Blog Archives
for lo, the days are hastening
Christmas Eve. It’s Christmas Eve.
I won’t lie: this time of the year is hard for me to get through. I struggle to hear vapid music without making comments (You: that damn drummer boy. I am looking RIGHT AT YOU when I bring this up.) (As an example of a comment that I’d like to make.) I am still not over the exact mathematical allotment of Festive Holiday Minutes™ per family that my in-laws tracked (and were so, so kind let us know when we were deficient.). I miss my mom, who died 20 years ago next week. The days are short which makes me feel bleak.
But. I have a million good memories of my mom and I have a loving family. No one (so far as I am aware) tracks my time allocation. We’re past the winter solstice so the days are already getting longer. And these verses from “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” help me see the beauty of the season even through all the things that don’t feel happy or kind or joyful.
Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
two thousand years of wrong
And man at war with man hears not
The love song which they bring
O hush the noise ye men of strife
And hear the angels sing
And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow
Take heart for comfort, love, and hope
Come swiftly on the wing
O rest beside the weary road
And hear the angels sing
So today I will take heart for comfort, love, and hope; rest beside that weary road when I need to; and will listen for the angels singing (hopefully with a drum accompaniment).
San Elizario, Texas
photographed 12.15.2025
church + grackles
Don Toothaker, my shooting partner and excellent friend, and I enjoyed the town of San Elizario – there are a lot of reasons why but if I try to write them down here, they start to sound trite or maybe a little bit like I’m trying to hard. Suffice it to say, then, that we were in sync with what we felt and what we saw and how we felt about what we saw. And we saw and we felt a lot. The day was beautiful.
Presidio Chapel of San Elizario
San Elizario, Texas
photographed 12.15.2025
sant’agata’s day begins
The bells woke me up. I stepped out onto my little balcony to see what the day looked like, and this was what greeted me.
And it only got better.
Catania, Sicily
photographed 2.4.2025
by the light of the spirit
Some photographers will carefully plan when they’ll be in a specific place because they’ve got an exact idea of where the light should be coming from to get The Best Photo. There’s apps and stuff to help you figure it out down to the exact minute and accounting for things like mountains or buildings that could block the light.
I am not one of those photographers.
My technique is far less technical and involves wandering around to see what’s interesting and would make a photograph.
And when I go past a church I didn’t even know was there and the afternoon light is flooding a window on the far side of the building, I like to think the light appreciates my faith in its ability to do the right thing. Without an app.
San Antonio Catholic Church
El Porvenir, New Mexico
photographed 11.10.2025
cholla, ribbon, church
Right about where the road is closed due to lingering danger from the 2022 Hermits Peak/Calf Creek forest fires, there’s a little church settled into the trees. You probably can’t even see it unless you’ve already gone to the end and had to turn around.
The (locked) gate was decorated with pieces of cholla cactus in the shape of a cross, with a yellow ribbon looped around it.
As far as I could tell, the church doesn’t have a name.
El Pornevir, New Mexico
photographed 11.11.2025
One Day | One Image 