Ordinary Benchmarks: Finding Meaning in the Everyday [Print Replica] Kindle Edition

Anne Lamott, in her book Somehow: Thoughts on Love, quotes her husband as saying “Eighty percent of everything that is true and beautiful can be experienced on any ten-minute walk.” Within that ten minute walk of her their home is a bench that teems with life…After describing this bench, she says simply, “When we are paying attention, we see how much holds us invisibly. Love is a bench.” (Somehow: Thoughts on Love, pages 1 and 6)I visited a bench near my home over 115 times at 7:45am throughout 2024 not sure what I would find there until I read Ms Lamott’s words and realized that what I was not only seeking but finding was meaning in each visit.Our lives are lived in the ordinary and the everyday. Yet we look for so much that is extraordinary and unique. What if we explored the ways that deep meaning is found in the everyday and the ordinary? Ordinary BenchMarks is a book of photographic and personal reflections based on photographs of an ordinary bench at an ordinary lake in an ordinary city at the very ordinary time of 7:45am on many mornings throughout 2024. But while the bench is so ordinary, this book helps to remind us of the ways that meaning is found even in these moments. Interspersed through the regular reflections and devotions are monthly introductions offering ways to go deeper with practices of contemplative photography. Many of the reflections also integrate music, video, and other forms of media to deepen the experience of finding meaning in the everyday. Read more