What nourishes our humanity? Where are the sources of spiritual sustenance, moral nurture, emotional health, physical joy, and humane maturity?
How do we grow into the kind of person for whom respect for others is a default disposition; for whom care for human flourishing is an active passion as well as a living aspiration; for whom compassion for life stretches from lichen to linnets, from seaweed to swans, from cats to catfish, and from forests to lochs?
I've just looked through the photos I've taken over the past month. Each was a deliberate act of framing, focus and click. But why were the subjects chosen? Because I saw something I wanted to see and take away with me. A photo allows me to carry away some of that seeing after the moment has passed; that's the time to explore the why, the significance of just this moment of seeing.
My camera is a window out into the world I see; it is also a window into the mind and heart that sees. At the moment of framing and focusing, something is going on between what is seen outwardly, and what is felt and thought and envisioned inwardly. I'm aware of this as an oblique form of prayer; that is, it isn't praying, but it isn't not praying either!
I've spent a while this week reading about the big argument between Karl Barth and Emil Brunner over the validity of a natural theology. Can we see the fingerprints of God all over creation? Can we have knowledge of God other than what God has revealed in Jesus Christ as testified in Scripture? Does God also reveal something of his glory in the beauty of a sunlit loch, in the majesty of mountains, in the haunting honks of chevrons of geese flying in the dark over our house towards Loch Skene?
I'm on Brunner's side, and as a matter of fact on Calvin's side. The world around us is "the theatre of God's glory." Here's Calvin himself, writing from Geneva surrounded by the Alps!
"Ever since in the creation of the universe he brought forth those insignia whereby he shows his glory to us, whenever and wherever we cast our gaze. …And since the glory of his power and wisdom shine more brightly above, heaven is often called his palace. Yet…wherever you cast your eyes, there is no spot in the universe wherein you cannot discern at least some sparks of his glory.” (Institutes, 1.5.1)
As I try to understand what's going on inside me when I take photographs, I'm in danger of spoiling spontaneous fun by overthinking it! I know. But still, the joy of taking a good photograph is perhaps related to an inner recognition that this too is a glimpse into God's theatre, a moment to "discern at least some sparks of his glory."
What nourishes our humanity, as those made in the image of God, if not appreciation and gratitude for God's masterpiece of creation? Where are the sources of spiritual sustenance, moral nurture, emotional health, physical joy, and humane maturity, if not in our seeing, and willingness to share in, the productions performed in "the theatre of God's glory"?
That is at least one good reason for taking some of the photos I take. That, and perhaps a resonant sympathy with the words of an ancient poet of Israel, "Great are the works of the Lord, they are pondered by all who delight in them." (Psalm 111.2)
The moment when I lift my camera, frame, focus and click, I'm paying tribute, "Great are the works of the Lord."
Later, reviewing the photographs filed under their dates, I am pondering them, as one who "delights in those great works of the Lord."
Or so it seems to me...for now...anyway. These are three photos of such great works, each containing the joy of the moment, and later persuading the photographer to ponder in a spirit of gratitude.
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