Expansive - A Doorway and a Chain Link Fence

One of the things I love about photography is how something is seen in a photo after downloading that was not seen in the moment. This photo is one of those.

I photographed this scene because I loved the shadows on the grass and the illuminated haze in the background. What I didn’t see at the moment was the arched doorway made by the framing of the trees and the mulch on the ground. Do you see it?

It is one of those things, now that I have seen initially, I cannot unsee. My eye is drawn to the center of the photo and how the point of the arch is illuminated and the shadows emerge from the doorway. There’s a beautiful expansivess that both sides of the door open to something wider and unique.

In a similar way, I have come to a place in my life and faith that I cannot unsee the core messages of what I see of Jesus in the Gospels, messages that are at odds with how too many forms of Christianity are practiced in the public sphere. I have heard many stories in recent years of how sermons focused on messages from the Sermon on the Mount or the one below from Luke 4 are seen as “too woke” even though they are directly from the words of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels.

In Luke 4, Jesus begins his public ministry in his hometown of Nazareth when he is invited to read from the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue. Here’s how Luke records the story:

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

The response is initially positive but as he begins to push the hearers about how they are living this out, the people turn against him and try to kill him. (Luke 4:16-30). Note also if you go back to Isaiah 61 (where Jesus quotes from), he stops before he gets to the part about proclaiming God’s vengeance. Interesting, no? What Jesus quotes from Isaiah 61 is very similar to what is just a short while before in Isaiah 58:6-10:

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.

Do you hear the expansiveness in these passages? This is the world we are called to partner with the divine and with one another to bring about. In my early years of faith, I paid lip service to this but my focus was more to the “saving myself and others from hell” rather than the work of God in the here and now. But as I have come to see all this in a broader way and I cannot unsee it, just like I cannot unsee the arched doorway in the photo above. I cannot help but see that we are called to bring about an expansiveness to this world and not a pulling in and a constricting.

The above photo was on Wednesday morning. Below is what I saw on Friday morning with a similar experience of seeing something upon later review rather than in the moment.

I was drawn to the way that the rising sun was seen through the chainlink fence but I didn’t necessarily frame it for the sun to be right behind one of the links. As I look at the sun in the photo, its brightness almost entirely obscures the link - almost like it is burning its way through. The chains are being broken, the bonds being released. Its not fully through yet but the light is working on it.

I know this expansiveness is not the reality of the world right now. Unfortunately, the world is working on constricting by putting up more walls and putting more people in chains. Yet, I hold to this truth that there is this doorway that we have been shown, this path that we have been given, and that’s the way I’m going to continue to try to walk and will continue to invite others to follow as well - a path of expansiveness, not constriction.

Here are a few other expansive moments from the last few days:

A little bit of explanation here. In the first photo, you might have to look really hard to see the heron. But the expansiveness here was the fact that it was out of another flooding time at the lake where this piece of wood floated out into the middle, giving this heron a new place to perch and see...The second is where I saw that same heron fly to a little while later

Glory Rays, God rays, sun rays, or the scientific term - crepuscular rays... regardless of the name, there's such beauty in these where the normally unseeable is revealed

Scout got into the act with the glory rays as well. How could she not? I texted this photo to our family group chat with the message "Possible the most majestic doggo moment ever!"

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A few other expansive things:

• This song - The Beautiful by David Wilcox. I first heard him play this song on a live Facebook concert during Covid and have loved it since (I found a way to pull the audio from the Facebook concert and have had it as an MP3 since) but he hadn’t put it on an album until now. Take a listen. This song feels like it speaks exactly to how I try to see this beautiful, expansive, painful world. Such a gift.
  Apple Music | Spotify

• This past Monday,

  MaryAnn McKibben Dana
  and I had our most recent Pop Culture Pastors Hour - this time talking through the recent film, The Life of Chuck. The move is a must see in my opinion and the conversation was pretty great as well. However, spoilers abound in the conversation so watch the film before you watch the conversation. Here’s the link. I also commend MaryAnn’s sermon from this past Sunday at the congregation she serves - Tyranny, Irises, and Sleepless Nights: On Finding the Hoped-For Things

• I am about ⅔ of the way through Ross Gay’s book, The Book of Delights, and goodness…it is a delight. I cannot recommend it enough. But take it slowly - I’m doing 2-3 delights each day.

• I listen each weekday to a poetry podcast called The Slowdown. This past Wednesday, they aired an episode when Ada Limón was the host and centered on a poem called Lately I am Trying by Sanna Wani. It is a poem about a dog, grief, and the power of touch. It is achingly beautiful and powerful.

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