Week One Hope Summary

Take a moment to breathe and be...

Breathe and be...

Letting the lists that demand your attention be put on the sidelines for a few moments...

And letting that imagination of hope draw new possibilities for this day.

After a week of images and words, as each week closes, I want to offer space.

No images, except the ones roaming around your mind.

No more words, except these few in front of you.

Lots of space....

Space for you to create.

To reflect....

To fill in or leave empty.

What new insights into hope dance within you?

What new insights from focusing and framing are now accompanying you in the Advent journey this week?

What did you see in daily life this week that perhaps during previous weeks you might have missed?

What is within you right now?

Breathe and be in the sea of traces of God's grace and hope right now.

Blessings ~~

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 ~~

Week One, Day Five Hope

I invite you into the prayer practice of Visio Divina by first focusing and framing your breath.

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

Breathe in the One who dances with delight, the One who is soft/quiet, the One who is there when you are simply trying to get dinner on the table...exhale those words that want to say there is no meaning or no purpose.

Breathe in a playfulness...breathe out the seriousness that stifles or thinks that there is only one way to “adult” in the world today.

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.  

Next, you may want to make a list of everything you see.  Or you may want to name just one or two things you notice, then ask yourself why you are focusing there?

Then, let your eyes gaze at the whole image. Take your time and look at every part of the photograph. See it all. Stand there on the street gazing at this sight, and let your imagination run wild like Max from the children's book, Where the Wild Things Are.  Reflect on the whole 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

Yup...

That is a tree growing from a building.

Yup...

That means in-between the bricks and mortar of what man hath made, a seedling decided to plant itself and put down roots saying, "Perfect! Just perfect!"

Yup...

I think one of the thousand words this photo evokes for me is, "Hope", and you could add to that word: "unbelievable," "impossible," "bizarre," and "what in the name of all that is holy!"

The photo comes to you courtesy of the city of Seattle.  We were on the Underground Tour of the city where you get to see how Seattle, because of its proximity to water and trying to solve its constant flooding issues, decided to build up.  You can still see where some of the businesses tried to operate in the original footprint down below the present-day street level.  You can see the structure that is holding up the sidewalks and buildings above your heads.  You can smell the musty air, see where people abandoned toilets and discarded trash, and shake your head and think, "Wait, I paid money to see this?!"

The strange way hope works won't follow a straight line.

The wonky way of hope delights in that which won't conform or be reasonably, rationally defended.

Hope simply starts to grow within us and around us regardless of whether the conditions are “correct” in the ways we define and distinguish the world.

When we do stumble across hope, or when someone else points it out to us, it will take us by surprise and cause a smile to cross our face.  And you may want to snap a photo of it, because others are not going to believe what they see.

May that kind of hope take root in the routines of your life in these days.  May you walk around your life focusing and framing, gazing, prayerfully pondering the place where hope enters in the most odd and usual ways: like in a barn, like in people who surprise you, like in moments of perplexing puzzlement, a tree growing out of a building, and may it all be more than a trace of God's grace.

Blessings ~~

Week One, Day Four Hope

I invite you into the prayer practice of Visio Divina by first focusing on your breath.

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

Breathe in the One who invites us to reside in hope... exhale all that declares such a street/location/place doesn't exist.

Breathe in the smell of fresh baked sugar cookies that taste like hope on the tip of our tongue...breathe out the sour taste that sometimes sits in our souls when we are 'too much with the world'.

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, from the first image that captured your imagination to the tiniest detail you must lean in to see or even enlarge the photo.  You may want to list want you notice and ask the question, why?

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.

Reflections...

Okay, wait, we've already been here before.

Growth in the desert.

Green where there should only be brown.

Life where we think of only barrenness.

I may not remember what I had for lunch yesterday, but the past photos of the desert in Alaska with flowers and then the picture of few small blades of grass still lingers as an invitation to hope this season of Advent.

We got it. Why another photo of something growing in sand?  Can we really see anything different or new or fresh?

Only, this isn't in Alaska. This is in Boca Grande, Florida.

This photo is taken from the light house I showed you a week ago when we dove into the topic of perspective with framing and focusing.

I am at the top of the lighthouse, looking down at endless horizon of water, the sea of sand, the ways the tall marsh grass are waving in the wind at me, and suddenly into my frame and focus comes this evergreen tree just hanging out as if to say, "How are you doing?"

