Life gets awfully loud, so loud it's hard to hear myself think. That's when I grab the walking stick and head out for the walk. What a blessing to be able to walk down to the bay and stand by the water's edge and watch the water and the distant lights of channel markers and bay bridge traffic. (I can see the spot when I drive over the bridge to and from work, a distant spot it seems, like the other world that it is.)

Next Sunday afternoon I hang my show at Image City Photography Gallery. My theme is "Argus at the Park". It's a collection of black and white photographs taken with the Argus C3 at four or five area state and county parks. Most of the photos include water. I didn't set out to make it a waterscape exhibit, but it did turn out that way. It's the sort of photography I gravitate toward. Photographing water calms my soul and lifts my spirit.

I photograph the simple beauty of people and places not to hide from the evil or pretend it does not exist but to challenge it. The crescendo highlights the quiet that challenges it. The ugliness and evil all around us make poignant the beauty and peace that defy it.

We laugh in the face of evil and God laughs with us. Christus victor. Christ has conquered. The Lamb of God has overcome the roaring lion.

(Thanks to Pastor Chris Fluit for getting me thinking along these lines with his sermon this morning.)