Visual Silence

After a blogging sabbatical, I came up with the fun challenge of posing a photography exploration for myself each month and then letting my camera and eyes loose on a photographic scavenger hunt to find images that fit the topic.  I’m not sure how exactly the concept of visual silence came to me, but it proved to be a great beginning to this new endeavor.

Photos are technically silent as in they are noiseless.   Artistically and contemplatively speaking, however, the visual speaks and speaks loudly, sometimes even screaming to be heard.  So, just what do I mean by visual silence?

Our ears each day are constantly confronted with chatter, muzak, and even noise pollution.  We find it difficult to listen because there is just too much to hear.  Likewise, our eyes are confronted each day with their own version of chatter which keeps us from really seeing anything because we see everything.

In Visual Silence, I” listened” with my eyes and camera to places and objects, trying to see what these places and objects truly are in all their individuality, uncluttered by the chatter around them.  Silence is not the absence of sound, but the absence of all that keeps me from knowing the essence of what is before me.  Isolated objects most easily spoke in silence, but sunrises and sunsets as well as fog creating silhouettes of trees also spoke essence that needed to be heard by my camera.

From among well over fifty images, these were my favorites.  Next month:  Suggestions of Spring.

Wisdom of the Child I Was

 Said the robin to the sparrow,

“I would surely like to know,

Why these anxious human beings

Rush about and hurry so!”

Said the sparrow to the robin,

“Friend I think that it must be,

That they have no Heavenly Father

Such as cares for you and me.”

When I was a little girl, my mother had a box of note-cards with this little poem written on them.  I think the author may have been Helen Steiner Rice, but this was  almost fifty years ago, and authors weren’t real high on my need-to-remember list back then.  But I do remember very clearly the sentimental illustration that accompanied the poem.  And the poem itself I learned by heart.

Now, back in those days, people still did memorize things like poetry.  But what I find very odd, strange, peculiar, and downright remarkable is that I myself learned this particular poem by heart.  You see, I was not raised in a church-going family, and what little I had been told about God was literally quite hellish.  So why this poem?  Why would a little girl like me be drawn to words that  presuppose Divine care and presence?  A poem that invites a slower, less frenetic life?

I’ve been pondering this poem a lot lately.  Yes, it’s pretty saccharine.  But almost fifty years after learning it by heart (and having it remain in my heart for all those years),  I think I understand the wisdom which my child’s heart intuitively knew, but had no words to express.

First, the loving Presence of the Sacred is at the heart of life.  As an older woman, I now know this. As a child, I’d thought God was confined to the four walls of a church building, and since my family didn’t attend church, I thought God was exempt from my life, except as my eventual judge.  However, I think my child’s heart knew better than my child’s mind:  God is everywhere; God is for everyone; and God is everywhere and for everyone as Love.

Second, life is eternal.  I don’t need to live an anxious, rushing life because I’m not racing to some finish line.  I can walk and savor and ponder to my heart’s content. I have plenty of time, after all.   I suspect this may have been the real attraction of this poem to me as a child.  I’ve always been a slow lane kind of person, and my growing up years demanded that I run faster into a world demanding perfection and compliance than my soul’s little legs could carry me.

Children are wiser than we give them credit for being.  The child I was certainly knew that there is truth in this poem that as an adult I have had to learn again (and again and again).  And, although I personally have never heard a robin and sparrow carry on a conversation, I certainly have seen much in the world around me that reminds me that a hurry-up life is probably a good indication that I have forgotten loving Sacred Presence and the eternity of my life.

May these photos encourage you to take time to find an oak tree where you can spend some blessed time in just being.

Peace and joy–Deborah

nap after lunch

 

invitation

resting rabbit

Continuing Creation and Everlasting Evolution

Little kids who sit in Sunday school classes are always told the Story of Creation:  God worked really hard for six days making everything that is, and then on the seventh day sat down on a celestial easy chair, satisfied with a job well done.  God might send down an occasional care package or lightning bolt to this creation, but the work of actually creating is done until a start-over heaven and earth zap on the scene, which only God knows when this will happen (although there always those who think they have the date and time figured out).

Bigger kids who sit in public school classes are always told the Story of Evolution:  Billions of years ago there was a  BIG BANG! and everything got started very, very slowly.  One day people (meaning us) showed up, and now everything just keeps rolling on until either the sun gives out, or we totally nuke or muck up the planet (although there are always those who think a giant meteor or space aliens will do the job for us).

