are destined to live fairly ordinary lives.

And perhaps there is a quiet dignity in that.

My life, in most respects, is fairly ordinary: modest means, a small circle of friendships, an unremarkable face, and abilities that do not particularly set me apart. I once read that only a tiny fraction of humanity will ever truly distinguish itself in the eyes of the world. The rest of us will live quieter lives—lives marked less by greatness than by small fidelities, ordinary responsibilities, modest joys, private griefs, and fleeting moments of beauty.

Yet we live in a culture that struggles to acknowledge this truth. Instead, we are continually told that relentless effort, ambition, and a nose-to-the-grindstone mentality will eventually check every box. The message is subtle but persistent: if we are not exceptional, perhaps we simply have not tried hard enough.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve begun to suspect that some of the expectations I carried for my life were shaped as much by fantasy as by reality. I say this cautiously because I do not want to discourage hope or aspiration. But there are times when our culture’s insistence that anyone can become extraordinary through enough effort begins to feel less encouraging than quietly unforgiving.

For many years, I struggled against the actual contours of my life. I measured myself against impossible standards and found myself lacking. I compared my life to those who seemed exceptional in obvious ways, all the while overlooking the quieter truths of my own existence—my capacities and limitations, my gifts and blind spots, the small but meaningful ways I had learned to love, endure, create, and remain present.

But perhaps there is freedom in finally laying all of that down.

Perhaps an ordinary life is not something to escape, but something to inhabit fully.

So the next time our paths cross—either in this life or the next—ask me about all the things I’m mediocre at.

It’s actually a pretty impressive list.

How We Hold This Moment

We live in a chaotic, unsettling world—
a world of 24/7 headlines
and breaking stories
that erode our sense of stability,
casting long shadows
over the future our children will inherit.

And so—
the question becomes
how we are to hold all of this,
as the ground keeps shifting beneath us,
when the old reference points no longer hold.

Perhaps we begin here—
consider holding yourself
as you would a newborn,
with kind hands,
with patience.

Be gentle in how you speak to yourself—
the spirit startles easily.

Do not drive yourself—
the body keeps the score.

Instead—
laugh when you can,
make something—anything—
with your hands.

Art is your birthright.

Let it be small,
let it be imperfect,
let it be yours.

In the act of creating,
a deeper wisdom finds expression.

Forgive yourself.
Not halfway.
Not later.
Now.

There is a strength
in radical honesty.
And there is a healing
each time we lay down our armor
and allow
the softness of our hearts
to be seen.

Remember—
you belong here.
Not because you are flawless,
but because you are.

Do not fasten your future
to the tight fist of the past.
There are still wonders
waiting to be noticed.

So walk—
simply—
one step,
then another.

No great aspirations.
No one to impress.

Let the old fears
soften, then dissolve.

Greet the morning
with expectancy and wonder.

And when you fail—
and you will fail gloriously—
welcome it.
Failure is a faithful companion,
a brilliant teacher.

You don’t have to harden yourself
for what may come next.

Let the future arrive
as an old friend—
met with gentleness,
with kind resolve,
and with the wide, unguarded
curiosity of a child.

Tired, Open, Real

In a small, dimly lit New York apartment, the photographer Nan Goldin turned her camera toward herself. She was young, a new mother, trying—as so many do—to make sense of a life that did not easily hold together. There was no studio lighting, no careful staging—just the quiet persistence of a camera and a woman determined not to look away. Again and again, she photographed herself: tired, undone, present. Not to create an image, but to remain in contact with something real. The camera became a witness, perhaps even a companion. In those self-portraits, there is no performance—only the unmistakable trace of a life being lived from the inside, with all its confusion, tenderness, and strain.

And it is here, perhaps, that we begin to recognize something of our own story. Our longing for love begins, in the simplest of desires: to hear, and to be heard. And because life so often resists ease—because it confuses, wounds, and unsettles—it follows that many of us, myself included, are drawn not to those who move through the world untouched, but to those who feel its weight as we do. Those who are puzzled by it, those who are undone by it—the ones who retreat to their beds in the middle of the day, who lose themselves in the soft glow of a screen, who send late-night messages to a therapist because something unnamed has surfaced again. The ones who have known the quiet chemistry of antidepressants, who carry the imprint of earlier wounds, who find themselves, at times, standing just this side of tears for reasons both known and not.

