Beholding (Blue)

Before we jump into Blue… The next Pop Culture Pastors’ Hour will be on Thursday, June 25 at 2:30 ET (or posted later here or on Spotify / Apple Podcasts) - MaryAnn and I will be welcoming Marlon Weems back with us as we talk America250. We’ll be doing a “draft” so to speak of movies, shows, music, books, and more that speak to us of this experiment we call America. Here’s the link for the live and there will also be some voting of who drafted the “best team.” Speaking of the red, white, and blue… let’s talk blue…

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Hope is not imaginary or illusory. It is that sonar by which the body of Christ holds together and finds its way. If we, as living members of the body of Christ, can surrender our hearts... and listen for that sonar with all we are worth, it will again guide us, both individually and corporately, to the future for which we are intended. And the body of Christ will live, and thrive, and hold us tenderly in belonging.¹

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:

Wednesday - The blue sky behind the tree that started this whole thing a few months ago on April 10. The leaves were a lot smaller then...

Thursday - the Star of David on the reflective sign at our neighborhood Jewish Temple.

Friday - Walking through our neighborhood, I saw one house that had three plastic flamingos - one red, one white, and one...blue. No pink flamingo though...

Saturday - Impossible for me to choose just one from this glorious morning. Yes there's lots of pink and orange but the blue that was off to the right side of each.

Sunday - a similar vibe but a different place around the same time of day. I loved the way that the path split and gave the sense that if you go left, you get blue. If you go right, you get the orange and yellow and pink. What would you choose? This is a stitched together panorama of 8 separate photos so the clouds were not curved as they are in the photo

Monday - In the window of a local business. There are many of the America250 signs around our neighborhood but I loved how this one also included the words from people from an event at the shop of what their hopes and dreams of America are. The Love Lives Here sign was a bonus along with.

Tuesday - I noted above how blue is a big part of my clothes. These shoes were worn at some point every day over the last week and the shirt was what I wore to leading our services on Sunday. A few of the many examples of my blue wardrobe...

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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1. Cynthia Bourgeault, Mystical Hope: Trusting in the Mercy of God (Cowley Publications, 2001), 86-87 - quoted in https://cac.org/daily-meditations/mercy-and-mystical-hope/

2. One Ping Only - The Hunt for Red October