Evergreens are native to Florida.  But in order to grow and bloom here, evergreens must be able to withstand the salty sea air and strong winds from storms.  This is true not only of the evergreens in my neighborhood, which is 10 miles away from the beach, but especially the tree pictured above which is 10 feet from the waves!  While this evergreen has a source of water and plenty of sunlight to soak into every single needle, the tree is constantly surrounded by the wind and waves, the surf and storms that can be strong.   When I first saw this, the evergreen looked even more out of place here than the ones in Carcross Desert!

Hope today will need to withstand the winds that want to suggest that we are naive or sticking our heads in the sand.  Hope will need to weather those who want to offer all kinds of evidence that we should just give in or give up and join them in the misery that loves company.  We know well those who want to say the only party in town is one thrown by Debby Downer where there are no Christmas cookies and eggnog because it’s all just empty calories, we will have to work off at the gym come the New Year.

I think hope can come in forms that are very familiar (like an evergreen), but at the same time meets us in different places and from different perspectives as we move about the world.  Hope sings one song in a desert in Alaska and a variation of that same tune on a beach in Florida.  The invitation of hope is to be open to how the traces of grace are moving in our lives in that particular place and space.

This is the invitation of God, who is willing to enter our world, not among the rich or powerful.  God enters not in palaces or places of prominence.  God enters not with trumpets blaring, blasting, announcing for all the world to hear!  Rather this is how Caesar (then and now) works in the world.  God's hope writes a different script.

God in a barn.

God born to two unwed parents and because of Mary's courageous, "Yes".

God noticed only by shepherds because everyone else was too busy bustling about dancing to Caesar's charge.

God who is found in a desert in Alaska and then 4,300 miles away in an evergreen on a beach in Florida.

Hope interrupting and disrupting our ways with a whole new way to be in the world.

What familiar sights, sounds, and scenes might keep repeating in your life this day as we seek in this season of Advent to stay awake, alert, and aware of traces of God's grace today?  May the connections across time and space to be woven with hope in your life in these days.

Blessings ~~

Week One, Day Three Hope

I invite you into the prayer practice of Visio Divina by focusing on your breathing.  Breathe in to the count of three...exhale to the count of six or seven.

Breathe in the One who goes by the name, "Hope"...exhale the voices that say such thinking or talking is all foolishness or wishful thinking.

Breathe in the aromas of sunshine, breezes, and birds singing out that morning has broken...breathe out that which woke you up at 2 am to chat.

Breathe...simply breathe.  Letting the exhale slowly fall from your lips like a drip of water from a faucet.

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.  Put yourself in the photo.  You are standing right there alongside me taking the photo, I wonder, what is stirring within you?  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...

I want to live on "Hope Street".

I want to reside, rest in a place where every time I am asked for my address, the word, "Hope" falls from my lips.

I want to sit on my front porch, waving to my neighbors walking past, because we share this one block of the world the city leaders decided to call "Hope".

I want to be, breathe knowing that I live in, on, and upon "Hope".

I almost missed this photo.

We had just left Capilano Suspension Bridge Park.  I had over one hundred photos on my camera of towering trees (don't worry, those photos are coming) as well as that tree stump I asked you to gaze and prayerfully ponder last week (don’t worry, that photo isn’t going to make another appearance).  My body was tired from the train ride that morning and two-hour plus walk in the beauty of creation.  My mind was trying to take in what I had experienced, and we were settling into our second stop on the journey.  We had encountered a playful squirrel (more on that later).  We were all a bit exhausted, so we boarded the trolley back to our hotel.

Then, just as we turned out of the parking lot, there was Hope Street.  I almost missed it, except my wife saw the street and pointed it out to me. And, with a trace of God's grace, the trolley stopped at a red light giving me time to get my camera out.

This short story for me is a great metaphor for hope.

Hope happens when we least expect it.  Hope arrives in our lives unannounced and is willing to wait quietly for us to notice.  To be sure, my family and I didn't discuss the merits of calling a street "Hope," or how other people who lived just south of "Hope" might feel about the location of their homes?  There was no philosophical conversation, just a blurry picture barely snapped before the trolley began to move in the bumper-to-bumper traffic.

This story and the photo are a reminder of what "Hope" is in my life.  Hope is a trace of God's grace which invites me to notice and name the movement of the holy.  The prayer practice of gazing and prayerfully pondering not just right now in that one moment, but especially as I move about my day and as we inch toward Bethlehem this Advent.

Blessings ~~

Week One, Day Two Hope

I invite you into the prayer practice of Visio Divina by beginning to breathe in the count of three...exhale to the count of six or seven.

Breathe in the One who Creates, Redeems, Sustains you right here and now...exhale those voices, places, and spaces that are too cynical or critical.

