Windows
“A window covered with raindrops interests me more than a photograph of a famous person.”—Saul Leiter, artist and photographer.
“View From My Window” is a social media group that calls me out of bed each morning as I long to refocus my life from more than the world outside my own window. Stunning photography from all over the globe enlarges my connection to universal beauty from Europe, Africa, South America, Australia, Canada, and other parts of North America. Flowers of every possible species, forests, elephants, bobcats, oceans, tidal pools, mountain ranges, snow in Austin, Texas, and northern lights in Iceland and Alaska wake me daily to beauty beyond my normal vision.
My experience is that being in or seeing nature is one of my best ways to connect to God. Each morning, I take a visual journey into the presence of creation in all its splendor beyond the bounds of my own home to someone else’s view that I will probably never meet. Each morning, I see a part of the beauty of the outdoors that I would have never seen in my lifetime. Occasionally, I share the view outside my window of woodpeckers and cardinals, Carolina chickadees, and blue jays, who visit the feeder beyond my floor-to-ceiling window, taking up almost a whole wall in my office at home.
However, my favorite view is when my granddaughter or grandson comes by to wave and say hello with a dog they walk, or when my daughter leaves taped outside my window a colorful “I love you” hand-drawn message with lots of hearts. Another favorite view is my husband going out in all kinds of weather to put out bird food, so I can see my avian neighbors every morning.
I rarely left my house during the two years of our long pandemic. The view from my window, where I spent most of the day, was my connection to the outside world. I am so fortunate that my view encompasses much of nature, where Parker Palmer tells us that the plants photosynthesize our nervous energy into peace, passing all understanding.
Now I connect to the views from people’s windows from all around the world. Consequently, I can now begin my day with a larger worldview.
