The Doggo Photo Series

The Transcendent Moment

Towards the middle of our walk, we saw this stunning work of art glistening in the sun. It was around 2’ in diameter and was gently swaying with the breeze, eliciting waves of light upon the strands. The video is a bit blurry because I couldn’t get my phone to focus directly on the web. C’est la vie.

Like I said...transcendent...Oh and a bonus one of what looked almost like a heart in the illuminated mist…

The Banana Peel Jumpshot

So one of my “Ed things” is that I have never let go of my basketball dreams from back in the day that ended when I stopped growing at 5’7”. So, bottles into the recycle bin, poop bags into sidewalk trash cans, and a variety of other items - all of them can become basketballs (of a sort). Today, it was the peel from the banana I ate on my way to Planet Fitness which was a perfect swish (if there was a net) into this trash can from this distance outside PF. It’s the small things...

Speaking of Small Things...The Perfect Words

The book I continued reading a few minutes later while on the treadmill is ’s latest Joyful, Anyway. Like her other books, it is a beautiful, funny, honest, and deep read. It’s great. Well, one of today’s chapters was entitled “The Biggest Tiny Thing You Can Do” and it tells of a conversation she had with a colleague who helped her to see how she could focus on the small things that she had control over in her life that could elicit joy. There are plenty of things outside our control that sap our joy or can elicit joy but there are also plenty of small things that can do the same. Kate writes:

“Don’t think big! If you want to change, think small, start small,” he says. “Small is beautiful.”

Small is beautiful, I repeat to myself. I think of a couple I know and adore. Married and in their sixties, they recently lost both their adult sons, one to cancer, and one to the disease of despair. Now when this couple wakes up in the morning, they need to stay in bed for a few hours. They might do their devotionals, watch a television show, or call their therapist. Waking up to a world without your children takes the time it takes. But when they finally get out of bed, this is what they do: they make friends with strangers; they buy gifts for other people’s grandchildren; they swim in the ocean. They perform small miracles.

Thinking about them reminds me of something that writer and pastor Jeff Chu likes to pray: God, grant me appropriate smallness. In a world that is overwhelming and full of suffering, give me back the smallness that is mine. Small actions. Small attempts. Small miracles.1

And then the chapter closes with this...

“You want to be more joyful,” he says again, clearly. “Make a list. Keep it small. Ask for help.”2

I didn’t think about it this morning as another day in a rough week began, but each of these were small things - a bow-tie-wearing-doggo photo series, a spiderweb in the sun, and a jumpshot with a banana peel.

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

PS - MaryAnn and I have our delayed Odyssey podcast this coming Monday on PCPH

PPS - If you want a Scout-based blessing (or any other), let me know. :)

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We have had a string of hot days where the heat and humidity have made even early sunrise walks feel sticky and ugh.

The heat warmed the water and storm fronts affected the air pressure leading to a few massive, damaging downpours for the area.

But even with the rain, it didn’t change the feel on the skin, the pressure of the air, or the warming of the water.

It felt like a tension, a knotting, a tightening.

And then, a change. The air cooled. The humidity dropped. A soft breeze blew.

Thursday morning......58° when I went out. Dry air. Almost made me wish I wore some long sleeves. Almost... but no.

A fog emerged on the surface of the lake. Cooler, drier air meeting warm surface waters.

Official terms for it - evaporative fog, steam fog, or lake steam. But those seem far from what it looked or felt like.

It was releasing, unclenching, moving, even dancing. Breathing.

The lake was sighing.

And so was I

A few glimpses from around the lake this morning:

And then Scout and me as we got back to the car…

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

PS - Send out three more blessings today. Feel free to reach out if you are interested in me sharing a photo and a blessing with someone in your life. Check here for more details.

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Walking and journeys are very much top of heart and mind for me right now. Last Sunday, my sermon was greatly shaped by what I shared about in my last post. This coming Sunday, we’ll be focusing on the story from Luke 24 where the resurrected Jesus meets two of his followers on a day walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus on the day that we today call Easter Sunday. Tonight, I’m seeing The Odyssey with my family. And this morning, this was the poem from The Slowdown - “Return Path” by Lesley Wheeler.

