Looking Up and Looking Down...

   On my recent trip into Cambridge, I felt like such a tourist!  I'd lived in the city for 2 years after I graduated from Harvard but this day, it all seemed new to me.

   Walking between the museums gave me lots of contemplative possibilities but I settled on the juxtaposition of the orderly and random.

   Cities, by their very nature, are man's attempt to bring order and structure to the world.  The beautiful tower of Memorial Hall on the Harvard campus is covered with intricate geometric patterns and is a masterpiece of symmetry and balance. A perfect example of the rational mind.  Yet, when viewed against the random and shape-shifting clouds, it takes on a different meaning for me...it is a dialogue between the rational and the mystical mind.

    There are those who maintain that if you can't categorize it, measure it, label it, and prove it scientifically, then it doesn't exist.  They discount all else.  The mystical world is just so much nonsense.  Of course, they are entitled to their opinions but for me there is something more at play in the world.  Call it what you will, but there is a knowing beyond knowing and it can't be categorized, measured, labeled or proved.

   When you look up, you look out into that world.  When you look down, you look into your own world.  I found that analogy beautifully and simply illustrated at my feet.  The curved and random seed pods laying on the ordered, logical brick pattern...two distinct worlds - and world views - which are interconnected yet separate.  Some minds, fortunately, can accommodate both viewpoints.

The most beautiful thing we can experience 

is the mysterious.

 It is the source of all true art and science.

Albert Einstein 

  

Release...

  I've been driving by a field of milkweed for weeks.  I watched them grow and the pods ripen and mature.   Then one day they burst open.  The beautiful white fluff, each one carrying just a single seed, was released to its fate...carried far and wide by the wind.

   Most of these seeds will blow around and never find the right spot to land and generate a new milkweed plant but that fact doesn't seem to dampen their enthusiasm.  As a child, my friends and I delighted in shaking the pods and setting the fluff flying in the breeze...a small act of liberation on our part.

   Hard to believe something so lovely and gentle could come out of those homely, withered pods but therein lies the message.  The beauty in each of us means nothing until it is released and sent flying out into the world.  We do it in a myriad of ways, not the least of which is through the photographs we let loose in the world...tiny acts of beauty lovingly created but then set free. 

    Life is your art. An open, aware heart is your camera. A oneness with your world is your film.

- Ansel Adams

   

Metaphors: Coming Together and Drifting Apart

   These trees offer a lovely way to contemplate relationship.  They started out as one and split apart for awhile.  Then, for some reason that I can't fathom, they came together and grew as one tree for quite some time.  And, equally inexplicably, they went there separate ways for a second time!

   Honestly, I sat on a nearby log and looked at this tree for quite some time.  What made them split? What brought them together again? And why, after rejoining, did they split yet again?  (The light in the space is really the sun striking a white birch that was growing right behind this tree.  I thought it added another level to the metaphor.)

   We have all had people in our lives that we were very close to for a time and then just drifted away from.  Somehow, we needed them in our lives for a time.

   Maybe we needed them for support, maybe they had something to teach us but they came and went...we grew together and then grew apart, like this tree.

   Holding on and letting go...two human traits and, it seems, a tree trait as well.  The wisdom of the forest never fails to amaze me.

Digital Collage and Photographic Metaphor...

   On my brief visit to Cape Ann, I saw and experienced quite a bit considering the fact that I was only there 27 hours and 8 of those hours I spent sleeping!  (If you didn't see the album of images on Google+, you can see it here.)

Stay Away from the Windows

   The image that pleases me the most, however, is a digital collage I made.  It is my icon of the experience.

   The people I was staying with had a beautiful contemporary home with huge expanses of glass that made the outside landscape fuse with the interior space.  Quite lovely.  But all that glass was having an unpleasant side effect.  The windows reflected the trees and sky and the birds were crashing into it.  Some were merely stunned; others succumbed to the collision.  Everyone was desperately trying to think of ways to prevent it.

   The bottom line was, for me, a metaphor for Man's relationship with Nature.  How do we live in peaceful co-existence?  How do we warn the birds to stay away from the windows?  What they are seeing is merely an illusion, a very dangerous one at that.  Human beings sometimes fall into this same trap, flying blindly into our illusions .  I felt compelled to make this digital collage of the metaphor and the experience.

