Solomon.
It's like the moment in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
There, locked behind glass and steel, is a sleek, red, thoroughbred of a car, and all the owner wants to do is polish it. It's never taken out of the gallery, never allowed to turn heads as it purrs along the open road - it's become less than it was meant to be.One of the joys of photography is when you meet and begin to work with someone and the ramifications of doing so becomes bigger and greater than you ever imagined. That's certainly been the case with many people for me over the last decade, but particularly with my Muse, Magenta.
When we first met, we were very different people, both still very much finding our feet, especially in relation to our artistry, and I really didn't expect us to connect or be able to do that much together. How wrong I was!
Over the last eight years, I have truly been blessed to watch an artist grow through the curve balls and splendors that life has given to her - often being allowed to be present at moments of pain and joy.Like the Samaritan woman that Jesus met at the well, our lives are often pretty mixed affairs, but in amidst that mixture, there is something precious and noble, and when we know how to invest this well, this allows us to stop curving in on ourselves and begin to engage with a much bigger picture - to cast our gifts before the world, and see them valued.
When thinking about this, Solomon also noted, As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.
It is only as we stop, as we 'consider the lilies' - the deeper truths that moments of art, beauty or true experience express or reflect - that we can allow a richness into our souls that makes us healthy.
The joy is knowing and sharing such moments - taking that beauty for a spin. That's what truly makes us .
By enclosing ourselves in houses and clothes, we are sheltered but also cut off from God's creation. I do not believe He intended for us to live cut off from the natural world. In freedom from clothing comes a deeper sense of what we were meant to be when God created us "naked and unashamed" and "very good." (Genesis 2:25; 1:31)
ReplyDelete"It is a serious thing to live in a world of possible 'gods' and goddesses' - to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature, which, you might be tempted to worship. There are no 'ordinary' people. You never talked to a 'mere' mortal. Nations, culture, art, civilizations may all appear and vanish, but it is those made in the image of God with whom we joke, marry and work. Immortal horrors or everlasting splendors are truly at stake... Next to Word and Sacrament, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to our senses". C S Lewis. The Weight of Glory.
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