Beholding (Green)

May 27, 2026

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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.