6/365 Self Portraits and Augustine

 It struck me today that 2 year olds are pretty awful at self portraits. To put it plainly, they cannot actually do them. They cannot even hold the marker. They have no idea where to put the eyes. They would rather draw on their own face than try to figure out what you mean by drawing it on a separate piece of paper. This was the deep thought I had while teaching art class this morning.

Later, after snapping a few late afternoon photos of my sweet son, I was struck again by how much an image can convey... that is not actually truthful. The backstory of what was happening when the picture took place is a far cry from what I see when I look at the portrait of him.

Self portraits as an exercise in self-reflection... and taking pictures as an exercise in seeing the world around you.  How to do these things without turning into a nauseating narcissist or a false image-bearer? 

I am an avid seeker of exercises that enhance creativity, or that simply help us see ourselves accurately and the world around us with greater clarity. But I want the result to be truthful, and if we are honest, that is not the way of the image world we live and breathe in and out, in and out,  like air that we no longer think about.

And then I thought of Augustine.

Now there is self-reflector if ever there was one. The man could look inward and pick himself apart psychologically, morally, relationally, spiritually, with a depth and breadth few rival even in today's memoir soaked culture. But he didn't do it alone. Every page, every thought has two people on it, himself and God. And there is no true self apart from that.

Earlier today I read a line from the father of the famous martyr, John Stam, talking about the model he and his wife used for parenting their children. "We sought grace to live consistently," he said, "You are so often in your own way when you undertake to rear children." That is the whole of it with everything I think. We are so often in our own way and we need Grace to move out of ourselves, to see things in their proper light, to understand not only ourselves but everyone else too, to be truthful about the world and it's realities. 

Even in self-portraits, even in something as simple as a photography exercise. There is no truth apart from Him. Next week, I'm bringing Augustine to the 2 year olds.

5/365 Monday Stories

| This last day of the break, in four photos |

| The cold, gray skyline, stripped and bare like the work I was about today, with icy fingers putting things away, sorting and clearing out all the excess |

| Our lunch together, guo tier, a standard favorite in this house |

| electric blankets are prime real estate these days |

4/365 #sundaysaremyfavorite

I need Sunday like it's my job. I need a soul dunking. I need a spirit cleanse. I need a day at the spa of I-Will-Make-All-Things-New. I need reminding, refreshing, rebuilding, restoring. 

On Sunday, the world does not stop and my house certainly does not become a haven of peace. We still battle the dishes, each other, our attitudes, messy rooms, disagreements, and rarely do we walk away unscathed by another day. But I still set apart this day, Sunday, as a day to begin again. To put myself and my family in the Way and ask for a blessing upon us as we walk in it. I still see it as a moment where we step out of the grind and into a few moments of quiet. When we, in our waywardness, ask for the Word and believe it will be given. 

And in that expectation, it comes. The soul dunking, the strength to begin again. It is why, in the flow of a string of days, each with it's rhythm of life and work, Sundays are so often my favorite.*

*taken from an Instagram hashtag I often use on Sundays with a photo from that day.

3/365 Give Me That Baby

If you bring me your ridiculously adorable baby, I will take him by the cheeks and make offers to keep him. And then put him in my basket and take pictures of him.

Little boy, you were a gift to your mama who waited a long time for your papa, and then for you. Do you know what a blessing you are?

2/365 The Project

You may have guessed it, but yes I am doing it. I am starting a 365 project. One photo posted each day for one full year. I am making the point to post here on this long neglected blog, where I have had my ups and down and yet still find it a sweet refuge for thinking, creating, sharing, and sometimes embarrassing myself.

Today I read this line from the Letters of Flannery O'Connor,

I've been writing for sixteen years and I have the sense of having exhausted my original potentiality and being now in need of the kind of grace that deepens perception, a new shot of life or something...

While I don't have sixteen years of writing behind me and certainly nothing even within one hundred light years of Miss O'Connor's writing potentiality, I love the expression, "being now in need of the kind of grace that deepens perception..."

And at the beginning of this year of 2015, I need that new shot of life... or something. When I photograph and write regularly, I see the world anew. There have been recent years when I felt like these pursuits, or outlets, or gifts, whatever they are, needed to lie dormant, or be given up for a time. You can always hold a thing to closely or expect too much from it. I don't need to lean on anything other than the One who upholds me and is the only real giver of life. But I sense that for now and perhaps in this year, I can take these tools He has given me and use them for some kind of good, maybe even service. Perhaps that is a bit pretentious. If nothing else, perhaps they can be a means of grace to simply deepen my own perception. And I surely am in need of that.

1/365 Begin Again

The road to our school was blocked by a jerry-rigged gate, the key to the padlock hidden in some small shack nearby and the owner of the key waited for, until finally we lumbered through onto the dusty straightaway.

The passing of the New Year happened and I hardly noticed, except for a few comments from fellow team members. We were there, hours away from our city home, eager to share gifts of love and smiles and time and a few resources with this small minority village. The schools were our focus, spending time in window-lit classrooms packed like sardines with anywhere from 40-80 beautiful children, living in a world all their own on the side of dusty mountains in the heart of Sichuan Province.

We taught, and played, and hiked with them up into the hills to visit their homes, meet their families, hear their stories, and bring gifts that we hoped would be received or at least leave a small seed of Love and Light for the future.

