Turn Ye to Me

What is your focus? A while back a study estimated that we encounter over 500 advertisements every day. A friend once said concerning a superstore we all know and love, “I never in my life have seen so much wonderful stuff that I don’t need!” Makes me want to sing that old song, “I’m so dizzy, my head is spinning.” So, with all the noise and information and messages we encounter every day, what is our focus? What do we really see and hear past all the “stuff we don’t need?”

My oldest friend, Dr. Thomas J Gibbs, Jr., became part of my life about 75 tears ago. Tom’s mother, Allen Orton Gibbs (1910-1996, pictured here), wrote a two piano improvisation on a Scottish song, Turn Ye to Me. During those days my mom, Barbara Thomas, and Mrs. Lois Greene Seals formed a two piano team and performed Turn Ye to Me many times; and the alluring call of that music became an invitation to my young heart. The Scottish song is actually composed of romantic lyrics which offer the comforting warmth of love amid “angry wave” and “sea mew … moaning.” But I have increasingly heard an invitation in Mrs. Gibbs’ profoundly beautiful music, an invitation to turn from madding crowd and shrill clamor to peace, to meaning, to the God who is love.

It’s a noisy, frenzied, often unpalatable and ugly world, but there is always beauty as well. The very hot hike I took down the iconic Lighthouse Trail in Palo Duro State Park a while back included many photographs; the picture above tells the story of our need to focus, to look and listen past the weeds of our lives to the beauty of God’s presence. For always, always, beyond the heat and dust and underbrush and reptiles of accusation and sin and dysfunction and hatred and conflict, there is always beauty and good and love and the music of the spheres of God’s presence.

The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews calls us to “…focus on Jesus….” (Heb 12:2, GW.) We all know what it means to look and listen past distraction and to keep our attention on a truly significant focal point. We can hear coaches, choral conductors, parents, perhaps military leaders asking us to keep our focus, keep our eyes on the prize, listen to the phrasing of our lives’ music.

And God is calling, simply, amid the angry waves, moaning sea, and our often stormy world, “Turn Ye to Me.”

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“…too deep for words” (Rom 8:26)

Have you ever prayed in your sleep? Ever prayed in a dream? Does prayer even depend on our awareness, our wakefulness?

God heard Israel’s cry during her slavery in Egypt (Ex 1-3.) Did Israel pray nicely, with solemn tone and careful wording? Or did the people of God pray with groans too deep for words? Were those the prayers of dreams, of people numbed into sleepwalking through pain?

I took this photograph as my wife, Calder, slept. The prayerful aspect of those beautiful hands spoke to me of our whole life becoming a prayer, a cry of God’s Spirit within, hid within our somnolence and too deep, indeed, for words.

May it be so.

Is it the day…?

When we were children my brother, sister, and I had a fun crescendo to what we called “vacation day.” We would ask for days, even weeks before the day we left, “Is it the day yet?!” Then we would bounce with glee on the day we went to the beach, “This is the day!”

What would it look like to expect uniquely beautiful sacraments of love this day? How might hopeful gratitude for each day affect our lives? What if we rose to morning light saying, “This is the day?!”

One might ask, “What if I can’t see anything good on my horizon?” That is the challenge to hope against hopelessness (Rom 4:18,) to seek beauty where the ugly is so strong. The prophet says in the face of an apparently hopeless, empty time,

17 Though the fig tree does not blossom
    and no fruit is on the vines;
though the produce of the olive fails
    and the fields yield no food;
though the flock is cut off from the fold
    and there is no herd in the stalls,
18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
    I will exult in the God of my salvation.
19 God, the Lord, is my strength;
    he makes my feet like the feet of a deer
    and makes me tread upon the mountains. (Hab 3:17-19.)

The psalmist said with the first light of morning, “This is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it” (Ps 118:24.)

Shall we pray? “Thank you, dear God who creates first light, for this day.”

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A Sacred Photography

What do you need from a photograph? A memory of history, like the memorial stones at Bethel or Gilgal in the Old Testament? Perhaps you need a source of self esteem or a prompt of gratitude for your family. Our home is filled with photographs, dating from a family portrait in Ireland in 1903 to a landscape I took last Spring. What need, I wonder, do these photographs meet? What needs can the art of photography meet for you?

There was a man who profoundly influenced my understanding of art. There was not, for him, a division between sacred and secular music or painting or photography. For good art, he would say, expresses the presence, the beauty, and the love of God. Music, writing, photography, painting—any art is sacred if it gives expression to God’s creation as “very good” (Gen 1.)

