Guest Writer: Eve Turek
Sky Smile: Photography as Spiritual Practice
Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven. -Mt. 6:10
Most English translations word this section of what we call the Lord’s Prayer this way, but a few flip the order of the last phrase so that the prayer ends, “as in heaven, so on earth.” I have been pondering the implications I find in these words of Jesus, given when His disciples asked Him how they should pray.
All the other parts of the Lord’s prayer, touching on everything from worshiping God as Holy to asking for daily bread—sustenance both spiritual and literal—to acknowledging our own ongoing need to extend and receive forgiveness, to seeking protection and strength against temptation and evil, I can see lived out on a steady, even daily, basis. But this particular part of the prayer seems to await its fulfillment still. To be sure, we see glimpses of God’s kingdom come or God’s will being done, especially when folks respond to significant needs outside their own lives with compassion or tangible assistance.
But I keep thinking perhaps Jesus meant something even more than this.
When I go out into the natural world with my camera in hand, I often deliberately seek glimpses of the world Jesus might have had in mind when He first spoke this prayer to His early disciples: As in heaven, so on earth. I think about what heaven’s Peace, Joy, or Love might look and feel like and be like HERE, where we still live.
Recently on a cold winter afternoon, I noticed iridescence in the clouds above me, and I drove to a spot where I could photograph the sky unobstructed by buildings or wires. Nearly overhead, I saw the brightest appearance of a “Sky Smile” – an upside rainbow called a circumzenithal arc – I have ever seen. It lasted a long time, and eventually, a fainter rainbow appeared below it, oriented in the traditional direction. There was no rain; instead, ice crystals in the high cirrus clouds caused the refraction.
The image I made that afternoon reminds me of Jesus’ words: As in heaven, so on earth. The “heaven” rainbow is bright, vibrant, and almost astonishing in its size. You can see a partial “day moon” tiny in the image to the left. And below it, much fainter, is the rainbow overarching our world. I find hope in its appearance, counterbalanced by a deep longing that the fainter rainbow could be as vibrant as the upper one. Perhaps it is enough to seek God’s Kingdom and God’s Will in and through our lives ever clearer, ever brighter, in a more authentic reflection of the God whose very name is Love and Peace: on earth, as in heaven.
Eve Turek
Joanna. https://www.joannaseibert.com/