photos Archives - The Rev. Kenneth Allen

A Day at the Sea

October 28, 2020

The sea can be pretty much anything hereabouts. In this case it’s the Mississippi Sound, from earlier this week, where Zeta just blew ashore tonight.

I’ve been back out with the camera more and more. I really need to work on my photography skills. So much to photograph around here, so little skill.

Look at that – such a potentially interesting photo, yet so unremarkable. Like the one below:

I love this little place. The good sisters here have made it into a tiny gem sparkling in the depths of the deep green forest. It deserves to be photographed much better than this.

Reading at the moment Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castles.

It can easily be read in a few hours, but it’s enjoyable to slow down and savor her words. Linguistically she’s a lot of fun, her personality is remarkable fresh and engaging.

She speaks often of being recollected, which today we would probably call composure, or being composed. For her, composure is has a greater depth than we might consider in mere psychological terms. The spirit is conformed to the will of the Lord, and recognizes his great majesty – being conformed to the will of the Lord is not a chore or a burden. It’s freeing, to be who we fully are and to walk, work, and speak in confidence.

Her work is much more than that also, it’s a masterpiece in spiritual literature. But being away right now is the perfect time to be doing some spiritual reading. My director has been encouraging me into more Adoration also, which was – oddly – difficult to do at the Parish. It wasn’t a matter of being busy, really. I’ll write more about that in my own book, which may or may not be written, as the Lord wills. As Teresa often said, “I am too stupid to do such things.”

I’m leaning towards redoing this blog, getting it into shape, and perhaps moving on. Before I do though, I want to finish learning about SEO, readability, etc. It’s not much, it’s just a matter of learning it. I’ll probably put in a lot of the photos I took over the years while redoing things at St. Jane because those are quite interesting.

In the meantime, the power’s out from Zeta, and I am off to do some reading.

Stay well and be great.

Life at St. Jane's

July 18, 2012

Yes, you guessed it: I’ve been walking around with my camera again.

And then going for that startling, vibrant look which is so ‘in’ in photos these days.

Oh, wait… you’ve not been seeing startling and vibrant photos which look quite like these?

Well. On a separate note, we really need to do something about these power lines in front of the Church, like run them underground.

That’s a joke by the way.

On the right side of the choir loft is a little belfry type room with windows; the first Pastor used to spend his nights there. I guess he more or less lived in the choir loft, which no doubt made for an interesting life. (I used to do that, but I was an organist.) The little room is about ten feet by eight feet, at the most.

And that’s no joke.

The rain here has been amazing. The dry, dry earth from the past few years has been soaking it up, and everything is green as could be and beautiful. Lots of dramatic clouds, too.

One of my seminary friends (now Dr. Jerry Harrington,) took up the photo a day contest that I bailed on recently, which inspired me to get back to it. Why not give it a try… what could happen?

Px, out.

Good Times

May 12, 2012

Because there’s nothing else to do with these random photos — it’s either delete them, have prints made so they can sit in a box on a shelf, or store them on yet another hard drive — I’ve decided to share them with you.

These type of demanding, cutting edge editorial decisions need to be made daily here, to keep this website spinning like a top.

These cool cats were the hit of the Bacchus route in our neck of the woods. I asked to take their picture, and one day that spread could make a great photo essay just watching the changing group dynamics

Winning smile, wonderful costume.

It was a pretty relaxed morning…

My good friend Adele.

The Japanese Magnolias were in bloom again… Such a strange flower, suitable to any occasion.

There’s a story here. I think these costumes are great for many reasons. I posted the pic on a Facebook page, and someone said “What’s so great about this?” Then I second guessed myself, un-posted it and curled into a ball and sucked my thumb for twelve hours. But I’m perfectly fine now, thank you.

The Creole Queen… It’s such a beautiful boat. Years ago a friend dragged me onto this boat to play the slot machines. I had a quarter on me, and walked out with $31 and was on top of the world.

We hit it off immediately, and nodded knowingly as we passed on the street.

And this is St. Joseph’s Church, which I post pics of every now and again. It’s grand and beautiful, but it needs a huge pipe organ way back there. Still, it makes me glad to be Catholic whenever I walk in.

Well, it re-affirms my gladness… it… you know what I mean.

And that’s it for now… but exciting things are happening, and it’s all good.

The Red Tree

January 14, 2012

The 365 Project continues.

I snapped some photos through the day, and the big things happening today were a fiesta for Fr. Bob, who is the alumni of the year at Holy Cross School, and the Saints game.

This red tree is down the street from a friend’s house where I watched the Saints game. Dunno why it’s red. Didn’t want to ask when they came out to marvel at my taking a picture of it. Didn’t have any other pics to post, even though I tried to make this a bit interesting and artsy. I tried!

I was tempted to use this. It’s a light bulb that reminds me of an old TV show from the 60’s called the Prisoner. There’s a huge white bulb type thing which comes up from the sea, and… that’s about all I remember because I never did like the show. For some reason it also reminds me of Dr. Who.

But, the Red Tree it is for today’s exercise.

Shalom.

Splash, out.

The Zoo

November 13, 2011

It never occurred to me until the other day, after I had taken this picture, that orangutans earned their name by the color of their fur. So, I looked it up over at dictionary dot comand found out that ‘orangutan’ is actually from pidgen or ‘bazaar Malay’ and means ‘forest man’. So there.

And with the cooler weather, all the animals were in great moods, so it seemed.

That was over at the zoo the other day. I had bought a membership right after I bought my camera and then never got around to going. So I headed on out and diligently learned a bit more about photography. (I played around with fill flashes. Speaking of which, National Geographic has a Guide to Flash Photography which has some beautiful photos in it.)

Beautiful Sunday today; I’m working on getting that Homily up here. It wasn’t a priority today (to post it here, i.e.; it was a huge priority yesterday in the making…), but I’m working on it! Wisdom and shalom.