The Divine Photo Shoot

I don’t sing at church. I have not uttered a note since Justin died. It is not willful refusal, that voice left. I don’t make the responses either. They speak in my head, but there is no voice for them. If the music is loud, I put earplugs in because harsh sound hurts my body. I can sit still for an hour. But if my skin is crawling, I leave before the final blessing and walk outside to breathe deep of the cool air.

I have a place though where God and I dance with abandon. Chronos becomes Kairos. Sequential time morphs into suspended moments of eternity. Moments that contain the merriment of God and spill forth in joy that roar of color and light. Movement replaces the boxed effigy of worship, scents and bird song that manifest fecundity flood the void of sterile walls.

God is light. The light as it diffuses through great swags of cedar boughs touching lotus flowers. He is the golden evening light and all that is touched by it shimmers. He is the light that turns the thousand dew drops into fairy lights at dawn. To brush your face against a sunflower in a field of hundreds is to be kissed by the light of God. Intimate, loving, soul restoring, the eros of the living God. Sunlight, red mud, the winsome come hither look of creation, where every cell in my body can sing in a silent chorus of praise for such divine delight.

The Greek word for light is Phos, the root word for our English word photo. Graphe is Greek for writing. The art and practice of photography is to draw with light.

God is light.
Photography is drawing with light.
Photography is drawing with God.
Photography is prayer.

The light makes no demand on me other than to be still, to wait for what will be revealed as the sun peeks over the horizon. Pink hued clouds announce the arrival of the sun. There, in the garden, the dew on delicate hydrangea petals sparkle like diamonds as the light teases through broad green maple leaves, miniature works of art that whisper to be immortalized through the lens of a camera.

God is light. He cannot be fractured, so in that dewdrop glowing with divine brilliance is the entirety of God.  As I gaze at that drop, God is gazing upon me. Cheeky, shy, tender, his lambent eyes seeking me in the dawn light. Watch him laugh for the camera, elusive, dancing, he has me chasing him all over the garden for his next appearance. And sometimes the light is so other that my camera cannot begin to catch its mystery, I swing the camera to my side and just breathe.

And in those moments, my soul rests, they are my Sabbath moments.