Creation Photos Around the World

Are those swamp cedar knees in the foreground?

Bald cypress.

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So this showed up in my email as a recommended TED talk. Considered making a separate post around it to argue that gratitude and appreciation are entirely reasonable without believing in a creator to whom one addresses that gratitude. It has always struck me as odd that so many apologist Christians have wanted to argue that gratitude minus a creator just didnā€™t make sense. But if I were a Christian I think Iā€™d find the wonder and gratitude atheists express as confirming the awe which nature/creation inspires in many of us. Anyhow, there is some nice footage here and I share the Benedictine monkā€™s sentiment regarding being grateful for every day as if it were your first and last.

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I really enjoy this post, @MarkD (the 3rd post of this thread, at the top). The first one actually looks a bit like the mist on the Barrowdowns, where Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin tangles with the Barrow-wights!. The second looks like I would have thought of the gleam from Gandalf when he was The White, barely covered by his robe. Thanks.

Thanks Randy, glad you liked them. What light can do in a landscape is so amazing. When you come out to California with your kids Iā€™ll point you to this trail and the steam trains where dogs ride free or Iā€™ll come along if you donā€™t mind a slower pace. Here is another photo from that same walk, this one looking north toward the Cartinez straights as the fog/low clouds flow up the delta through Golden Gate.

View through that same gate on a day without the low clouds.

This one is looking West out over San Francisco. Iā€™ve enlarged it a bit to be able to see it better.

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I know the frog looks out of place but it was supposed to be there lol. Was trying to sleep since itā€™s 1am and I have to be up in 3 hours to go hiking before work but could not sleep so I darted outside to look for moths and instead ended up looking at the stars.

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Yeah, that is odd. One can be thankful for a blank envelope through the letter box containing Ā£50 without tracking down the mystery provider and thanking them personally. Yet, if one is able to track down the provider then maybe oneā€™s gratitude becomes greater, because it also includes the love, thoughtfulness, and kindness of the provider.

Similarly, gratitude and appreciation are perfectly legitimate ends in themselves. However, within the Christian framework they have the opportunity to rise above themselves to become means to delight in the goodness of God.

Thatā€™s how I see it at least. :slight_smile:

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Wow, you have quite a talent for perspective! Thank you. Have you created prints for some of them, to put up in your house?
I remember attending a wedding just north of San Franciscoā€“it was in a beautifully green time of year. It would be a great place to live, for the scenery, I think.

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The great advantage of God as you conceive him is the pleasure of anticipating a day when you can meet face to face. I once had that too. Then prayers were like letters to someone you expect to be reunited with and be able to converse with directly. Truly I am not certain that will never be possible but neither do I count on it. For me it will always be a presence in my periphery, an Orher that never leaves me who I rarely hear from directly and only when I am still and receptive. I think life makes makes most sense as a kind of parallel play with that Other.

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Is that the Orion Constellation I spy in the second picture?

There is something aesthetic about places where the land meets the sea or other large body of watee. It also results in varied microclimates where cooling effect of the water concentrated in one area more or less than another due to contours in the land or its distance from the water. But as you obviously know every place has its charm. One thing I miss is the way snow can blanket the rampant growth of spring and summer, transforming the countryside into something almost abstract and sublimely beautiful. Of course I donā€™t miss the practical necessities of living with snow and slush but when I lived outside of DC I was just going in to high school so I didnā€™t have many responsibilities for all of that and we werenā€™t there long enough for shoveling snow to lose its novelty completely.

Honestly Ramdy I almost never print out photos. I think most images just look better backlit on a monitorā€™s screen.

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Sure, I can respect that. And since emotional responses like gratitude are so intrinsically personal, it would be stupid to say that my sense of gratitude is more meaningful or deeper or whatever than yours is. One, may perceive that their approach to gratitude is more meaningful than anotherā€™s, but how does one measure that? Itā€™s like on person trying to argue that they see more blue in the colour of the sky than the person next to them.

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Sadly some of the most ungrateful people I have met have been of the religious flavourā€¦

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Just had a restaurant worker tell me that the grouchiest folks show up on Sunday after church! :slight_smile: (maybe the same ones who wonā€™t work because itā€™s Sunday?)

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But every good trait like every bad one is scattershot through out our species paying no mind to divisions such as religious affiliation.

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It is always good to see Orion rise above the horizon in the fall. Sort of like the return of an old friend, preceded by the fuzzy blur of Pleiades caught in the peripheral vision. Neat to follow Mars, Saturn and Jupiter earlier in the evening. Have you noted the dimmer Betelgeuse in Orion? I understand dust cloud have dimmed that star a bit in the last few years.

The frog looks like it doesnā€™t want to be disturbed.

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I unfortunately have not done enough studies on stars to know much. I hope to study them out again this year as a way to stay connected to nature in winter when itā€™s cold and dark for the majority of my free time. Though I am getting in hikes in the morning 2+ times a week.

The frog was definitely wanting to be left alone to sleep.

Iā€™m having trouble making out the other photos but the frog is fantastic. Native to your area then? Wish I had frogs, though my deceased brother lived just one side of a canal. Not only did they invade his swimming pool but the noise they made in their stiflingly hot summer made it impossible to carry on a conversation without closing the window. So perhaps I should be careful what I wish for.