I have absolutely neither the nerve nor the interest in entering the debate of the how everything got going.  But I think both of these stories get so caught up in defending The Beginning that they neglect a wondrous beauty right in front of us:  creation is always being created; the cosmos is always evolving.  How do I know?  I watch the clouds.

Yeah, I’m a cloud watcher.  You probably used to be, too.  Remember being a little kid, lying on your back in the grass on a summer afternoon?  What did you do?  You watched the clouds!  You saw puppies and snowmen and ice cream cones and who knows what all being created and evolving on the immense blue canvas above you.  Clouds are ever and always being created and evolving 24/7.

We need to know this; we need to remember this, because this is the way of life.  We too are always being created and evolving, always us but always new.  It’s not so much a matter of remembering the good luck of second chances (what happens if you don’t get a third?) but more a need to slow down and love the journey that is your life.  Realize that lying on the grass on a summer afternoon and smiling at the pictures in the clouds is not just OK but an essential part of life.  Know that there is an eternity that we are part of that is so vast and so creative that contemplative time is a necessity not a luxury.

I invite you (no, this is really a challenge) to go find some grass, a park bench, a whatever, and WATCH THE CLOUDS!  Look for those ducks and lambs and ships and tacos that are being created and evolving on and on and on.  And here are a few of my favorite cloud photos to help give you a push out the door.

Joy and peace–Deborah

Seeing the Trees

We’ve  all heard the expression that someone “can’t see the forest for the trees.”  When we say that, we are implying that said person is so caught up in the details that they can’t see the overall picture.  They lack the BIG picture, the purpose, the point (and WE, of course, can.)  Sometimes I think we need to turn this expression around, to realize that sometimes we can’t see the trees because we’re too focused on the forest.  We’re so fixated on the BIG picture that we go stomping through that proverbial forest too fast and miss the delights of the details.

For me, photography is a contemplative practice because it allows me time and space to see the trees rather than the forest.  I get to delight in the little things that I would miss if I focused on the forest.  One of the blessings I’ve discovered of having rheumatoid arthritis is that speed is no longer an option, but more contemplative space is.  So enjoy these photos of the delightful details that I discovered on a hike at Moorehead Park.

Joy and peace–Deborah

Little Bits of Green

Sunlover

Passage

Face in the Tree

Texture

A Little Bit of Beauty

Oak Leaves (of course!)

Killing Children

Death is so totally inconceivable for us, and yet by necessity, it’s an issue we have to face.  We want to think we have it all figured out and so have come up with three very different ways of explaining why we die.

First, there’s the You Live and Then You Die Theory.  We get born, live awhile, and then go back to the nothingness from which we came.  The only value in life is in the living, enjoying it as you can, maybe leaving behind some sort of legacy to be remembered by.

Second, there’s the Death is Punishment Theory.  People sinned way back at the beginning of life and cursed us all to die as punishment for their sin and our own.  After dying, one either takes the up elevator to heaven or the down one to eternal punishment in hell.  Thus, some people are punished both by death and by eternal hell.

Third, there’s the Death is a Part of Life Theory. Death is natural.   We live and then we die because that’s how life is.  Death is a gateway into new life.

And then children are killed.  Senselessly.  Brutally.  And all our theories and explanations for death evaporate.  All we can do is face the horror and ask:  WHY?

Our theories of death are cruel beyond cruel.  Those kids hadn’t lived long enough to just live and die.  Death as a birth to new life?  They were too close to their first births to need to be birthed to new life.  And anyone who wants to write off their deaths as punishment–well, what I have to say about that isn’t fit to print.

It is a horrific fact of life, though, that kids die and die senselessly and brutally.  Children died in the recent conflict in the Gaza Strip.  How many have died in the violence in Syria?  So often children die because the adults in this world believe that any one “different” is expendable, that the lives of “others” aren’t as valuable.

While so much prayer is going out to the families of the children who died, others died senselessly as well yesterday.  Those adults were just doing their job by educating the children and died by being where they were supposed to be.  Just because they were older and had lived more of life doesn’t make their deaths less tragic.

That young man who created this horror was 20 years old.  As a mom of 20 year old twins, I also have to look at his death through eyes of compassion.  What could possibly cause a young man to kill his mom and then murder people in an elementary school?  No theory of death or life has a place for such horror.

