If we live our spiritual lives only in fear of punishment or in hope of reward, rather than in the awareness of the One because of whom all life is worthwhile, we can be religious people but we will never be holy people. Then life is simply a series of tests and trials and scores, not the moment by moment revelation of God who is present in everything that happens to us, in everything we do.
Sanctity is about how we view life. It is not about spiritual exercises designed to evaluate our spiritual athleticism or a kind of spiritual bribery designed to win us spiritual prizes we do not deserve.
Coming to know the sacred—the energy of air, the possibility in children, the beauty of regret, the value of life—is what makes us holy.
Joan Chittister, from Becoming Fully Human
My passion for using contemplative photography as a spiritual exercise to explore my God, my world and myself is the overarching theme that runs through nearly every one of the three hundred posts on the shot at ten paces blog. My spirit leaps as, camera in hand, I glimpse the possibility that God is nearby, asking me to pay attention to what treasures might be about to be revealed. For me, my camera is a vital spiritual tool along my faith journey.
Yet the interplay between photography and spirituality is not just about using a viewfinder to see God in one single moment of time. The practice of contemplative photography as a spiritual tool for photographing any given subject is only one aspect of Visio Divina (seeing God). Another way I might ‘come to know the sacred’ in this particular part of my journey is to sit over an image I have received (preferably printed out rather than on a screen) and view the image as an Ikon that needs to be ‘read’ to be understood what God’s revealing for me might be at this moment.
Reading an image is not an intellectual, analytical exercise, and switching off my default behaviour is imperative. For as my counsellor pointed out to me only last week, whilst I might be acquiring some skill at seeing God in the everyday details of my life through a camera lens, I remain woefully poor in comparison at seeing God in the everyday details of my life without a lens. Sitting over an image and prayerfully waiting for how the Spirit inspires my heart to respond is one way of hearing where God might be nudging us next.
I made today’s image in 2016, looking through a car window at one of my favourite places in the world. It was the last day of a holiday and Dad was driving me home. We stopped off to say a final goodbye to the beach and to play with my new toy, a prism.
The photographer David Hill suggested that my interest in contemplative perception might be stretched by working with a prism, and indeed I find it fascinating (if sometimes incredibly frustrating!). Sadly, I’ve not been able to experiment with it as much as I had hoped, since there are days when I have a severe tremor which in turn affects my camera shake and exhaustion levels - so we tend to play with it only when Dad is around to be my assistant.
A prism can mean all I see is that my nice straightforward way of seeing is violently interrupted. Some days, far from bringing clarity, a prism only brings blurs and smears; it further complicates my over- stretched and over-stressed mind.
Yet, on the good days, a prism brings new planes of seeing into the same image; it is like magic, like seeing round corners, like seeing layers of time and place all sandwiched into one picture. A prism refracts the light into its constituent colours, so the entire rainbow’s wave lengths can be distinguished clearly on a sunny day like this one in 2016.
The vertical lines of the prism disrupt the image, the horizon line shifts, making me question which line is the ‘real’ one. Colours are revealed that I could not see before. Light creates patterns and patches I did not see before. And whilst the boys in front of me at the edge of the sea cast their lines, a single fishing boat is revealed in sparkling silvered silhouette; a sudden stark contrast to what is round about it.
So today, how might I see God? What shall I listen for?
Shall I cast my line?
Or shall I spend time and energy readying that boat to go out into that unknown light?
Or is today a day for beaching my boat, putting down my rod, and for resting in the Glory who is all about me?
Let there be a place somewhere in which you can breathe naturally, quietly, and not have to take your breath in continual short gasps. A place where your mind can be idle and forget its concerns, descend into silence, and worship God in secret.
There can be no contemplation where there is no secret.
Thomas Merton, from A Book of Hours
being a lightbody (with thanks to Laura Sewall). Canon 7D. f5.6. 1/2000. ISO 100.
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