The only way to pray is through my feet,
earthward, jolted in return by the fizz
of a spiking current. I never thought a circuit

would loop through me, believed I was separate,
alone, done with gods, but here it is:
I’ve found a way to pray. Through my feet,

I reach down. There’s something animate,
mycelial, that touches me back. It’s a species
of love, a thinking-spike, a zinging circuit

of energy and dirt, blood and spirit—
plutonic conversation, mostly wordless.
The way I’ve found to pray is through my feet,

sole bared to wooden boards, or rug, or slate,
or buggy grass, just as you want to press
skin to a beloved’s, sparking a current, a circuit.

Not that earth loves me, exactly. Matter’s what
matters. She wants me to return the mess
of my only body, pray from head through feet
as I sink, unthinking ash, into love’s circuit.1

So yeah, walking and journeys are very much top of heart and mind. When Scout and I went out this morning, all of this was there for me as I noticed that there was going to be a really unique sunrise emerging. I decided to simply photograph a bunch of points all the way along - not just the beautiful colors of the sunrise (which they definitely were) but places up in the sky, down on the path, to the sides, and so forth. So I’m simply going to share those images and then I’ll offer some commentary at the end. If you want to skip the commentary, no problem - simply enjoy the walk with Scout and me from this morning.

First, here’s the map of our walk. We started at the blue dot and went clockwise. The first photo you’ll see below the map was from the first bridge (bottom left corner) and the last photo is back at the car. A few key points along the way. The first panorama is from the green line just to the right of the “2.” The other bridge images are on the far right side of the path. The last panorama is from the point out into the water and then the rest are along the loop up a hill back to the car.

So a few thoughts on the winding path today:

Different tools for different moments. Some of the photos were with my iPhone’s camera and some were with my DSLR. The iPhone camera is great for basic photos like the ones on the latter part where there isn’t as much dynamic color or where it is simply a “pull the camera out for a photo.” The DSLR however, is far better at accurately reflecting the colors of the sunrise. Life parallel? Our lives can’t be just one tool and one perspective all the time.

Even more so, this felt like a very large labyrinth walk this morning. Like the labyrinth, there were points that felt like the short, inner rings of the labyrinth and close to the heart - vibrant colors, stunning light, soft clouds, and more. While other points felt further from the heart - when the clouds shifted to greys and were growing thicker with the coming weather front. There were moments of noticing along the way such as the white bird standing still in the middle of the water, the golden flowers along the edge of the path, or the barely-noticeable stone heart embedded in the asphalt. The whole walk felt like a contemplative walk - like the circuit being made such as in the poem or walking alongside Jesus while not even knowing it.

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

PS - Any of the photos above (or any of the others I share) are available to be used for blessings/bestowals. Check this post for more info if there’s someone in your life (or if you) need a blessing.

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...a music that’s larger than this one life we are given.

That line stopped me.

It is the conclusion of a beautiful poem entitled “So much Space for Song” by James Crews that was shared on Friday’s episode of The Slowdown. The poem connects us with the tiniest of newborn wrens while asking questions about braving this world and our responsibilities to one another. That’s the poem’s focus, but it was the last line that stayed with me.

When I first received that poem on Friday, I was feeling a lot like this moment that I witnessed at the lake on Saturday morning.

Glimpses of color and light but more a heaviness and a grey-ness in the midst of what had been a very tiring and full week on many levels. This has been one of those pastor weeks where there is the breadth of just about everything. Participation and leading in two funerals (for 102 and 97 year old women). Ministry meetings on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings. A beautiful small group meeting on Thursday night and a dynamic outreach event on Friday night. Oh and crafting a sermon and the day-to-day things of life and of being a pastor. There’d been a lot of wonderful things but for someone who has the energy struggles of an Enneagram 5, it had been a LOT.

There was also this storm cloud slowly swirling around that looked far more ominous than it actually was but it was in the mix.

I think I was doing a lot of looking down because it was only when I saw this reflection in the water that I realized what I was missing in the sky above. (And yes, there’s some irony in the fact that the path is “spotted” with plenty of goose poop)

I looked up to see this:

I don’t know how many times I have soaked in sunrises at Winton Lake but I cannot remember seeing something like this - the leading edge of a storm cloud right at sunrise where the brilliant warm light of the morning sun is still sneaking out beyond the storm clouds. It was a moment of remembering the “music” that is so much bigger than the singular moments.