If you think YOU can offer answers to this tragedy, please do so.  However, I would suspect that anything anyone can offer will either fall into the category of cruelty on the one hand or saccharine sentimentality on the other.  That being said, with this being the season of Christmas and wishes of peace on earth, I would like to offer a suggestion, a response to what happened.  Gandhi said what I consider to be some of the wisest words ever spoken:  Be the change you want to see in the world.  If you want peace on earth, be peace.  If you want compassion, be compassion. If you want life to be valued, then value it.   If you want children and adults, including 20 year old ‘s who shoot them, to life long and happy lives, then help make that happen. Do what you can to stop labeling others as “different” and thus expendable.  Very likely, you could become the victim for your efforts.  Gandhi did.  So did Jesus.

Explanations and theories are useless in such a tragedy as this.  But what we can’t explain, we can respond to and respond to in a way that just might make a difference.

Prayers for peace–Deborah

Community

Who would have thought that community would grow into such an important need for an artistic contemplative who lives for silence and solitude?  Maybe it’s having now lived over three years in very rural NW Iowa.  Maybe it’s a result of mellowing in my older age (you know, like a fine wine:  I’m meant to be enjoyed!)  But truth be told, I suspect it has more to do with actually having experienced some real, genuine, honest community.

The most surprising thing about community is that it takes one by surprise!  It can’t be planned or manipulated.  It just sort of happens.  And those it happens with aren’t necessarily those you would think it should or has to happen with–like family, neighbors, or colleagues.  Rather, community births into reality when you meet and spend time with those with whom you can be yourself and they can be themselves without fear of–well, without fear of anything.

So here are some photos and a poem celebrating community.  When you think about it, community is exactly what this season of Advent is all about.  Community’s what the Incarnation, Emmanuel, God-with-us is all about:   being with God and with others, just being yourself, without fear of–well, without fear of anything.

Blessings–Deborah

COMMUNITY

No, not a village
Rather, soul holding me close
A sacred shelter.

community in the kitchen

Bethlehem family

Nazareth schoolgirls

waxwings and berries

cousins

Join us!

Belonging: A Poem of Hospitality

Since this month’s theme at Abbey of the Arts is hospitality, I have been pondering what it means to embrace a vision of hospitality that goes beyond our culture’s usual approach of “look-at-me-aren’t-I-awesome!”  hospitality.  Several weeks ago I wrote:

Hospitality goes beyond providing food and/or maybe a place to sleep.  I’d like to suggest that hospitality is the invitation to a sacred space and time, when one offers spiritual, emotional, and physical rest and refuge to another.  Hospitality both frees and comforts another to be authentically who they are, because the one offering hospitality is able to be a free and authentic individual.

In my pondering and then writing a poem for this week’s Poetry Party at the Abbey, I’ve found that the word belonging is a very good synonym for hospitality.  When we offer hospitality, when we say to another, “You are welcome to come into this time and place.  You are free to be who you are here. Yes, even those parts of yourself you’d like to leave outside are welcome,” we are telling them:  you belong; you are not an outsider; you don’t need to be lonely or feel rejected; you are valued just for who you are.  What a great and precious gift hospitality is!

I wonder if this isn’t the real truth behind that wonderful little story about Jesus visiting Mary and Martha.  Martha takes the culture’s approach– fine food and amazing ambiance–and of course, as a 1st century woman, this was exactly what was required of her as hostess.  Mary takes the radical approach of hospitality; she sits with Jesus, welcoming him as she values his words and presence.  I think too that Mary helps us see that hospitality is reciprocal.  As she welcomes Jesus, creating a time and place for him to belong, she is also welcoming herself, who she truly is, creating a time and place of belonging for herself.

So here is my poem, Belonging.

To belong–
is to cross the threshold with muddy feet and cock-eyed cap,
carrying life’s bundle unchecked at the door.

To belong–
is to bless each tatter and patch with as much honor as each gem and crown,
knowing the necessity of both.

To belong–
is to welcome beyond the Rules,
setting the table with a sheltering circle.