There is, in all of this, a strange and tender recognition: we are not drawn to perfection, but to familiarity—to those who speak a language we did not know we knew.

And yet, we live in a world that rushes to diagnose such sadness, to tidy it up, to render it manageable. A world where beauty has become increasingly curated, polished into something bright and untroubled, where our social feeds glow with the seamless illusion of perfect families, perfect bodies, perfect days.

But life, as it is actually lived, rarely arranges itself so neatly.

The image I have chosen for this post—a neighborhood coffee shop seen through a window—holds everything at once. Light, reflection, movement, distraction. All the details are there, but they refuse to settle into order. They overlap, blur, interrupt one another. There have been days in my own life when experience arrives in just this way—fragmented, disordered, difficult to make sense of.

And yet, even here—within the blur and disorder—something is being revealed.

If we do not turn away.

Perhaps this is what gets lost in all the brightness:
the insistence on clarity, on polish, on things appearing as they should.

Because there is another kind of beauty—rarer, quieter, and far more difficult to hold—that emerges in the unguarded moment when the face releases its practiced expressions, when the mask falls away and something true, if fragile, is allowed to be seen.

Under a Witnessing Sky

The cloth is tired—
not broken,
but worn thin.

Edges frayed
like trust,
handled too roughly,
too often.

Stars still hold—
echoes of a distant galaxy bearing witness.

We wade through an uncertain future—
prices at the pump rising,
prescriptions slipping out of reach,
and voting rights under assault.

It would be easier
to turn away—
to armor up,
to self-medicate,
to go numb.

And yet,
something primordial,
imperfect,
and sacred
still remains— even as we lick our wounds
and debate next steps.

So we go on—
grieving, but not in despair,
finding our footing,
finding our voice,
as our children watch,
learning what courage looks like,
what fearlessness requires,
and what sacrifice asks of us.

What Art Knows About Us

Photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto works with a kind of radical restraint—horizon lines, long exposures, and time held in quiet suspension. His photographs feel less constructed than patiently received, as though they have emerged from sustained attention rather than deliberate design. He is not simply simplifying the image; he is letting it fall away to what cannot be reduced any further: time, light, horizon, presence.

In his Seascapes, the image is nearly empty—a single line holding sea and sky in balance. And yet, what begins to unsettle and astonish is this: these photographs are made in different parts of the world, and still they appear almost the same. Sugimoto once said he wanted to capture a view that would have been recognizable to someone living thousands of years ago. Standing before them, we are no longer anchored in a particular place, but drawn into something continuous—something older than language, older than memory, quietly enduring.

And yet, we do not all meet these images in the same way. Some feel drawn in by the stillness, the openness, the way the image seems to create space within them. Others turn away, finding them too empty, too quiet, too close to silence. Where is the color? Where is the movement? Why does everything feel so spare?

Perhaps what we are sensing is not only in the image, but in ourselves. We are often drawn to what we are missing—psychologically, even spiritually—and we resist what feels too familiar or too close to what already overwhelms us. The art we love is not a mirror of who we are; it is a quiet gesture toward who we are becoming, or who, somewhere beneath the noise, we long to be.

To be moved by Sugimoto’s Seascapes may be to recognize that there is simply too much—too much noise, too much urgency, too much to take in, and nowhere to set it down. These images do not argue or persuade. They open: a wider horizon, a slower breath, a life with a little more space in it. They seem to whisper that we can step back, that we can close the door, even briefly, on the constant hum of things, and begin again with less.

Over time, we become more whole when we learn to ask of the art that stays with us: what is this showing me about what is missing? Art is not only something we admire—it is something that calls us, quietly, in a particular direction—toward balance, toward spaciousness, toward a life that feels more like our own.

The image I’ve chosen is of Masonboro Inlet in New Hanover County, North Carolina, where the water opens gently between Wrightsville Beach and the long, unbroken stretch of Masonboro Island Reserve. It is a place where nothing insists, where the horizon does its quiet work.