I know part of it was that, whenever I am out on these walks, that I am trying to be open to what will emerge. I often tell Scout as we are heading out the door, “Let’s see what the world has for us today!” So, my spirit was attuned to this but I cannot say that I was feeling it strongly when we first headed out. But this moment of looking up and seeing this...It was a gift for me to receive.

At that moment, I decided to simply stop walking and set down my camera for a while and simply watch and hold gratitude for this gifted and needed moment. Scout seemed to sense similarly and sat down next to the bench to wait in her beautiful patient way. I truly felt a sense of lightening of my spirit (even as we saw lightning in the clouds moving away from us) and sat there in deep reverence just holding my hand over my heart.

I did lift my camera back up of course (its me after all) and photographed this wide panorama of the whole of what was before us.

What was additionally beautiful about this was that this was the final piece of what ended up becoming my message at RJC this morning. I was sharing on the story of the Last Supper from Matthew 26, specifically on the pattern we see of Jesus taking the bread (and the cup), blessing/giving thanks, breaking the bread, pouring the cup, and then sharing it with those at the table with him. I was seeing that pattern in the story and seeing it not only as a pattern for “how to do Communion in worship” but more so a pattern for how we live out our lives.

We move with anticipation and curiosity of what is before us and having an openness to receive what does come (Scout, what does the world have for us today?). We hold that with gratitude and blessing (as I did sitting on the bench). We work with it actively as Jesus did breaking the bread and pouring the cup (as I have been doing the last 24-48 hours with all of this reflecting and writing). And then we share it. We give it to others. And we repeat it over and over.

And all of this...it plays the melody of the song that reminds us that we are part of a much larger composition.

A few additional notes:

• A reminder about the blessings/bestowals. I sent out another one on Saturday afternoon. Such a gift to be able to do this for others. If you would like to receive one or would like to send to others, check this page out for more details.

• MaryAnn and my next PCPH conversation will be on the 28th as we talk The Odyssey. My family is seeing it together this Tuesday night! So excited!

• And for today… Vamos España!!!!

• And a brief political foray. I listened to an interview on Friday morning that did with a CIA analyst named Julia Curlee about the ongoing actions around the upcoming elections. Regardless of where you find yourself on the political spectrum, this is important to listen to and be aware of what is at stake in all that is taking place. Here’s the interview

Finally, Scout is a devourer of the sun apparently…

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

...claim the beauty that exists. Let it guide you. Beauty is its own resistance, contending with all that is ugly and chaotic... if the tumultuous world has not stopped being beautiful, neither has love stopped being love...

I wish I knew where I found this quote but, for some reason, I didn’t mark where I found it in my quote-keeping app. But wow - what wisdom. (If anyone knows where this came from, please let me know and I’ll update it)

So today, just some glimpses I have seen the last few days around here. We live in a tumultuous world yes with a lot that is ugly and chaotic. But like the quote says, lifting up beauty is an act of resistance. Sharing beauty is an act of resistance. Creating beauty is an act of resistance. All of these say that the ugliness, the chaos, and the tumult will not have the final word.

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

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• Tomorrow (7/15) is our next Pop Culture Pastors Hour conversation - we’ll be talking about epic tales and the “hero’s journey” as a bit of a lead in to talking about The Odyssey in a few weeks. We’ll be talking at 1pm ET and you can find us at pcph.substack.com

• I’m deeply grateful for several more requests for photo blessings / bestowals that came in this week. For more about these, you can click here for this new offering I am sharing.

Sunday morning, I could have turned right.

I came to the t-intersection right next to my house and I chose to turn left.

Had I turned right, I would have made my way to one of Scout and my walking places on Sunday mornings and I would have talked through my sermon as I had originally planned it, would have returned home for my Sunday morning yoga time, and then made it to the church right around my normal time.

Had I turned right, my son would not have been woken up by a parent needing a Spanish translator and he would have been awake to go see a movie with us in the afternoon.

