Breathing In

The chapter I just finished in The Creative Calling was titled Breathing In, and was focused on inspiration, especially being inspired by the Holy Spirit. The section I read the other day was talking about the places you go and the things you do where you find you can breathe in that inspiration. Where the sights and sounds around you open you up to new perceptions, and lead you to sense the awe of things. For me, of course, that best of all places is the shore, especially the untamed crags that take a little getting to, and as such are a little more raw.
But when the book asked the obvious question, "When did you last go there?" I had to admit it had been a long time. Too many preparations and stuff to get ready before the baby arrives (were we not expecting, I would no doubt have found other 'obligations'). And I had to recognize that it wasn't going to get easier to slip out for a little quiet reflection. The Bear, too, had been relegating some of his favourite escapes until 'certain priorities' were attended to. As the final day has been drawing near, I'd been encouraging him to take available opportunities to get out there while it's still simple, but until that chapter, I hadn't thought about the same for myself - at least not with respect to getting out for quiet time on my own. One of my heroes, June, reminded me in an e-mail earlier today of her state of mind before her first (now married) arrived, "I remember just wanting to get it over with so that life can start again. Little did I know that I'd longingly look back and try to remember what it felt like to sleep!"
So, the obvious eventually occurred to me. When the Bear goes diving, it usually starts on the shore somewhere, and it would be easy for me to tag along, see him into the water with whatever group, and then find a quiet spot for myself until he surfaced. And this morning, that's what we did. We ended up down at the breakwater at Ogden Point as nobody else turned up at the Dive Shop for the Sunday drop-in. He hooked up with a couple of divers who pulled in about the same time. I followed them down to the second dive stop on the breakwater with some spare weights for the Bear, should he need them. I saw them off and waited 'til he got past some initial gear issues (first dive with some reconfigured gear). I took some snapshots along the way with the new camera, and once they were off, I was on my own.
Ahh, yes, the new camera. A treat that's been on our list for awhile. The old digital point and shoot that some friends gave us awhile back had been showing its age for awhile, with the biggest problem being that it wouldn't format any new cards, so we were left with only one relatively small card, which was no doubt due to fail at the worst possible time. So we talked about what we wanted, I did some research on some of the higher end compacts with the features we were looking for, and we went out Thursday night to take a closer look down at LD. When we got there we learned from one of the reps that the model up from what we were looking at had just been put on a clearout for the same price. Pretty much a no-brainer from there, but we did a side-by-side check of the key features and came home with a new Panasonic DMC-FZ30.
So while the Bear was diving, I did some breathing in through the lens, finding my way around the various features and options. Here are some of the results:

Left: Geared up on the ledge. Below: The Bear with his newly acquired dive buddies, ready to descend from the far side of the kelp.



Now the breakwater is obviously not the rugged, raw coast, but there's still some life and the ocean sounds. Below left: the far navigation beacon - it's red mate is at the end of the breakwater. Right: the layers of stone blocks that make up the breakwater.



Left: the waves, light today, push the seaweed over the lower blocks in the eddies. Right: driftwood stacks where the breakwater meets the beach.