The Religion of Ordinary Life...

And some, like me,

are just beginning

 to guess at the

 powerful religion

or ordinary life, 

a spirituality of

 freshly mopped

 floors and

stacked dishes 

and clothes blowing

on the line.

- Adair Lara

    Next month it will be 10 years since I received my grant to go to the Western Isles of Scotland and renew my passion for photography.  What an interesting journey it has been in those 10 years! For the past 3 years I have been recording that journey on this blog. This image of a clothes line on South Uist is so exemplary of that initial trip, when I was fully immersed in the monochrome image.

    What hasn't change in those 10 years is my equally passionate engagement with the commonplace.  The "religion of ordinary life" as Adair Lara calls it.  Now, I no longer need to travel great distances to practice my "religion"...it surrounds me everyday.  

   It isn't just my ordinary life that fascinates me but the ordinary lives of the birds and squirrels, the trees and pond, the flowers and grasses by the roadside.  It is the ordinary life of the natural world around me that draws my lens and my heart.

Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars... and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers — for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are. ~Osho