Had I turned right, I would not have driven right into the middle of a parable of Jesus.1

Instead I turned left, and less than ¼ mile later, I came across a family whose car’s left side was off the side of our under-construction road.

This reflection isn’t going to tell any more of their story or about what happened immediately after. A public post like this isn’t the place for it but instead I have been thinking the last 36 hours or so about that simple question.

What if I had turned right?

As you are thinking about the directions our lives take us in ways expected and surprising, here are a few other photos from recent days:

And of course, Scout…

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

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• I am grateful for the first few “bestowals” that I have sent out to folks. For those who requested them, I hope they speak deeply to those who will receive them. For those who aren’t sure what I’m talking about, you can click here for my new practice inspired by the book Theo of Golden.

• MaryAnn and I have our next Pop Culture Pastors Hour coming up next Wednesday at 1pm ET. We are going to be focusing on Epic Tales and Origin Stories. You can participate live here on substack or check it out after at pcph.substack.com or your preferred podcast app.

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Looking back, many of my recent posts have been a bit on the “heavier” side. Reflecting on the 250th, Theo of Golden, the Beholding Flag, and so forth. I thought I would just take a step away from the heavier and just share some of the beauty of the weekend we had in West Virginia last weekend. We spent a few days over the 4th weekend at the New River Gorge National Park and I thought I would just share some of the glimpses of beauty of that place.

I’ll share the remainder ones individually - they are all from a hike my wife and I did our last morning there. It is called Endless Wall and there’s a beautiful (and some might say scary) point along it called the Diamond Point Overlook. I’m grateful that Scout is a good sport about these kinds of things!

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

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A week or so ago, Scout and I were walking through a campground at Winton Lake and we saw a flag planted in the ground near one RV that said, “America - Freedom for 250 years!” As I saw that, my immediate thought was “yes…for some, but not for all.” But the promise of freedom is part of the promise of what America was to be and still can be - a nation founded on these words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...

That is the promise of America from 250 years ago but it is not a promise that has been lived out fully in those 250 years. We have taken some steps towards that and we have also taken steps back. In reflecting on these 250 years, I went through my image libraries and looked up all the images of the American flag that I have photographed. As I looked all of these together, what I saw was how these flags represent many things in our history - things to be proud of and things for which we still need to repent. Things that we are doing well and things we need to change. They speak to how I have and do feel about my country. They reflect the fact that I (and all of us) can hold multiple feelings together at the same time.

These are photographed from places as diverse as the heart of Washington DC, sites of remembrance and honor, a sunset boat ride off Hilton Head, SC, a small cemetery in northern Kentucky, a riverboat on the Ohio River, a small pond near my father-in-law’s home, a church cemetery in Cincinnati, and a North Carolina beach. And, acknowledging the oddness that America can be, one was photographed right outside an Elvis-themed AirBNB near Louisville, KY.

Some of the flags look to be in pristine condition while others look far more ragged (notably the one on the ground at the cemetery in northern Kentucky at the end). Some were the subject of the photo while others were more in the background. They were photographed during the presidential terms of George W Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden.

I am grateful for all that this country has given to me but I also long for us to fully live up to the promise our framers wrote — so that a future flag planted at a campsite can say “freedom for all” and mean it.

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

A Few Programming Notes

• Just a reminder back to what I shared in my last few posts - if you have a photo blessing you would like me to share with someone, send me a direct message and we’ll be in touch with how to make it happen.

• In July, MaryAnn and I will be doing two Pop Culture Pastor Hour podcasts - both tied to the release of Christopher Nolan’s telling of The Odyssey. The first will be on July 15th - Origin Stories and Epic Tales and the second will be in late July after we’ve both seen the movie.

Finally, Scout when we were in DC…

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No I am not, but based on some of the responses I got to my post yesterday, folks beyond just my wife see at least some of Theo in me.

At the end of my post yesterday, I shared about an offer inspired by Theo’s bestowals in the book. Here’s what I am feeling led to share.

In the book, Theo sees all the portrait sketches on the wall of The Chalice (coffee house) and those inspire him to purchase them and share not only the sketches but blessings with the subject of each in a conversation at a bench in Golden. (Hence Theo of Golden).