And if it is true that we are drawn to what we need, I find myself wondering what this image is asking of me. And perhaps the same question can be gently extended to you: what does this image stir, or resist, within you? Does it draw you in—or leave you at a distance? Does it offer a sense of ease, or does its stillness feel unsettling? What, exactly, does it seem to know about what you might be needing now?

What we are drawn to, and what we resist, may be the very place our life is asking to grow.

A Wabi-Sabi Kind of Life

I’ve lived long enough now to feel the full range of things this brief life holds—success and failure, marriage and divorce, the fullness of raising children and the quiet of an empty nest, moments of clarity and moments I’d rather forget.

It seems no one is spared the turning of the wheel—the gentle and the difficult, the light and the shadow, all of it shaping us in ways we don’t always understand at the time.

And so, something in me has softened. I find I can listen more fully now—without rushing to respond. I can make art more freely—without leaning so heavily on the opinions of others. And I can live, more and more, with a quiet acceptance of things as they are—a wabi-sabi kind of life, held together not by perfection, but by presence, and offered without apology.

We Have a Choice

As we grow older, something quiet and decisive begins to happen.
Life either opens us to its mysteries—or gently closes around us.

I don’t mean mysteries in the abstract,
but those simple, enduring truths that live beneath belief systems—
beneath politics, doctrines, and creeds—
the kind that can’t be argued, only recognized.

Even in the midst of the daily noise,
the chaos that presses in from every side,
if we can remain open—spacious, receptive—
something in us begins to settle.
Trust grows.
A quiet contentment takes root.

And we begin to sense a more ancient knowing,
a kind of primordial wisdom
that has always been there, just beneath the surface of things,
waiting for our attention.

But it can go another way.

If our gaze narrows—
if we spend our days tracking our 401(k)s,
studying the lines on our faces in the morning mirror,
counting the deepening creases around our eyes,
and the slow, quiet silvering of our hair—
we risk becoming confined by our own anxieties,
caught in the small, tightening loops of “what if.”

Then the world begins to shrink.
We see only diminishment,
only the slow unraveling
of what we once called a productive life.

And yet—there is another calling.

To grow into elderhood is to recover a way of seeing
we once knew well.
Like a child before language,
we learn again to notice—
to point, almost instinctively,
toward the subtle beauty that lives in the everyday:
light finding its way across a wall,
a voice that feels like home,
the simple fact of being here.

To meet it all
with something like awe—
and yes, with a sense of childlike curiosity.

As wise elders, we can use our voices—
and step-in no-hand shoes—
to help secure a safe and equitable future
for the next generation of emerging adults.

And from that place,
we step forward—not away—
to engage a hurting world.

With our voices.
With our presence.
With our well-worn shoes carrying us where we’re needed—
toward a more just and gentle world
for those who are coming after us.

This is the work of wise elders:
to see clearly,
to love deeply,
and to remain available
to what matters most.

We do have a choice.

We can live these remaining days in alignment
with that deeper wisdom—
becoming steady companions,
reliable mentors,
a quiet source of grounding for children and grandchildren.

Or we can turn inward in another way—
fortifying, insulating, protecting—
redecorating, again and again,
the small rooms of our own fear.

We have a choice.

And life, even now,
is still inviting us
to choose well.

What Suffices

As I grow older, I am learning—quietly—
to tell the difference
between what holds real power
and what is merely performative.

I hear the striving of the privileged few,
their hunger for more—
while just beyond the frame
someone quietly weighs
bread or medicine.

And something in me grows quieter.

As I grow older, my grip loosens.
Ambition, once loud,
has softened.

Desire still visits—
but it no longer runs the house.
And so I am less persuaded
by the whisper
that I am not enough.

As I grow older, I begin to see
I was never the voice in my head.

What I need now feels simpler.

a friend’s presence.
a loving partner.
the quiet pride of being a father.
unhurried mornings.

A poem by Robert Lax.
A photograph by Minor White.

These are enough.

A friend’s voice.
A lingering lunch
where conversation turns toward what is tender.

A glass of red wine on the porch.
A journal page filled with gratitude.

