Good Eye - Newsletter Article from 1 February 2009

I recently got a new camera. My old one died (in the middle of a Chalice worship service, of all times) and I had been without a camera for several months. It felt strange, I realized, not to be able to take pictures, something I have been doing since I was young.

The other day, Allen & I were showing a friend around from New York City who was out here for a meeting. We took her up to the Marin Headlands where the views in all directions are quite spectacular. She and I were both happily snapping away and comparing pictures on the little screens of our digital cameras. (Allen hadn't brought his camera, poor boy!)

At one point, as she was admiring a shot I had taken, she said, "you have a good eye," a compliment I enjoyed hearing. Of course, she meant nothing about the status of my physical eyeball but instead was referring to the way I frame shots and set up pictures.

Though I have been told that before, it always comes as a bit of a shock. It's not something that I've worked to learn; I haven't trained myself to set up shots...I seem to just do it. And sometimes, I surprise myself because a picture comes through that I didn't even know I was seeing.

At another picture taking time during a trip to London, I took a shot of the crowd at a big outdoor market. There in the center of the picture is a woman staring directly at me, as much as to say, "what are you doing with that camera?" I missed her when I took the picture completely. It wasn't until I got home and downloaded the pictures onto my computer that I saw her. My eye didn't catch what was going on as I took the shot; that that woman was communicating with me in her way and I missed it.

How often is that sort of thing true about our relationships with God and with each other? No matter how good our "eye" for that sort of thing is, we miss things...we overlook the obvious...we don't observe those things that are right before us. It's not until later, if then, that we realize what we've missed or overlooked.

Sometimes, with each other, it is sadly too late to go back and recapture a moment in which we were blind to something right before us. We are all human and recapturing in hindsight can be difficult because time intervenes, personalities change, egos are involved, and everyone needs to cooperate. But fortunately, the good news is that with God it is never too late. God is always ready for us to try again. God will redo moments and pose in front of our lenses time and time again and come back for more. It's never too late to begin to work on your "eye" to better observe and capture those moments in your spiritual life that will make you a fuller and closer to complete child of God.

Pace e Bene,
Gerry

PS--Okay, it's really hard not to get a good shot in the Marin Headlands, so maybe including that picture isn't fair. And the second photo may be too small in this setting for you to really be able to see what I'm going on about.

[The photos used here are my own and are from my Flickr account at www.flickr.com/photos/revger/.]