What is Essential is Invisible to the Eye
We decided to watch the sunrise over the lake Easter morning. I couldn’t tell if the sun had risen yet on the drive over, the morning was thick with fog. I’ve been at the lake at least once each week since January. It has become a place where I can clear my mind and water down any problems and stresses, like visiting a friend where conversations help ease burdens and uplift my spirit. It seemed appropriate for me to be there Easter morning. But I never saw the lake. The landscape I’m so used to seeing was completely shrouded with heavy, low fog. Just 100 yards from the water, only the dock and cattail grasses were visible along the shoreline. The lake and sky were erased by a thick white veil that was before me, behind me, around me. I walked onto the dock. I stood on the dock as if I were suspended in clouds, without contrast and without color. I could faintly see where the sunrise might have been in an area of the fog that was lighter than the rest.
The birds chattered in the trees, and the orange blossoms from nearby groves were fragrant in the moist air. Only if I looked directly down from the dock did I see water, sprinkled with oak pollen, as quiet and still as a tomb. The bells tolling at the Abbey across the lake told me it was 7:00. A raft of twelve coots broke my feeling of being suspended in the sky. I first became aware of the water’s surface with the movement of the small, black birds swimming. My urge to capture the sunrise was met with white haze. The lack of what I wanted to see reflected back on just me. And I felt the significance of believing without seeing.
Later in the day, we surrounded ourselves with Easter-egg colors of sky and water and spring. Gulf waters were green and met with a crystal blue sky. Trees were blossomed, and the Caribbean Kapok tree near the St. Petersburg Pier was in full bloom, large red blooms bigger than my hand covered the naked, gray branches of the gnarled tree as if someone glued on origami flowers but forgot the leaves.
The colors we associate with Easter were infinite. But my morning where all was white-gray light, and I saw nothing, remained strong in my mind, more vivid than all the colors.
We decided to watch the sunrise over the lake Easter morning. I couldn’t tell if the sun had risen yet on the drive over, the morning was thick with fog. I’ve been at the lake at least once each week since January. It has become a place where I can clear my mind and water down any problems and stresses, like visiting a friend where conversations help ease burdens and uplift my spirit. It seemed appropriate for me to be there Easter morning. But I never saw the lake. The landscape I’m so used to seeing was completely shrouded with heavy, low fog. Just 100 yards from the water, only the dock and cattail grasses were visible along the shoreline. The lake and sky were erased by a thick white veil that was before me, behind me, around me. I walked onto the dock. I stood on the dock as if I were suspended in clouds, without contrast and without color. I could faintly see where the sunrise might have been in an area of the fog that was lighter than the rest.
The birds chattered in the trees, and the orange blossoms from nearby groves were fragrant in the moist air. Only if I looked directly down from the dock did I see water, sprinkled with oak pollen, as quiet and still as a tomb. The bells tolling at the Abbey across the lake told me it was 7:00. A raft of twelve coots broke my feeling of being suspended in the sky. I first became aware of the water’s surface with the movement of the small, black birds swimming. My urge to capture the sunrise was met with white haze. The lack of what I wanted to see reflected back on just me. And I felt the significance of believing without seeing.
Later in the day, we surrounded ourselves with Easter-egg colors of sky and water and spring. Gulf waters were green and met with a crystal blue sky. Trees were blossomed, and the Caribbean Kapok tree near the St. Petersburg Pier was in full bloom, large red blooms bigger than my hand covered the naked, gray branches of the gnarled tree as if someone glued on origami flowers but forgot the leaves.
The colors we associate with Easter were infinite. But my morning where all was white-gray light, and I saw nothing, remained strong in my mind, more vivid than all the colors.
There is still a strange power in what's invisible, isn't there?
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