In the last week or so, I’ve seen three very different movies. Masters of the Universe (He-Man), Remarkably Bright Creatures, and then Disclosure Day. I enjoyed all three for different reasons, but there’s only one that I’ve continued to think about consistently since I saw it... Disclosure Day.

I’ll admit that I am a mark for sci-fi and for Spielberg movies so there’s that. I also admit that my first reaction to Disclosure Day was not all that enthusiastic. What I said to several family members was that I felt like the film tried to do too much and, as a result, didn’t allow some of the storylines to really be explored. There were also a few points in the film where some story choices were made that were ridiculous (scene where one of our heroes is crawling behind an open fence with his pursuing authorities not 10’ from him and somehow they don’t see or hear him...I’m looking at you.). So the film was not perfect by any means but again, I’m still thinking about it 48 hours later.

And maybe that’s a sign of a good (great?) movie - that it stays with you after you leave the theater. I enjoyed Masters of the Universe but basically it was like downing a ridiculously sugary dessert and enjoying the rush of it and then crashing about 2 hrs later and wondering why I did what I just did. Remarkably Bright Creatures was also just a wonderful feel-good story about forgiveness and healing and community and totally worth a watch. But again, I’m still chewing on Disclosure Day.

It is a very different “alien” film. In a lot of ways, it isn’t really about the aliens as much as it is about us. The film asks big questions about what humanity would do if we found out definitively that we are not alone in the universe. In the film there are people who don’t trust how humanity would respond and so there is the requisite massive government cover-up. Within that, it also engages the question of what that definitive realization would mean for people of faith - how would major religions respond to this disclosure?

The film also does something Contact and Arrival both did - gives the sense that extra-terrestrial life have a greater belief in the human race than we have of ourselves. Whoever sent the communication from Vega in Contact and the Septapods from Arrival and the aliens from Disclosure Day seem to believe that humanity can handle this truth.

And finally, Disclosure Day asks whether this news could bring a sense of unity and commonality to our world right now. The subtext within the film is that the world is on the brink of a massive multi-national conflict (World War III?) but when the disclosure finally happens, WWIII is no longer the breaking news.

And that’s where I need to get into some big spoilers for the film. So if you haven’t seen it and do want to see it, stop here. Come back after you watch. I’m going to give some literal space before the spoilers...

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(Still in spoiler break)

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Ok - you have been warned.

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Spoilers abound…

The disclosure finally happens in the last 10 minutes or so of the movie and goes from a Kansas City television broadcast to eventually being news all over the world. There’s one particularly powerful portrayal of a national news anchor starting to be able to share the videos being disclosed and eventually losing the “professionalism” and being so very human as she tries to interpret what she’s seeing along with everyone else. And then the film ends as Margaret, Emily Blunt’s character who we first met in the film as a weather forecaster, begins to relay the actual message from one of the aliens to humanity. Margaret is one whose job it is to watch the skies for the rest of us and there’s one particular forecast she gives about hail coming that doesn’t seem to happen...until it does...Just like the insights she begins to gain don’t seem to have a foothold in reality...until they do.

And then as she looks into the camera, the film ends with just the first word of the message - a message that will land as strongly as hail on the roof and people have no choice but to... listen

The way that it is filmed, it felt to me that it was the first word of a sentence and not the whole of the message. But, as one reviewer wrote about it, even the best screenwriter can’t script something that would be appropriate to the momentousness of that kind of occasion. Instead, it is left to the viewer to try to interpret what might come next and to sit with the unresolvedness. It is almost like Spielberg is leaving the audience with that not as a statement but as a question...what will you do with what you are now hearing?

And I think that some of the criticism is that the film ends so abruptly and doesn’t have a clear resolution. And maybe that’s the genius of it - it is not trying to wrap up the story perfectly but allowing the story and the questions to continue to work.

Listen...

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

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In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.

I have adapted that line for many other settings over the years and especially for this week...

In my seeing this week, there was often no clear line between pink and a host of other colors.

At what point does pink start to be more orange and when does it move into purple? I’ve since made this photo, from a few weeks ago, the background for my devices — it captures exactly that question.

At what point does the pink that is peeking out of the blue/grey clouds become red or orange or purple? I think that’s the beauty of spectrum thinking and living. Spectrum helps us to recognize that few things are clearly this or that, a or b, black or white. But instead they all exist along a spectrum, where something might be more ‘this’ than ‘that’ while still holding some ‘that’ within the ‘this.’

On my first day of beholding pink, I ran into this exact issue when I saw some flowers out on my walk. I wasn’t 100% sure if they were purple or pink but they were more on a spectrum of those two wonderful colors. Interestingly, as you’ll see below, my first pink photo didn’t end up being that one. It’s how these things go. But the question remains the same and is then evident in what you’ll see from another photo below. This is part of the practice of beholding... paying attention to what is there and honestly engaging what we are receiving from the world around us.

In her post this past Monday, my friend shared a quote along these lines from Alice Walker’s book The Color Purple. Arianne writes:

Along those lines, paying attention and being mindful ~ One of my favorite books is “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker, and within it, there’s a line from the character Shug who says, “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.” Paying attention is prayer and pure devotion, friends.2

You could easily swap out any other color for purple in the quote but the color isn’t the important part of it. The important part is the awareness and the beholding. And in that awareness we can engage questions such as “is that pink” or “is that purple” or “is it some of both”?

Here are my pink beholdings for the week.

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

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2

Monday Manna

Monday Manna

Good morning, friends, and summer blessings to each of you …

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7 days ago · 13 likes · 4 comments · Arianne Braithwaite Lehn

After she begins in a measure of lament with “When I’m weary lost or sad // Overwhelmed or just fed up” she then moves into small actions she can take ... “I say grace for what I have // If I start by being kind // Love usually follows right behind // It nods its head and softly hums // Saying “Honey that’s the way it’s done.”

And then she moves to singing of the power of love and then the lyric with the song title...

And the things that have saved us
Are still here to save us
It’s not out there somewhere
It’s right here, it’s right here

I can’t change the whole world
But I can change the world I know
What’s within three feet or so

We are body, skin and bones
We’re all the love we’ve ever known
When I don’t know what is right
I hold it up into the Light
I hold it up into the Light
I hold it up into the Light

Three feet doesn’t seem like much but it can make a big difference.

Two mornings ago, I saw that three feet make that difference. It was one of those mornings with a light fog and bright sunlight about 30 minutes after sunrise. The sun was up but the shadows were still deep and long and there was a wonderful coolness to the air. Towards the end of our walk is one area where there’s a fairly open field but with a line of trees at the far end that obstructs the morning sun. But on a lightly foggy day...magic happens. I have experienced so much awe along this part of the path over the years. The light sneaks through the leafy branches of the trees and illuminates the fog creating lines and shapes that shift and move as the fog slowly drifts and as you walk along the path. At times the light shines brightly through the fog and other times, when the trees fully block it, the illuminated patterns disappear.

The other morning, the patterns largely disappeared as I passed this small tree.

But as I walked a short bit...

And then a bit further...

It wasn’t far - maybe 3 feet or so. At first, I kept walking but then stopped to go back and look again. I went back to the place where the sun was obscured and then walked a few feet and then walked back and then did it again. Scout was probably so confused. But wow did it change. It was only after about 3 or 4 times of this that I pulled out my camera for these photographs. It was an awe-filled moment then and still feels that way a few days later.

