Decided to take Monday for a visit to the Chicago Botanical Garden.  This garden is world class, an expanse of sculpted land and water displaying a sublime array of plants.  Calling a rare time out from work, I gathered my camera, and a book.  Laura and I left for a few hours of paradise.

Before leaving I received email word of the dissolution of a mutual relationship with another company with whom we had hoped to partner for the future.  The decision was made for sound reason so I took some comfort that in the long run it was for everyone’s benefit.  Then I received word of a failure of commitment by a coworker to a customer and the predictable negative reaction.  All of this was personal to me.  A wider reality was the drowning destruction of Houston, a city of a few million people by a hurricane taking place on the Gulf.  The rain continues to fall on Houston and Corpus Christi.  How are we going to rebuild a major city?

Against a dark personal, and national news background I walked the Botanical Garden.  There were many spectacular blossoms that attracted my eye and my camera.  I photographed glowing day-blooming water lilies, colorful bromeliads from the Brazilian Amazon, roses, etc.  However, my spirit was captured by the 17 acre Japanese garden with it’s tea house and three islands.  The earth tones, the somber greens, the lighter shades of gray and white were in sympathy with my mood.  The garden changes moment to moment with the angle of light while the rocks placed along the path seem eternally rooted in the earth.

I took some pictures.  The arc of the wooden bridge captured by attention.  A bridge carries people across water.  Some waters are rough and vast, and metaphorical.  We still need a bridge to get across.  A bridge also links this world to paradise, the everyday world which we have made, to the world of Nature.

After one crosses this bridge one comes to the Zen meditation garden.

Our words are the construction of bridges, our necessary bridge that allow us to journey on, to achieve safe passage.

When enough people make false promises, words stop meaning anything. Then there are no more answers, only better and better lies.

– Jon Snow, Game of Thrones,  Season 7