George Taylor: Photography as a Spiritual Practice

Photography as a Spiritual Practice

Guest Writer: George Taylor

Finding Beauty in the Discarded

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With the advent of smartphones and computers, most images remain digital files, rarely making it to print. The small percentage of images that are printed on paper can be reproduced without limit, each an exact duplicate of the last print. Over the last few years, I have begun to explore printing images on surfaces of discarded and found objects. As the image merges with an old shingle, a piece of driftwood, or discarded cardboard, the result is a one-of-a-kind object with characteristics of both the image and the substrate. While the same image can be placed on several different surfaces, the resulting object will differ in complexity and feel. 

The surfaces I have chosen are found objects discarded because they can no longer fulfill their original purpose. Using them as photographic objects allows each of these discarded fragments to take on a new and different meaning. The fragment changes the image just as much as the photograph transforms the fragment into something new. 

As we get older, it can feel like we are becoming the discarded fragments of a life once lived. These pieces of driftwood and old cardboard remind me that we can all find a new purpose as we transition into a new phase of life. There is always something we can do to contribute. It does not have to be monumental. Simply finding beauty in discarded fragments can be enough to make a positive difference. 

George Taylor has an exhibit, X-Ray as Art Exhibit, Falmouth Art Center, September 1-29. #xrayasart, Falmouth, Mass.

For more images of discarded fragments, please visit https://taylorimaging.smugmug.com/Discarded-Fragments/

Images:

1-Cold Storage Building, Philadelphia. Printed on a discarded Amazon shipping box found across the street.

2-Fells Point, Baltimore. Printed on a fragment of roofing slate from the city.

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3-Moulton Barn, Wyoming. Printed on a plywood fragment discovered on Cape Cod.

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4-Wood End Lighthouse, Provincetown. Printed on driftwood found in Penobscot Bay, Maine.

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George Taylor

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

THE ESSENCE (i.e., "GOD")

THE ESSENCE (i.e., “GOD”)

Guest Writer: Gary Kimmel

“The difference between you and God is that God never thinks he is you.” – Anne Lamott, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers (Hodder & Stoughton, 2001)

God is the essence of Creation. That essence may be a noun (e.g., tree, rain, child) or a verb (love, parenting, growing). It is not for us to put in a box or to understand. Instead, it is for us to experience and embrace. 

My concept of “God” has evolved over my life. Initially, “God” was the outstretched hand on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, human in nature, reaching out with a paternal touch. But for a long time, I have thought of “God” in much more non-human terms. Once, I compared “God” to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics – the force that provided equilibrium to creation. While I didn’t really believe this, it gave my mind something to hold on to that was not predicated on making “God” human.

We were made in the image of God, not the other way around. Unfortunately, we have often confined God to the limits of a human being.

Over the past several years, our study group has explored sources that discuss “God,” most often from a comprehensive and comforting perspective. Most recently, I have found that the term Essence captures my concept of “God” as fully as possible. It is not a single identifiable object or condition. Instead, it pervades all and is the defining entity of everything, including the elusive energy that ties all Creation together.

I have put “God” in quotes because I have found the term so co-opted by its personification that it is no longer meaningful to me. In fact, the perpetuation of the human-like “God” in our minds may keep us from evolving within Creation. For the moment, Essence will suffice for me.

Gary Kimmel

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Death of Someone We Love and How the Relationship Continues

Death of Someone We Love and How the Relationship Continues

my brother and our daughter

“We are given to one another in trust. I think people are much too wonderful to be alive briefly and then gone.”—Marilynne Robinson. 

When I talk with spiritual friends who have experienced the death of a loved one, I remind them that the God of my understanding does not give us an incredibly loving relationship with someone else, and then abruptly take it away. Death is not a period at the end of a sentence, but more like a comma. The relationship continues.

Our loved ones remain in their relationship with us, though in a way we don’t yet understand. Sometimes we feel their presence. We often sense the reality of their prayers. In his book A Crazy, Holy Grace (Zondervan, 2017), Frederick Buechner writes about using active imagination with those we love who have died. We can converse with them in the silence of our minds, and we often feel their presence, supporting and loving us just as they did when they were alive. 

I also remind friends that those we love are now with us at all times—beside us—in some form we do not understand. When they were alive, we were with them only when we saw them physically. They are now always with us in a closer relationship than we can explain.

I often feel the presence of my younger brother, Jim, my only sibling, who died much too prematurely in 2014, the day after Christmas. I especially feel the fun and mischief we can so easily see in his eyes. I keep his notes by my desk. They are full of encouragement that keeps me going on difficult days. His presence is still here in some form, doing the same. We celebrate his life again this week, since he was born on September 2, Labor Day, 1944.

Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/