A trip like this, for me and my heart, leaves an aftermath of tangled thoughts and feelings.  I was challenged, in some expected and almost cliche ways, but also in ways I did not see coming. Living in China for nearly eight years now, I still feel much like a baby who has barely scratched the surface of understanding. My language, while much improved since those early days, is still so far from allowing real depth of communication. My insight into the culture, thinking and heart of Chinese people is something I long for but admittedly still falls far short of anything to be confident in. I still feel like I have so much to learn, and even to realize that I don't know. But still, I have also grown used to feeling like I don't understand. I have become somewhat versed in knowing my cultural ignorance.

So to go from my now established way of life and understanding in a Chinese city to a remote Yi minority village in the countryside where the language is different, the culture and customs are different, and even the social and economic class is another step removed, I am thrown back on my heels grasping for a way to know how to respond appropriately. As seems to be the knee-jerk reaction I can't quite rid myself of, the White Man Savior complex quickly kicked into high gear. I cannot help but see the poverty, the barrenness, the dirt, the material need and immediately feel the guilt of all that I own and have at my fingertips. I see the simple and struggling education system, the broken families, the loss, the children with big, staring eyes and want to help. I feel what I think is a very real compassion, and then jump to all my known systems of how to turn that compassion into action.

I was surprised and a bit embarrassed at how easily I was jumping to these responses too. I felt I should have known better. It was humbling to see the perceived need, and how I so quickly would do the wealthy-upper-class-swooping-in things to help.

And the humbling did not stop there. I can critique social media and technology and all it's effects on the way we live our lives like it's my job, and I put measures in place to fight against some of that. Yet here I am, still prone to the social sins I so readily observe. It has become almost a way of life we don't even think about anymore: taking pictures of what we are doing and telling everyone about it, instead of actually just doing what we're doing. And in our picture sharing, we project so much that is not reality, both of the setting and the people, and what we were doing and feeling in that moment.

My understanding of these Yi people, their lives, even their hearts, is limited by the few short hours I spent with them, the inability to speak their language, and all of my false conceptions. Yet, I can so readily project sentimental ideas of either the beauty or loss of their situation. All in a picture. I love photography and for me it is most often an artistic medium to share and think through the realities both physical and spiritual. But how to share our life here and our experience even on trips like this without exploiting? How to be honest and not make things appear better or worse than they are?

The most insightful part the trip for me was listening to the thoughts of local Chinese friends who went with us. Their criticisms and questions cut to the quick but also cracked open my understanding in a way that I want and need. Their reflections about everything from growing up in China, to poverty, criticism, and ultimately the level playing field we are all on in our need for Jesus was endlessly instructive to me. And beyond even the wisest cultural and sociological insights, their patient reminders to pray and be open to hearing His voice is the overarching reminder we all need to hear.

In the end, I left feeling like I know nothing. Entirely humbled, I was brought back to the verse I had begun with, meditating on it days before we left, but this time with a bit of a different perspective.

I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father for such was your good pleasure... no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. ~Matthew 11

A Good Man Is Hard to Find

A good man is hidden away in the dark. Far away from the eyes of the public, who are a poor judge of anything beyond the fitness of his form, the cut or sloth of his clothes, the polished or crude sound of his speech.

The good man is hidden, far even from the colleague or the church member, who sit beside him in the shining goodness of daylight, where fine words, smiles and handshakes, a well timed joke or veneer of productivity sit like a thin vapor over the deep well of a soul.

A good man may well look good to most men and women-- he ought to in fact. But a good-looking man in looks or in deed, does not a good man make. A truly good man is hidden far away from seeing eyes, is made in the fiery dark places that are unseen. Because a good man will be quiet when others speak ill of him in order to put themselves ahead or cover their mistakes. He may burn with their marks against him, but he will bear the sin of others, believing that, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr. and Saint Peter, undeserved suffering is in fact redemptive. A good man is a quiet, sometimes silent worker of redemption. 

A good man is the strongest, the bravest, the most respectable when there is not another soul around to see, to praise, to appreciate, or to keep in check. He fights for his woman when she is nowhere around. He fights for every woman by honoring them all, even when no one applauds his fight or praises his valor. In a world that pants after recognition, "likes" and the applause of an ever present and connected public, perhaps it is no wonder that a good man is hard to find.

Flannery O'Connor wrote a deeply dark and provocative story of the same title, "A Good Man is Hard to Find." In a letter to a friend she described her theological understanding of her characters: that Grace can in fact be delivered through the vehicle of the hypocrite, the fallen, the most base of humanity among us. In that vein, it must also be said, that the means of God's work in and among us is never limited by the cracks in the vessel.

A good man, yes, full of cracks he may be.

We are a world full of masks, of facades and personas. And the good men are out there, shoulder to shoulder with these men-as-shells. A good man, hidden among the reeds, is hard to find. A good man, whose goodness is not proved by his appearance, his words, his personality or joviality, his smoothness or even vulnerability, is hard to see. A good man is made in the secret, the quiet place. It may be that few will really find him. To find these good men is no small work of Grace itself. There ought to be no applauding or back-patting for those who have found and have known the years of truth of a good man. Knowing they are hard to find we ought to fight all the harder to honor them, share them, give thanks for them, protect them, pray for them, and do what ever we can in all this waging war of a world not to pedestal or promote them, but preserve them.

And then, over and over and over, we give thanks for them.

giving thanks especially for one I share this life with~ who incidentally celebrates 37 years of a life filled with cracks and grace today.