Two Women + Two Cameras + Autumn Afternoon = Beauty

I am now the proud owner of a NEW CAMERA!  It’s not so fancy and complicated that it’s bewildering, but I can zoom more and see more, and my creativity is no longer outstripping my technology.  So–what better way to spend an autumn afternoon than wandering the shores of Swan Lake south of here with my dear Amazing Artist and our cameras in hand.

I’m not sure why the lake is Swan Lake.  There were no swans, but lots of geese, and a flock of white pelicans flew in.  Our afternoon began with a vivid blue sky, but was overcast by the time we left.  It was an afternoon of companionship, creativity, and beauty.  Here are my favorites.

Invitation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meeting of Earth and Water

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blue

Rest

White Pelicans

Waiting

Embrace

The Fork in the Tree

Journey Home

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hospitality

Hospitality is a forgotten grace in our culture.  Oh, sure–we network; we entertain; we socialize.  But if we’re honest, we do these things because we expect to gain something, impress someone, or inflate our ego.  Hospitality falls on the other end of the “getting together to get” spectrum:  we offer hospitality because we expect to give something, comfort someone, or value someone.

Hospitality goes beyond providing food and/or maybe a place to sleep.  I’d like to suggest that hospitality is the invitation to a sacred space and time, when one offers spiritual, emotional, and physical rest and refuge to another.  Hospitality both frees and comforts another to be authentically who they are, because the one offering hospitality is able to be a free and authentic individual.  While the hospitable person is one who radically gives of time and place, true  hospitality belongs neither to the martyr nor the slave–it’s given freely in joy.  Neither does hospitality come at the expense of others:  one doesn’t treat those nearest and dearest to us badly for the sake of a guest.  Hospitality always  includes all, and never excludes anyone.

I’d like to share some photos that evoke hospitality for me.  All are invitations to deepen the place of this grace in our lives.

 

Come join us! There’s always room for one more.

 

Refreshment–at Cheers in Boston. If you remember this show, you know that’s the place where everybody knows your name. Delicious hospitality!

 

The table is set at the Sea of Galilee–a precious memory for me; a time when a group of women pilgrims affirmed one another in prayerful hospitality.

 

You are welcome to come–The deer to the left looks as though she needs a little coaxing to the table.

 

Feathered hospitality–offered with the blessing of St. Francis.

 

 

 

 

A Picture of God

Lucy Maude Montgomery is best known for the Anne books.  As much as I love these books, my favorites by her are The Story Girl and The Golden Road.  A first person narrative, the books look back on the childhood delights and tragedies of a group of cousins and their friends on Prince Edward Island.  There’s a depth of wisdom to these humorous stories that come from the mature vantage point of the narrator.  One chapter in particular has stayed with me over the years.

A classmate of the children claims to have a picture of . . .  GOD.  Well, who wouldn’t be curious to have a view of that?!  The classmate is more than willing to give the children a peek at this picture; in fact, he’s willing to sell it to them for the immense some of 50 cents.  Of course, they pool their resources and wait with intense solemnity to see this picture.  The classmate delivers the picture (in a basket of dried herring, no less).  They unfold it–and Oh! their tears, disappointment, and wretchedness as they see a wood-cut of a “stern, angrily-frowning old man with tossing hair and beard.”  No wonder L.M. Montgomery entitles this chapter “A Tragedy of Childhood.”

A picture of God . . .

In spite of all the Thou shalt not commands and prohibitions, we do want a picture of God to satisfy our curiosity.  Unfortunately, like the children, curiosity too often turns tragic rather than comforting.  And perhaps, that’s the point of all the commands and prohibitions:  it’s not that God’s too bashful to pose or so grumpy that all artists and photographers can’t get near enough with canvas or camera to create a divine picture.  It’s more that God is more–more than any image, symbol, or physical identity can begin to hold.

I’ve heard it said that God is more verb than noun, more doing and being, and thus impossible to capture and hold hostage in physical attributes.  Think about the name of God given to Moses at the burning bush, YAHWEH.  The best translation for this enigmatic word is I AM WHAT I AM; I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE.  No stern old man here, rather sheer vitality that can’t be nailed down, except on a cross.  Vitality that creates, resurrects, recreates and does so in love, because love is what God is.

If you want a picture of God, try this one:

Love/God is patient; love/God is kind; love/God is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  Love/God does not insist on its own way; love/God is not irritable or resentful;  love/God does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.  Love/God bears all things, believes all things hopes all things, endures all things.  1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Loved