Visio Divina Take Two

I know.  It really looks like the same picture from yesterday, and you are starting to wonder if every day is going to be an abstract photo and if you should keep going with this devotional?!?

Part of this reaction comes out of the world today.  When three hundred hours of new content are uploaded every minute; when there are millions of results and websites for every single Google search; when we swim in a swirl of information and images, we sometimes gloss over anything that seems too familiar or strikes us as boring.

We continually long for what is different and distinctive.

We are constantly scanning and searching for the "New and Improved" promise.

So, why would I share two very similar photos back-to-back?  I do this because Advent is a season of staying awake, alert, aware of the world and Advent is a time of waiting.  Sometimes waiting means living with the same, well-known, even boring, parts of life.

Sometimes we hope for something new and instead we get leftovers.  Sometimes our hearts are so tuned toward moving on that we don't ever return/revisit what we've already seen or been.

As a matter of fact, we toss and throw around the cliché, "Been there, done that" as a suitable defense for why should ignore such a practice of going back to what we have already seen, encountered, experienced.  Our default might be that returning to something that was “Meh” at best cannot, will not ever, be helpful.  The world is big, why return to another photo of swirls on a tree that looks strikingly similar to what we already saw?

Here is the deeper point I am trying to make.

Advent is a familiar road to Bethlehem, well-worn with the footprints of our grandparents, parents and even our own set of tracks from this time last year.  Advent's destination, a stable, is the same as last year and the year before that and before that.  The creche scene hasn't change.  I mean sure, you can put your Luke Skywalker action figure there, write a funny blog post about it. But when we arrive at the threshold of Christmas Eve, the reading will be from Luke, the carols will be the ones you have heard for as many years as you can remember, and we will all hold a candle in our hands just like years prior.

Yet.

In the midst of the familiar and well-known, goosebumps still race, run up and down my arms as if I am experiencing the sacredness for the first-time.

In the midst of singing the line I know so well, "The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight" still stirs my soul still stir.

I am not saying either the photo from yesterday or today is destined to become a classic, or that people will demand reprints of both paying thousands of dollars for the original.

This is not gonna happen.

But on the way to Bethlehem this year, amid the familiar, mundane, and even boring...perhaps that is the place where Visio Divina (gazing deeply rather than glancing) can awaken us to the holy fingerprints of God around us and within us.

Consider this quote from the Upper Room Website, "Visio Divina or sacred seeing is a way of seeing the world with the eyes of the heart, which is the place of receptivity and openness, rather than with the mind, which is often the place of grasping and planning."

Or remember the Richard Rohr quote about beholding is also be-helding - being held by the image.

As I be-held this image above in a deeper way, I start to see the colorful grain of the manger where Jesus was laid.  Perhaps the grains of the wood are a metaphor for the years of my life which have color, shape, and texture.  To keep gazing, especially when I think I have exhausted all that can be seen, I might discover a holy hum coming from the photo I missed the first twenty times I glanced, even tried to gaze prayerfully, upon the scene.

It is in a lingering, savory space where I believe there is always a trace of God's grace to be encountered and be embraced by. 

Maybe both the photo from today and yesterday are inviting you to take a second look, just as the season of Advent will as we embark to Bethlehem this year.

Blessings ~~