This three feet or so can be in the way that we share and act in the world, and it can be in what we receive from the world. It can be in the stretch of our arms but also in the steps with our feet. Like Carrie shared in the song, we can’t change the whole world, but we can change the world that we know that’s in that three feet or so.

So again, stretch out your arms...see what can change.

And here’s one of Scout’s beautiful eyes taking in the world...

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

Programming Update

• Our most recent Pop Culture Pastors Hour centered was the first of what will be likely be several episodes tlaking about artificial intelligence. We were thrilled to welcome Phuc Luu back with us. One hour wasn’t enough! Here’s the link.

• Monday at 1pm ET, MaryAnn and I will be doing a “will it preach” on the recent film, The Sheep Detectives. Will it preach? Oh yes indeed it will!

• And then on the 25th, we’ll be joined by once again as we talk about America250 movies.

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Personally, black is definitely a primary color for me, if not my favorite color. It is one of my college alma mater’s colors and it seems a good portion of my clothes are some shade of grey to black, although I have tried to draw in some more vibrant color in recent years. I do think that black is a deeply beautiful color but it is also similar to white in that it is a complicated color to photograph. Just like pure white is impossible to photograph, so is pure black. There needs to be some texture, some variance for a camera even to focus.

I will also share that I have changed in my usage of language around black / dark / etc. When we reflect on depictions and language when it comes to black, it is often connected to villains or evil or of someone/something to fear. There are abhorrent religious traditions that said that the “mark of Cain” was black skin and that it was a punishment from God for murdering his brother Abel. (Genesis 4 does not say this in any way). In the Bible, forgiveness is often connected to the color white which has the implication that sin (or separation from God) is the opposite. Villains in stories are the ones who are often wearing black (the cowboy with the black hat, Darth Vader, Sauron, etc). In coming to see these patterns more clearly over the last several years, I have tried to amend my language to try to not continue to foster that perception. The words we use matter.

I started the week thinking that I was going to be centered on black objects like you’ll see from my first photo (my black Canon camera and one of my Bibles) but then a foggy morning shifted that to mostly focusing on silhouettes. The mornings for most of this week have really lent themselves to silhouettes (getting out before sunrise and mostly clear mornings). So here are my beholdings of black this week:

And Scout has to get in the silhouette mix as well!

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

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Yesterday in our service, we had a really unique guest “preacher.” My dog Scout shared a commencement address as we were honoring graduates connected to the congregation and also ordaining and installing our next class of servant leaders (elders and deacons). Our focus scripture was 1 Timothy 6:11-19 and the message begins with my introduction but then shifts into me sharing what Scout told me to share. Here’s the full text and here’s a PDF manuscript of it.

Me

The reading we just heard comes from the end of Paul’s first letter to Timothy, and the more I sit with it, the more it reads like part of a commencement address. Paul had been the teacher and Timothy the student. The two first met in a town called Lystra, and Timothy went on to travel with Paul on several of his journeys. But here, near the very end, you can feel Paul handing off the baton — sending Timothy out to go and do this church thing on his own.

Now, full disclosure…not every line in this letter has aged especially well. But there is still a great deal of timeless wisdom in it. Some of it is wonderfully practical and down to earth — For instance, Paul lays out the qualifications for the people who serve as leaders in the church, which feels awfully timely on a day when we are ordaining and installing elders and deacons. And some of it is less grounded, more mysterious, dwelling in the deep things of faith. Which, again, is exactly what a good commencement address does.

But it’s the ending that has really held my attention this week. In our English translation, it’s just nine words: “Take hold of the life that really is life.” so let’s dig into that.

Just before our reading, Paul is contrasting two different kinds of “life.” He warns that the life built on wealth, privilege, power, and dominance is not the life God desires for us. It isn’t life-giving at all — it ends up destroying the person living it and everyone around them. And then he turns. But as for you, he says, shun all of this. And he describes a different life — one marked by righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. A few sentences later he adds: do good, be rich in good works, be ready to share. It’s the mirror image of everything he just warned against. And when we live in these life-giving ways, Paul says, we are taking hold of the life that really is life — a life we can hold onto, steady and secure.

So what does this life really look like? I could stand up here for the next 10 minutes or so and share about it or we can hear from somebody who I think really lives it. so for the rest of the message, we are going to be hearing from someone who I think live this just about better than any human I know.

Earlier this week, my dog Scout and I were out on one of our morning walks, and as she was greeting another person on the trail I and my guest preacher Was right there with me . What we worked out is that she’d tell me what to say, and I’d share it for her, here, in person. She knows that not everybody is comfortable with dogs and some people are allergic to dogs so she wanted to make sure that this was as welcoming a place as possible. So — to our graduates, to the elders and deacons we’ll ordain and install today, and to all of us — here is Scout’s commencement address.

From Scout

Thank you all for giving me this opportunity to share. I am fairly sure that there hasn’t been a message shared by a dog here at RJC before so I hope that this won’t be the only time that this happens. I am humbled that my human thinks that I live this kind of life. I don’t necessarily think about it that way, but instead I just try to live. So here goes on what that guy Paul shares (my human read it to me several times as I don’t know how to read yet… yet).

First, behold the beauty. You humans move too quickly too much of the time. I cannot tell you the number of times my human tells me that we have to get going when I’m doing a big sniff. Yes there are times to get moving quickly (like when I get to chase a goose at the lake) . I know my nose sniffs things much better than your weird looking human noses but it is important to slow down and really take in a big sniff of a tree, a post, a plant, a spot on the ground, and of other creatures. There is so much that is out there that you aren’t aware of but if you slowed down you might notice more. I think when Paul talks about righteousness and faith, a big part of that is slowing down to recognize where God is at work. One of my humans’ favorite movies is about a high schooler named Ferris Bueller and he once said, “life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while you could miss it.” While your noses don’t work like mine, some of your other senses are much better than mine - use those to really soak in the wonder that is this world and the people that God has put around you. There is so much mystery and wonder. Soak it in even if you can’t sniff it in.

Second, pay attention to others. One of the things we dogs are awesome at is picking up on things that our humans don’t even know is going on. There are some dogs that have detected diseases in their humans before all your doctors have! But it is even in how we recognize that you are having a hard day and we try to get you to stop and rest and recover. It makes me sad when I am trying to send that message to my humans and they just keep on stressing when just sitting down on the couch and petting me for a few minutes will help them feel better. The other day my human was really cranky about something that happened and I just kept coming up to him and reminding him that I was there until he finally realized what I was saying. So we sat down together on the couch and the next thing that happened was that he woke up after about a 20 minute nap and felt better! Paying attention to others is something that Paul wrote to Timothy - to do good and to serve others. That Jesus guy knew what he was talking about when he said to look to needs of others before your own.

Third, be gentle. I know not all dogs are gentle but gentleness is something that Paul tells Timothy is really important. I wasn’t always as gentle as I am now. My first few years I was pretty difficult and I snapped at people when they got too close to me when I was chewing a bone or something. Something I didn’t know then was that there were times that my humans were actually trying to help me not eat something I shouldn’t (although socks do taste really good). They were doing it because they love me. But I have grown to be very gentle and I think that’s important for you humans to do just like Paul tells Timothy here. There are too many humans who aren’t gentle and are mean, violent, angry, and take that all out on others in awful ways. I know they do it to dogs sometimes and also to humans and other animals and to all of this beautiful world. That Jesus guy was gentle and caring and when humans say they should be like Jesus, this is something that can easily be missed. This is what that love of Jesus thing is. One of my favoritest things in the world is when we are on a walk and a little human asks if they can pet me. Once I sit down my human says that they can and I just sit there and let them feel my soft ears or run their hands down my back. It means a lot to me when I hear other humans tell my humans how gentle and sweet I am. You humans can be this way as well.

