This is a Japanese tea bowl from the exhibit we went to in Kalamazoo in mid-November. My eye was focusing on leaves of all kinds during that season of leaf transformation.Today it is fitting well with a paragraph I came across in a Christian Century article in the December 13th issue, "Times of Abundance", by Amy Frykholm. She interviewed Terra Brockman, an advocate for sustainable agriculture and founder of The Land Connection. The paragraph came in the midst of a discussion of people's reactions to "imperfect" fruits and vegetables:
I learned about the importance of imperfection when I lived in Japan. In the Japanese tea ceremony, you have to use imperfect clay bowls because the aging, cracked, asymmetrical bowls force you to see beyond the surface to the spark of light and beauty within. The spark points to perfection within imperfection. Food is not about some perfect size or color or presentation. It's about joining us to the earth, our fellow creatures, family, guests, and ultimately God. It's about life here and now, about seeing the spark of light and beauty in our world and our lives, even with all their imperfection and unpredictability. Amen -- it's like the broken and blessed pot I wrote of November 28, it's like all our lives. It's about seeing the spark of light and beauty in the midst of all the imperfection, unpredictability, and change. So here's a few more sparks of light, found in what at first glance was a gray, frozen, barren landscape.
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_ Late Wednesday evening John dropped me off at the South Bend airport and went off to park the car. We were there to pick up our son, and since his bus wasn’t in yet, I wandered around the waiting area. I ambled over to the vending machines, not hungry, but curious about what they offered.
There was an African-American man with a trim, salt-and-pepper beard looking over the selections. When he realized I was looking at the same machine, he stepped back with a word of apology. “I was just trying to find the prices,” he said. “I’m not really buying.” I nodded. “Me either.” We contemplated the cookies and potato chips and saw the prices at almost the same moment. “Damn!” he said, and a beat later I said, “Goodness!” At the same time, he caught himself with a “Sorry, excuse me,” and went on, “Yeah, goodness!” and chuckled. I hadn’t really heard what either of us had said till then, hearing instead our common meaning that the junk food was way overpriced, but something about these parallel but opposite exclamations continues to amuse me. “Damn” is actually quite appropriate. I’m reminded of a Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman story in which a personified Famine is the CEO for the Newtrition corporation, which produces food made of “spun, plaited, and woven protein molecules, capped and coded, carefully designed to be ignored by even the most ravenous digestive tract enzymes; no-cal sweeteners; mineral oils replacing vegetable oils; fibrous materials, colorings, and flavorings.” The end result is a food that looks like any other food except that it costs more and you starve to death eating it. And Famine’s goal is quite literally the damnation of those who eat the food. The vending machine choices weren’t from the Newtrition company, but cost and nutrition-wise, they were near cousins. So what about my “Goodness” exclamation? It comes from childhood training and a continued adult commitment to not readily use swear words -- if I'm going to say them, I mean them. Mostly 'goodness' was just a sound. I certainly didn’t mean there was anything much good about either the food choices or the prices. Perhaps at a deeper level it is a prayer, a blessing. Instead of a “damned if I’ll eat that, or pay that,” perhaps it can be “may goodness and mercy abound, even here, despite overpriced junk food.” Or maybe at some level it is a plea: “Goodness, come rescue us!” The man and I strolled back to the seating area, he shaking his head. “Buying two of those would be more than I’m paying for my Thanksgiving dinner.” I laughed, agreed, and went off to join John. And goodness did abound with our Thanksgiving dinner, shared with family and friends who brought much good food, conversation and laughter. Here’s some sparks of light on the cranberries, encountered during my preparation of apple-cranberry pie, just before I added the crumb topping. I drove over to Elkhart for a meeting this morning and took the country roads, past fields that a few days ago were golden with sunshine. Not today. Today there was a thick gray cloud cover, and the bare trees were dark gray, the harvested soy fields were rusty gray, and the harvested corn fields were dun, with scarcely a ghost of pale gold remaining.
It wasn't a landscape for sparks of light, at least not photographic ones. It occurred to me that it is easy to find sparks in full sunshine -- so easy that we quickly take it for granted. And in darkness, the light stands out in vibrant contrast. The real challenge is finding light when life is gray, and all energy and life seems bleached away. I thought I'd probably be writing about moments of light from conversations or from my visit to the seminary library, and I certainly could do that with memories from today. But I'll save some of the reading sparks for another day and post the one photographic spark I did find. I came out of the seminary library into a downpour and hurried to my car. No glory of gulls today. But these berries on low bushes by the sidewalk were dripping light, thanks to the rain. We got enough snow to stick last night, though it has melted by now. I spent the morning at Pathways Retreat Center, and was able to spend some of that time looking for sparks of light generated by melting snow and ice.
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My approach to contemplative photography --
"Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." Mary Oliver in "Sometimes" Archives
August 2020
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