Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a Christian Contemplative Practice
Thank you for your thoughtful responses to Christine’s wise words of tending to our moments. I am grateful.
The book winner is Deanna Risser–congratulations Deanna! I will contact you for your address to mail to you.
And, I encourage everyone to pick up/order Christine’s book.
A final thought for today:
Christine Valters Paintner
You have undoubtedly had an experience similar to this: you are moving through a most ordinary day, when suddenly something shifts. Where there was drudgery and habit, suddenly you become aware of the way sunlight is spilling across the living room rug and your heart breaks open at the splendor of it all. Or you see a loved one in a new way and revel in their beauty. Or maybe it is as simple as savoring the steam rising from your morning coffee, like incense lifting the longings of your heart.
We move through our lives, often at such speed, that our perception of time becomes contorted. We begin to believe that life is about rushing as fast as we can, about getting as much done as possible. We are essentially skating across life’s surface, exhausted, and disoriented.
Contemplative practice calls us to change our perspective and awaken to a different reality, one that is governed by spaciousness, slowness, stillness, and presence. Contemplation invites us to tend the moments.
Moments are holy doorways where I am lifted out of time and I encounter the sacred in the most ordinary of acts. Moments invite me to pause and linger because there is a different sense of time experienced. Moments are those openings we experience, where time suddenly loses its linear march and seems to wrap us in an experience of the eternal.
Mythologist and storyteller Michael Meade says the word “moment” comes from the Latin root momentus, which means to move. We are moved when we touch the eternal and timeless which is available to us in each moment we are fully present.
My work in the world is to invite people into this kind of awareness, something that is available to each of us, we just need to cultivate skills and practices to tend the moments.
Art and spiritual practice are how you find this moment of eternity, or better yet, how you allow the moment to find you. We only need to make ourselves available to them, to receive them as the gifts that they are, rather than seek them out as something we are entitled to.
Call to mind a time when you were so present to the moment, to the sheer grace of things, maybe watching a child giggle with delight or your dog romp playfully in a field. And then perhaps, the thoughts broke in. The ones which seem to wield only criticism and dissatisfaction. Maybe you remember the items still languishing on your “to do” list back at home and you felt an anxious dread. Contemplative practice cultivates our awareness of this pattern, so that we might be able to change it. So that when moments come to visit us, we find ourselves savoring and basking in wonder rather than reaching for what is next.
Contemplative practice also cultivates our profound awareness of life as an unending stream of gifts, and from this arises the impulse to create. When we open ourselves to the sheer grace of things, we tap into a source of inspiration. We feel moved to create something out of that gratitude.
For me, photography and writing are the ways I feel most often moved to respond to the generosity of life. Try this next time you feel overcome by beauty – pause there as long as you can without moving to do something else or complete another task. And then, when there is a sense of fullness or completion, pick up a camera or a pen, and allow them to become the tools to honor what you have experienced and your expression of deep gratitude. Rather than “capturing” the encounter, let this be a prayer, so that slowly over time you might find yourself in an unending litany of praise.
Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a Christian Contemplative Practice
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Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, is the online Abbess at Abbey of the Arts, a virtual monastery and community for contemplative practice and creative expression. She is the author of 7 books on art and monasticism, including her latest, Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a Christian Contemplative Practice (Ave Maria Press). Christine currently lives out her commitment as a monk in the world with her husband in Galway, Ireland.
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Thank you Christine!
The publisher has provided a copy of Christine’s book, Eyes of the Heart, as a giveaway to one of you! Leave a comment by Wednesday, May 22, 9 pm (est) to be included in the drawing. Please leave info for contacting you.
I am reading Christine Valters Paintner’s latest book, Eyes of the Heart: Photography as a Christian Contemplative Practice and am marking up the book with stars, underlines, and circled words as I begin to shift my understanding of photography. In the introduction she writes: “Photography as a spiritual practice combines the active art of image-receiving with the contemplative nature and open-heartedness of prayer.” (p. 3)
In chapter 1, Christine suggests we take 50 photos of one thing. “Choose an object from your everyday life. It could be anything that you engage with daily but that often falls under your radar of real attention …become curious about this object and see if you can make fifty images of it.”
