I’m not a photographer. Sure, I get lucky every once in awhile and catch a good shot. (Like the photo to the left. I took it in Sioux Center, where I used to live, on a beautiful fall evening a couple years ago.) But I’m really not a photographer. A real photographer, a good one – whether skilled by natural talent or years of training – has an eye for it. They see things I don’t see. They notice things that escape me – angles and lighting, contrast and balance.
Real photographers just see more. Or maybe it’s that they see what could be and they know what to do to make it happen. It’s probably both.
Either way, I don’t seem to have the skill.
But that idea of seeing has a hold on my mind tonight. Not sure why. And really, tracing the path of my thoughts on an evening like this – when I’m sleepier than usual and haven’t seemed to click out of weekend laid-back mode – would likely be a lesson in futility. ‘Cause I’m not sure myself where they’re springing from and I doubt they’re linearly traceable.
But seeing…seeing more, seeing deeper. I can’t seem to let go of the idea. Something’s niggling at my brain and though I’m not sure I’m catching the drift, I’m not ready to give up on it. And whatever it is that’s rippling beneath the surface, it seems to be coming in snapshots…
I think it has to do a bit with writing, with seeing what’s there in the story I’m working on that maybe I didn’t even mean to include. I’ve been playing around with these characters and the situations they’re in for close to two years now. And I’m seeing more in them, sensing undercurrents in the plot I didn’t realize were there even just a month or two back.
I’m learning to see more in my story.
But I think my thoughts also have to do with the trip I took to Northwest Iowa this weekend. I’ve seen quite a few pretty places over the years: the floating morning smoke of the Appalachians, the bright beauty of Spain, Colorado peaks and a Scottish landscape rife with stories of clans and skirmishes with the English. But on my way up to Sioux Center this weekend, Iowa spoke to me reminders of its own beauty. Although nothing to the Rockies, western Iowa has plenty of hills, and together with a blue sky and perfect cotton ball clouds it made for a pretty picture on my drive. But even more, it was the fields – deep green in color, corn that was plenty taller than “knee high by the Fourth of July” – that really captured my eye during the drive. Iowa has its own version of beauty and it goes further, even, than the colors of its landscape on to the import of its bounty – 22% of the nation’s corn is grown right here, close to 10% of all the corn grown in the world!
I’m learning to see what’s outside my window with greater appreciation, greater understanding.
And then there’s my job at Hope Ministries, the people I come into contact with as I go about my day-to-day work. Hurting people not really all that different than the executives working downtown and the families in the suburbs except for the simple fact that they wear their hurts and hardships visibly. But these people, these homeless and hungry men, women and children, they are more than their plight. Because, you see, when they are defined by their plight, they are simply to be pitied. But when they are defined as they really are – people, created and cherished by God, entrusted to the care of those who have means to help (see I John 3:17-18, James 1:27, Galatians 2:10, Luke 14:13, Matthew 25:35…) – it sheds entirely new perspective and grows a kind of love that totally bypasses pity and moves straight on to action, relationship and brother/sisterhood.
There is so much more to be seen in the people around me.
There is so much more to be seen period. Maybe that’s part of growing up. Maybe we begin to see with wiser eyes, greater patience and deeper understanding.
Not that I’m wise, patient and ever-understanding, oh no. Not that I’m all grown up. (Why, I still get giddy during thunderstorms and I say “dude” way too much.)
But I’m seeing more. Or at least, learning to see more…like a student in a photography class, each snapshot illuminating.
