Help Me See: Photography and Worship

A quick break from a list still “un-done”, but progressing!  Second refrigerator cleaned out Misty-style (wiping down with baking soda water, and drying).  Looks great!  Great tip!  Laundry running, lists churning, visits made, turkey picked up, food planned, cooking begun (tonight, fruit salad, left-overs for supper).

I am behind on my 90 days reading, having taken yesterday off, so 30 chapters tonight!  I’m on about Isa. 58.  I’m supposed to get through Jer 15 or so today, I think.  My list feel out of my Bible again.   (Must.  Catch.  Up. {panting}).

This post by Ann at Holy Experience of Listening articulated some great thoughts of the relations to photography and worship.  I loved it.

Each year, she also does something like “Year of a Thousand Thanks” or something like that…she writes down through her day every single passing thought of thankfulness.  I am thankful, but she has also trained herself to be thankful.  It’s a beautiful thing to read.  She will write down thanks for the light backlighting the golden-rod.  The old grey watering bucket that glistens under a covering of frost.  The pauses of beauty her children (many, many children) take to speak to dolls in hushed tones.  It’s worth checking out.  I feel more thankful just reading the things we can pause to be thankful for!

Problems/Benefits of STATIC /(or) LEAVES and Beauty

This morning I had an early appointment at the car dealer to try to fix my van door locks.  They stopped working last week.  Flip the button up, flip it down, press the key fob…nothing happens. 

Interestingly enough, the dealer said that this “electrical problem” was generally easy to fix, just a fresh download from the computer, and it will reset.  He said, “Put some Bounce, or other fabric softener dryer sheets under your car seats and car mats to keep it from happening again.  It’s the only thing that will work.  The factory has tried and tried and can’t correct for random static build-up.  Body static alone getting in and out of the vehicle creates enough of a current it over-rides the {amps/volts…whatever} – the electronics just forget their settings.”

I started to think:  my life is a lot like that right now.  My system has been set many times with the right electronics to respond, yet lately there is too much static running through my system, things sliding this way and that, in and out, here and there.  I go for the fresh downloads every day, but alas, there is so much shifting, my memory “forgets” again and again.  When I least expect it, things just don’t work!  No matter how many buttons get pushed…buttons that worked before, they are NOT working today when I need them to!   Arg.

Stress, it’s a crazy thing.

I started to wonder…so what is the “bounce” for my life to put in my back pockets?  How do I protect my circuitry?  I’m in the word, I’m praying, I’m resting, I’m trying to eat well and life well and even eat the chocolate a girl needs under this amount of life!!!.  Still, short circuiting.  Oh, Lord!  I need to just crawl in a hole and stay there!

I think back to yesterday…are there clues I’m missing?  I mean, I don’t know if they are clues to fix anything, but did I hear God?  

On our field trip with the kids, several the ”active boys” wanted to be in my group because when I’m in the class, I try to help the teacher with those kids so that she can rest and be free to help others for that time.  They know me best…off we went.    In our LONG line of kids, I started picking up pretty leaves that had fallen, stacking them together neatly from BIG ORANGE LARGE in the back of my handle to LITTLE BITTY YELLOW POINTY leaf stacked neatly on the front.  It was beautiful.  Everyone commented on it.  They loved it.  I was enjoying it immensely. 

The kids all asked to hold it, but I wanted to get it back to the room in one piece, so I asked them to make their own!   Every leaf was interesting and of value to them.   Actually, they liked the crunchy ones–ones without color at all…of course, I knew those would make a mess and would not keep!  

On the way walking back, I had just a few boys in the very back of the line.  They wanted to give me some more leaves! I was getting picky by this point.  My stack had been held for three hours!.  My hand was cramping from holding them tight.  So, I was even more discerning by then, saying, “No, that one is a bit dry for us to keep.” or “That one is pretty broken up, let’s look for another.” 

I’d let it fall back to the ground. 

A little boy then reached down to the very next leaf in his path and said, “Look!”  I’m thinking he is NOT being very discerning yet!  Kids just don’t listen.  But, they are having a good time.

Out of my mouth was about to come, “Let’s look for another, it’s middle is all torn out…it’s getting dry”.

But, he went on quickly with a smile, holding his leaf way up to my face as we walked, and said ”See, it sort of looks like a butterfly!”

“Yes.  Why, it does.”, tucking it into my hand, behind another so that it’s “wings” wouldn’t get broken on the journey.

When we got back to the classroom, the teacher said she’d use the leaves for a project.  I said, “Oh.  Great!   Um, I just want to take a couple of them Flash picked out to show his Dad how pretty they are!”  (I lied, I wanted to keep the broken leaf).

I fished through for one BIG ORANGE leaf, one YELLOW POINTY leaf, and one torn and broken leaf that happened to look like a butterfly to a 6 year old, discerning little boy.  More discerning than I.  I really only took the others to make it look less obvious, and to protect it as I carried it home. 

Yesterday morning, a friend had bloggged about no longer considering herself ”a moth drawn to the light” as she used to say, but she now more like a butterfly, basking in the light.  I think of the graceful flight of a butterfly, in all it’s flitting, as compared to the mad frenzy of a moth.  Something in that touched me.  Another this week referred to the “process of becoming” using the same imagery of being a caterpillar, just breaking out. 

This year butterflies symbolize hope for me.  It seems that at the lowest of times, I run smack dab into them.  Or they run into me,  en masse.  It’s true.  And people, I don’t collect things.  I mean, I don’t keep groups of ducks and roosters, or angels or collectibles, this is a whole new thing for me–this “repeat exposure” to an object that means something to me.  This visual that needs to mean something to me, something I can’t quite put a finger on, but that I know it is significant for me to grasp.    

I read a magazine while I waited for my van to be de-static-tized.  I saw an advert with a butterfly in the background. 

In the meantime, the mechanic was warning me, you need to get some of those fabric softeners, or this will happen again.  I told him I would. 

Then, my eyes fell to an article that didn’t even apply to me, but it ended in this scripture:    

1Therefore, since we have been justified [made right with God] through faith [in Christ Jesus], we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

3Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4perseverance, character; and character, hope.

5And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.  (Romans 5:4-5)

So, yup, life brings inherent static.  But, to get to solid hope, we apparently need us some static.  Faith, hope, and love/the fruit of the Spirit?  These keep our systems running through Christ Jesus our Lord.  

That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor. 12:10)

I do not feel strong yet.  I am not “delighting” yet.  I’m rather grumpy, in fact. 

This may require a process of character and perseverance, it may take some patience I don’t have either, but He promises to do the work if we’ll stay the course.  

In the meantime, he has “poured out HIS LOVE into OUR HEARTS by the Holy Spirit whom he has given us.”(Rom. 5:5) 

He loves us.  Like the leaf the little boy saw:  when our middle is all torn out, we’re getting a bit dry, our edges are a little shredded up,  we feel way past our peak and usefulness, probably not worth much more than throwing down for others to hear the sound of crunching under their feet in a brisk Autumn stroll.  

It is at that point,  that He reaches down and takes hold of us, and puts us in his collection.  He may tuck us in between two strong, younger leaves so that we don’t get our wings broken and he can continue to enjoy us.  We ;ook like a butterfly to Him.  We are most definitely “a keeper”!