Be a Life-long Learner

 

This part of the journey started when my husband, Jim, began to text our adult children. It was awkward at first but I wanted to be in on it. Our children welcomed texts. Their response might be one word but often more immediate than to a voice mail. We had finally moved to smart phones and now were beginning to play with new features such as apps. (Applications)

I found a collage app for my android phone when we took a trip to national parks out west. (I use “Collage Photo Maker Pic Grid made by Lyrebird Studio) I wanted a creative way to share photos with a bit of whimsy remembering long evenings in the 70’s with friends seeing hundreds of slides of castles…ok, it seemed like hundreds.  You have to be willing to just experiment to learn to use the phone and apps. I found a young friend of 50 who was willing to teach me. We laugh and say we need a 12 year old consultant like I had in the 80’s when I was first using a computer.

It was soon clear that this trip was a spiritual journey.  We were humbled by the natural wonders and rich history we had only visited in books and movies. We were stunned at the beauty of such places as Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park which literally left us “breathless” at high altitudes. My husband has long been drawn to the West and the Cowboy Code of Ethics. This trip which included Deadwood and Jackson Hole and Little Bighorn brought this era to life. I looked up the exquisite written proposal of the artist selected to create the Indian memorial at Little Bighorn, entitled “Peace through Unity.”

So how could we savor this trip and contemplate what we had seen? How could we honor the photographs to bear witness to this pilgrimage to a part of the country full of important history?   I found an online course, Photography as a Spiritual Path, by Jan Phillips at www.spiritualityandpractice.com  She wrote God is at eye level: photography as a healing art.

Currently I am using the assignments and questions posed to process photos we took seeing photography as an expressive art. I had introduced my nursing students to a book, My morning view: an IPhone photography project about gratitude, grief, and good coffee by Tammy Stroeble, which inspired several of them to use photography in their final class project in expressive arts in healing.

I don’t look at all the photos in the practice circle of the e-course nor do I submit photos for each class but save the assignments to ponder at my own pace. I don’t have a lot of apps on my phone but I am enjoying a few. This time of life is about giving myself permission to try new things and only continuing with those that intrigue me. It is about honoring the discomfort of the learning curve, asking questions, and asking “what questions should I be asking?”

As we ask ourselves, “What’s next?” and “Trust our intuition,” is there something you are curious to know more about?

Something to think about:

“Life isn’t measured by the number of breaths we take, but by those that take our breath away.”