As I grow older,
I ask less of life—
and receive more than I imagined.

And so I turn again
to the ordinary moment—

to be totally here
and nowhere else.

to notice
and feel everything—
everything.

What We Carry Is Not Ours Alone

Over the past few months, I’ve been accompanied by a quiet melancholy.

It arrived without announcement. I can’t quite trace its origins. Perhaps too much news. That steady, low-grade ache of the world. Or perhaps the recent diagnosis of osteoarthritis in my back—a reminder, not unkind but unmistakable, that time is doing what time does.

But this isn’t grief. Not quite. Nor is it heartache.

It feels more like a soft, persistent knowing— that happiness, while real, is often brief, and that much of life is lived in the company of things unfinished, imperfect, and quietly heavy.

And yet, because of this— what is gentle begins to glow. What is calm, what is kind, what is graceful— these stand out now with a kind of unexpected clarity.

I caught a glimpse of this a few months ago while having lunch with my friend James. Across the room, a young woman sat alone at the bar. No conversation. No movement. Just her, in the stillness of that empty space.  I know nothing about her life. Why she was there. What she carried.  And yet—I knew the feeling.

You can find the full piece over on Substack: https://substack.com/@timauman1/note/c-249915137

The Essential and Unavoidable Place of Failure

Before becoming one of the most distinctive photographic voices of the 20th century, Diane Arbus spent her days in the polished world of fashion photography, working alongside her husband. The images were composed, elegant—and yet something in them did not quite breathe. By her own telling, they left her quietly unsatisfied, as if she were circling the surface of a life she had not yet entered.

Then came Lisette Model. Model did not offer comfort in the usual sense. She did not say, “This is good.” She said, in effect: “Go closer. Risk more. Tell the truth.”

And in that invitation—part challenge, part blessing—Arbus began to trust what she had once held back: her strange, searching way of seeing. The work deepened. The images began to breathe.

Something similar unfolds in the early life of Carrie Mae Weems. She did not begin with the clarity we now recognize. Her early photographs were grounded in documentary practice—steady, attentive, but not yet carrying the layered voice that would later emerge. What changed was not simply her skill, but her permission.

In the presence of teachers, fellow artists, and a widening circle of conversation, she began to see that her own life—her family, her history, her identity—was not something to work around, but something to work from. That her experience was not incidental, but essential.

And so the work shifted. Not toward perfection, but toward truth. Again and again, this quiet pattern appears: The mentor listens for what is alive in the work, and quietly invites, “Stay with it.” And yet, how quickly we forget.

I often imagine that artists arrive fully formed—that greatness is bestowed rather than slowly, almost invisibly, grown. In that forgetting, my own early photographs begin to feel like evidence against me, rather than part of the path.

After all, I know my own work from the inside: the hesitation, the misjudgment, the images that fall flat. And yet I encounter the work of others only after it has been shaped and offered to the world. I do not see their early attempts—the uncertain frames, the failed exposures, the long stretches of not knowing. And so the scale tips—unfairly, quietly, persistently.

What I need—and what we all need, perhaps—is a more generous way of seeing: an honest remembering of how much awkwardness, repetition, and imperfect seeing lies behind anything we come to call beautiful.

I think back to my undergraduate years at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and to my art history professor, Dr. Constance Armitage. I took every course I could with her—not because she made things easier, but because she made them more real.

She helped us to see differently—to honor our own unique ways of perceiving the phenomenal world, rather than rushing to inherit someone else’s vision.

In her presence, looking became something more than analysis. It became a kind of listening. A quiet trust that what we were drawn to—however tentative, however unpolished—might already carry the seed of something real.

She didn’t take us to museums, but she encouraged us—again and again—to go, to return often, to linger and to look. And when we did, she quietly shaped our attention—not only toward the masterpieces that draw the crowds, but toward the early works of those same artists: the hesitant lines, the uneven compositions, the beginnings that did not yet know what they were becoming.

We explored the earliest works of a famous artist so that we could recognize the essential and unavoidable place of failure—to allow ourselves to do things quite imperfectly for a very long time, as the price we cannot avoid paying for the chance, one day—perhaps decades from now—to create something that feels whole: an image, a book, a non-profit, a garden, a meal…something others might one day call a masterpiece.