   I make finding the metaphor in the landscape a major part of my work as a contemplative photographer but with the medium of digital collage, I can create them as well.  Finding new ways to think about the world around me through the lens of my camera, is always a good thing. 

 

Living in the Shadowlands...

   There can be no appreciation of the light without an understanding of the shadow.  I've been photographing shadows recently; fascinated by the cast shapes and patterns.  I find them a revealing metaphor.

   The chair's shadow tells us nothing about the chair; not its size, its shape or much else about it.  In fact, you would never be able to guess what the object was if you only had the shadow to look at.

   I was sitting on the observation platform of an old train which I took as a pleasant diversion on a late summer day.  And while the scenery was lovely, it was the shadows on the deck that held my attention.  As the train moved, the shadows changed shape, becoming more elongated and distorted.  By the time we had reached the station, they were gone altogether.

   Time and circumstance bend and twist our realities in many ways, like the shadows, but we remain as we are, regardless of whatever temporary shadows we cast...

Keep your face always toward the sunshine

 and shadows will fall behind you.

- Walt Whitman

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Footnote:

   This post reminded me of a film I haven't seen in a number of years.  Shadowlands tells the true story of C.S. Lewis and his love affair and subsequent marriage to an American divorcee.  The acting is wonderful and it explores the hidden dimensions - shadowlands - that we all have.

    I bought the film, No Greater Love, by Michael Whyte recently. It depicts the cloistered lives of a convent of Carmelite nuns in England.  It is the follow up to Into Great Silence which documents the lives of an order of French monks. (You can read the post I did of it here...)  No Greater Love is like watching a Vermeer painting come to life and I paused it again and again to just savor the light and compositions.   I find myself doing that more and more with films...pausing them and savoring some detail.  Films created by true masters of the medium can be viewed that way...a series of beautiful "stills".

Living in the Border World...

   The monks at St. Joseph Abbey live in a kind of border world between the sacred and the worldly.  They have chosen a life that tries to walk the difficult line of being of this world but not in it.  Retreatents are given a small glimpse of this border world.

   The Trappist order is a cloistered order and the monks never venture outside the monastery except for medical reasons. It is a lifestyle that is hard to fathom for most of us but it certainly has it appeal.  They live a completely stress-free existence and we could all do with a bit less stress in our lives.  That is one of the reasons I stay in monasteries whenever I can.

   For the vast majority of the world, these brief respites are just that, brief.  At some point we have to return to the "real world" and deal with it all.  I found a breadcrumb that I've mulled over quite a bit since my return.

   It wasn't so much the dried grass that filled the crack in the sidewalk but that it seemed to separate the old, faded asphalt from the newer, dark section...a border world in miniature.

   I'd walked on this sidewalk several times already but this time it caught my attention and made me stop and look at it.  That is the real definition of a "breadcrumb" for me.  It is an image that makes you put the brakes on...an image that interrupts your day and says, "Hey...you who are in such a hurry.  Stop and look at me!  I have something to tell you!"

   The grass was soft looking and inviting...Nature bridging the gap between the old and new...blunting the hard surfaces with its appealing texture.  The asphalt was hot in the sun but the grass was many degrees cooler.  It seemed a good place to be.

   The monks, here at St. Joseph, live in this kind of world, this border place, and for a short time I did too.  Then it occurred to me that living in a "border world" is a choice I could make.  I could partake of both, the dark and the light, and rest serenely in between.  It is my choice, it has always been my choice.

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Footnote:
 
    The monks acquire this land in 1950 and moved their monastery here when the one they were living in in Rhode Island was destroyed by a devastating fire.  They built it entirely with their own hands using the native field stone they found all over the property, mainly in stone walls that criss-crossed the landscape.

   In a video presentation I watched about the history of the abbey, I learned that the monks designed the buildings and built the entire monastery in less than two years. It was a finely crafted and beautifully designed group of buildings and I was extremely impressed. 

   In a way, this place reminded me of the Shaker Villages I have visited and that also represented an attempt to create a "heaven on earth".  The monks have succeeded admirably, I think.  To a much less extent, that is what I am trying to do with my garden...gardens are my idea of heaven on earth.

  
 

Broken Wide Open...

   Awhile back I advised that we should keep our eyes open for the little contemplative gems all around us.  No need to venture far afield...they are right around us everyday.  This is one of my recent discoveries.

