Week One, Day Six Hope

I invite you into the prayer practice of Visio Divina by focusing upon one breath at a time.

Breathe in to the count of three...exhale to the count of six or seven.

Breathe in the One who fashioned and formed the world around you and within you...exhale those thoughts that say we are just featherless bipeds or a random collection of atoms.

Breathe in imagination...breathe out the words of those who said you had to stay and color within the lines.

Look at the image and let your eyes stay with the very first thing that you see. Keep your attention on that one part of the image that first catches your eye. Try to keep your eyes from wandering to other parts of the picture. Breathe deeply and let yourself gaze at that part of the image for a minute or so.  

Now, let your eyes gaze at the whole image. Take your time and look at every part of the photograph. See it all. Reflect on the image for a minute or so.

Consider the following questions:

What emotions does this image evoke in you?

What does the image stir up in you, bring forth in you?

Does this image lead you into an attitude of prayer? If so, let these prayers take form in you. Write them down if you desire.

Reflection....

Pretty flower.  Maybe that was your first thought.

Or, why didn't Wes hold the camera straight?

Or, maybe you tried to tilt your head to the left, letting your ear touch your shoulder so you could get a different perspective.

Hope, to be hope, invites us to bring along with our imagination.

Imagination is vital because if we cannot dream a different way of being, we will keep thinking the path we are on is the only way.

Hope and imagination are dance partners.

Hope and imagination are in constant dialogue.

Yet, too often we are told that to be an adult means that we have to let go of some of our 'childish' creative ways.  We leave behind imaginary friends or thoughts about Santa Claus or a dream we are told is impossible.  To be sure, we might not be able to be the next rock star, but that doesn’t mean we have to stop playing the guitar.  But too often, the grind of life is just being another cog in the wheel, doing our part day after day after day.

Until.

Something interrupts us.  Something disrupts us.  Something beckons us into another way of being about this world.

Consider how companies today regularly give employees time to dream, innovate, and work on projects that may never make a single dime on the bottom line.

We are seeking and searching for ways we can bring both our creative and logical ways of being in the world together.  Imagination which activates our right brain needs to have moments to let loose in a world where we sometimes feel confined and contained by the box of “expectations”.

To be sure, there is a place and space for our left brains that want order and are still asking, “Why did Wes decide to tilt the camera!?!”  Sorry, I don't have a great reason.  But if it makes you feel better, just think that my grip on the camera slipped!  More important to me is that I love the result.

This flower is called a fireweed.  As the name suggests, it is one of the first plants to blossom after a fire.  After a moment when life as we've known it has been charred to a crisp, when something has been destroyed, when destruction is all we see around us. This purple flower dares to burst forth on to the scene and say, "Not so fast." Fireweed spreads fast, it can send out thousands of seedlings to the soil around it.  Fireweed sprang forth on the ground after the bombing of London in World War II bringing color to an otherwise grim landscape.

What if that is how hope moves in our midst?

That, if we are willing to open our imaginations just a bit to the possibility, hope is at work in our world even in such a time as this?  Who knows what kinds of colors and new life might start to spring forth?

Noticing one purple flower, Alice Walker said, was a delight to God.  And I believe is still one doorway to hope in our lives right now.

I pray there are traces of grace like a purple wildflower in your life this day as we journey to the barn in Bethlehem where hope is always reborn in and around us.

Blessings ~~