And last, don’t be afraid to share what you need. This isn’t really in what Paul tells Timothy here but there’s another place in the Bible where Paul tells Timothy to be sure to take care of himself and his sensitive stomach. Paul reminds Timothy that his needs are important as well. Yes we are supposed to look to others and serve others like Jesus said but we also need to be aware of what we need and be willing to ask others for help. I do this a LOT. I love getting scratches right on my back near my back legs. My humans call them “butt scratches.” I will come up to my humans and will turn my butt toward them until they start scratchng. It feels so good. I also know how to tell my humans when I need to go outside and when I’m hungry (although I don’t think they feed me as much or as often as I think they should). Sometimes when I am asking them to come sit with me on the couch it isn’t just got something going on for them but sometimes I just need someone to be with me. And I know there are times that I go even a bit more direct and poke my humans gently with one of my paws. But when you can’t speak human words, you’ve got to do what you can.

Can I give one more?

Have friends. My humans are my friends but I also have other friends in my house - a soft llama named Lugnut, an elephant named Sebastian, and a shark named Agnes (and there are a few others too). But they are friends too and they’re important to me. I sometimes get so excited when my humans come home that I will go and get one of my friends to show how excited we both are! But Timothy and Paul were friends too - they were important to each other. Paul writes to Timothy here because they cared for and loved each other. We dogs generally like to be in packs - we don’t like to be on our own. You humans sometimes think you can do it all on your own but you can’t. You need friends. We all do. God gave us one another.

And in closing, you can send me my honorarium in milk bones…

Thank you Scout. Good and wise words. Good girl.

And here are a few pics of the stunning sunrise we had this morning. Wow. Just wow.

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

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Onto "Beholding (Green)”

You may have noticed that the title for this post is different from what came before. Beholding (Green) not Noticing (Green). This came out of a Fr. Richard Rohr and Amy Frykholm post shared on Friday, May 22 called “Beholding God Everywhere.” The whole post is worth your time - click here to read - but I was so moved by this from Fr Rohr...

The real gift of contemplative practice is to be happy and content, even while we are simply sitting on the porch, looking at a rock, or benevolently gazing at anything in its ordinariness. When we can see, accept, and say that every single act of creation is “just this,” we allow it to work its wonder on us....Remember, the whole process most often begins by one, long, relished moment of awe, one fully sincere moment of beholding anything and saying, “Just this!” And, as Isaiah promised, we will know that every moment is shouting, “I am here! I am here!”

And then Amy Frykholm picks up on that by going deep with the challenges that come with a practice of “beholding.”

Let’s be clear, though, contemplation of any object, person, idea, or being is much more difficult than it sounds. First of all, we face the difficulty of sitting down for beholding at all….If we are able to get ourselves situated for beholding, we will notice the next difficulty arising: We are constantly being taken out of presence by our own thoughts…. Any act of attention is not a sustained experiencing. It’s a series of successive efforts to bring attention back to the same thing, considering it again and again... We gradually train our attention to encounter, discovering its fruits in slow and subtle movements over time. Whatever you behold, you eventually become beholden to. You enter into a love relation. You recognize your own dependence on the created world, the way that you are held, even as you are holding...And sometimes grace carries us away, and we glimpse, maybe even for several seconds at a time, the whole interconnected, openhearted world … welcomes us.

When I read all this on Friday morning, I realized that “noticing” wasn’t the word for what I have been doing. Noticing feels more like the quick glance, the “oh, that’s cool” type of thing. But beholding (literally coming from words meaning “to keep hold of - or held by” or “belong to.”) has a much more tactile and deeper sense to it. It puts the beholder and the beheld in some kind of relationship and sometimes in physical contact. It isn’t the quick glance but it is much more of a gaze to behold what is being experienced. And this beholding isn’t just about visual sight but through any (or all) of the senses.

This was further amplified by Sunday’s podcast episode of The Daily entitled Sites Unseen: What’s Revealed by Traveling With the Blind. It is a conversation with NY Times photographer Andy Isaacson about how he experienced traveling in a completely new way. Isaacson has traveled all over the world in his work for the Times and his work has largely been through the lens of his camera so he was used to experiencing travel through the visual medium. But he took a trip to India with a travel company called Travelize who create trips pairing visually impaired travelers with sighted travelers as equal companions. In the podcast, Isaacson is challenged to experience India through his other senses and to be deeply open to the experiences of his traveling companions who are sensing the trip in a radically different way than he. While the word “beholding” was not used, I couldn’t help but return to that time and again as I listened to this story as Isaacson and his companions beheld that amazing country in unique and beautiful ways.

And finally we come to one other intersection for this week of “beholding” the color green. In my journal entries from past years, I saw that on May 22, 2016 (yes May 22 like the day I read the Rohr / Frykholm post), I wrote the following reflecting upon readings from 1 Chronicles 16 and 17 during a Bible in a year read.

Imago Scriptura 52 - The Color Green

Yes, in a week in 2026 where I was seeking to behold the color green, I was writing and reflecting upon the same 10 years ago. A significant portion of that reflection was connected to the Rich Mullins song, The Color Green, a song about beholding the beauty and wonder of God in all of nature (not just green). The chorus of the song is this:

Be praised for all Your tenderness by these works of Your hands
Suns that rise and rains that fall to bless and bring to life Your land
Look down upon this winter wheat and be glad that You have made
Blue for the sky and the color green that fills these fields with praise

I love how the song holds together so much of what surrounds us in creation and names so many things - the gold of the sun that rises, the waving of the winter wheat, the vibrance of the blue sky and of course the color green that stands out so boldly. And that’s just the chorus. These lyrics are very much in my heart and mind as I’ve listened to The Color Green many times these last few days.

As a result of all this, my practice changed slightly after what I read on Friday. I decided that each remaining day I was not only going to photograph green but I was going to behold green not only through seeing it but also receive it with my other senses. Each day is a different leaf from a tree or plant that has deep meaning to me with the exception of Monday’s and Tuesday’s which were something I decided to do with Scout. So, here’s beholding green for the last week but starting with the green image that I shared 10 years ago this week.

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

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Two parts were notable for me. First, was the point when he came to recognize that the people he had formerly dismissed as “misfits” and “geeks” were actually “his people.” His comment was “My classmates were people I had previously discounted as geeks and misfits, but I soon realized I was a geek and a misfit. I had found my fit. These were my people.” That is a purple statement. What I mean by that is that purple is a color that is made by the mixing of shades of red and blue. Here’s a great page that describes how that happens. Purple is something currently that is used to refer to places where people of different perspectives and worldviews are able to be in community with one another, especially politically. When Ford was dismissing the people in the drama classes, he was functioning more in a place of separating himself but when he came to know them, he began to realize that there was more similarity than difference. Those who were previously “those people” became “his people.”

Purple.

The other part that stood out for me in the speech was his comments about passion and purpose. After sharing how his persistence eventually paid off and he made it big with his role as Han Solo in Star Wars, he said, “the load lightened. I had freedom, opportunity, but something was still missing.” He continued with this:

Passion and purpose are not the same thing. Passion brings you joy. Purpose brings you meaning. Passion gets you out of bed in the morning, but purpose allows you to sleep at night. And I hadn’t found purpose higher than my job yet.