   A tulip in its last gasp, broken open and ready to shed its petals.  That was what caught my eye and that would have been enough but when I opened the file on my computer, I saw that little forsythia flower which seemed to be mirror of the tulips center color...all by itself at the end of the branch. The white tulip petal seemed to separate it visually from the rest.  It had burst out, escaped and was heading in a new direction.

   That is what we all must do from time to time especially when we find ourselves tightly closed and resistant to change.  We need to break ourselves wide open, shed the petals that once protected our vulnerability, and escape!

   Like the little forsythia blossom,  we must be willing to venture out of the security of conformity and get ourselves way out on the tip of the limb.  Every country girl knows that's where the best apples grow...that's where you will grow best as well.

   I love to find these little bits of wisdom close to hand.  It makes me feel that the Universe is participating in my souls evolution by presenting me with these contemplative tidbits.  The world is full of these metaphors for spiritual growth.  We just have to open our hearts and our minds and seek them out!

My final post on A Sacred Journey is up and you can read my last reflections here.

Hidden within the Light...

   Ever since I learned of James Turrell's work with light, I have been fascinated with the metaphoric capacity of sunlight.  As photographers we are, literally, "writers of light." (Photon + grapha = photography) One of my favorite demonstrations in my art room when I was a teacher was to use a prism to break a ray of sunlight into a rainbow.  Children were always amazed that all the colors are "inside" the seemingly white light.

   Every sunny morning when I get up at this time of year, I am greeted by a little rainbow somewhere in the hall outside the bathroom. Finding it is a morning ritual for me.  The beveled glass mirror over the sink serves as a prism creating the stunning light show and sometimes, like this photograph shows, the effect is quite striking.

   Light has always been, across many cultures, the grand metaphor and I am a commensurate light seeker.  I use to joke that I was solar powered...without my daily charge of sunlight my batteries quickly deplete!  All living things reach for the light and I see that as an intrinsic soul searching enterprise.  Somehow we yearn for enlightenment and we are constantly walking that path whether we fully embrace the process or not.  It is built into our genes.

   Every time I see this little rainbow I think about all that is hidden within the light.  The symbols, the metaphors, the color, the life giving warmth.  After this long winter, being touched by the light means even more to me.

   You can see some lovely interpretations of this theme on my Pinterest board.  How does the light touch you?

Let the Light Touch You

The Sacred Place of Borderlands...

   Slowly, so very slowly, the landscape around my home in Maine is coming back to life.  As the sun warms and the edge of icy winter retreats, tiny signs of re-emergence can be seen.

   I've always viewed the planting of bulbs in the autumn as an act of faith...their appearance in the spring, a moment of joy especially this spring.

   We are all turning our faces to the light and basking in the warmth of a much delayed spring...it is heavenly.

   Although we've experienced this spring ritual of re-birth countless times, this year it seems even more poignant to my winter-weary soul.

   There is a magical quality to the experience of being on the edge of anything...the moment when a change is about to occur.  It could be at the moment of sunrise or sunset or, as in this photograph, the demarcation between cold death and the warmth of emerging life.  It is so clearly delineated here; you can run your finger along the edge.

   These are sublime contemplative moments, to be savored and internalized.  Living in this "in between" place, even for just a moment, is a delight.  One of my favorite edges to walk is where water touches the land...one of those sacred boundary places that Margaret Silf calls the "borderlands of being".   There is something inherently mysterious about these places at the edge.  We can glimpse two ways of being simultaneously...look in two directions at the same time.  Somehow, these borderlands feel like a holy place to me.

A Thought for Today...We're all broken

 

  This was one of the "breadcrumbs" I picked up on my SoulCollage® retreat last weekend.  The split on this birch tree ran its whole length but it still seemed to be thriving.  I immediately recalled this Hemingway quotation. It also seemed appropriate for the workshop I was taking.  Essential parts of ourselves are often revealed when we allow our soul to open up.

   We had spent the morning talking about the "trans-personal" cards, Source, Soul Essence, and Witness.  These are difficult concepts since they are somewhat abstract and formless.  I later found an image during my contemplative stroll on the grounds that seemed to clarify the idea for me.

