3/17/2020 0 Comments Leaning into faithWe are amidst a global pandemic. These are words I never thought I'd be writing. Feels like something out of a science fiction novel. Captain Trips is what Stephen King named his devastating virus in The Stand. Seriously? Can't we live out a scene from a Hallmark movie? Where there's love and beauty and Candace Cameron and everything's tied up in a pretty bow in the end? I realize how simplistic this want of mine is but come on, a pandemic?
I've been listening and reading and watching the news and heeding all the warnings and worrying about all the things, particularly how to help those who are already living on the margins. And I've been at a complete loss for what to say and what to do. I know, unprecendented territory and all, but everyone else seems to have something to say. Everyone seems to know what they can do to be useful. I feel paralyzed. Now I'm a doer. I have to work very hard at being still. Meditation helps, yoga is a gift, but stillness is not my natural state. When my friends share their struggles, I fight action. I want to fix the pain, not rest in it. This is the kind of mother I am too, for better or worse. I know intellectually how important it is to let these boys fall down and pick themselves back up but catching them before they hit the ground happens more often than it should. Resilience, though, doesn't come from coddling and it doesn't come from days that are all filled with sunshine and rainbows. So this feeling of doubt and pause, not knowing what to do, has forced me to lean into faith. Faith in the hope that lies ahead. Faith in the love that is present now, amidst the chaos and fear and darkness. Because intertwined with pain and loss and sadness is love and light and beauty. In art, this contrast is called chiaroscuro. Light and dark create shadows and highlights to give an image dimension and depth. You have to have the darkness to see what the light is revealing. The darkness allows for depth. Author Libba Bray wrote, "In each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice… No one can live in the light all the time.” Amidst the barrage of fear-inducing headlines, my faith is bouyed by the son who has visited his father's retirement home every day to sit outside his dad's window and talk via cell phone. Love and light are undeniable when I read about the apartment buildings in quarantine who are organizing to all go outside on their balconies at the same to exercise and maintain their health in solidarity. And I can't even with this tweet from @MaryLauraPh, "Hey: If you have that uneasy "I need my mom" feeling, but don't have access to your mom for whatever reason, I have Big Mom Energy to spare. (Seriously, my teenagers are over it.) Lemme know here / DM if you need me to tell you it's OK. Now go wash your hands. - Your Internet Mom". I am resting in the fact that it's ok to not know what to say or what to do right now. I am leaning into faith. Wendell Berry writes, "It may be when we no longer know what we have to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey." In the last week, my family has shared family movie nights (on weeknights!), we have discovered new games to play, we've made biscuits from scratch, we've prayed together, we've taken nightly walks (with very large wine glasses), we've hiked, we've read, we've listened to music and belted out the lyrics (much to the dog's chagrin). We've re-connected in a way that I'm incredibly grateful for. There's no denying that I wish we could turn back time and that all this sickness and hurt and loss never happened but leaning into faith that the light is coming - and it may be here now in small & big ways - is the only path I think we can take.
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aboutWelcome to my blog Photos + Footnotes. I am Tyler Cunningham and I love taking pictures. It is the best way I know how to express myself and my view of the world. It's when I'm behind the camera that I'm most comfortable. I see colors and details, I observe connections between people. I see joy and pain, abundance and poverty. I am my least judgmental behind the lens, simply seeing and recording. It is how I process the abundance of information the world throws at me. ArchivesCategories |
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