And perhaps this is not so far from what Shunryu Suzuki called beginner’s mind—that way of meeting the world without the burden of already knowing. A mind that is open, curious, unguarded, and willing to stay with uncertainty.

“In the beginner’s mind,” he reminds us, “there are many possibilities.” To begin again—awkwardly, imperfectly, honestly—is not to fall short of the path. It is the path.

In the Company of Broken Hearts

The older I get, the harder it can be not to be quietly undone—sometimes to tears—when I come into contact with a moment of tenderness: a film, a phone conversation with my son Jon, waving goodbye to my son Micah as his car disappears in the distance, or a beloved photograph of my brother Ed.

I’ve come to sense that these moments carry such weight because, over time, we begin to see more clearly the deep contrast that shapes a human life. We come to know its customary hardness—its disappointments, its quiet cruelties—and so when tenderness appears, even briefly, it meets us in a deeper place. Perhaps we are not only responding to the beauty before us, but also grieving, in some quiet way, the innocence the world does not always know how to protect.

The photograph I’ve chosen for this reflection is of my younger brother Ed. I assume my dad took the picture, though I have no memory of when or where it was taken. What I do know is how difficult it is to look for very long into the eyes of my baby brother. There he is—Edwin, as we called him then—wide-eyed, delighted, meeting the world with a kind of unguarded joy.

And I know what came later. He did not.

There is something almost unbearable in that difference. As he giggled and marveled at the life laid out before him, none of us could see what would eventually unfold—years later, a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, and then pancreatic cancer. A life that would ask so much of him. A life that would end too soon, leaving behind his wife Robin and his daughter Presley.

To look at this photograph is to hold two truths at once: the purity of that moment, and the weight of everything that followed. And sometimes, that is almost more than the heart can hold.

And yet…That small, radiant child is not only my brother. He is, in some way, all of us.

We, too, began this way—open, curious, unguarded. And over time, we have walked through more than we ever would have chosen. We have made our share of mistakes, missteps, and the small stumblings of an ordinary life. The world, sooner or later, finds its way into every heart—and breaks it.

And still, something tender remains.

Perhaps these moments are not asking us to explain anything, or to make sense of it all, but simply to soften. To meet ourselves—and one another—with a little more kindness. At the end of the day, these small acts of tenderness matter more than our politics, our religious affiliations, or how much money we have in the bank.

What we share in common is far more fundamental: our broken hearts—the Iranian mother grieving the death of her son, the parents of a U.S. Marine waving goodbye as their daughter is deployed to the Middle East, the husband who has just read the word “cancer” for the first time on MyChart.

And to remember, gently, that whatever we have carried, whatever we have endured, we are deserving of as much tenderness and compassion as this life can offer.

What Picasso Knew About War

It took only a few hours for General Francisco Franco’s forces, aided by the German Condor Legion, to devastate the Basque town of Guernica—a sudden unraveling of ordinary life. The bombing came in waves: planes circling, returning, circling again, until the town was reduced to smoke, rubble, and stunned silence. And for those who lived through it, the ending never really came. It lingered—in memory, in grief, in the slow, uneven work of making sense of what had been lost.

When Pablo Picasso began painting Guernica, he stepped into that lingering space. Thirty-five days of intense labor, yes—but also a lifetime of seeing and feeling. The painting doesn’t explain the event. There are no clear soldiers, no literal planes. Instead, there are fractured bodies, anguished faces, a horse mid-cry, a mother holding her dead child—images that feel less like history and more like the inner shape of trauma.

War happens quickly—brutally, without warning. But understanding it, absorbing it, responding with any depth—that takes years, even generations.

Art, at its best, slows us down. It holds the unbearable in place long enough for us to really see it. Picasso’s thirty-five days were not an answer; they were an invitation: stay a little longer… look again… don’t turn away.

And so we’re left with a quiet paradox: the speed of destruction, and the slowness of understanding. We see it still—in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Iran, in Lebanon. Decisions are made in hours; consequences unfold across lifetimes. A deeper wisdom asks something different of us: attention, patience, and the courage to keep seeing.

