advent apertures 2018 day 14: unable to see

So maybe being awake and alert and expectant - all themes of Advent - has nothing to do with knowing or certainty or prediction, but has a lot to do with being in a state of unknowing.  My instinct is always to use my knowingness, my certainty I'm right ...- as a sort of loss-prevention program, a system by which I protect myself from the unknown and unexpected.  Which works approximately none of the time ... But perhaps having an unknowing brain allows us to be taken unaware by the grace of God, which is like a thief in the night ... The promise of Advent is that in the absence of knowing everything, we get robbed.  There was and is and will be a break-in because God is not interested in our loss-prevention programs but in saving us from ourselves and saving us from our culture and saving us even from our certainties about God's story itself.

Nadia Bolz-Weber, from Accidental Saints

So I had made my plan, and I had gathered my companions, and I set out on my way.  I overcame a few changes to the schedule and several hitches with the baggage train, and I’m sure I’m just about to reach the heights any time soon - and the cloud comes in.  No need to panic, we can make a shelter and wait for it to lift.

But the panic starts rising nonetheless.  I’m aware I cannot see anything but blurry grey outlines … and then just the blurry grey.  I suddenly find myself completely alone.  No map, no companions, no gear.  I have absolutely no idea what to do next, even though I thought I was prepared for just such an eventuality, having been in some pretty dark situations along the way so far.  But this, this is way beyond my imaginings of a grim time.  Every aspect of the circumstance I find myself in robs me of my choices.

So I sit down to wait. Unsheltered. Unaccompanied.  What else can I do?

Suddenly, I have a bright idea.  I remember Bernard of Clairvaux said, ‘You wish to see; Listen.’  So I listen.

And hear nothing.  Not just nothing profound against a muted backdrop of nature’s sounds.  Nothing.

So all I can do is wait isn’t it?

‘But... You say 'Where then shall I be?' By your reckoning I am

to be nowhere!' Exactly.  In fact, you have expressed it rather

well, for I would indeed have you nowhere.  Why?  Because

nowhere, physically, is everywhere spiritually.’ (The Cloud of Unknowing)

When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.

Ansel Adams

an unknown way. Canon 7D. f5.6. 1/320. ISO 400.