Some of my best days are spent walking in the woods with my camera. When I was about 15, I experienced the presence of God in a powerful way while walking the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Our family camped and so there were lots of woods and mountains, streams and lakes, and beaches in my life. But that day, by myself, I understood for the first time just how much I am loved by God and the magnificence of God as I walked and studied the Canyon. It is seared into my memory and written into my heart.

When I go walking with my camera in the woods, down the street, in my garden, I try my best to see what is before me whether that is an interesting bark pattern on a tree or a mushroom, or how the light filters through. This time slows my mind and my body and helps me to reclaim the presence of God I felt that day along the Grand Canyon. And I need that with all that comes along with six people in the same house: my husband, three teenage daughters, an elderly parent, 3 dogs, work, and more. IT IS VERY BUSY. So I step away, find someplace to walk and sit and observe seeking God in the midst of it all. And I make photographs. Later, I study them. Is there anything new that I didn’t see while making the photograph? Maybe God, you have something to show me?

Carlo Carretto in The God Who Comes, believes we come to know God through Jesus in the gospels. He writes:

I should say that, although Jesus has given us the “photograph” of the Father in the gospels, the mystery, the “unknowing” of God remains. We see, and yet we do not see; we become acquainted, and yet we still need to become further acquainted; we know, but we are still very ignorant. It is a photograph that we are able and unable to see.

It depends on you. You are the camera, able to fix inside yourself what you see and what you don’t see in the gospels and thus to make a photograph of your own. You know that the power of fixing an image in the soul depends on the Holy Spirit, who is love, who alone is able to make that photograph in proportions to your intimacy with him.

I haven’t spent much time with God and making photographs lately. My days seem to run full speed and then they are over, I sleep, and it’s time to start all over in the morning. But God is really speaking to me about making a photograph. I won’t need my camera in my hand because my heart is the camera as I form an image of our great and loving God as I read. I want to see. I want to become acquainted. I want to know. I want to see more than I am unable to see.

This is about as close to a new year’s resolution as I can make. In fact, I haven’t even tried so far this year because 3 of us have been sick for days and made 2 trips to the doctor and our elder has spent 4 days in the hospital on top of all the normal life stuff. But, I already have a photograph of God in my heart. The resolution is a little grainy, and it’s got some blurry spots but at I can read the words in the center, I am the God of Love and Grace. So I’ll give myself a little grace today and tomorrow I will open my Bible and maybe that photograph will get clearer and with the help of the Holy Spirit, I will see more than I am unable to see.

W