Watch and See More

As I came to the end of Luke 21 today, there was an exhortation to “watch.”  Jesus was telling his followers to be regularly “on watch” for the coming day of the Lord (Luke 21:34-38).  There’s all kinds of ways to go with this teaching of Jesus but where I went was to the surprise snowfall we had yesterday and a walk out to our nearby prayer labyrinth.  I had noticed as Scout and I headed out that I could still follow the sidewalks and paths because they had about 1” less snow than around them and I began to wonder what the labyrinth might look like.  Would the curving paths still be visible or would it simply be a smooth open area with a big rock in the middle?  And full disclosure, I was really hoping that no one had walked the labyrinth that day and broken up the snow.  Well, as we arrived, this is how we found it.

But here’s the thing...on a quick glance, it was very hard to see the ridges of the stone paths.  The whiteness of the snow and the brightness of the afternoon made it really hard to see.  And the photographs as well...on first review when I got home, they looked like what I described above - a big white area with a rock in the middle.   

But just like it took some effort to see the ridges when I was there in person, some adjustments in Lightroom of contrast and the levels for highlights, shadows, blacks, and whites, and then a conversion to a further high-contrast black and white filter, ... and there were the ridges like you see in the photo.  But it took some work to get there just as it took some focusing in while there to see the ridges of the prayerful path.

I shared this image with a labyrinth-walking friend of mine with the message:

Sometimes walking a labyrinth is easy to follow...other times you've got to look a bit harder as you pray...

Watchfulness - something that takes some effort on all of our parts.  It is so easy to go through life and be on auto-pilot and not notice what is all around us.  It is easy to take in sounds but not really hear what is said or shared.  It is easy to look but not focus.  It is easy to speak words but not let them be prayer.  If I were to walk and pray this labyrinth and stay on the path, I would need to not only be watching intently where I was going but I would probably also really need to be feeling my way through as my feet might run up against a turn back to another direction - seeing and feeling.  Keeping watch wouldn’t only be with my eyes but with my body and even with my emotions.

When I guide my contemplative photography groups (reminder - online one starting at the end of February - Lent Through the Lens), I share that one of my hopes for the participants is that they will simply come to see more.  Yes, in a literal sense, I hope they see more.  But even more so I hope that they see more in how they experience the world, how they take in what is around them, how they tune into the stories of others, and simply be more connected to the whole.

I don’t know if that’s where Jesus was going with what was shared in Luke 21 but this is where it led me just seeing my way and feeling my way through...