I chose our unmade bed (perhaps a cheeky choice). I took 50 photos of it and I became curious of how the light and shadows might be seen on the sheets and quilt. I was surprised by my emotional responses to the images as I uploaded them later to my laptop. Here is a sampling:
I saw our bed as a place of life, safety, comfort, intimacy, and love. This is the place where I feel safest, secure in Kevin’s love and fidelity. The unmade-ness of the bed reveals our life together.
This is the second quilt I made, in the late 1990s. I fell in love with colors in both the printed fabric and the batik fabrics when I first saw them together in the local quilt store in Goshen. I had enormous fun wandering amongst the fabrics, pulling bolts from their snuggled companions, and place them with the other fabrics, seeing if they will mix well together. I was so excited to play with these fabrics and I had great fun piecing this quilt together.
I see how the colors are beginning to fade by use and sunlight. Although the colors have lost their vibrancy I still love them. And I still love the sunflowers—one of my favorite flowers.
I was unaware of how worn the quilt is getting from daily use as I see the fraying of the binding. The fraying is a sign of love to me. Love for the quilt, love in the bed.
I didn’t intend to photograph my shoes beside the bed but I am delighted to see them. A sign of life and life beyond the bed.
Lastly, Kevin’s shirt discarded onto the bed late in the day after he had worked hard in the backyard. Another sign of life.
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Christine will be writing a guest post for this blog later this week and I will be giving away one copy of her book. Be sure to check back for Christine’s wisdom and a chance to receive her latest book!
“It is time for religions to open the eyes of a world that believes it has seen everything.”—Daniel Kantor, Graphic Design and Religion.
I recently heard artist and writer Jan Richardson at a conference. I’ve appreciated and admired Jan’s work for many years and I leapt at the chance to hear and see her and I wasn’t disappointed. Jan’s paper collages have inspired me as I think about fabric art.
One workshop was led by Jan and her husband Garrison Doles on “Art into Faith” and I was nudged again to think how artists and “the arts” can become integral to faith communities. Here are my notes from the workshop and I want to emphasize these are my notes and I may have misheard or misunderstood Jan and/or Gary.
Jan pointed back to medieval cathedrals that used a “multimedia” of art forms to embed the biblical Story into and for the medieval congregants to ultimately embody the Story in their lives.
We need to reclaim the language of “symbol” and how symbols become a part of our existential being—and this is how the Story gets into our bones and we embody the Story of God’s love. Jan said there is a difference between reciting the Story and telling the Story, that is, we live into the Story and develop the skills to tell the Story through all forms of the arts and culture. It is a significant way to tell our story to God and to tell our story to each other. Yet, how can we, with our brokenness and our beauty, tell the Story (and tell our stories?).
These are the things we need:
1) Engaging people in the creative process, including people who don’t think they are creative. We are co-creators and collaborators with the Creator so we do have creativity. But we have become a culture of spectators so we let the professionals present to us.
2) We need to develop the talent and skills in people—like developing the “farm league” of a particular medium.
3) Decide to seek out those who have developed the facility to tell the Story that creates new doorways into the Story.
4) Art doesn’t happen in isolation but needs community, a fertile soil that provides cross-fertilization, and is focused on the process of telling the Story rather than a final product.
5) Discern who are the “culture makers” in the congregation and can lead into the mystery of the Story rather than a literal interpretation that limits another understanding of God’s love and interaction with humanity.
6) Challenge this statement: “I don’t know much about art but I know what I like.” Ask: why don’t you know much about art? Are you afraid of it? Are you choosing to be illiterate? Explore: How does art communicate with people?
7) Art jars us out of a particular way of seeing, understanding, and knowing. Art is always a dialogue—what happens in the heart of the artist and the heart of the other. Sometimes art can help us talk about the Story in ways that we haven’t been able to before.
Find the line between the telling of the Story in a powerful and meaningful way and a place of emotional manipulation.
At the end of the workshop, Jan distributed a recommended book list:
Janice Eslheimer, The Creative Call: An Artist’s Response to the Way of the Spirit
Makoto Fujimara, Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture
Robin M. Jensen, The Substance of Things Seen: Art, Faith, and the Christian Community
Daniel Kantor, Graphic Design and Religion
Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water, Reflections on Faith and Art
Christine Valters Paintner, The Artist’s Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom
Luci Shaw, Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination and Spirit: A Reflection on Creativity and Faith
Dick Staub, The Culturally Savvy Christian: A Manifesto for Deepening Faith and Enriching Popular Culture in an Age of Christianity-Lite
W. David O. Taylor, For the Beauty of the Church: Casting a Vision for the Arts
Sister Wendy, Joy Lasts: On the Spiritual in Art
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What are your experiences of integrating art into faith?
