mt. aspiration

Little goals or just goals:

Take a picture of someone who is dying.
Buy an orginial photograph by a well known photographer.
Watch the sunrise on the East coast and the sunset on the West coast in the sameday.
Run up a hill and roll down it.
Understand what it means to love fearlessly.
Learn to bake yummy cake.
Cry when I want to.
Carry a backpack on a trail with my bleongings for more than a week.
Smile and laugh more.
Learn about loving and living.
Eat strawberries under a tree.
Create more goals.

These are my aspirations, this is where I am, on mt. aspiration.

Stepping Into the Dark

My hands are still soaked with the smell of developer, stop and fix. For some the smell is awful and hard to live with but for me it is a simple reminder of the joy of being in the darkroom. Yesterday I spent 7 hours printing my favorite photographs and although my feet hurt from standing for so long, I walked away with the joy of living my passion.

The darkroom is saturated with analogies that help me understand photography as a way to experience life. You need to go into the dark in order to produce something. You need time and patience to see anything develop. Printing takes an almost scary amount of perfection, yet no matter how hard you try you can always do better. Moments you thought could not be experienced again come back to life. It is a sanctuary from the loud and bright world.

I am still learning a ton about how to develop and print. I am learning to care about my work enough to spend hours on one image. Being in the dark room is humbling, you throw away more prints than you keep and every time I am in there I question every desire I have had to follow my passion. I think I need a passion that will continue to humble me for the rest of my life; I need to love something that will push me to discover more. I love being in the darkroom and knowing that I am at least trying to create, trying to discover and trying to understand more about this beauty called photography.

Ypomoni

"Our prayer this morning is for those tempted to yield to defeat: PRESS ON
Grant them strength to press on.
When our cherished dreams begin to burst
like the children's bubbles blown to the air,
when people of common sense and clear sight,
when doctors and lawyers, specialists, friends and neighbors all cry:
'A good try, but you're through.'
Lord, give us strength to keep on persisting.
Light the fire to press n.

And when the forces are overwhelming-
as in illness or death-
keep our goal ever before us-
defiantly - past every discouragement,
past every surrender of those we love and respect,
give us the mighty power of God to press on
and on
and on.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen"
-Robert James St. Clair

I am beginning to realize the power of endurance, that God loves us so much He lets us endure. A parent has to let their little guy endure the awkwardness of learning to walk in ski boots, the loneliness of ski bus, they have to let them endure the cold and the falls all for the greater hope that one day they can enjoy the mountain together. Thank you for letting me endure, for giving me this chance to press on, to practice the art of understanding ypomoni.

My Drink

I am addicted to coffee, or maybe just the culture. I think everyone I know has either been a barista, a shareholder in Starbucks or thinks they have their own personal drink that no one else orders. I feel like in Seattle you no longer sit down to a meal to share in conversation, but you sit down to the cup of coffee of your choice. I prefer to share meals, actual meals, not a coffee and a scone. For some reason the concept of coffee just seems to protray a short period of time, rather than a salad, entree and dessert. But for some reason, I still love coffee.

The type of coffee you order also seems to somehow say something about you. You are not going to find a teenager walking into Starbucks and ordering a tall drip with no room. You are also not going to find a corporate business man ordering a grande, half-shot, non-fat, no sugar orange mocha.

My drink is a tall non-fat latte. It pretty muchs says I am boring but it is good. I like them because I don't get tongue tied when I order it, and the plain taste is somehow comforting. But my real point is, we claim identifying marks in order to symbloize we belong. Maybe I am taking this too far, but the other day a barista called my drink as reduced fat instead of non-fat. I didn't respond, that was not my drink. Eventually she told me it was mine and I went on my way with cup in hand, but I laughed to myself and thought "is this really so ingrained in me?" Who really knows, maybe a new culture will come along and sweep us up, but until then, I must admit I am just a member of this culture, loving my drink.

Slow Passion

I am not really sure if passion is a good word to describe what pushes me to wake up every morning and seek more. It is the closest I can get. I have also come to realize that my relationship with my passions, is just that, a relationship. It needs work, communication, fun times, sacrifice and tears. In my relationships I sometimes say "I still love you, but I don't like you right now." That is how I am feeling with my passions. But how do I get through those parts of my life when it is hard to like but love still exists? I try to put my passions right in front of me all the time, I do not let myself forget that I love it.

I put these two pictures up because they represent so much of what drives me. All those photographs tell me that I am capable of capturing moments that are valuable but they also ask for more. I just have to look at them and the desire to grab my camera creeps up and I am off to go shoot. They also represent the power of a passion, what happens when you share it and how someone else can accept it.

My other passion is Mt. Rainier. This has been a harder one to accept, but it has been so persistent, always there and always beautiful. The mountain has been the backdrop for our family conversations out on the deck. It taught my mom that faith is real, it built a bond between my father and grandfather, and someday it will be humble me and my brother as we have been asked to carry our grandpa's ashes to the summit. To me this mountain is more than an addition to the beautiful Northwest, it is a continual reminder that relationships are solid, hard and humbling.