If you can, take a few minutes—maybe even thirty-five—and sit with Guernica. Let it speak. Notice what rises.

The image I chose for this post comes from Gurudwara Bangla Sahib in New Delhi, home to its remarkable langar, a free community kitchen that serves thousands each day. People of every background sit side by side on the floor, sharing a simple meal—lentils, rice, bread—prepared by volunteers in a spirit of devotion. No one is turned away. It is not charity so much as practice: seva, compassion made visible.

Between the anguish of Guernica and the quiet generosity of the langar, we are reminded—gently but firmly—that another way is always possible.

And perhaps this is what that deeper wisdom is asking of us now. Not to look away when the images are difficult, not to rush too quickly toward conclusions or sides, not to harden ourselves in the face of what we cannot easily fix. But to practice a different kind of seeing—one that lingers—to stay with the human cost, even when it unsettles us, and to allow our hearts to remain porous, responsive, alive. Attention, in this sense, becomes a form of care. Patience, a refusal to reduce complex suffering into simple narratives. And the courage to keep seeing—again and again—may be one of the most honest forms of compassion we have.

Heidi and I are trying, in our own imperfect way, to pass this on to Jon, Micah, Addie, and Noah: that a deeper wisdom asks something different of us—attention, patience, and the courage to keep seeing. And perhaps this is part of what each of us is called to offer now. In what we notice, in how we speak, in what we refuse to ignore, we are shaping the world the next generation will inherit. And as always, it will be our children and grandchildren who live most fully with the consequences of which path we choose.

The Bench We Somehow Know

Back in December, I found myself quietly creating a kind of personal memorial—not to loss, but to the contemplative life itself. The image I received stands in gentle contrast to the noise and spectacle we so often ingest—less like something that animates us, and more like something that settles us. And yet, like those roaring crowds in a stadium, it carries its own quiet intensity. It gathers and concentrates a feeling. It invites us to pause long enough to recognize what we’ve always valued, but too easily overlooked. It steadies us. It returns us, quietly and without force, to our own center.

On the southern end of Wrightsville Beach in North Carolina, looking out toward Masonboro Inlet, I received a photograph of an empty bench facing the wide openness of sea and sky. I wasn’t trying to take or capture anything, but to receive what was already offering itself—standing still long enough for the universe to speak first. I returned to that bench again and again—different light, different angles—drawn not by novelty, but by a quiet insistence. It was the bench that held me there. The bench that kept asking for my attention. Over time, it began to feel less like an object and more like a small shrine to stillness, to integrity, to tenderness.

We are given endless encouragement to live loudly. There is always somewhere new to go, something more to become, someone else we’re supposed to be chasing after or becoming worthy of. But at sixty-eight, I find myself no longer compelled by all that urgency. Not in resistance, exactly—but in recognition. That perhaps our deeper calling is not to keep moving, but to stay. To stay long enough for our eyes to soften… and to finally see the beauty of what has been here all along, waiting for our full attention.

This isn’t a rejection of ambition or growth. Nor is it a dismissal of that inner tug that calls us forward. But so much of our lives are lived leaning into the future, that we rarely allow ourselves to fully inhabit the present. And the present—quiet, ordinary, easily missed—is where so much of the richness actually lives.

Some days, the highlight is as simple as grabbing a couple of my cameras and wandering through the streets of my own hometown, receiving whatever moments of urban life choose to reveal themselves. Or a walk down to Camino Bakery for a cinnamon bun, a loaf of bread, or a good Caffè Americano. Then back home. Lying on the bed with Heidi, listening to a favorite podcast. Letting the mind wander a bit. Letting certain thoughts rise and settle. There are still things within us that need tending—some that simply ask to be felt, others that invite a deeper looking. It may sound like idleness from the outside. But in truth, it is a kind of quiet discipline—a way of returning ourselves to sanity, to balance, to contentment.

And yet, after all of this—the wandering, the small pleasures, the quiet disciplines—it is the bench that remains. The bench we have not sat on, and yet somehow know. The bench that waits without asking anything of us.