He had passion for his acting career but the purpose had not yet been found. The rest of his message shares of how he found his purpose in working for conservation and care of the earth.

This reminds me of why I do what I do. I have passions - I have a passion for my family, for my friends, and for my work as a pastor. But those aren’t my ultimate purpose here. I have come to see that my purpose, which I primarily live out through the lens of my camera, is to see and share beauty and to inspire wonder. And that purpose then informs each of the ways I live my life - as a husband, father, brother, son, friend, pastor, etc.

Is it this purpose that had me seeking to notice purple this week - in a coincidental moment with a flower and a pollinating bee, in a photo my daughter shared with me, in a table where I was stretching out after a long drive, in an epically frosted cake, in the beautiful diversity of the graduating class, in signs on walls, and finally in Tuesday morning’s sunrise.

And speaking of Scout… one of the students at my daughter’s school had left this plush shark in the giveaway room. We didn’t feel it should be abandoned so the shark came home with us and Scout has a new friend!

This next week is green! I wonder if I should try to see green in things other than trees and grass? Nah…

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

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The Bible talks about how white is the color of forgiveness (sins that were once scarlet, now white as snow). Traditional concepts of a wedding in western culture emphasize the purity of the bride as she wears a white wedding dress. Holiness is also often symbolized by white as seen in the white robes that the Pope or other religious leaders wear (including me sometimes).

But at the same time white carries a lot of weight along with it. White also gets used to refer to groups of people, aka caucasian. But within that there’s a lot of gradation. I am considered white/caucasian because I am of 50% Polish ancestry and then a mix of other European backgrounds in my other 50%. But I tan incredibly quickly and my skin doesn’t necessarily look “white.” In fact, at my seminary orientation, I was asked by one of the facilitators if I was planning on attending the international student activities. When I asked why, he replied, “Well, you’re Filipino aren’t you?” My response - “Um...no. I’m Polish.”

Awkward.

This sense of white also is very tied to some of the dangerous movements in my country’s history and in my country’s present moment - white supremacy and white Christian nationalism. In both of these, those of “white culture” are centered over and against others and thought to be better, smarter, or more important - none of which are remotely true. These practices have and are currently creating true harm and pain and need to be resisted and condemned.

And even in something as seemingly neutral as web and graphic design, “white” is not simply a single color. While one shade can be represented by the hexcode #FFFFFF, there are over 100 other color shades that are considered white in graphic design - some of which look more pink or grey or tan to me. Here’s a page that describes this.

So, yeah...white is messy and far from simple. And I experienced being aware of white to be a bit messy this week as well in the sense of “what is white?” Is the slightly off white of the ceiling tiles in my church office “white”? What about the long-exposure of the waterfall that gave a sense of silky white smoothness but if it was a split second exposure, it would have looked vastly different? What about the muddy heart that was hanging off a tree that was white under the mud? Was it still “white”? Or that one spot on Scout’s back? Are those strands of fur white? Grey? Something else? Or the reflection of the sun off the water in the morning? Outside the camera, the reflection looked to be a gleaming white but the exposure made it more golden, at least until I adjusted the white balance in post processing. So yeah, it was messy.

Because “white” is so hard to pin down, noticing it this week felt more like discovery than definition.

Discovery was something I heard in a Rilke poem I read on Monday night before bed. It came from his Collected French Poems and was shared in my “Daily Rilke” book I’m slowly working through. The poem was called Orchard and Road but what I heard in it was simply a message about being willing to listen and to hear what is around us - to receive what comes. So, I’m ok with the messy, even if I’m not ok with how messy “white” is making the world right now.

Orchard and Road
In the traffic of our days
may we attend to each thing
so that patterns are revealed
amidst the offerings of chance.

All things want to be heard,
so let us listen to what they say.
In the end we will hear what we are:
the orchard or the road leading past.1

My noticings for the week

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

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I've been reflecting about resilience this week - the kind that doesn't announce itself, but the kind that just quietly keeps going.

One of the two books I’m reading right now is called The Future is Peace by Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon. It is a recounting of their journey together through key places in the Holy Land as friends and as a Palestinian (Sarah) and an Israeli (Inon). It is an amazing read, but a hard read as well. A few days ago, there was this section from when they were at what is referred to in the Bible as The Mount of Olives. After talking about some of the history in that place over the last 2000 years, they write:

Today this ancient garden endures as a place of serenity and contemplation. Sunlight dances through narrow silvery-green leaves. Goldfinches and house sparrows dart from branch to branch, and the pealing of bells reverberates from the church below.

The fragrance of rosemary fills the air, and bees devote themselves to gathering nectar and pollen from the bright blue flowers. In spring, the trees are blanketed with clusters of white blossoms, followed by tiny green olives that mature into blackish purple-hued fruit in the fall. Century after century, the olive trees do what they have always done: produce fruit, no matter what human turmoil is playing out nearby. Empires have risen and fallen around this timeless place, the trees a living witness to the drama of history. Just as the hedges of prickly pear cactus keep watch over the demolished villages of Palestine, these olive trees will stand for centuries more, silent spectators to the choices we make. Nature’s calm perseverance in the face of ongoing human discord almost seems a rebuke. Having witnessed humanity’s past, what could these trees tell us about our future?

Because of its ability to regrow from rootstock, the olive tree is a powerful symbol of regeneration and resilience. A new beginning can sprout from an old and painful past, and no rupture is ever truly final. Like hope, life can spring from even the smallest seed. We were about to see this in Jerusalem, a city that has been conquered and reborn from one era to the next, time and time again.

As our third day in the Holy Land came to an end, we had dug deep into our pasts and shared parts of our story with each other for the first time. We had learned that friendship can’t endure without vulnerability. We had asked each other questions, cried together, and pledged to continue this learning journey, to examine our motivations and what brought us together.1

What I heard as I read this was resilience - specifically the resilience of nature that just keeps going no matter what we throw at it. Yes nature does get wounded, and sometimes irreparibly in extinctions and destruction, but nature seems to find ways to adapt even as it is scarred. The cycles and rhythms of nature keep enduring time and again.

I saw that same resilience in recent days at the lake where Scout and I have been walking. Looking back on these same days in past years in my journal, I see photos of new goslings and ducklings swimming around the lake in past years. And the last few days - ducklings and goslings galore. As I have seen the pairs of adult geese with their goslings and the mother ducks with their ducklings, I wondered whether any of them were some of those little ones I photographed in years past and here they are as new parents themselves? Regardless, the cycle is continuing.

And I’m experiencing that myself as later this week, two of our children will be graduating from college. It didn’t feel that long ago that we were walking those little ones to their first days of school as kindergarteners or their first days in middle school or as they walked on their high school graduation days. It also doesn’t feel that long ago that I was waiting for my graduation day to begin when I was in college. And now here I am. While there is a bit of “yikes” in all of this, it is far more just deep pride and admiration for their resilience and growth into the low-mileage adults they’ve become.

But I am hopeful and believing in them and so many others right now who are growing into a world vastly different from what I entered into after I graduated from college. But I am grateful for the wisdom of people like Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon as they bear witness to a new way of moving through this world, not as enemies but as peacemakers and friends together. I am grateful for the resilience of nature that shows us how to keep going. And I’m grateful for the celebrations that are ahead not only for my family but for so many others.

Here’s the new life around the lake the last few days (and full disclosure - there are a couple of heron pics that aren’t of babies but were just perfectly photographed moments that needed to be shared).

