I find it too easy to reduce life to simple sight; I define the state of my mind by what I experience. The sensory inputs of things external tell me what’s real because of their solidity. What I can see or hear feels real because they enter my mind through the senses.

The second, however, that stimuli pass from sensory receptors to the brain, the human mind is already interpreting them and assigning values. Intangible mental processes translate physical life based on what I’ve thought and experienced.

When I first picked up a camera, I was awed by the ways it could frame a shot. I discovered photography on an October day in 2018 while in London’s Regent Park. The soft rays of sunset wrapped themselves around trees, casting gentle shadows dappled with gold. The contrast between light and dark made a stunning shot. Highlight and shadow are the necessary ingredients of a shot. And knowing how to balance them gives appeal to the photograph.

But in the brilliance of what Jesus unveils, the elevated ceiling and the gloom looming around candles reminds me that there is so much of God I have yet to see. That prospect, however, doesn’t cast me into despair; it excites me with the thrill of adventure. It’s an invitation to explore the eternal God who has no end. Though the light of what I know has defined boundaries, Christ is a country and an open road without border. To know him in one moment is to realize how much more I have yet to grasp. And that’s the joy of knowing him. As I venture deeper into his character, he continues to get bigger and better.

The first time I tasted eternity I was ankle-deep in water gilded with golden hour light. The sun setting over the Mediterranean felt like an invitation to step into a world suffused with light, a world without an end, an amen not only heard, but felt in the warm wind on my face and the tide lapping around my bare feet. My toes dug into sand that shifted with each current, but somehow in that moment, I knew my life wouldn’t be swept out to sea like those grains.

I love the idea of baking bread: sequestering myself to the kitchen for an idyllic afternoon of deftly mixing ingredients, kneading fresh dough, and placing the confection in the oven to rise to its full height as a loaf. I picture myself as a monk secreting myself away to a simple chapel where I wither away the hours in prayer, stringing together my words and requests into a message fit for heaven. I’ll knead my batch of humanity into a song second only to the Psalms. And I’ll wait with expectation for the Holy Spirit to heat my words into a bread baked for angels. This is how I like to imagine what it’s like to bake bread, but the actual process is less “as it is in heaven” and far more “on earth”.

Gingerly I sat down on the pew. With head bowed low, I contemplated what had brought me here. Though darkness is the light’s absence, it feels heavy to the one forced to carry it, like an unrequested cross biting into their back. My battle with depression in the years leading up to this moment felt like calvary for me. It forced upon me a passion only God could relieve. Yet all my prayers felt like caged birds calling for the sky. Who would open the door that lets my words fly free?

Learning about poetry in high school English felt like a medieval torture device. Metaphorically tied to the rack of iambic pentameter, I was forced by my teacher to read poems I could barely understand to find stress patterns I could hardly hear. Yet the only discernible stress pattern I found was the pain of her making us read long dead English poets. She claimed the exercise “stretched” us. It would take me years to put my poetic bones back in their sockets.

Welcome to my page!

Does taking pictures make you a photographer? Does putting words on paper make you a writer? I often wonder when a hobby has to be loved enough to confer a title. How many shots do I need to take and stories do I need to tell to earn the name saying what I do?