The three trunks are united at the base. Their roots go deep into the earth. They are three distinct entities with a common base. Coming from a Christian background, I naturally saw it in the light of the trinity.   But what I love about the SoulCollage®
experience is that it welcomes and honors all faith traditions or no faith tradition at all.  It becomes what you need it to become.  It is an expansive umbrella the shelters all sorts of people; it is inclusive and protective of each individual soul.

    If you are interested in learning a bit more about the
SoulCollage® process, follow these links.  Find a facilitator near you and take an introductory class.  It is really a fascinating process and it synchronizes beautifully with contemplative photography.

SoulCollage®

 Kaleidosoul

Contemplative Poetry Series - William Wordsworth

Radiance

 

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind. 

 

William Wordsworth

 

 

 p.s Another Susan Fox inspired image! 

 

Stillness, Silence and Solitude...

   The great trinity of essential practices for the contemplative photographer, stillness, silence and solitude. 

   When I give workshops in the field I had to come up with a way for people to be guided and to be alone at the same time.  Contemplative photography is not a group activity!

   The journals of guided meditations I design and give to participants allow them to experience the stillness, silence and solitude for themselves while keeping them focused on the essential experience I want them to have.

   Stilling the mind's constant chattering, entering into a companionable silence as one sits in solitude in the landscape, this is foremost in the practice of contemplative photography for me and one I look forward to whenever I go out into the landscape.

   I photographed this scene on a visit to Massachusetts recently where they were far more advanced in the steady progress to spring than we are in Maine.  "Ice out" is a term we use here to signify that moment when the pond comes back to life and sheds its winter blanket of ice.  People even wager on possible dates and great ceremony is attached to this northern rite of Spring.  In this image we can see ice out is well on its way.

    It is also an apt metaphor for the spiritual awakening in all of us...when we melt into a new way of being that more clearly reflects the wonders and love of life.  It is the moment of re-embracing the sunlight that will warm us to the core after our voluntary retreat behind an icy barrier of detachment.

   There is nothing so still as a pond silently re-emerging after a long, long winter.  We can't see the wonders at work beneath the icy covering but it is there.  Slowly and in a splendid solitude it begins its transformation and we can only watch and wait.

   I've begun a new Pinterest board you might like to explore...

Stillness, Silence and Solitude

Opening Up the Window...

The eyes are the 

windows of the Soul.

   This old English proverb can be traced to many sources including biblical and ancient Roman.  It also fits in very nicely with my Jungian belief that the soul not only speaks to us in images but responds to them as well.

   With the Spring Equinox we find ourselves full of yearning. One of the traditional spring rituals is to give the house a good turning out.  After a long and difficult winter we have the urge to open the windows to let fresh air fill our homes.  We also find the need to clean off the winter's accumulated grime from the panes so we can see Spring coming to life in our yards more clearly.

   This window metaphor is very apt for the contemplative photographer as well.   Our contemplative eyes connect to our hearts as much as our brains.  Through visual listening and visual journaling/sketching exercises, we free our soul to communicate directly with the landscape.  It will then let us know what we need to photograph.

   As we slowly awaken from our winter rest, stretch our limbs and again venture out into our beloved landscape, remember to do a little spiritual housecleaning first.  Wash off the cloudy film that detracts from your ability to see clearly what is in front of you and throw open the windows to your soul and let the breath of the divine flow in.

   Check out the link below to learn more about the traditions surrounding the Spring Equinox, or to be fair to our southern hemisphere friends, the March Equinox...

Celebrating the Vernal Equinox

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Footnote:   

  I won't be opening my windows any time soon with the 12" of new snow that fell yesterday! This is the view from Emerson's pillow, where he normally enjoys watching the world go by. No chance of that, he can't even see the road!

    Sigh..."This too shall pass"...and I hope it's soon!

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The Ultimate Metaphor...

   I am not one to admired "staged" photographs but in the case of this series by one of my favorite photographers, Nick Brandt, I'll make an exception.  I talked about his contemplative wildlife photography in a previous post and this series is another jaw dropping visual display.

    Brandt's images were made at Lake Natron in Northern Tanzania.  The lakes extreme alkalinity calcifies any animal who is unfortunate enough to fall into it.  He gathered these remains and posed them, as they would be in life and the photographs he made are haunting and thought provoking in the extreme.

   Some people, myself included, may find it difficult to view these images but contemplation isn't simply thinking about comfortable and pretty things.  It is the long, slow and loving look at the real and these represent a very real situation and place.  It is helpful, from time to time, to ponder things that make us feel uncomfortable.