And the herons

And Scout…

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

PS - Noticing (White) is still coming on Wednesday…

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Ok…onto yellow!

The first thing I listen to in the car each weekday is a podcast called The Slowdown. It is a weekday podcast with a poem and a short reflection. As with any artistic experience, some of the poems connect and some do not but I continue to listen each day. Last Friday, the daily poem was You Reading This, Be Ready by William Stafford. You can listen to the full episode here (or any of the usual podcast sites) as I don’t think I can post the full poem here. But I can post an excerpt of this beautiful poem about trying to be fully present...

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life –1

The whole focus that day was on the gift of being present. In the reflection before the poem was read, the host Maggie Smith shared this:

Being present costs us nothing. It requires no special equipment. No special location. We can all do better at noticing, and at keeping ourselves open to what we’re experiencing right now.

Today’s poem is a good reminder that the present is just that — a gift.2

Being present at the heart of this practice of noticing. It is simply being present in the moment, aware of what I am seeking (in the case of this week, the color yellow/gold), and simply receiving what the present moment brings.

I was fascinated by the variance in the experience of yellow that I read in Wikipedia’s entry on the color - from energy and optimism to fear and cowardice. Different cultures, of course, have vastly different experiences and interpretations of the color as well. Check out the article for more. In my Christian faith tradition, yellow doesn’t appear directly very often in the Bible, but gold appears ALL over the place. The ark of the covenant, the tabernacle, the temple, visions of God, and the list goes on. So in the Bible it is often associated with something majestic, powerful, holy, and priceless.

This week, with yellow, I found the color in some much different places than my usuals as you’ll see below. Initially this week, however, yellow was more about music than about images. Yellow by Coldplay has been on my mental (and literal) playlist all week. It also jogged a great memory for me as the first time I heard the song was one of the early gatherings for my Doctor of Ministry group over 20 years ago. Going to this song led me to other “yellow” (and gold) songs, including a few I hadn’t heard of before. I put together a Yellow playlist on both Apple and Spotify if you’re interested in listening. The playlist includes Coldplay’s song of course, but also one my sister would be furious if I didn’t include, along with the Beatles, a Sting song covered by Eva Cassidy, some Fleetwood Mac, K Pop Demon Hunters, Elton John, and a gorgeous song entitled Yellow Moon by a Japanese folk artist named Akeboshi. The translation of the lyrics to the song’s Japanese lyrics are here if you want to take a listen. Here are the full playlists (19 songs):

When it comes to the photographs, there was one moment that was impossible to photograph. Monday morning as I was getting ready to head out, there was an incredible quality to the morning light. The golden hue of the just-risen sun was absolutely stunning. But as I walked out to soak it in, I knew that there was no way that any photograph could even come close to reflecting the reality of the experience. The color of that morning was the domain of a poet. I am just grateful that I was able to receive that moment with the photograph of my heart and my mind and that it is still there…

Onto the photographs of yellow for the week:

I did want to share one other really unique photo that has a tiny bit of yellow. My favorite bird (and potentially my spirit animal), the Great Blue Heron perched right on the point by the photograph that was the framing for my book Ordinary Benchmarks. This was the only photograph from that moment but I am so grateful that I was able to see it. And the yellow? Just at the tip of the heron’s beak.

The color for the week ahead… white!

And Scout of course. These two photos are not recent but came up as I was looking for some older photos for one of my daughters. These are Scout when she was only about 3 months old...look at those big ears!

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

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• Several days ago, posted this amazing reflection - beauty as sustenance - on her Words from Silence page - focused on the practice of savoring moments. She defines savoring as “the practice of slowing down to notice and be present to beauty and goodness.” The whole post is totally worth a read

• Over the weekend I listened to a podcast from RadioLab called “Forests on Forests” that shared about some of the wonders that we are only now learning about forest canopies (including large amounts of humus piled up on branches high in some of the tallest trees out of which are growing new trees and within which are entire ecosystems! - Many of them brown!)

• Then Monday, I read this from in her Monday Manna - All about paying attention as she focuses on a recent novel and also the wisdom of Mary Oliver whom she quotes with: “Attention is the beginning of devotion….” among several other bits of wisdom from Mary Oliver. She closes her post with one of her own prayers - When I’m Completely Scattered. Again, whole post worth a read.

• Then Monday afternoon, I met with my spiritual director and the majority of our conversation shifted to this sense of paying attention (sorry no link for a transcript of our conversation).

• Tuesday morning, I queued up my Daily Calm podcast and it was entitled “Vividness” but was about a technique to deepen awareness. The closing image quotes Jon Kabat-Zinn... “Mindfulness is about being fully awake in our lives.” Here’s the free share link if you’d like to listen.

• Not done yet...The Strands puzzle from the New York Times on Tuesday had a theme of “Attention, Attention” with the words in the puzzle being behold, watch, witness, eyeball, monitor, observe, and then the “spangram” of “like a hawk,”

• And finally...in the Pop Culture Pastor’s Hour that MaryAnn and I recorded about Nature with our special guest Fr Pete the Wilderness Priest, what does MaryAnn mention with her first “pop culture item”? She talks about how nature calls us to “pay attention to little things.”

So yeah... I’m listening... I’m trying to pay attention!

This week I’ve been seeking to pay attention to my next color... brown.

Full disclosure, I had a bit of a reaction about the fact that my random list of colors for this came to brown for this week. After all, Spring is in full bloom around here. Vivid greens, purples, oranges, reds, yellows, and so forth. And this week is... brown. Some of that feeling goes back to something I heard in a message shared at an event in college over 30 years ago. The speaker was sharing about a moment with his wife while driving and he began to sing along with a song that came on the radio. She stopped his singing when she noted that she felt like his singing wasn’t bad but it wasn’t very good . As she tried to describe it further, she talked about how, when you make a fruit smoothie you put all these vibrant colors together in the blender and when they are all mixed up - they come out brown. She said, “your singing is brown.” If we were using 2026 slang, she might have said that his singing was “meh” or “mid.” For some reason, I’ve never forgotten that part of the message (honestly I don’t remember what the rest was) and it is probably because my singing is meh/mid (at best).

In the years since, however, I’ve become more aware of how someone who was not white skinned might have heard that when it was shared. Someone whose skin tone was more brown or black who heard that color described as not bad but not very good either - just brown. Good chance that it didn’t sit too well with them. I have come to understand this more with what I have read and learned about how often darker colors are associated with badness or with evil. And looking right now at the United States...who are those who are being most often targeted for arrest or put under suspicion or are victims of hate crims? People whose skin tones are darker. It is why I try to be aware and pay attention to the ways in which I speak of light and darkness, black and white, and so forth.

I am grateful that the last seven days have reminded me and shown me that brown is an amazingly vibrant and wonderful color. One example…Something my spiritual director said on Monday as we talked about this was that you don’t have a tree, any tree, without the color brown. She’s right. Brown was there in the trunk of my favorite tree as I placed my hand on it on Earth Day. Brown was the color of the bench that was the inspiration in 2024 about finding wonder in the everyday which led to my book, Ordinary Benchmarks. Brown was the color of the twisted tiny branch that I photographed with a macro lens that could have easily been overlooked. Brown was the color of the train tracks and rail spikes that held them together that I photographed on Saturday. Brown was the color of the water but more so the two turtles that I saw swimming as I looked into the lake on. Sunday. Shades of brown made up the intarsia wood piece of a heron that my dad crafted years ago that stands on a shelf in our house. Brown was the color of the snail that was so tiny that I noticed while walking on Tuesday morning after a rainy overnight.

