Church should challenge us to blur lines , dissolve boundaries and discover Jesus in the worldly .
cannot deny that God ’ s grace can be made visible in even the most unlikely of places .
To embrace a faith rooted in flesh and reflected in the “ secular ” is not to discount the value of church . Quite the opposite . An expansive faith is difficult , if not impossible , to bear alone . An expansive faith must rest on the shoulders of community . A church community should remind us that we are but one part of the larger body of Christ , which is not limited to our space or our people or our beliefs . A church community should demand we turn outward when we want nothing more than to turn only to them . A church community should teach us what turning outward looks like . A church community should push us out into the world and then accept us back like any good mother with open arms , soothing words and Band-Aid ’ s if necessary , never letting us rest too long before pushing us out again .
Influential documentary photographer and photojournalist Dorothea Lange suggested that “ the camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera .” It strikes me that church should do the same -- teach people how to see without church . Each of us is called and equipped to participate deeply in God ’ s continuing act of creation
and reconciliation . What is church for if it does not encourage us to recognize this truth , cultivate our distinct abilities , and turn outward so that we might see and point to Christ at work in the world ? So that we might be God ’ s work in the world ? Church should challenge us to blur lines , dissolve boundaries and discover Jesus in the worldly . Church should facilitate a participative and sacramental faith .
We were but dust turned bones before God breathed into us the breath of life . Photography is one way I attempt to turn that breath breathed into me at the beginning outward . It is how I remind people , and myself , that deep within us is a God-space that cannot be made unclean , that there is a grace that moves between us that cannot be denied , that there is within us still that first breath of God . It is one part of the participative and sacramental faith I feel called to live .
CRYSTAL HARDIN
Crystal Hardin is a postulant in the Diocese of Virginia , sent by St . George ’ s , Arlington , where she served as senior warden . She holds a JD from the University of Alabama and practiced law before becoming a freelance photographer . She begins at Virginia Theological Seminary this fall .
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