Reflections Of A Winter Shoreline
I love the photography of my friend and colleague, Fr. Jerry Schweitzer, who resides in Northern Indiana. He publishes a daily meditation which includes his photographs and, truth be told, most days I find myself just looking into the pictures he provides and imagining my place in each setting. Jerry, and so many others like him, have the God-given capacity to see with God's eyes, to intuitively capture a moment, an event or an environment, and then invite others to marvel with them at the sight. This scene holds me fast . . .
On the shoreline of Lake Michigan, at a place where once someone sat and took in its beauty and power, where a fence divides the land to the place where the waters cannot be divided, and where under snow and blustery winds there still resides the vestiges of summers past: The windswept grasses tell their tales and shifting sands reveal their secrets.
Here we meet ourselves. Here we see our reflections. Here we tremble, not for Winter's wind, but for that which can no longer be hidden. The camera's lens has done its work, raucously peeling away the prejudices separating our journeys in the land of our living, the ease with which we dally days away, usurping evening sunsets as our own venues and caucusing assent from gulls whose rising screeches confirm our way as the only way, our faith as the only faith . . . as though they could. Here where skyline meets water's horizon, and shoreline pushes into the authority of baptismal beginnings, here we bow in humble adoration before the One whose Hand spins the clouds to rain and raises the land to meet its birthing embrace. Here we recognize the humility and frailty of our humanity before the Divinity of Eternity, whose Presence has cast this shore long before we ever considered it and will remain long after our thoughts have left us. Here, like sand on a shore, our lives are granted a moment of deeper meaning and our faith is given reason to rejoice. Here we emerge anew, granted a reprieve from the many deaths with which this world threatens, finding our way beyond the scope of vision's certainty, treading the way forward as snow covers the direction of our course behind. Here, we look and see only God in all that is and will be and, for this one nanosecond in history, understand . . . we are part of God, in heart, mind and soul. Not the definition of God, mind you, but part, each one of us a part, all of us a part . . . otherwise none of us is a part - rendering all things, all such moments and scenes, for naught.
Forever, we are part of God, in our living, in our dying, in our being raised to New Life.
Forever we are part of God. So is everyone else.
Something to ponder along the shorelines of our journey.
Thank you, Jerry, for inviting us to see God as do you.
(c)dcw2020
Photograph (c)Fr. Jerry Schweitzer. Used by permission.