    These images also allow us to meditate on the ultimate metaphor - Death.  And like that ever present reality, there is something beautiful to contemplate in the final act of letting go.  I recently attended the funeral of a very dear friend who had accompanied me to Ireland in 2009.  The sadness of a life cut short is never easy but the beauty of her life and how she accepted her death seemed to ease some of our grief.  Many can teach us how to live and a few special people can teach us how to face our own death...with grace and dignity.

    This series also recalls the ground breaking exhibit by Gunther von Hagens, Body Worlds.  I've never seen that exhibit but it is the striking revelation of the intricacies of the human body. Somehow, the animals in Brandt's photographs, seen in their natural environment, seem to me more poignant and touching...less about science and more about contemplation.

   I'll leave it up to you to visit the following link and form your own conclusions.  I would be interested in your thoughts....

Calcified - Across the Ravaged Land

 

Contemplative Poetry Series - Sara Teasdale

The Sanctuary

If I could keep my innermost Me
Fearless, aloof and free
Of the least breath of love or hate,
And not disconsolate
At the sick load of sorrow laid on men;
If I could keep a sanctuary there
Free even of prayer,
If I could do this, then,
With quiet candor as I grew more wise
I could look even at God with grave forgiving eyes.

Sara Teasdale


From time to time I hope to offer you a contemplative poem for you to enjoy and think about. There are so many wonderful poems and I often use them to enhance my visual listening exercises in the landscape...this is the first in the series.

 Enjoy!

The Scripture of the Landscape...

A Luminous Light

   Contemplative photography means, for me, being gifted images from a landscape that is eager to share its wisdom with those who possess a still and quiet heart and who are willing to sit and just listen.  The images I receive are the scripture of the landscape written not with words but with photons.

Light is the language

 of the landscape.

   Some days the light fairly sings, like this morning under the crab apple tree.  It was like this, soft and luminous, for just a few minutes.  Just long enough for me to record this scripture of light.

   Snow usually gives a sharp white light with stark blue/violet shadows.  It is not easy to photograph.  But this day, there was a warm glow to the snow and there was no glaring contrast.  It seemed to emit light rather than reflect it.  I know that may sound strange but it was the sensation I got as I look out the window at it.

    At moments such as this, I understand why light has always been associated with the spiritual.  Through time and across cultures, light is the supreme scriptural metaphor.  This day I finally "got" James Turrell's statement about the consciousness of light.  You can re-read the original post here.

   After I made this photograph, I just sat and gazed at the scene, afraid to blink for fear it would disappear in that instant.  It did slowly fade away after about five minutes and I was left with such a feeling of profound thankfulness that my camera and I were there to bear witness to the sight.

   I felt that after weeks of in-dwelling this Winter; of embracing both stability and the wonderful Taoist practice of Wu Wei, photographing only what comes to me, I was given an amazing gift in this image.  No, more than the image it was the experience...the photograph is but a translation of the experience and never equal to it.  This will be my Icon of the Experience for the Winter of 2013/2014.  The image that says it all for me.

   Another post on James Turrell's amazing installation at the Guggenheim last year may also provide some further illumination on light....

Other Seeing

 

Returning to the Well...

    Wells are wonderful metaphors.  The idea of casting your bucket into a deep abyss and bringing up, with some effort, life giving water can easily be applied to those of us who seek refreshment for their spirits through their practice of  photography.

   Nature is an infinitely deep well of inspiration for the contemplative photographer.  Everyday, every moment in fact, offers a new and surprising revelation for hearts that are open and eyes that are clearly focused on what is before them.

   You might also discover special and individual wells within the landscape that you can return to time and time again to quench your soul's thirst.  The crab apple tree a few feet behind my house is one of my personal wells as you no doubt have come to realize this winter.

   One of the vows monks take when they enter the monastery is one of stability...staying put in one place.  Now, with my wanderlust that is one vow I would have a great deal of difficulty with at this stage in my life but Winter offers this "monk in the world" a taste of that stability.  I stay put, hunker down, and feel immense contentment with the near at hand...like my crab apple tree.

