My son Jude climbing a tree after a storm. I can see heaven in that boy.
Life gets very complicated. Work, kids, school, weather, bills, etc. you name it. They all can suck the fun out of life. If you let them.
This past weekend I had a chance to be a kid again. It was a “complicated” free zone. While the climax of the weekend was a killer obstacle course I built in the woods behind our house for the kids to enjoy at Maximus’s birthday party, a few days before this epic party, I received a glimpse of heaven.
It had stormed. A quick moving, violent storm that left golden light, damp grass, and beautiful hues in its wake. Entranced by the beauty, I went outside to take pictures as my 8-year old Jude climbed trees. He was on his way up to the technicolor sky when I took the picture you see here. I love high contrast photos that allow you to imagine the reality behind the shadows, in this case, the unbridled joy of a little boy climbing a tree under the glow of nature unleashed. Click it, like all the pictures on my blog, for a larger version. It is because of moments like these that I try to carry a good portable camera with me at all times, in this case, a Panasonic LX7.
Simple images can hearken to something deep within us. If we are lucky, they touch a place unsullied by the world and still able to dream, able to make even the simplest moments of life quiet wonders. “Jude in the Tree” reminded me of an incredible description of “the glory of God in us” by my literary hero, Thomas Merton.
“At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us… It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely…I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.”
Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
A pure diamond of light. Our backyard this past Friday. Taken as Jude was climbing trees.
“A pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven.” I didn’t quite get that, but walking across our yard to gaze upon our neighbors golden corn field, I saw something pretty close to God’s pure diamond, this rainbow. It stayed a long time and I was able to just stand there and gaze upon it. Jude climbing, then this. How lucky I felt, how grateful to be alive. We can become so unsettled by the “things” that we don’t have, we lose sight of the wonder all around us. Usually, we just have to stop and look. If we are willing to venture outside after the storm, we can find magic. We can understand how to find the glory of God in us.
Hope live free!!