Brown in all of these ways was beautiful, wondrous, and full of life and memory and love in what I received from this week of paying attention to this dear color.

One more thing before sharing the photos. This week also had something take place that could easily have gone unnoticed for many. Congress passed and the President signed an action that removes a long-standing protection for the Boundary Waters Wilderness area. The Boundary Waters is one of the last fully protected areas in our country. But no more. The action signed will allow for copper mining by a Chilean company that will likely disrupt if not destroy areas of this pristine wilderness. I don’t know what else can be done beyond direct action when the work begins (I am sure that there are organizations already filing suit against the actions) but still contact your representatives to express your feelings about this. To read more about this, click here.

Onto the beauty and wonder of noticing Brown this week:

Where did you see brown this past week?

This next week? Yellow!

I did want to share a few more images that were not brown per se but just were really beautiful and fun to receive including Scout from a really unique angle.

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

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Last week, when intro-ing the color red, I shared that I had a rather conflicted relationship with that color. Orange is quite different sports-wise as my beloved Denver Broncos’ colors are orange and blue. Similarly, as I now live in Cincinnati, orange is all over the place for the colors (along with black) of the Cincinnati Bengals.

Orange is the next color in the rainbow after red so it flows from red and flows into yellow - hence how the color orange emerges as the mixing of red and yellow. As you’ll see in my noticings this week, there also isn’t “one” orange. There’s a spectrum of what is considered orange.

Orange also has deeply varying meanings. It generally speaks to energy, enthusiasm, and happiness but it also has a sense of warning / danger. The signs I noted above on my street are orange to draw peoples’ attention to be sure they know they are in a work zone to keep the workers safe (as well as those traveling through). Orange is also a color that hunters and outdoorspeople are to wear to be sure that others can see them.

Orange is also the color for one of the leading gun-safety movements in the United States - wearorange.org is the website for Everytown for Gun Safety and drew the inspiration from the tragic story of Hadiya Pendleton. Quoting from the website:

On January 21, 2013, marched in President Obama’s second inaugural parade. One week later, Hadiya was shot and killed on a playground in Chicago. Soon after this tragedy, Hadiya’s friends commemorated her life by wearing orange, the color hunters wear in the woods to protect themselves and others.

Wear Orange honors Hadiya and the nearly 130 people shot and killed every day in the United States, along with the hundreds more who are wounded and the countless others whose lives have been changed by gun violence.

I personally wear orange each year on National Gun Violence Awareness Day in honor (this year it is June 5) and will continue to work and advocate for common-sense gun safety in our country.

Orange also has a deeply spiritual side to it. However, in my Christian tradition, orange isn’t a regularly used color. There isn’t an orange liturgical season (our primary liturgical colors are blue/purple, green, white, and red). Similarly as far as I could find, there is nowhere in the Bible where the word “orange” is used either to refer to a color or to the fruit. When doing an internet search about this, I found one website that came up called “30 Powerful Verses about the Color Orange.” However, none of them were directly related to orange, but instead it was just a ploy to pull in traffic and put out a bunch of Bible verses that (with some imagination) could connect to the meaning of the color. Interestingly though, the church that I serve now (ResoundingJoy Church) has orange as one of its primary colors in the logo because of a sense of warmth, energy, and vitality.

But that is not to say that other religious traditions are the same. In the Buddhist tradition, orange is a central color. Buddhist monks often wear robes that are bright orange. They’re sometimes referred to as saffron robes because they used to be created by using scraps of cloth that were then dyed in saffron or tumeric infused waters. The meaning with this is tied to simplicity (robes), eschewing material possessions (using cloth scraps), and a connection to the natural world (using natural dyes and colors).

One last orange thing before sharing my noticings for the week. So I have a weird thing I do when I am finishing my daily workouts with a yoga flow. In our basement we have some of those wifi-enabled light bulbs which can emit a wide range of colors. So I generally try to connect the primary color of the yoga teacher’s outfit to the colors in the room (yes I know its weird but it gives a good vibe). Anyway, on Tuesday morning, I pulled up a video for that day and what color was the yogi wearing? Bright orange. So I made the room a nice shade of orange and I did photograph my legs at the end of the flow with an intent to share but it looked rather creepy…so I’m not subjecting you to that…

Next week is a shift away from the traditional spectrum colors - this week ahead is… brown!

Here are my orange noticings ...

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

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Red is one of the three primary colors (along with blue and green yellow) and is the color with the longest wavelength of light. Different cultures have different associations with the color red. In China and many other Asian countries, red symbolizes good forture and happiness. In the United States and many European countries, it is associated with love, sexuality, and passion but also anger and death. For example in many movies and shows, if you see someone wearing red, it often hints at an unfortunate end coming for them (see “red shirts” on the original Star Trek show). I would also be remiss if, as a Star Wars geek, I did not note how red lightsabers (powered by red kyber crystals) have generally noted someone who has turned away from the life-giving aspects of The Force.

One specific usage of red is firmly in my memory - red is also the only color seen in the black-and-white film, Schindler’s List, where a young Jewish girl wearing a bright red coat is seen being rounded up by the Nazis. Later in the film, when there is a pile of bodies shown, there is the faintest glimpse of a dirty red coat. This is one of the most memorable and heartbreaking movie moments I have ever seen.2

Red is also often a primary color in sunrises and sunsets - explained best by this from Wikipedia about what is known as Rayleigh Scattering:

As a ray of white sunlight travels through the atmosphere to the eye, some of the colors are scattered out of the beam by air molecules and airborne particles due to Rayleigh scattering, changing the final color of the beam that is seen. Colors with a shorter wavelength, such as blue and green, scatter more strongly, and are removed from the light that finally reaches the eye. At sunrise and sunset, when the path of the sunlight through the atmosphere to the eye is longest, the blue and green components are removed almost completely, leaving the longer wavelength orange and red light. The remaining reddened sunlight can also be scattered by cloud droplets and other relatively large particles, which give the sky above the horizon its red glow.3

And there’s the old saying “Red sky in morning, sailors take warning. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.”

In my Christian faith tradition, red is often connected with sin (Isaiah 1:18 - ...though your sins are scarlet...”), judgment/wrath (Revelation 6:4 - the fiery red horse of judgment), and also to signify wealth and abundance (Proverbs 31:21 and Exodus 26:1). So, like everything else above, it is all over the map.

Here’s where I saw red this week (along with some commentary as the captions for each)

This next week, I will be shifting to orange and again, I’ll post those photos next Wednesday.

And Scout…wearing the hat in the macro photo above…

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

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I tried to find a youtube clip of the scene but could only find one really low quality one. C’est la vie. Things are feeling frayed for our heroes in the film at this point and this moment represents a step towards restoration.

I had several conversations on Wednesday as well where there was a similar theme of feeling frayed and I’m feeling that a bit as well. In times like that, it is good to go back to the beginning, back to foundations. So, I’m going back to the beginning for the next chunk of time here at Imago Scriptura. I feel a need to jumpstart some of my photographic creativity and so I am going back to the beginning - color. (BTW - there was a great article I found when searching for the video clip - it was from a writer named Bill True using this same scene to talk about when a writer gets stuck. A solution? Go back to the beginning - here the link)

When I have facilitated groups on contemplative photography, I always begin with color. The first week we would meet, the assignment would be to choose a color and intentionally seek to photograph that color throughout the week. The intention was to focus on something simple to help with the practice of noticing. It was beautiful as we would gather the next time and people would share about how they never realized how much _________ (insert color here) there was around them until they started looking specifically for that color.