God our Healer,
you have already healed us in many ways–
and still we know our need for healing.
We thank you for the healing we have received:
for relationships, now mended by your healing touch,
for bodies racked with pain, now made free,
for emotions once crippling us, finally restored by love.
At the same time, we come to you for healing–
for wounds that have injured our spirits
and continue to stab us,
for words said to us, perhaps even unknowingly,
that have killed our joy,
for actions against us and those we love,
that have nearly crushed our breath from us.
For all this and much more–we need your healing touch. Amen.
–Bj Leichty, Words for Worship 2, (Herald Press, 2009)
“One place where Pine Ridge reservation sports teams used to get harassed regularly was in the high school gymnasium in Lead, South Dakota. Lead is a town of about 3,200 northwest of the reservation, in the Black Hills. It is laid out among the mines that are its main industry, and low, wooded mountains hedge it round. The brick high school building is set into a hillside. The school’s only gym in those days was small, with tiers of gray-painted concrete on which the spectator benches descended from just below the steel-beamed roof to the very edge of the basketball court–an arrangement that greatly magnified the interior noise.
In the fall of 1988, the Pine Ridge Lady Thorpes went to Lead to play a basketball game. SuAnne was a full member of the team by then. She was a freshman, fourteen years old. Getting ready in the locker room, the Pine Ridge girls could hear the din from the fans. They were yelling fake-Indian war cries, a “woo-woo-woo” sound. The usual plan for the pre-game warm-up was for the visiting team to run onto the court in a line, take a lap or two around the floor, shoot some baskets, and then go to their bench at court side. After that, the home team would come out and do the same, and then the game would begin. Usually the Thorpes lined up for their entry more or less according to height, which meant that senior Doni De Cory, one of the tallest, went first. As the team waited in the hallway leading from the locker room, the heckling got louder. The Lead fans were yelling epithets like “squaw” and “gut-eater.” Some were waving food stamps, a reference to the reservation’s receiving federal aid. Others yelled, “Where’s the cheese?”–the joke being that if Indians were lining up, it must be to get commodity cheese. The Lead high school band had joined in with fake-Indian drumming. Doni De Cory looked out the door and told her teammates, “I can’t handle this.” SuAnne quickly offered to go first in her place. She was so eager that Doni became suspicious. “Don’t embarrass us,” Doni told her. SuAnne said, “I won’t. I won’t embarrass you.” Doni gave her the ball, and SuAnne stood first in line.
She came running onto the court dribbling the basketball, with her teammates running behind. On the court, the noise was deafeningly loud. SuAnne went right down the middle; but instead of running a full lap, she suddenly stopped when she got to center court. Her teammates were taken by surprise, and some bumped into one another. Coach Zimiga at the rear of the line did not know why they had stopped. SuAnne turned to Doni De Cory and tossed her the ball. Then she stepped into the jump-ball circle at center court, in front of the Lead fans. She unbuttoned her warm-up jacket, took it off, draped it over her shoulders, and began to do the Lakota shawl dance. SuAnne knew all the traditional dances–she had competed in many powwows as a little girl–and the dance she chose is a young woman’s dance, graceful and modest and show-offy all at the same time. “I couldn’t believe it–she was powwowin’, like ‘get down!’” Don De Cory recalled. “And then she started to sing.” SuAnne began to sing in Lakota, swaying back and forth in the jump-ball circle, doing the shawl dance, using her warm-up jacket for a shawl. The crowd went completely silent. “All that stuff the Lead fans were yelling–it was like she reversed it somehow,” a teammate said. In the sudden quiet, all you could hear was her Lakota song. SuAnne stood up, dropped her jacket, took the ball from Doni De Cory, and ran a lap around the court dribbling expertly and fast. The fans began to cheer and applaud. She sprinted to the basket, went up in the air, and laid the ball through the hoop, with the fans cheering loudly now. Of course, Pine Ridge went on to win the game.” (From On the Rez by Ian Frazier, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000)
Both SuAnne’s story and the story of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey are stories about subversive actions. They both subverted the expectations of the people. SuAnne subverted the expectations of the basketball fans who wanted to continue Native American stereotypes. Jesus subverted the hopes and expectations of the Israelites who wanted a king.