It begins to feel less like an object and more like a place within us—our true home—the place we have slowly drifted from through unbridled ambition and quiet forms of workaholism. And perhaps we will reach what we have been searching for, and finally understand where we have been all along, not by going farther, but by returning—again and again—to that place.

To sit, without distraction or self-reproach. To feel the breeze move across your face, asking nothing of you. To hear the soft rhythm of waves meeting the shore—arriving, receding, arriving again—without urgency, without demand. To notice the way light shifts across the water. The way the body begins to soften when there is nothing it has to prove.

To let the mind settle where it is, without chasing or correcting. To allow what is unfinished in you to simply be, for now. To rest your attention on what is given, rather than what is missing.

To sit long enough that the need to go somewhere else begins to loosen its grip. Long enough to remember that this—this moment, this breath, this simple awareness—is not a detour from your life, but the very ground of it.

And to recognize, gently, without fanfare, that you are already home.

A Porch, a Book, and a Hostile Aviary

One of my favorite retirement rituals is to sit on my front porch late in the afternoon and read. Sometimes—with full honesty—a nice glass of shiraz joins me. At that hour, when the light begins to soften and the day exhales, even a few pages can soothe my busy, overstimulated mind. I keep a dedicated stack of “front porch books”—the kind that invite dipping in and out rather than plowing through. My current companions include Black Mountain Days by Michael Rumaker, Memorable Fancies by Minor White, Aperture Magazine Anthology – The Minor White Years, Leica Fotographie International (October 2026), Robert Lax Poems (1962–1997), and A Book of Days by Patti Smith. I move between them slowly, sometimes pausing for a phone call with a friend or family member, sometimes just letting the words settle.

Recently, I decided to enhance the experience by adding a bird feeder at the far end of the porch. The idea was simple: create a little distance between myself and the feeder so the birds could feel at ease… and I could enjoy their presence without intruding. In theory, it was a beautiful plan. In practice… not so much. I’ve learned that I live in a remarkably rich birding zone here in the foothills of the Appalachians. Cardinals, chickadees, titmice, goldfinches—they all show up, each with their own rhythm and personality. It’s a lively, ever-changing community. And apparently… I am not welcome.

Every time I settle into my rocking chair with a book and a glass of wine, the birds stage what can only be described as a collective protest. Chickadees scold. Titmice object loudly. There is, I’m quite certain, a level of outrage that borders on the theatrical. I’ve tried everything—sitting very still, moving slowly, projecting what I hoped was a non-threatening, contemplative presence. They are not impressed. Eventually, after enough chirping commentary, I gather my books (and what remains of my dignity) and retreat back inside.

Recently, I shared this predicament with a close friend, who suggested—quite rightly—that I write about it. Surely, we surmised, others must be facing similar existential crises. And here’s where things get especially interesting. For most of my professional life—as a chaplain, mindfulness educator, and contemplative photographer—I’ve taught about the importance of cultivating gratitude. I’ve spoken often about building what I like to call a “gratitude neural pathway”—the idea that, over time, a steady practice of noticing what is good and given can soften the sharp edges of anxiety. People are usually quite receptive to this. Which leads me to wonder… What the hell is going on with these damn birds?

Because, at the moment, their attitudes are not especially aligned with a mindful, gratitude-based worldview. I mean—have they not encountered the wisdom of Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching? Have they not at least skimmed Stephen Mitchell’s rather generous translation of Chapter 44?

“Be content with what you have;
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.”

Mitchell’s translation of Chapter 44 is worth sitting with precisely because it speaks the language of our moment—a world that rarely pauses long enough to ask, What is enough? Where more literal translations of the Tao Te Ching warn about the dangers of excess, Mitchell turns that warning into something more invitational, almost like a quiet hand on the shoulder: Be content with what you have… When you realize there is nothing lacking… In a culture shaped by constant striving—more success, more productivity, more accumulation—his version gently shifts the focus from restraint to sufficiency. Not you should want less, but rather: you may already have enough. It names the quiet illusion that drives so much of our restlessness—that something is missing—and invites us to see that, perhaps, it isn’t. And when that illusion loosens, even slightly, something else begins to emerge. A sense of belonging. A recognition that this moment, just as it is, might be complete.

