Friends,
I wrote this Contact piece while up against a deadline imagining, I’m sure, that I probably needed to address some kind of Big and Important subject in the life of the Church or the world, but all I could think about was photography.
Just before writing this article, I got a new (to me) lens for my camera. It is a lens that I purchased so that I could take better photos, and I hope videos, of my son while he plays soccer. But the first thing I did with the new lens was to go around the block, taking photos of local flora.
Taking photos of flowers is something I started doing while making celebration videos this past year. It started with pictures of tomatoes growing in my garden last summer, and in the last couple of months I’ve gotten sort of obsessed with taking pictures of flowers and other kinds of plants. It is, I suppose, one of the gifts of the pandemic—a newly-discovered artistic outlet.
***
Speaking of cameras, the pandemic, and what we will carry forward, I was really happy with how things went at our first in-person celebration on Sunday. It wasn’t perfect—there were a couple things I forgot to mention, some people I forgot to thank publicly for their help getting the service together (I hope to remember next Sunday), and we had a microphone battery die, but from my perspective it felt really good. It felt like something we can get better at doing. So if you have any feedback or any observations that you’d like to share with me and with the folks putting the services together, please reach out. I’m particularly interested to know what the experience was like for folks who watched the service on Zoom. I loved watching our new camera move as it followed the service, but I was only looking into the lens as I led the service (something I’ve actually been doing for more than a year now). I didn’t get to see how things looked from the other end, but I am curious to know how the service felt online.
***
Back to my new lens. As I walked around Grisborne Avenue
testing my lens, I snapped a photo of some wild (or at least feral) plums
growing along the banks of Temescal Creek. I like the photo and posted it on
Facebook and a friend of mine said “looks like the fruit needs a few more
days.”
I hope the same will always be said for us. As we learn how to be a church that
meets face to face again, I hope there will always be room for us to become
more sweet. May we never get overripe and drop off the tree. May we always
believe the best days are ahead of us.
God’s Peace,
Ben