   This particular morning it's branches were etched with a silver light that, frankly, took my breath away.  It only lasted a few minutes.  I was fortunate to have seen it at all.  The sun at this time for year melts things quickly but I'm in the habit of checking out the tree several times a day.  For a few minutes I was able to take in the beauty and wonder of this sight.  Tomorrow, even this afternoon, the tree will present a whole different message...a new source of inspiration.  I don't think I will ever tire of returning to this well so, in my own way, I practice the monastic devotion to stability at least for the winter months.  Do you have a special well of inspiration?

  

Finding your own kind of Enlightenment through Contemplative Photography

   There is a Taoist concept that states that what exists above (in heaven) also is present below (on earth).  There is no real separation between the two...each reflects the other.  This is also a Celtic world view.  It is that way of looking at the world that is the basis of my form of contemplative photography.  I search for divine "fingerprints" in the landscapes I photograph and I never fail to find them.

   I was reminded of these ideas as I stood, yet again, on my back porch looking at the crab apple tree for probably the 100th time this Winter.

   What I saw really wasn't anything dramatic, at first, until I put together the highlighted icicles and the illuminated snow under the tree.  The icicles were like pointing fingers and in the flattened space of the resulting digital image they seemed to be pointing to the sunlit snow.  While my eye didn't connect the two when I first stepped out on the porch because of their distance apart in reality, the unreality of the photograph pulled them together for me.

   Enlightenment or self-understanding can be found absolutely anywhere, even in this rather mundane scene.  It is, in fact, in these very ordinary encounters that I find the most profound understanding of all.  It tells me that the divine fingerprint I seek is everywhere and you need not journey far from home to experience it.

   For me, in the end, it is all about forging connections with the viewed elements of the landscape which are recorded in your photograph- through Photo Lectio - and some concept or idea.  Then the "enlightenment" occurs and it always makes me smile when it does! (I can't help but see that cartoon of the figure with the light bulb above their head!)  I wouldn't have, for instance, believed the common icicle could have so much to tell me in so many different ways but here it is again.  Winter is far from over here in Maine.  Maybe there are more stories these frozen finger prints have yet to reveal to me.

Digging for Buried Treasure...

   I have a lot of deer around my property (and a pair of moose but I rarely see them) and they visit frequently.  After a snow fall I can see their tracks moving from tree to tree looking for food.

  I let the apples, which fall from the big old tree on the left, stay on the ground for this very reason.  They may not be great eating for me but in mid-winter, they are buried treasure for the deer.  Now, after 18 years, these deer know where they can find a meal!

   I can relate quite well to these hungry deer.  I feel that I too move through the landscape, hungry for meaning, digging for buried treasure in the landscape.  Beneath the frozen crust of the obvious and superficial lays a wealth of wisdom if you put in a little effort and dig for it.

   Sometimes, however, things are hidden in plain sight, like these tracks in the snow.  With patience and perseverance, the deer explore their world and they are rewarded, as are we.  Contemplative photographers and hungry deer; we have a lot in common.

A Beach of Bones....

One of the best things in this year of travel was discovering the Beach of Metaphors on Campobello Island in Canada.  I never expected to find one on St. John which is world renowned for is velvety pink sand beaches.  I would be wrong.

   A small, secluded beach on Ditleff point has it's own story, and metaphors, to tell.  It is not only a stone strewn beach but has hundreds of bleached pieces of coral.  I found this sweet heart shaped one the day we visited.

   People had built small cairns with the coral as I had with the stones on the Campobello beach.  I was enthralled with the variety of the coral pieces.  Then it hit me, these really are the "bones" of the delicate and endangered coral reefs that once proliferated in the Caribbean.

    I immediately had a different reaction to this "beach of bones".  Even in this beautiful and privileged location, there are reminders that things aren't as they should be.

   Many of the coral pieces were stag horns, a variety that is especially endangered in the Caribbean.  One of the benefits of a world-wide audience on a blog is I can spread the word about especially sensitive environmental issues.  Back in October I posted about the plight of the honey bee.  You can read that here.

   That was the message I took away from this beach on St. John.  I now saw this beach as a cemetery for the lost coral reefs off shore and I want to pass on a resource to begin educating the world.  Coral reefs have a huge impact on the health of the marine life and it would be a tragedy of immense proportions if they continue to disappear at the alarming rates they are now.  Please post this link on your Facebook page and help spread the word.

   I now see that little coral heart as a metaphor for a re-awaken consciousness about the plight of the coral reefs world wide. Will you help spread the word?

Earth Justice