As I read each bestowal, I saw how I have been doing something similar in my off-line life. In the congregation I serve, I write prayer and birthday cards drawing from sunrise photos I made into notecards. I have also done similar with other photographs for friends and family.

In the spirit of Theo and in what I have been doing for the last several years, I’d like to offer a to you for yourself or for people in your life.

Bestowals and Blessings

If you tell me a bit about who I am writing for, I will select a photograph that I have in my library (or photograph something new) and write a blessing that will be written on the back of the print. And then I’ll mail it to you to deliver to your friend (or I’d mail it directly to them if you’d like). Here’s one example of a blessing I recently shared with a dear friend who offered me a beautiful gift of grace during a difficult period in my life. (He gave me permission to share it here)

For those who are paid subscribers, this is something I’ll do at no charge to you as a thank you for supporting my work here. For those who are free subscribers, I would simply ask a donation of $5 (or whatever you would like to do) for my time, supplies, and mailing via Venmo / Zelle / etc.

When the artist, Asher, shared about how people were experiencing the bestowals, Theo deferred by saying, “I simply help people sit still long enough to see what is already there.”1

What is already there are the gifts of kindness, presence, and love that we can share with others. I believe that I have a unique gift and a unique space from which to share. It is easy to be cynical and feel helpless about what we can do with all the ugliness in the world, but this is something I can do to push back against helplessness. As John O’Donohue wrote in that concluding chapter about recovering the lost art of blessing:

When we yield to helplessness, we strengthen the hand of those who would destroy. When we choose indifference, we betray our world. Yet the world is not decided by action alone. It is decided more by consciousness and spirit; they are the secret sources of all action and behavior....When you give in to helplessness, you collude with despair and add to it. When you take back your power and choose to see the possibilities for healing and transformation, your creativity awakens and flows to become an active force of renewal and encouragement in the world. In this way, even in your own hidden life, you can become a powerful agent of transformation in a broken, darkened world. There is a huge force field that opens when intention focuses and directs itself toward transformation.2

So if you would like to receive a blessing or have one shared with another, reply directly to this message (if you’re reading in email), click the button below, or comment below and I’ll be in touch!

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

PS - Scout says she’d be happy to write a few blessings as well!

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When I was about halfway through the book, Theo of Golden, I asked my wife, “Am I Theo?”

She was a bit further along than me at that time and she just gave a bit of a knowing smile and raised her eyebrows.

It has been a while since a novel has entranced me as Theo of Golden has done. I just finished it on Tuesday and I am tempted to pick it back up and re-read it again. The last time I remember a novel affecting me like this one has was the first time I read A Prayer for Owen Meany nearly 30 years ago. My primary reading time is while I’m on the treadmill in the morning (shoutout to ebooks with large print readable while running) and on Tuesday morning, I came to a point where I let out an audible gasp and had to stop running because of what happened. I’m grateful that no one else seemed to notice what I did at that moment. I am not going to share what happened at that moment in the book because that needs to be for the reader to experience.

I was at a point in the book, however, when I finished my run that I knew the book needed to be finished today. So as I ate my lunch, I savored the last 30-40 pages of this book. When I finished, I closed the cover on my iPad and held the device to my chest.

Am I Theo?

Without spoiling the story, the heart of the novel is a mysterious man named Theo (who is very hesitant to reveal much of himself to others, as many enneagram 5s like me are known for) who comes to a town in Georgia and begins bestowing blessings on others through portraits that dot the walls of a local coffee house. A local artist created these portraits of locals who visit the coffee house. Theo purchases the portraits and arranges to meet with each person and shares a blessing of what he sees in the hand-sketched faces.

The “bestowals” are deeply touching and reflect this truth from John O’Donohue in his book To Bless the Space Between Us.

When someone blesses you, the fruits of healing may surprise you and seem to come from afar. In fact, they are your own natural serenity and sureness awakening and arriving around you.1

Each of Theo’s bestowals show the surprise and the distance traveled but reveal an awakening and a true sense of presence as he sits on a simple bench along the Promenade in Golden. Theo seems to intuitively recognize the held-back things in the sketched faces . Again, quoting O’Donohue...

