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Good art helps us to appreciate the parts of creation that we tend to take for granted.

We tend to think that art is supposed to be about something, but sometimes it can just celebrate the ordinary. Photography can show us how interesting light is when it falls on a person’s face; abstract art draws us to the marvel of colours and shapes; dance demonstrates the beauty of bodies-in-motion.

Think of all the things you learnt names for when you were two and quickly took for granted. Like reds, greens, oranges, triangles, squares, circles, running and jumping. Good art makes us notice these things again. It helps us to remember the world that gets lost in our day-to-day. To see that God has surrounded us with wonder.

As the great philosopher Ferris Bueller once said  “Life moves pretty fast. You don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

from Desert Perspectives

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, ‘Abba as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?’ then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, ‘If you will, you can become all flame.’

from stories of the desert fathers (HT: Daniel Siedell)

“…wilderness cannot be home because it does not provide the necessary culture-forming resources to make it home….The wilderness is preeminently the place where it seems impossible to fulfil our calling to be God’s image-bearing agents in creation. It becomes a place where [we are] reawakened to the gift character of the world.”

Middleton & Walsh (from “truth is stranger than it used to be”)

I’ve been experimenting a little with some photo ‘re-mixes’. Taking an old desert photo of mine (from a visit to Joshua Tree National Park) and ‘borrowing’ some textures from Makoto Fujimura (taken from his Countenance donation at The By/For Project.)

Here’s a taster

For more see the Desert Perspectives album.

“Thank God for hard stones; thank God for hard facts; thank God for thorns and rocks and deserts and long years. At least I know now that I am not the best or strongest thing in the world. At least I know now that I have not dreamed of everything.”

G.K. Chesterton

(The album was created with Apple iWeb and doesn’t seem to work with some older browsers. Let me know if you have problems.)

Hopefully, the new medium will mean more ‘instamatic’ to match the ‘theology’…