The Israelites were under Roman occupation while the Jewish religious leaders were in collaboration with the Roman occupying force with rebellious Jewish skirmishes around the countryside. The people wanted to be free of the Roman empire via a king (or a warrior messiah) to emancipate them from the Romans. And this where Jesus enters the scene.
Jesus often used the language of paradox and reversal to shatter the conventional wisdom and expectations. Jesus subverts the powerful symbol of a king riding amongst his adoring subjects to reverse the common understanding of power, status and rule. As he did with the cleansing of the Temple, Jesus takes action–a rather provocative action much like an Old Testament prophet would take–to demonstrate the character of God.
Additionally, Jesus uses his donkey ride as an additional lesson in the reign of God. Jesus frequently spoke of the kingdom of God in the language of impossible or unexpected combinations. The kingdom, which is something great, is compared to something very tiny: it is like “a grain of mustard seed.” Not only is the see tiny but mustard is a weed– thus, the reign of God is like a weed. Also, the kingdom is for children, who were nobodies—therefore, the the kingdom is for nobodies. Additionally, Jesus models this upside kingdom by dining (or, fellowshiping) with outcasts—so, the kingdom is like a banquet of outcasts, of nobodies. In the realm of God, those who are broken will be blessed.
Perhaps Jesus’ parody of a celebrated king is a gentle poke at us as well as the religious authorities of his day: God is not interested in status, whether it’s religious, or political, or material. Rather, God desires that we follow—that we become like—the One who was born in a barn and is preparing to die a criminal’s death.
The spectators of Lead, South Dakota wanted “Injuns” and SuAnne gave them an “Injun”–but did it with a power and grace that subverted the entire scene. The Israelites wanted a king and Jesus gave them a king–but did it with a donkey and days before his death by subverting all expectations and understandings at what Jesus’ kingdom was about–where the marginalized, the wounded, discouraged, powerless, and sick belong.
The quilt top was done. I finished it months ago. The back was also finished. But I didn’t like the batting I bought to use between the quilt top and back. And I couldn’t decide on a design or pattern to quilt everything together. So the parts of the quilt stayed draped over the stairwell, taunting me every time I opened the door to my sewing room.
I was stuck. I was creatively blocked for months.
The quilt was made for my youngest niece as she transitioned from a crib to a “big girl bed.” I wondered if I would finish the quilt in time for her to move into a college dorm. I felt terrible about how long the quilt was taking and I was feeling increasing stuck. I couldn’t work on other sewing. My sewing creativity was jammed and bound up in that quilt.
I wanted to give the quilt to my niece and her parents when I visited my family in early March. And my frustration was spiking as the date of my trip approached.
I began to pray about the situation (finally). I prayed about being stuck and unable to find a way to resolve my dilemma. Then the story of Mr. Rogers “look for the helpers” came to mind.
“Look for the helpers.”
And I understood that I need to hire someone else to quilt it. I needed help to maneuver out of my creative block. So I did.
I took the quilt top and back to a local quilting shop and hired the owner to quilt everything together. She suggested a design and a different batting and I knew this was the way to go. As I walked out of the shop, I felt my shoulders drop and I breathed a deep sigh of relief.
Two weeks later I picked up my quilt—quilted and bound—to deliver to my niece. I’m not sure how much she likes it but my sister and brother-in-law do!
Quilt front with my niece. Photo by Kevin Driedger.
Quilt back with my niece.
Photo by Kevin Driedger.
I met with my spiritual director just before I picked up the quilt and we talked about my “look for the helpers” revelation. She suggested this was a move toward freedom for me. Rather than me insisting that I do it all, I chose to let others assist me. She suggested this is a journey from inner bondage to inner freedom.
I’m still pondering this. And, I’m praying a new prayer: “God, let me be free.”
And, one answer to that prayer is finding the helpers.
*The quilt pattern was originally posted on the Film in the Fridge blog.