Breathe in a single flower blooming in the desert...breathe out the parts of you that seem to suggest that such a sight is simply a mere mirage.

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. Then, you may want to make a list of everything you see.  Or you may want to name just one or two things you notice and ask yourself why you are focusing there?

Go to the very edge of the photo, try to peer into what is just beyond the edge of the frame. See the whole photo and 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...

Now, this is more like it.  

This conforms to our constructed container of what a desert should be!

Just a few blades of grass trying to survive the struggle of finding enough water.

There are a couple of barren twigs poking tentatively and shyly out of the ground.

It is all well and good to talk about hope, but some days hope feels like (to borrow the phrase from Frederick Buechner), 'wishful thinking'.  Pie-in-the-sky.  Hope doesn't always feel grounded in the raw reality of today.  The ways we speak of hope can sound too removed from the grit and grime we encounter in our lives and the news we hear on television.

We tend to gravitate toward that which reinforces our way of perceiving the world.

A desert is supposed to be a wilderness place!  Wild means that it is unpredictable, where our flight, fight, flee, freeze, or flock part of our reptilian brain says, “It’s showtime!”.

Yet, so often, our dualistic minds want to compartmentalize and categorize everything into the containers we've constructed.  This thing/event/person, we doth declareth, is good.  This other thing/event/person is bad.  Yet, what do we do when just a few small blades of grass are deviant and poke their heads out of the sand where they shouldn't be?  Do we shrug it off as an anomaly?  Do we ignore them?

The same can be true of our lives.

In the slog that can sometimes be life, wandering in the wilderness looking for an oasis to rest, we don't always take in the complexity of each moment.

Yes, there is deep pain when the pink slip comes.

Yes, there is an honest, raw, real disappointment when we hear the doctor's diagnosis.

Yes, family's comments can cause lasting wounds that won't heal easily.

The desert is real.

Hope doesn't try to diminish or deny the harsh barrenness of the wilderness landscape in life; at least not true hope anyway.  Hope doesn't puff out its chest to say, "I am superwoman and will save the day!"  Hope acknowledges the harsh hardness of the desert.  And hope is also wonderfully creative at looking, deeply gazing, for a single blade of grass even in the struggle or suffering.

It isn't a paradoxical puzzle to solve, it is a trace of grace - both the sand and grass together.  A trace of grace when God’s grand entry is a stable this Advent season.  A trace of grace as God roams around our lives today persistently and patiently in waiting for you and me to notice and respond to the blades of hope around us.

Blessings ~~

Week One, Day One Hope

As we prepare to practice Visio Divina, prayerfully gazing rather than glancing, letting our eyes explore to the very edges, we begin first by focusing on our own breathing.

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

Breathe in the One who Creates, Redeems, Sustains you right here and now...exhale the distractions of things you have to do.

Breathe in an openness, willingness, and hopefulness...breathe out the fears that close and cut you off.

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. 

Next, you may want to make a list of everything you see.  Or you may want to name just one or two things you notice, then ask yourself why you are focusing there?

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:

Hope is like a flower in the desert.

Hope is like a flower in the desert which is in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness.

Hope refuses to play by the rules of the game we were taught and told since childhood.

Hope joyfully and playfully laughs at our human abilities to white-knuckle life by clinging to control and invites us to breathe, be, taste and see that God's goodness is around us.

After three hours in the car stopping to take pictures every two miles, my family stepped into the sand of Carcross Desert in Alaska.  To say it was unexpected is an understatement.  Alaska is supposed to be snow, cold, and bears roaming not sand and desert.  Alaska is supposed to be rugged pine trees weathering the harsh, hard winter not taking your shoes off to feel the tiny grains of sand in-between your toes.  If I wanted to be at a beach, I could have stayed in Florida.  Yet, there is a desert in the most peculiar place.

This was a bit like God deciding that a stable - a dusty, dirty, and drafty stable – was the place to be born.  God deciding a cow shed - where animals lived - was the threshold of heaven and earth.  God picked a shack with gaps between the boards that couldn't keep out the night chill as the best place to show up in the world God so loved.  "Yup," God said, "This will work wonderfully for the new thing I am doing."

What?!?

It is absurd.

It goes against the grain.

It refuses to play by the rules of the game of life we have been taught and told since the very beginning.

It is like a flower blooming in the desert ~ which was and still is the way God’s hope arrives in the world.

May you be awake, aware, and alert to such serendipitous traces of God's grace in these Advent days.

Blessings ~~