In my own contemplative photography work, this insight shows up again and again: when we stop trying to get the perfect image, when we release the pressure to produce, when we simply receive what is given, there is often a quiet realization that nothing is lacking. And from there, gratitude isn’t something we manufacture. It’s what remains when striving settles down.

Now, I can’t speak for the birds at your feeder. But I’m fairly certain that mine have not spent much time with Lao Tzu… or Ryōkan… or Robert Lax. They seem, at least for now, far more attached to their songbird mix than to Eastern philosophy. And maybe that’s the lesson I’m still learning. Because while I sit there with my books and my carefully cultivated thoughts about gratitude and enoughness… they’re simply waiting for me to leave. So they can get back to what matters—without overthinking it. And perhaps, in their own way, they already know what enough looks like.

Swords & Plowshares

He is shouting commands to his adolescent peers. He wants his company to be the sharpest in the battalion. The young men shout their loyalty to the first sergeant, their voices rising together, a kind of chorus. He is eighteen years old.

I was just a boy—sixth grade—when my parents sent me away to a military preparatory school, at a time when the Vietnam War was still unfolding. Though I did not yet understand it, the war was already finding its way into us—into our posture, our language, our sense of what it meant to be a young man. To this day, I’m not entirely sure what moved my parents to make that decision. It felt like a sudden and disorienting turn for a boy shaped by the gentler rhythms of church life, the Boy Scouts, and public school classrooms. Perhaps they believed that one more layer of discipline—structured, unyielding—might steady me for whatever future lay ahead.

Looking back, it’s hard not to see how much of that world was already being shaped by the war itself. It hovered in the background of our lives, forming a generation of young men long before any of us were old enough to understand it. We absorbed it in ways both obvious and subtle—in the language of command, in the quiet pressure to be tough, in the unspoken expectation that we might one day be called to step into something we could not yet name.

The war drew to its official close on April 30, 1975, just a year before I graduated from high school. With the fall of Saigon—North Vietnamese forces entering the capital—something ended, at least on paper. But it never felt like a clean ending. There was no real sense of resolution, only a lingering weight, a quiet reckoning with all that had been lost.

One of my clearest memories from those years is not of the classroom or the drill field, but of the breakfast table. Morning after morning, the news would carry the latest count—the number of U.S. soldiers killed the day before. It was delivered plainly, almost routinely, as if it were just another statistic. And yet, something in me registered the gravity of it, even if I couldn’t fully understand it at the time. The war was not only something happening far away; it had found its way into the most ordinary moments of our lives, shaping us in ways we would only come to recognize much later.

Though this story unfolded in a particular time and place, its deeper pattern feels almost timeless. It has appeared before and will appear again, wearing new names, shaped by new grievances, sustained by familiar fears. The settings change; the language shifts; but the underlying currents remain. Today, young people may not be sent off to military academies in the same way, yet they gather for hours in virtual battlefields—Call of Duty, Hell Let Loose, Total War—where the lines between play and formation, simulation and conditioning, can quietly blur.

Each conflict carries its own name, its own justifications. But beneath the surface, there is often a familiar human story unfolding: the pull toward certainty, the seduction of righteousness, the ease with which fear hardens into cruelty, and crowds become convinced of their virtue. These dynamics are not confined to distant battlefields. They can surface anywhere—in the rhetoric of nations, in the unrest of cities, even in the quieter, more insidious spaces of online exchange.

And so it seems important to remember this deeper, archetypal pattern—not with despair, but with clarity. Even in societies that prize order and civility, the undercurrents of violence, tribalism, and judgment remain close at hand. To recognize this is not to give in to it, but to become more attentive to the choices before us.

This is where your voice matters. Not as noise added to the chorus, but as something steadier, more grounded. The work of restraint, of compassion, of refusing the easy path of outrage—these are not small gestures. They are, in their own quiet way, acts that preserve life.

In this spirit, the call to peace—echoed in the teachings of the current pope, Pope Leo XIV, and rooted in the prophetic vision of Book of Micah—still calls out to us:

They shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war anymore.

It is an ancient hope. And perhaps, even now, a necessary one.