Blessing is the art of harvesting the wisdom of the invisible world. From day to day it offers us new gifts.2

As the story progresses, we see how the blessings are not simply Theo’s only to share but we begin to see the bestowals that others share with him and those they share with others - a bike ride, a series of gifts, a cello recital, trusting others with stories, and sitting around tables sharing meals and community. All bestowals and all blessings.

This book feels like a novelization of the last chapter of To Bless the Space Between Us which is entitled, “To Retrieve the Lost Art of Blessing.” Towards the end of that concluding chapter, O’Donohue writes:

We have no idea the effect we actually have on one another. This is where blessing can achieve so much. Blessing as powerful and positive intention can transform situations and people. The force of blessing must be even more powerful when we consider how the intention of blessing corresponds with the deepest desire of reality for creativity, healing, and wholesomeness. Blessing has pure agency because it animates on the deepest threshold between being and becoming; it mines the territories of memory to awaken and draw forth possibilities we cannot even begin to imagine!3

Again, Am I Theo?

Now, there’s a lot about Theo that is definitely not me, but this sense of seeing something deeper and a desire to share that with others? Feels a lot like me and what I share here. It is also what I have found myself sharing with people directly more and more over the last few years. I have made cards with my photographs and often create birthday and everyday wishes for people based on those images and what I know is happening in their lives. I call these “visual prayers.” I also, of course, spent a year photographing a bench and continue to be drawn to benches in my photography. I couldn’t help but imagine myself photographing “Theo’s bench” at the Fedder or sharing a blessing as he did with so many in this story.

But about the feather...I photographed this tiny feather about two weeks ago simply because it drew my eye on one of Scout and my morning walks. I didn’t know why then but I see it now in the feather not only on the cover of the book, but the way that the feather in the story represented a blessing given to Theo and one that he shared with another.

I hope to live as Theo shares at one point in the book. When responding to a question about what makes “good art,” he says:

Yes, I have thought about it. In fact, I’ve thought about it a great deal. And I’ve asked others about it. But I don’t know if I have an answer either. Other than this. It might not make a lot of sense, but for anything to be good, truly good, there must be love in it. I’m not even sure I know fully what that means, but the older I get, the more I believe it. There must be love for the gift itself, love for the subject being depicted or the story being told, and love for the audience.

Whether the art is sculpture, farming, teaching, lawmaking, medicine, music, or raising a child, if love is not in it — at the very heart of it — it might be skillful, marketable, or popular but I doubt it is truly good. Nothing is what it’s supposed to be if love is not at the core.4

I may not be Theo, but I see so much of myself in Theo and long for more of him to be lived out in the world - blessing, presence, hope, welcome, and love.

My next post is going be an offer of something drawn from all of this but for now, this is simply a note of gratitude to Allen Levi for introducing me to Theo, Ellen, Asher, Shep, Addie, Simone, Tony, Kenrick, Lamisha, Minette, and so many others on the Promenade of Golden, Georgia.

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

PS - Scout and me on a bench! Check the inscription between us too!

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Over the last several months as I have been beholding (colors), I have felt a bit like one of those editors who had to leave scenes and moments on the proverbial cutting room floor. So now that the original has been released, I wanted to share a few more of my favorite images that didn’t make it into the posts - most of them were simply that the color had already been shared or as still to come. But before the images, there was this reminder that I saw in a daily email I receive…A quote from Terry Temptest Williams:

Of all the additional photos, this first one is my favorite

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

PS - Scout cuddling Agnes the Shark…

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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.1

As I returned to “colors” in this series, I experienced the same. I shared about how remarkable it was that the more I intended to find a specific color in a week, the more places I would see it. It wasn’t that the specific colors magically appeared in a given week but that I was attuned to that color.

But I also found over these last 78 days that I was actually more attuned to all of the colors and not just the one for each week. It was almost like, once I tuned into a new color, all the previous ones were with me as well. I’ll share some photos of moments like those in my next post.

Today, however, is not about the separate colors but instead how all these colors come together. These eleven colors weren’t simply eleven colors. Put them together, and you get something like this:

From the start of this color journey, I had this mosaic in my heart and mind. I knew the beauty of the Progress Pride Flag - the way that it pulled together not only the “traditional” colors of the pride flag but also the colors honoring and recognizing people of color and trans people as well. It was this flag that led to me choosing these eleven colors.