This was all sparked on Wednesday morning as I was feeling like I was photographing the same places and the same things. What lit the spark was this photo.

The brilliant red (unusual a bit for this early Spring) took me back to those contemplative photography sessions, back to the beginning. And then I started seeing more and more red on the walk. And the idea was born.

So, for the most part, over the next few months, I am going to be posting generally 1x/week on Wednesdays and sharing seven images of the color I was focusing on. As I shared above, I am starting with red. Then next Wednesday I’ll share all the red photographs and introduce the next color. There may be some reflections on the experience and meaning of that color as well.

As True wrote in the article linked above, “…go back to the core of the story.” The core of what I share here is about noticing. So, like I do in my contemplative photography classes I’m going back to the beginning of noticing color. I’d love to have you share colors that you see along the way as well. See you next Wednesday with seven days of noticing the color red.

We’ll see about getting Scout in on the act too…(even though her visual color spectrum is much more limited than ours).

Here’s a blast from the past photo of Scout. Two years ago this past Wednesday when we went to northern Ohio for the total solar eclipse…

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

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But here’s the other thing. Since I wrote that last reflection on Thursday, I have been seeing these trees everywhere. It isn’t that they all of a sudden appeared but I had an attentiveness to them because of that experience with Troy and MaryAnn. So, my eyes have been drawn to that purple/pink color all around.

Its very similar to what I shared in my Easter message on Sunday morning. I shared that resurrection wasn’t just something from a story 2,000+ years ago but is happening all around all the time, even, and often in defiance of, evidence to the contrary. It is in nature (Winter shifting to Spring). it is in relationships. It is in communities. it is in the rhythms of life. Fr. Richard Rohr often shares his threefold pattern of life of - order, disorder, and reorder. Another way of explaining those would be - life, death, and resurrection. Another framework I’ve heard (and is the one I usually speak to) is that the rhythm of all of life is birth, life, death, and resurrection, repeat. Parts of life might be in different stages but I do truly believe that when we are in a time of disorder/death, that reorder/resurrection is sometime ahead. I’m holding tightly to that hope and trying to live that hope in a time right now that feels like massive disorder and too much death.

In his Easter reflection yesterday, Fr. Rohr wrote this:

I believe the resurrection of Christ is saying that the final judgment has already happened. It’s nothing we need to fear. It’s nothing we need to avoid or deny. God’s final judgment is that God will have the last word! Easter reveals that there are no dead ends; ultimately, nothing is going to end in tragedy and crucifixion. Of course we look around us, at history and at life in its daily moments and it seems, “No, that isn’t true.” And yet, ever and again, here and there, more than we suspect, new life breaks through for those who are willing to see and to cooperate with this universal mystery of resurrection.1

The reminder in this for me? If I want to be angry at the world (and there’s plenty to be angry about), then by all means I can center on the things that will keep me angry. But if I want to live in resurrection and in hope, center on the things that remind me that, even in spite of so many things, resurrection and restoration are still ahead and are also present here and now. And in centering on those, it allows me to engage that which needs to be changed and needs transformation and healing.

So with that, here’s a bunch of the Eastern Redbuds I have seen, starting with my favorite of all of them.

And of course Scout with some more…

A few more notes:

Pop Culture Pastors Hour - The Pitt

A new episode of PCPH is posted! This time we were talking the HBO Max show, The Pitt, with two real-life chaplains! and Amy Snow! Check it out right here and you can also subscribe to the podcast feed on Apple or Spotify

New Music! U2 drops two surprise EPs!

Anyone who has been on here for a while knows that I am a U2 mark in a big way. So, I was so excited for the surprise EP, Days of Ash that dropped on Ash Wednesday a few weeks back - it is a collection of songs speaking into the very present events right now and several of the songs especially gave words to what I have been feeling.

But then, on Good Friday (the Friday before Easter), they dropped ANOTHER surprise EP - this one called Easter Lily that was a collection of songs that spoke to the hope of rebirth and restoration that is possible (and similar to what I wrote above). I waited to listen to it until Scout and my walk on Easter morning and I am so glad I did. What a treasure of new songs.

You can check them both out on any of the streaming services or you can purchase digital tracks as well. Personally, I’d say that my top five from the two EPs are (in no particular order)

• American Obituary (Days of Ash)

• The Tears of Things (Days of Ash)

• COEXIST (I Will Bless the Lord at All Times) (Easter Lily)

• Scars (Easter Lily)

• Resurrection Song (Easter Lily)

In that last song are these lyrics:

Love extravagantly
and without regret
If there’s anything better
I’ve not heard it yet

An Action Step

With that lyric in mind, I cannot leave this post without asking this of you. Regardless of your feelings about the current American administration, if you are an American citizen, I am asking you to please contact your representative and your senators. Ask/tell them to do what they can to stop the actions threatened by the president in what he posted online on Easter morning. There is no place in our world right now for attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure (bridges, power plants, etc). I do not support, of course, the Iranian actions of doing that to other countries, but I can take action to do what I can to stop it from our own country. I called my legislators on Monday and I will be calling again today asking them to do what they can to take action against these promised attacks. These actions are not the way of civility, love, or resurrection.

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

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Ok, onto the 6th and final shift from Better Than Normal. But starting with a way-back Ed flashback and a bit of a true confession…

I was on our fifth and sixth grade basketball teams at the Catholic school I attended while growing up. (This was before I basically stopped growing at 5’7” a few years later). Our team was dominant. We had the tallest player in the league and one of our guards was the nephew of an NBA player. During our fifth grade year we were barely even challenged throughout the season and the Denver parochial league playoffs. We won the title game in a runaway. Unfortunately, I came down with chicken pox right at the beginning of the playoffs and so I missed the championship game celebration. The only bright spot was that I remember that I saw an ad while watching The Price is Right that Star Wars was going to be shown on network TV! But it wasn’t much of a bright spot considering what I had missed with my team.

Well there was always next season and we continued where we left off. We dominated everyone we played. We, of course, reached the playoffs and faced a team in the semifinals that we had crushed earlier in the year. Well, something was in the air that day and it was a tight game throughout. It came down to a final shot and one of our players missed. I happened to be on the floor as the final shot clanged off the rim. I jumped valiantly for a rebound but came nowhere near it. And like that, the game was over. We lost.

We went back to the locker room and I slammed a locker so hard that it broke. I was so mad. Several other teammates were doing the same. Our coach game in and shouted in a very non-Catholic way, “Cut it the hell out! You lost! But that’s not how we lose!”

I would love to say that I took his words to heart and that my fiery competitive nature decreased as the years went but that was not the case. As I shifted to tennis in junior high and high school, there were more than a few times that a racquet was slammed after a bad shot or after losing a match. Similary, the same would happen while watching sports - yelling at the TV, getting furious after one of my teams lost, etc. Decades after that 6th grade basketball game, in my and my wife’s first year of marriage, I was watching Colorado play Colorado State and CU blew a big lead late and lost in a really ugly fashion. I was so mad grouched at her and she (rightly) threw it back at me. That moment began a shift for me about trying to temper my competitive nature. Now, I can’t say that I am not competitive but it (thankfully) has definitely shifted. But my kids can tell you that I still do not like to lose when we play cards or other games...But I will say that I think I’m the least competitive person in my family…lol

This is not to say that competition is always a bad thing. But the question is whether our competitiveness is simply to push us to dominate and overpower others or whether it is to help build up and grow community. MaryAnn details a beautiful shift from competition to community in the final chapter of Better Than Normal where she shares a list of the characteristics of community. I don’t want to list all of them (I don’t want to spoil the book after all) but I could sum them up personally with this.

