Wonder! Happy Sunday!

“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light.” Jesus

Someone asked me the other day what had happened to my Generous Eye, Sunday posts. I had to admit that for a while there I was working on “God, the Universe, and Everything” and that was occupying all the theological cells in my limited brain. There was no room for the Generous Eye. What a sad thing to say. I have no excuse. Maybe I just needed a break. I can assure you that my Generous Eye, imperfect as it is, has been in operation during the weeks I have not written a Sunday post. Let’s get back to it.

I had already caught two sunsets at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge during the Festival of the Cranes...something I try to do on every visit. At sunset the Snow Geese on certain ponds get up and move in mass to the fields where they roost for the night, and the Sandhill Cranes often come in to those same ponds to spend the night ankle deep in water where they have warning of preditors. If the sunset is coopertive it can be quite a strirring site. I had not planned to catch another sunset, but this one simply pulled me off the road on my way home. There was parking in one of the lots by the pond off Rt 1 (there often is no parking left after 30 minutes before sunset), and I had to stop. It was one of those Bosque days with a mix of cloud types, everything from whisy mares-tails and mackerel scales to puffy cumulus and there was a great deal of promise in the sky as the sun went down. It did not disappoint. The setting sun painted the clouds more gold than red, red-gold, that deepened toward ember orange-red as the sun sank further behind the mountains in the west. And the Sandhill Cranes came in in groups of 3 and 4 right across the glowing clouds. Words can not capture it, and even the best photo falls short of the actual experience. It does not take long. Sunset is fast in New Mexico in the November. I stood on the berm between the road and pond for 15 minuets of pure wonder, and let wonder guide my camera...tracking flying cranes in across the sunset until the weight of wonder forced the shutter down. There were a lot of cameras on the berm, but there were also a lot people just standing and drinking it all in. I sometimes wonder if that is not the better way, but I have had a camera in my hands too long already...I would feel naked without it...and I feel some obligation to bring home a bit of the experience to share with those who could not be there. It is experiences like the sunset and the cranes at Bosque that open the generous eye in many of us...experiences that slip by all our defenses and make our eyes generous, if only for 15 minutes. I don’t believe though, that the generous eye, once opened, ever fully closes. I think the wonder of sunset at Bosque changes people, opens the generous eye when it is not open, and feeds the light within for those with already open eyes. I can only hope that those of you who never get to Bosque del Apache in November at sunset, find some other experience equally as stirring, and that your generous eye is opened, and the the light within you renewed. Happy Sunday!