October, 2025

A woman on a black Horse has been my metaphor for my intuition guiding, directing, me through my life, from where I am here,  now to what is called for and what is calling me to do in each situation as it arises. I know it when I see it, sense it, the way I knew a woman on a black horse was the photograph that needed to be taken as I sat with my wife in Tom Phillips' pickup truck driving through the desert in Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. 

Tom was the Zen Master of Navajo photography guides in 2006 and he was driving us to the first stop in his list of "shooting locations" in Monument Valley when we met a Navajo woman riding a black horse. I didn't tell him to stop for the photograph of her on the horse because he was the one who was supposed to know these things, and because I had no idea of what the etiquette was with me taking personal photos of Navajos in their native environment, so I let the opportunity pass. And remembering it has kept it as the sole failure to listen to my intuitive recognition of the situation at hand. From that moment, I have been quick to do what I know cries out to be done. I live to get the picture no matter what. And the woman on a black horse is in every photograph I take, and she is even becoming visible from time to time to commemorate every time that she is present in my mind as the shutter clicks and the photo is taken.

What is your metaphor for your own intuitive sense of what is called for? How do you make your intuition real in the time and place of your living? Live to know these things and to serve your intuition above all else in the time left for living, no matter what!