Taking in the View Friday Five

Sally says: "This week I took some time out to stop and walk and take in the view; my son Chris is studying in one of the most beautiful parts of the country, too often we simply drive up there, turn around and come home! This time Tim and I took time out to take in the view. It occurs to me that we need to do that more in life. With that in mind I offer you this weeks Friday Five:"
1. How important is the "big picture" to you, do you need a glimpse of the possibilities or are you a details person? I think it's a.....get ready for this one.....a both/and for me! I can see the vision for the big thing, but can also break it down to the parts, organize it and make it happen. The difference is one is by inclination, the other by training. I am a dreamer and contempletive and I think "big picture" person by nature, but my jobs and education voer the years haev helped me learn to channel those dreams into possibities and realities.

2. If the big picture is important to you how do you hold onto it in the nitty gritty details of life? That is sometimes challenging. One thing I had to learn, well to be honest, am still having to (not past tense as much as I would like it to be) is that holding onto the big picture requires time and intentionality and solitude and discipline and saying NO to some of the things that produce all that nit and grit.

3. Name a book, poem, psalm, piece of music that transports to to another dimension ( one....what am I thinking....) Ah, she knows us well...one indeed! Well there is the Pachelbel Canon, and Beethoven's Ninth and Handel's Messiah, native flute, Gregorian chant, and the music of Mark Sedio, Beth Chapman and Jearlynn Steele at the FoH. There's pretty much anything Mary Oliver or Wendell Berry or Emily Dickenson have written. There's the Book of Common Prayer, the Twenty Third Psalm, the Gospel of John. Then there is JK Rowlings and Anne McCaffrey and Madeleine L'Engle. It kind depends on where I want to be transported at any given time.

4.Thinking of physical views, is there somewhere that inspires you, somewhere that you breathe more easily? Badlands, definitely Badlands. But I was raised on the bluffs of the Mississippi and there is something in my soul that sings when that landscape comes into view. And when I moved out here, the quality of the light on the open prairie completely captured my heart (thus the blog name).

5. A picture opportunity... post one if you can ( or a link to one!) My best pictures are on my computer at home. I'll come back and post one tonight.