So on this last weekend of Pride month and the weekend that Cincinnati holds its Pride parade and festival, I share this as a gift to the LGBTQIA+ community. It is my way of sharing my art to recognize how you are beloved and you belong. With each of these photos that I received over these last 78 days, I have held you in my heart and mind, knowing the difficulty of this current time in this country and in many other places. I have seen the fear and the anger but I continue to see the resilience and courage that you have to continue to live with the simple mantra of “this is me.”

I do want to lift up one specific choice I made in the creation of this mosaic - the battered white heart on the left side. That is a cropped portion of a larger photo of a laminated, water damaged, and battered white heart that I saw hanging from a knot on a tree at Winton Lake. I chose that heart to be in the center of the white area because it represented something I have seen and heard from everyone who identifies as a part of the LGBTQIA+ community.

There is not one person who says that their life has been easy and without hardship in their journey of understanding who they are and seeking to live in that way. Each person has been battered and bruised in some ways (and that’s an understatement) but so many continue to hold on and continue to live proudly and fully. But in this there is also the acknowledgment that this is not a universal response. The suicide rate of LGBTQIA+ individuals is dramatically higher than many other populations - the hatred and rejection that people experience from those closest to them in their lives and from society as a whole leads many to end their lives.2. There are also so many who did not choose to end their lives but instead their lives were ended by the actions of others. For those who survive and those who haven’t, I chose that heart.

For a long time in my life, I chose to not see you, to not acknowledge who you are, and to believe that there was something wrong or broken in you that needed to be changed. So I never truly saw you but instead looked at you the way I wanted to look at you. The way I wanted to. I am grateful for the ways that I have changed (and am still changing) in not trying to fit you into my way of seeing the world but instead trying to see the world through your experience. Thank you to each and every person who has helped me grow in this journey along the way.

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

The image above is a lower-resolution version of this flag. If you want the full-resolution one, you can click here.

A few notes about the creation of this mosaic:

• I had intended to use all the images from each week in each color in the flag. But the black, brown, cyan, pink, and white parts of the flag did not lend themselves to effectively being able to use the images. Instead, I chose to simply use two - the silhouette of Scout in the black stripe and the battered white heart. I explained the placement of the white heart above, but I also wanted to share about the choice of Scout

• I chose the one of Scout not only because, well....Scout. But I also chose it because I see the way that Scout loves every person she comes in contact with. She doesn’t look at someone and say, “nope, I don’t like you because of the color of your skin” or “I don’t like you because of who you love.” She simply says, I’m your friend, will you be mine? Why can’t we live that way as humans?

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I read this quote on Monday morning from the Center for Action and Contemplation and dang it has been working on me, especially that part about the sonar. As I read what she Cynthia Bourgeault shares here, she leans into the listening aspect of sonar. But sonar isn’t simply passive receiving; it’s active and sending. The pulse goes out (and I have the line from Hunt for Red October in my head here “One ping only...”2) and what comes back is shaped by what we sent. So this whole thing is both - the sending and the receiving.

In this series I’ve been doing, I started with the word “noticing” and then shifted to “beholding.” It was another CAC email that led to this shift. You can read that reflection here. Looking back at all of it, noticing feels a bit more passive while beholding feels much more active. For me, beholding gives a sense of having an intentionality and even a sense of sending something out into the world with an expectation of what I will receive. This whole series has been a gift for me because the more I have been intentional about the specific colors, the more I have had an attentiveness, and the more I have seen.

This week with blue was no different. In one sense, blue is the easiest color for me because not only is the sky blue (or some shade of it) but I have more blue in my wardrobe than any other color. Solid blues, striped blues, patterned blues. Blue clothes, blue shoes, a few blue suits, blue hats. Honestly, I could have simply photographed a different article of blue clothing each day and been done with it. But as you’ll see below, there’s a lot more blue to behold above and around than just in my closet!

As I’m writing this, I’m sitting in my office looking up at one of my shelves where there’s a picture of one of my daughters from a trip we were on in the Caribbean...it is one of my favorite pictures of her. She’s sitting in profile on a turquoise wall, the gradient of blue water stretching behind her with light near the shore and deepening to dark at the horizon. Blue shirt, blue shorts, and even a touch of blue on the edges of her crocs (you might need to look closely).

