withdraw and self-protect. There may be no greater
vulnerability than to love with your whole heart.
Photography grounded me in her flesh while revealing
moments that can only be described as sacred. Camera
in hand, I once again found myself trying to make
sense of a world where the secular could not and
would not separate fully from the Holy.
As I turned my camera away from my own life
and toward the lives of others, I discovered a striking
commonality of experience. It was reflected in the
tenderness between parent and child. It was present
in the details: sticky hands, gap-toothed grins, firm
grips and scraped knees. It revealed itself in the shared
looks between parents. They were overwhelmingly
exhausted and grateful at the same time. I could relate.
Just as I met God in the places of my childhood,
I met God in the vulnerability of my subjects.
Every one of us lives moments that, once gone, are
impossible to re-create, breathing importance into
otherwise mundane occurrences. Every one of us feels
the weight of our own mortality and the mortality of
those we hold dear. Human experience is so common,
so communal. And yet, it’s so unique, so individual.
Behind my camera, I am both a witness to and a
participant in this mystery.
26
The beauty of photography is its ability to make
visible the blessedness of each individual and the deep
connection between all people. In this way, it mirrors
the mystery of our highly personal and yet preciously
communal existence. My fingers itch for a camera
every time I experience God in the world. I seek
sacrament in the secular so that I might photograph it.
I photograph it to acknowledge it, to cherish it and to
point to it. Photography is a medium through which I
turn my internal experience outward.
My discovery of The Episcopal Church ran
parallel to my discovery of photography. In both I
met God in flesh. In Christian community, I heard
stories of a God who poured himself into the flesh of
an infant. From that most vulnerable of beginnings,
this God grew into a man who broke bread with
sinners, who spit and sat on the dirt of the earth,
who touched the untouchable and seemed to value
all flesh, and who called us to love God and to
love one another. This God blurred lines, dissolved
boundaries and immersed himself in the worldly. This
God is a God of radical action. This is the God that I
have glimpsed in my photography. Just as Christians
are Easter people, I believe this God calls us to be
sacramental people. It is because of Jesus that we
SUMMER 2016 / VIRGINIA EPISCOPALIAN