Outtakes and Crooked Lines
It amazes me how God can use every part of me, even the things that I didn't think I'd use or that wouldn't be worthy.
For the season of Advent, I decided to do a series of images based on the Way of Love Advent Calendar published by the Episcopal Church, based on the rule of life that Presiding Bishop Michael Curry created this year. You can read more about the Way of Love if you are unfamiliar with it by clicking here.
To create these images, I use the text from the Advent calendar, together with images from my own photography files. Since I have to come up with an image for every day in Advent, I'm trawling through my old pictures and sometimes I find outtakes that I had completely disregarded when I first took them. One example is this:
So something good came out of an "outtake" that I had deemed unworthy of attention the first time around. Not only that, but here I'm drawing on my Graphic Design experience that I haven't used in years, and that I honestly didn't think I'd ever use again.
When I first graduated high school, I knew I wanted to do something art related. That's about it. So I went to the local community college and majored in Graphic Design. After about a year of this, I changed majors. Graphic Design was just not for me. I learned a bit about layouts and typography and the elements of design that apparently stayed with me, but it was a mentally and emotionally tough program to be in. It was extremely competitive and precision was everything. And it was all about what would sell. One of my professors' favorite sayings was "who cares." As in, if you don't grab their attention, who cares? It was incredibly soul-draining for me.
One of my favorite spiritual authors is James Martin, a Jesuit priest. He started out his career by majoring in finance in college and getting a job at General Electric. All he really knew was he wanted to make money. He was miserable. After a lot of soul-searching, he discovered Thomas Merton and came to realize he wanted to be a Jesuit. And yet, the background he'd had in business ended up serving him in his later ministry. He spent some time in Nairobi, Kenya when he was in the novitiate, and ended up using his business knowledge to help the refugees he was serving:
James Martin realized that the idea of "the true self, the person who you are before God" that Thomas Merton spoke about was about ALL of one's self, not just the parts that you think look good. "I tried to bring all of myself to each of these jobs: all my talents and skills and gifts, as well as my struggles and limitations and failings. I brought all of those things because that's who God brought there."
In our diocese we have a bumper sticker that says "God Loves You: No Exceptions." Usually we think about that in terms of which people we are called to love - there's no loopholes or groups of people we're allowed to exclude. But I think maybe it could also mean that there's no exceptions to the parts of you that God loves. God doesn't just love the parts of you that look good on a resume. God loves, and can use, even the parts that we think aren't worthy. The outtakes, if you will. The major difference for me between my past and present use of skills is that I am not doing it solely for myself.
P.S. I highly recommend the book Becoming Who You Are by James Martin, SJ. It's very small and simple but worth rereading again and again.
For the season of Advent, I decided to do a series of images based on the Way of Love Advent Calendar published by the Episcopal Church, based on the rule of life that Presiding Bishop Michael Curry created this year. You can read more about the Way of Love if you are unfamiliar with it by clicking here.
To create these images, I use the text from the Advent calendar, together with images from my own photography files. Since I have to come up with an image for every day in Advent, I'm trawling through my old pictures and sometimes I find outtakes that I had completely disregarded when I first took them. One example is this:
This was an outtake from a day when I took a lot of pictures of the interior of my own church, St James in Painesville. We have many gorgeous stained glass windows, but this one didn't stand out as much as some of the others. Part of it, I think, was the angle this photo was taken at. Also this window is near the back of the church, so I don't often look at this one when I'm there on Sunday. But when I was searching for a picture to use for one of my daily Way of Love images, I looked at this one closer, and ended up with this:
When I first graduated high school, I knew I wanted to do something art related. That's about it. So I went to the local community college and majored in Graphic Design. After about a year of this, I changed majors. Graphic Design was just not for me. I learned a bit about layouts and typography and the elements of design that apparently stayed with me, but it was a mentally and emotionally tough program to be in. It was extremely competitive and precision was everything. And it was all about what would sell. One of my professors' favorite sayings was "who cares." As in, if you don't grab their attention, who cares? It was incredibly soul-draining for me.
One of my favorite spiritual authors is James Martin, a Jesuit priest. He started out his career by majoring in finance in college and getting a job at General Electric. All he really knew was he wanted to make money. He was miserable. After a lot of soul-searching, he discovered Thomas Merton and came to realize he wanted to be a Jesuit. And yet, the background he'd had in business ended up serving him in his later ministry. He spent some time in Nairobi, Kenya when he was in the novitiate, and ended up using his business knowledge to help the refugees he was serving:
To my amazement, I found myself constantly drawing on my business experience... Every few months, I would run a "Business Seminar" for the refugees that reviewed the basics of how to run a small business... The talents that I thought I had permanently left behind - my business skills - turned out to be of enormous help in my work in Nairobi. Moreover, they turned out to be enormously helpful to the refugees. In fact, I ended up using a wider variety of my business skills in Nairobi than I ever had in my job with General Electric. Once again I realized that how God can use every part of our selves - even those parts we think are useless - for the good. God writes straight, as the proverb goes, with crooked lines. - (Becoming Who You Are, James Martin, SJ)This is what I thought of when I realized I was using my graphic design knowledge for spreading the Way of Love - this is one of those crooked lines.
James Martin realized that the idea of "the true self, the person who you are before God" that Thomas Merton spoke about was about ALL of one's self, not just the parts that you think look good. "I tried to bring all of myself to each of these jobs: all my talents and skills and gifts, as well as my struggles and limitations and failings. I brought all of those things because that's who God brought there."
In our diocese we have a bumper sticker that says "God Loves You: No Exceptions." Usually we think about that in terms of which people we are called to love - there's no loopholes or groups of people we're allowed to exclude. But I think maybe it could also mean that there's no exceptions to the parts of you that God loves. God doesn't just love the parts of you that look good on a resume. God loves, and can use, even the parts that we think aren't worthy. The outtakes, if you will. The major difference for me between my past and present use of skills is that I am not doing it solely for myself.
For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. - 2 Corinthians 4:5-6If I can use skills that I haven't given a thought to in more than 10 years in order to bring "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God" then that's wonderful. At least they aren't going to waste. It seems like God loves to look for things on the cutting room floor.
P.S. I highly recommend the book Becoming Who You Are by James Martin, SJ. It's very small and simple but worth rereading again and again.
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