Sonar travels through water and in this case, across time - from over ten years ago, giving me the opportunity to behold and be held today.

To go back to Bourgeault’s quote, even for one who may not be a professing Christian, she shares such deep wisdom. We are to put hope, beauty, wonder, and awe out into the world. We need to send these things out as waves into the world and allow them to bounce off everything else and allow them to come back to us and see how it all holds together.

Here are all the “Blues” from this past week and then a note about what’s next:

And what would a blue post be without including our beloved BLUEtick / Beagle mix, Scout?!?!

So, what’s next? Well, two posts for sure. One will be on Friday where you’ll see a way that all these colors came together. And the other will be a (mostly) photo post of some of the photos that didn’t get into the posts but were special to me in the series.

Thanks for being on this Beholding journey!

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

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Ten times a day something happens to me like this - some strengthening throb of amazement - some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.
-Mary Oliver, Low Tide

I will never apologize for embracing joy and beauty - even when the world is falling apart - because joy and beauty are my fuel for activism.
-Karen Walrond, The Lightmaker’s Manifesto.1

These two quotes came across my social media feeds this week. The last two mornings provided the amazement, the swell, the joy, and the beauty. All of them, like Karen Walrond shared, provide me the fuel I need to seek to live as I believe I am called to live - attentive and open.

Friday

Life - so much life.2 Scout and I were finishing up a 3 mile walk around Sharon Lake when I decided to go down to one of the docks and simply sit with the gentle morning fog blowing across the surface. As I sat down on the dewy dock, there was a beautiful spider on the edge but as I looked closer at the spider, I saw so much life swimming around in the water beyond. It was a joy to see because the lake has recently been rehabbed. Before I started recording the video below, I realized how much life had been evident in our walk - the sounds of the birds, the lush woods around the lake, a heron flying low across the water, a deer watching us from the far bank, the spiderweb below the perched bird, and the beaver we saw swimming in the lake. And then these little swimming ones (along with this spider). So. Much. Life.

Saturday

Saturday began with an internal debate between a drive to a further away nature center or just staying nearby. I’m so grateful I stayed close because I would have missed this sunrise. It shifted from the stunning burst of color along the horizon to the softer glow as the sun appeared. It was truly breath-giving. It gave me energy and fullness for the day. You’ll see one of these photos again next Wednesday when my blue photos are posted.

And of course, Scout in the midst of it all…

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

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Cyan

There were all the other usual colors - yellow, blue, green, orange, red, white, black, purple, and “light” variations of each, but then there was…

Cyan

Basically, it was like a light blue, but officially it sits between blue and green in the visible spectrum. So it isn’t really light blue but neither is it greenish. It’s…

Cyan

This week brought some unique beholdings as some were more blue, some a bit more green but maybe if they are averaged out, they’d be…cyan.

Before jumping into the photos, there were a few other points from this week around the color - a beautiful sight I see most every day, a beautiful memory, and a beautiful poem.

The sight. No photo - I am not sure my wife would want a close-up of her eyes online, but she has light blue-green (cyan-adjacent) eyes. That color I learned from a machine decades ago is with me each day.

The memory. This photo is from three years ago — a solo day at the end of a week-long church trip, circling the Great Blue Hole off the coast of Belize. The hole itself is a deep, almost ink-dark blue. The water ringing it…cyan.

The poem - “Blue” by Laura Villareal from the June 8 episode of The Slowdown podcast. It dropped in my feed just as I was about to begin my cyan week and it paints several shades of blue, including one that sounds suspiciously like…cyan.

There is quite an assortment of photos below but one surprised me. On Monday, Winton Lake had flooded again and the benches were just above the waterline. In the photo, the bench isn’t moving, but the water is stirring all around it and reflecting the mottled clouds in the cyan sky. It was unique to see in person, but the photo that resulted…a sight to behold.

That one, and the rest, are below.

And then some bonus Scout photos…(Sorry Scout, I can’t do anything about how Substack cropped the middle photo - note the cyan leash too!)

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

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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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2 months 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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