unexpected

In 2005, I journeyed to an Atlantic Coast beach town toward the end of the great August exhibition known as summer vacation. I am not fond of the beach or too much sunlight: moonlight reflecting on the water at midnight did make me think of Yeats and Arnold; the sunrise did encourage my mind to create some terse, tense text detailed silliness about creation with a hint of glossy, glib science fiction jargon; and somewhere in the gallery of my mind stretched a desire for goodness, justice, mercy, hundreds of unsaid, unasked prayers like sand beneath my feet, like sea grass protected in small patches to be seen, to be remembered. And each time I heard the waves crash, now looking back, it seemed as if that trip was an allusion, in part, to the nursery rhymes and Bible verses from my youth – the causeway of sound memory recitations about Job and the Whale, Miss Lucy, This little light, that were preserved in order to give safe passage to continuity and reason across my swampy gray matter for a lifetime.

Unexpectedly, after the Atlantic Beach trip whenever I would look at some of the photographs of the water or the sunrise over the water my thoughts were also accompanied by a longing, a yearning new yet familiar. Unexpectedly – because I had previously made many statements of faith, civility, propriety, and common sense partially based and formed on a particular Midwestern Catholic thought, so much that I felt more Catholic than the lapsed Catholics that one frequently meets at dinner parties, the theater, smart cocktail parties, poetry readings, art gallery openings of new or emerging artists. My own life was presented to me, an incomplete work, without passion, without purpose exhibited with a trendy colorful retro unglossed sheen of silent, resilient innocence, the innocence of compartmentalization and separation. How awful to view my life, as if it appeared on a single sheet of glossy card stock, folded into three panels, like a simple brochure. I could not decide upon a title. I could not decide upon the text which would describe my life. There was just the image of the water, and the sun at dawn. My mind was infatuated with the horizon, the horizon energized thoughts of faith and hope. The simplicity and repetitions of hope and love (as seen in the images from my camera), combined with the mise en scène, gave the canvas of my growing faith a peculiar perspective: part discernment, part situation comedy–

I like the simplicity of holding my camera,
the simplicity of focusing the lens on flowers in a basket, or playing cards dropped in the gutter near the corner of a busy street.
I like common definitions and uncommon allegories, allusions, and alliteration that provides life and art with a gentle, unexpected twist.
I choose colors and the horizon because they do the job of inspiring hope.
My life is about applying hope in the wide world, applying love in the wide world, and remembering that once upon a time everyone believed that the world was flat.
My life, my hope is not modern, nor is it anxious.
It is the laying down of ancient questions, ancient hopes, ancient prayers and trusting in the mysterious and the practical moments of prayer and faith.