I still have so much to discover about what a passion is and how to follow it, but for now I realize that they are sometimes hard to like, but my love it always there. They need to be in front of me all the time, to remind me that there is a desire in my heart to seek more life. I am slow to understand this relationship but as it grows, I am beginning to see its beauty.

Johnny

So this is Johnny. He is probably the cutest little guy I have ever met and he has also taught me more about being a child of Christ than any other person I have ever met. The family I nannied for adopted Johnny when he was born, and a month or so later there was a custody battle over him. Johnny had to return to his biological parents while the dispute was settled. Johnny eventually returned to his adopted parents just before I started to work for them.

One day when I was with the family, Johnny's (adoptive) parents recieved a phone call from the judge handling the custody battle. The judge called to tell them that Johnny was legally their child and there was no way anyone could take him away from them again. After the phone call was over, the mom and dad came into the living room with tears in their eyes. His dad picked him up and held him close and through his tears said "You are mine, you will always be mine, nothing will ever change that."

If you know me, then you know I started crying too. Infront of me was the most perfect example of Christ saying "Lauren, you are mine, I will never let you go." Johnny squalled with delight as his mother and father hugged him, he was not aware of the significance of that moment, all he knew was that he was loved. Johnny will also have no idea he impacted my life so much but I am so thankful to God that He has given me blessed moments with Johnny.

Blog Thoughts

I have been reading a lot lately. I enjoy reading because it gives me a new perspective, helps me practice empathy and it briefly takes me out of my world and places me in the world of another. When I put a book down, either for the night or at its complication, I notice my thoughts begin to mimic the tone of the writer. I wonder how they would write my thoughts, what words and word order they would use. This is helpful if you are trying to become a better writer because you learn new styles and practice different ways of articulating yourself. It can also be dangerous because you being to think for an audience, you become tied to the way you think and not your actual thoughts.

I know my blog thoughts are for an audience, I don't know who you are but I want you to know my thoughts are real, but they are manicured in some ways. I use spell check, I reread, I rewrite until it sounds right. But hopefully they convey authenticity and I would share them with you if we were having a cup of coffee. I don't believe a blog is a good place for me to share a part of myself that I would not in any other arena. It could become too safe, I would be sharing without being exposed and that is simply not how I want to live my life.

So please know that these thoughts are meant to convey a part of me, they have depth and strength, but also know that you are not the first one to know them. This is not meant to dishonor you in anyway but to simply hold myself accountable. I love writing here and I am honored that you are listening.

Chalk on the Sidewalk

This is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to a dear friend.

"I am currently amazed by the power of healing time. Time seems to be a slow drizzle that washes away the chalk drawings. Our memories of creating those drawings will not wash away but the chalk, what I thought to be the unforgettable feelings do wash away. I have wished that the rain would come sooner, harder and more persistent but if it did, it would leave the sidewalk too wet to draw on the next day and for that reason I am thankful for the drizzle of healing time."

I still haven't found what I am looking for, and that is perfectly alright.

Bono had it right when he sang "I want to run, I want to hide, I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside, I want to reach out and touch the flame, where the streets have no name...but I still haven't found what I am looking for." This song needs to be on the soundtrack of life. Play it when you start a road trip, when you find yourself in love, when you question every ounce of your faith, when you triwl in the sun. It reminds us that the quest for the known turns into a race of endurance in the unknown.

There are so many unknowns ahead of me and yet these lyrics and wise voices of friends and family, tell me to get comfortable in this uncertainity. Bono still hasn't found what he was looking for because what he was looking for was the unknown and that is a quest that will last a lifetime. I cannot think of a bigger blessing than to have the desire to continue to go, to search and chase the unknowns.

Thankful

I am thankful for heavy drops of rain
and bright sun.

I am thankful for the noise of wind
and for the silence at 6:45 a.m.

I am thankful for the ability to learn
and for sleep.

I am thankful for vision
and for hope.

I am thankful for the listeners in my life
and for the talkers

I am thankful for the smell of espresso
and the taste of peanut butter.

I am thankful for seeing in darkness.

That Hurt

As a child I remember falling off my bike, running to fast and tripping or catching an edge while skiing. All these memories, gravity acted quickly and I had no time to react expect to give into the fall. I would slowly get back up and wipe the tears from my eyes even while the sting remained in my scrapped knees and palms. Hitting the ground hurt and continues to hurt to this day.

This year has been full of hitting the ground hard, whether it was my heart, confidence in my academic ability or my faith, they all left me with some sort of open wound from a fall. But the point is not that I have fallen or that I have a scar in this area of my life now, the beauty my childhood memories have taught me is that I can get back up even when it still stings or tears are still in my eyes. That I can look around and realize that I am ok, that I can keep playing.

I am so thankful to anyone that has helped me to my feet or has simply sat with me on the ground.

This year was not all about the falls but is really more about the redemption that came after.