This, Our Valley

This, Our Valley

03/23/2018

The Daffodils

There’s a lot of hope and a lot of faith and love mixed up in a miracle – MEINDERT DEJONG

My wife and I went out for a drive as we are wont to do from time to time. It was a weekday evening and, what with the time change and lengthening of days of early spring (and a nice day, to boot), I thought we’d go out and see the daffodils growing commercially in fields just west of us.

I wasn’t exactly sure where we would find them – I think the local farms are better known for their tulips (which don’t come into bloom for another month or two) – but I knew that if I drove around aimlessly for a while I would surely discover them.

We headed west towards Anacortes on the old Memorial Highway and sure enough, there they were: fields of bright yellow daffodils swaying in the breeze. I grabbed a few quick snaps from my phone for, alas, I had left my good camera at home. My brother-in-law’s words bounced around the cavern between my ears: “You can’t get pictures if you don’t take your camera.” He won’t read this so it’s safe to say this openly: He’s right!

While cell phone cameras have come a long way, and while some can take breath-taking photos, my phone isn’t one of those. So I got some decent shots, but nothing as spectacular as what we saw before us, but that’s OK. Perfection is God’s responsibility, not mine.

While I enjoy photography as a hobby (and I am really a beginner of a novice, and not really even a novice yet), the fact is I am finding joy in simply living. While it is nice taking pictures (and quite ego-stroking setting up the tripod, changing lenses, playing with focus, composition, f-stops, and the like – to the oos and the ahs of the local lookie-loos), I am coming to appreciate actually just being “in the moment” – like looking at a field of flowers swaying ever so gently in the breeze. It was truly a “wow” moment.

Lifting up my eyes from the field of golden daffodils (do they come in any other color?), I gazed to the east and couldn’t help but notice the clouds billowing over the north Cascade Mountains. It wasn’t the usual flat gray slate that usually hangs over our part of the world. These were angry, well-defined and muscular storm clouds looking to put some serious water down on the hills to the east. Again, all I could do is let out an almost imperceptible “wow.”

Living in the moment. What a concept. I forget who it was who said, “There is no past; there is no future; there is only now – ever only now.” Incidentally, if no one actually ever said that, I’ll be happy to take credit. Please send royalties my way via the Madisonian.

It has been said that a miracle is an event that can’t be explained with the laws of science or nature, but I would disagree completely. Just the complexity of the universe in which we live is a miracle. Just the fact that a seed or bulb can be shoved into a bit of black or brown dirt and come up in bright green and yellows is a miracle.

The fact you and I can see that stuff – and knowing we don’t really see it, but an image of reflected light is caught by lenses that evolved over more millennia than we can count, hits a fleshy slate containing rods and cones at the back of our eyeballs (upside down, no less), is converted to chemical and electrical impulses that snap, crackle, and pop along an optic nerve to a patch of gray matter that lies between our ears, and is perceived (right side up) as something which then causes other parts of our body to secrete endorphins that eventually produces a smile upon one’s mug – that’s a miracle!

Miracles are everywhere. All we need to do is look around with eyes to see, and listen with ears to hear.

To appreciate what we have, and what we see, and what we hear, and what we feel, and what we experience – and that we can do it alone or in community – by golly, those are also miracles here now in this, our valley.

Keith Axberg writes on matters concerning life and faith. He can be reached at kfaxberg@gmail.com.