Community arises when we are seeking to build up with one another into something greater than ourselves rather than just trying to see who will end up on top.

I experienced something of this in an unexpected way on Thursday morning. My friend has been doing a really cool thing on his substack page where he’s sharing songs that he’s written over the years over a period of 100 days. He sent that day’s song to me and to MaryAnn (Troy is a common friend) which is linked directly below. His comment on the song to us was “A modern gothic lament for Maundy Thursday. Blessings on your weekend!”

Troy Bronsink

Day 39: *Justice Waits on Us All

Fifteenth song of my #100DaysOfDemos project, a darker lament for the age of disorientation. I’m still at it: an hour or more a day. Some fish just take longer to hook…

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2 months ago · 2 likes · 2 comments · Troy Bronsink

After I listened to the song on my way back from the lake after Scout and my walk, I sent this back in the group text.

Just listened while driving back from Winton lake with Scout on this super foggy morning. Lots to process in the song but wow. Simply. Wow.

Later in the day I downloaded that morning’s photos beacuse there was one moment on Scout and my walk that seemed to connect with Troy’s song. In the group text, I replied with this photo and message:

Troy after I downloaded my photos, this one felt like your song to me - that there’s something beautiful that is out there (authentic justice) like the purple blooms but it just feels at times like it is reaching into a world that is unclear about what that actually is.

Troy’s response?

Yessss! Thank you

MaryAnn replied with this photo and comment:

And how fitting… I have one of those right out my window!

I so loved how the three of us were able to build on each other and build upon the overlapping friendships that we share to create this thing.

That is a beautiful example, from my perspective, of the shift from competition to community. Three friends, each using their own gifts and their own experiences, not to compete but to build toward something bigger. 💙

I do hope you pick up MaryAnn’s book. It is a truly encouraging, challenging, and honest read that so speaks into where we find ourselves at this point.

Again, you can order it at any of the usual online and in-person retailers or you can order it directly from the publisher at 40% using this link and the code NORMAL40.

Scout Pic - Dog in the fog…

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

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As we walked, I was thinking about what beauty means to me and how seeking after and sharing beauty has become a core practice in my day to day life. But as I reflected yesterday morning, what stood out to me is that what makes something beautiful is how it connects. Beauty connects me with God. Beauty connects me to nature. Beauty connects me to others. Beauty connects me to memories. It isn’t just beauty for beauty’s sake. Beauty connects.

This past Sunday morning, I had, of course, been out with Scout early before our Palm Sunday service. But a little bit later, I received a message from one of our folks in the church with a photo of the sunrise from his home (which is about 20ish minutes from the church). Here’s what he sent.

Beautiful, eh? It was beautiful not only in what is in the photo but in that he made the choice to share that beauty with another person. In this case...me.

Well, when I downloaded my photos later in the day from the morning, here’s one of them.

Maybe they weren’t quite at the same time but they were pretty close. So I shared it with him as well. Again, beauty shared and beauty connecting.

I thought it was so wonderful that the two of us were looking at the same sunrise from two rather different locations (about 30 miles apart). Again, beauty connects.

So with all of that...maybe there is a deeper connection to what MaryAnn wrote as she included this shift in her section on communal values - that this isn’t simply an individual thing but something we do with others. Beauty is something that draws us closer and moves us out of blandness and the usual into something beyond ourselves.

To what does beauty connect you? And are there some examples of how you perceive beauty that you can share in the comments?

Here are a few others from Wednesday morning as I was pondering all this…Including Scout amongst the periwinkle...

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

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Also, this post has a few videos and a fair number of images. Likely going to be too long for email.

This is the fourth in my Holy Week series on ’s upcoming book Better Than Normal: Virtues for an Off-Script Life. It will be available in the coming weeks from all the usual booksellers, but you can order it direct from the publisher before the release date for 40% off if you use the code NORMAL40 and follow this link.

Onto shift #4

“What is truth?”

Those are the words attributed to a 1st century regional Roman ruler named Pontius Pilate. It is in part of the Holy Week stories of Jesus and is recorded in John 18. In that story, Jesus has just finished saying “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” and Pilate’s reply is simply, “What is truth?”

What is truth?

What is true?

What is real?

MaryAnn’s fourth shift is one that focuses more on community than the invididual and I believe that we are in a communal crisis of truth right now. With the spread of misinformation (a nicer word for lies), the increasingly imperceptible differences between human created and AI created media, and the general mistrust that is swirling around, Pilate’s question is pretty relevant.

What is truth?

So here’s a little experiment. Here are two videos of the tree that I have been photographing somewhat regularly so far this year. It is simply a slide show of all of the photos. See if you notice anything about one video instead of the other. You might need to swap back and forth a bit. But they are different…

What did you see?

Here’s are several of the photos in comparison with one another: (you’ll need to click the images to see the full frame - also the originals are on the left)

What you may see in there are some small changes - few things that are major but in one, the church on the left side of the frame is gone. In another, one of the smaller trees is gone. Others have removed the yellow glow of headlights in the fog, the path in the bottom right, and so forth. How did I do it? Well, I could have done it with some fancy photoshop work which is way above my skill grade. But instead, I did it with the new AI remove tool that is in Adobe Lightroom (the software I use for photo organization). All I had to do was highlight the area that I wanted removed and you see the results. And the same can be done with a trashcan that is in a photo that “takes away” from the scene or that one random person who walked into frame. Or even, as I have heard people doing, removing people from family photos after a divorce or some kind of indiscretion. I have even heard of a church that did that with removing a youth leader from a photo from a mission trip from years before.

Probably if I hadn’t said anything about it, no one would have noticed. But what you have in the edited photos is artifice not authenticity. What you have in the edited is trying to hide what is really there.

In this chapter, MaryAnn has this simple, yet profound statment about this shift...

[With] Artifice we need to hide what’s true from one another.1

One of the things that I love about the Holy Week stories is that they show the reality of the people involved. You have some of the religious leaders who are willing to go against their own beliefs in order to protect their power. You have political leaders who are willing to sacrifice an innocent in order to “keep the peace.” You have people who followed Jesus for years who betray and deny him when things start getting dicey. You even have Jesus himself pleading in anguish in the garden that a different way could take place. Whether one believes these stories are true or not, these are examples of authentic human actions and not just an artificial glossing over the hard stuff.

As Rachel Held Evans wrote in her beautiful book, Searching for Sunday,

And the truth is, the church doesn’t offer a cure. It doesn’t offer a quick fix. The church offers death and resurrection. The church offers the messy, inconvenient, gut-wrenching, never-ending work of healing and reconciliation. The church offers grace. Anything else we try to peddle is snake oil. It’s not the real thing.2

Amen. That’s authenticity, not artifice.

PS - In case you are wondering, in the vast majority of my photos, the only “AI edits” that I do are things like lensflares, etc. Beyond that, I try to let the image be as close to the real moment as possible.

Yesterday, one commentor asked about Scout dressed up in rainbows…ask and ye shall receive. Full disclosure, this one was rather posed and highly edited (background, etc - ironic considering what I wrote above).

Scout, a superhero for inclusion!

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

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