Week One: Saturday before the First Sunday of Advent

I am driving at dawn on the North River Road from Mottville to Constantine. The sun stalks me from behind the trees, glimpsing at me from curve to curve from the far side of the St. Joe River.

In this season of hunting I should be looking for deer crossing the curves in front of me. But the chase of the sun compels my glance, my glint, as an open curve sparkles in sun caught frost.

Rural vibrancy. Here it is. Literally. The fields are down to corn stubble or new curves drawn by farm impliments, fingerprints in the soil. The sun reveals their DNA. It dazzles crystals of frost caught in tight cradles of dry Queen Ann's Lace and arches of brittle twists and stems, names unknown. Its great eye chases me and then slips around a corner to beat me to the last open field before the new houses and the 25 mile per hour speed limit at the Constantine Village limit. So I tag the sun back -- with my camera.

Why should this give me such delight? There is shape, light, color, shadow, sparkle and rings of refracted light making their own circles in my lens and image. This is my morning reverie, a way to honor the holy wholeness this sun has circled, creeping round the cosmos from Cambodia and across Tanzania and Congo to Bristol and this North River Road.

We take snapshots of the ones we love. Weeds, sky, cloud, sun, streaks of light. These I love. These spaces of silence and morning glory. A way to begin again -- a vibrant rural year of R & R.

"Thus says the LORD God, the Holy One of Israel:

'In returning and rest you shall be saved;

in quietness and trust will be your strength.'"

Isaiah 30:15