That man was my father. His art was music; mine has included photography.

Dad taught me that we need reminders that our lives are the sacred work of God. Art can give us those sacramental reminders through music, visual art, maybe even the art of sport like a good curveball, a well designed football play, or the fluid poetry of a cutting horse.

We need these arts to remind us that we and our world come from God. We are the art of God. Our arts—music, visual art, writing—are attempts to reflect the “very good” of our lives.

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The Encouragers

Do you ever feel discouraged? Ever need an uplifting word to bouy your spirits? We’ve all been there, yes? And the encouragers among us can have a powerful influence on our inner world.

Think for a moment about the teachers who taught you the most. Whose lessons linger in your mind and heart long after graduation? Perhaps even long after they’ve graduated from this earthly life. I think of Mrs. Evans in eighth grade, Sparky Brazier who was my first supervisor in farm work, Ella Mae Simon who was an African-American lady and worked for mom and dad. And then there was my aunt Ruth. And I shouldn’t forget Sanford Enslen who taught me photography as a ten year old Boy Scout, or Buck A who led me into AA in Mobile, Alabama. Oh and there was Rev. Linwood Bowdoin, a Baptist minister and teacher. And others. What did these people have in common? It certainly wasn’t school or race or education or theology. So, what was their gift?

They were encouragers. They gave one thing: the encouragement of loving, life-giving presence.

It doesn’t take much, this gift of encouragement. In fact, some the most encouraging “people” right now for my wife and me are our furiends, the four legged children pictured above. And though I sometimes think they’re smarter than a few people I know, they are mainly just there, showing up every single day with their happy dog faces and unconditional love.

Each of us knows the vulnerable need for an uplifting presence now and then. I recently decided to shift to a professional role in my photography. I’ll never forget the words of the Director of Communication at our church when I expressed my uncertain insecurity about that decision; he said, simply and with a warm smile, “You’ve always been professional as a photographer, Madoc.” Encouragement: loving presence.

That certainly is a gift of God in Jesus Christ. It is a gift my wife and I receive from our church and Sunday School class and ministers. It is a gift of good music, a pat on the shoulder, or a Twelve Step group. It is a gift that’s not that hard to give but which can offer something we all need when undergoing the “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” (so, Shakespeare.) Encouragement gives the lift we need to bear our life load with grace and a smile and the words of the Little Engine that Could, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.”

THE DIVIDE

Divisions can be beautiful. The Continental Divide, two roads diverging in a yellow wood, night and day—these differences and divisions are a part of life God calls “very good” (Gen. 1:31.)

Divisions can also be destructive. History is rife with examples of divisive destruction: civil wars, racism, hatred of minorities.

How can our differences, our divisions as it were, reflect the kind of beauty God shaped into The Continental Divide? How in particular can our spiritual differences reflect the beauty of the Lord?

Paul’s letter to the churches of Galatia shows a way of looking at things and people that creates love rather than hate in our differences. He speaks in terms of life by law or flesh and life by the Spirit or grace. Let’s unpack that a bit. Life by flesh or law sees life as mine, to quote Gollum in Lord of the Rings—my church, my party, my life. Life by grace or the Spirit sees life as a gift of God which nurtures gratitude, not greed.

If life is my own achievement, possession, and reward then I can look at others with prideful contempt, not worthy of love, not good enough to be accepted. And I sure don’t want to share what is mine and mine alone.

If life is a gift of God’s grace, a belovedness which I have not earned but which I am given to share, then I can see others as loved by God just as I am.

So, a question: do I love my neighbor as myself? Do I love my neighbors as God loves them?

THE VISION

Sunrise promises that we can, again, see the beauty of the Lord. The flower by the walk, the smile on a child’s face, the young, pastel greens of Spring—these and all creation proclaim the serene beauty of God.

The light can also, of course, illumine the shadow side, the darkness of this world. The ugly, hateful, and destructive, in both humankind and nature, stand in sharp contrast to the beautiful.

And often the power and dynamic range of a photograph, whether in camera or in our eyes, are determined by the juxtaposition of the beautiful and the not so lovely. Like a resilient flower surviving after a tornado or a mother’s love transcending the devastation of a war zone.

Perhaps our vision of life, our way of seeing things, our life photograph as it were—maybe these can if we will result from seeking God in every scene of our lives. Even when God seems to be absent, silent, hidden. The psalmist paints a picture of thus seeking God in all life: “My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning” (Ps 130:6.)