Like A Child

Photos courtesy of various children in Santa Rita and Nueva Arminia, Honduras

I have a habit of lending out my camera to kids.

I know, it is not a wise choice to lend one's camera out to clamouring groups of budding photographers with sticky fingers and short attention spans. But I love the images that come out of it. Like someone who has just opened up the box of a brand new camera and is now trying to artistically photograph their feet and dirty dishes, children strive to document everything that is in sight, to capture everything that is the world within the camera lens. And unlike a new camera owner, they couldn't care less about artistic pretensions and the rule of thirds.

That is what I love about the pictures taken by children. They abandon conventions because, quite frankly they couldn't care less about the final product. All they care about is pressing a button, seeing a big flash, and then giggling at their little sister's face on the camera screen.

When I think about childhood photography, I am reminded of the passage in the Gospel of Matthew, where Christ says "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." It seems strange to me that Christ links children with humility. As adults, we sometimes have an idealized view of children. Children fit right in with sheep lying down their pretty cotton ball heads in brilliant green flannel board pastures.

But because I work in a daycare, I have no such delusions. I would never describe any child I have ever known or worked with as "bad." However I can not ignore their often blatant demonstrations of selfishness and meanness. Memories of children clambering for who gets to be first in line for the slide, or for the biggest piece of cake hardly corresponds with my understanding of humility. It is much easier for me to imagine kids asking together with the disciples the question "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?"

The seventeenth century poet Thomas Traherne describes described childhood as a state of wholeness and innocence. In the poem "Wonder" he describes his childhood self as "like an angel," full of "native health and innocence" and experiencing none of the harshness and all of the joy and goodness that is in creation. He describes the perspective of a child as one which is untainted by earthly affairs. For the child, "Harsh ragged objects were concealed, Oppressions, tears and cries, Sins, griefs, complaints, dissensions, weeping eyes, Were hid."

I am fairly certain that Thomas Traherne was not a childcare worker. I have seen too many "weeping eyes," "complaints," and "oppressions" amongst children to consider this an accurate depiction of children

But my thoughts return to childhood photography. Their photos are honest. They don't try to make things look better than they are, rearranging them to fit conventional rules of composition and playing around with lightening. Instead, their photos are dominated by cut-off heads, over-exposure and blurred lines.

When I first recalled Traherne's poem while writing this, I planned to use it as an example of how adults have a tendency to idealize childhood. However, I have changed my mind. Together with his depiction of children living in a state of wholeness and perfection, Traherne describes children as having a heightened awareness of the divine beauty around them. He describes children as seeing the streets as paved with gold as they are in heaven. He writes about how children are moved to wonder by material objects rather than avarice. And when they look to the skies, they are "oh how divine, how soft, how sweet, how fair!"

I see this wonder and sense of the divine in the pictures that children take. And perhaps this wonder is the key to their humility. Kids are so often awed by the immensity of the world around them, and are deeply filled with the awareness of their smallness in the face of such grandeur. When we grow older, we fashion ourselves as having the statures of giants. We seek to reach the heavens by building trembling towers upon shaky foundations of security in the material and by trying to fit ourselves into the composition others expect of us. But children, with their awareness of their smallness are enabled to see wonder in the skies, in the oceans, in the cities.

My challenge  is to dare to view the world today through the lens of a child. The streets with asphalt glistening in the rain are really paved with gold. The bridge that takes you across the river that is so long and wide that it must surely fall over the edge of the horizon like a waterfall is incomprehensible. And when you stare up at the mountains and the buildings that tower up to the heights of the heavens and the birds that soar in unison through the sky, you are so very small in comparison. It is a world so beautiful that it doesn't matter how you hold your camera, or how you set up the aperture. Every haphazard shot is a glimpse of glory.

Photos of the year gone by

The first word that comes to mind when I think about the year 2012 is adventure. For me, the adventure began in March when I packed my bags and left rainy BC and headed south to Honduras. While I was in Central America, I helped make an alfombra in the streets of Antigua,

I hiked to the highest point in Honduras, 

I baked traditional Mennonite paska for the first time ever using traditional Honduran baleada flour, limones and possibly a dash of Honduran ants (so so proud of myself),

I explored ancient Mayan ruins and picnicked in ancient sports fields in the pouring rain,

I wandered through the colourful colonial streets of Antigua and kayaked in a lake high in the Guatemalan mountains surrounded by volcanoes and coffee plantations:

and I saw a few too many of these of these.

But more importantly, I got to spend a great deal of time teaching English and playing with kids here:









I was able to teach this cheerful looking group how to play "Ode to Joy" on the keyboard:

and I made a great deal of creative (and MESSY!) art with this bunch of darlings:

And to end my adventures in Honduras I traveled by bus, taxi and fishing boat with some friends to a small island in the Caribbean where we snorkelled with barracuda and ate heaping plates of fish and crab:

Upon returning back to Canada in August I spent some time wandering in the mountains around Banff with my brother:

And then it was time to embark on the new adventure of moving into a little yellow house on a tree-lined street of Vancouver and beginning my first semester of grad school:

Looking through these photos reminds me that this certainly has been a year of adventure. And while the moments of "firsts" have perhaps been the most memorable - and the most photogenic - it has been the undocumented moments that truly composed the framework of the past year.

It was the time spent reading with fidgety nine-year old boys, teaching the oh-so-valuable phrase "the wolf cries" to a group of Honduran elementary students, spending my early mornings reading and praying while looking out over the mist-shrouded mountains, listening to a fisherman's story on the beach, braiding little girls' hair and searching every grocery store in Copan Ruinas for baking flour that filled my time this year. It was the hours of reading both in and out of school and the hours of essay-writing and studying that have shaped and guided my thoughts. It has been a year filled with moments of waiting for buses in the pouring rain and taking long walks through misty forests. And it has - perhaps most importantly - been a year of finding wonderful and dear friends to go along with me in adventures that each year brings.

I suspect, given my loosely formed plans for the year to come, that 2013 will be primarily composed of the undocumented moments, those moments which are likely not as photogenic as exploring old ruins and cities in Latin America. But I know that every adventure is composed of time spent waiting in the rain, where the excitement of adventure is hard to discern. And so I will strive to keep my eyes open and my ears listening for the strains of beauty and excitement that weave themselves through the fabric of every adventure that ever comes my way. 

Compost

I am a composting failure.

I think that composting is very much important, I really do. It is just that when composting moves beyond idealism and I actually need to put my discarded peels and egg shells in a fruit fly infested bucket below the sink, my naturally laziness kicks in, oh-so-quickly.

I know, I am a terrible person who doesn't belong on the West Coast. But I really am going to try to improve.

While I am a self-proclaimed composting failure, I think that composting is beautiful. What was once so solid and full of life becomes soft, subtle and filled with hope of regeneration and new life, like the ancient nurse trees lining the forest floor, that fall to the ground dead only to become a rich source of nutrients for future generations of trees and shrubs growing in the places where they once stood tall and strong through winds and rainstorms.

Rotten apple cores and onion skins lying in a plastic bucket below my sink are not quite as poetic as decaying red cedars in the forest. But the same depth of meaning applies.

Here is a visual reflection on compost that I did for an art class this past semester:

(I apologize if this isn't the clearest picture...texture and gloss medium don't add up to photogenic material...)

Bach in Times of Crisis

There is something about Bach in times of crisis.

I have a tendency to run to Bach when times get crazy, when it feels like all the threads of events are tangled in the most beastly of knots that even the invincible children's book protagonist Maniac Magee would be unable to untangle. Bach entered my life when I was about twelve and once I mastered my first little prelude I pounded it out with great enthusiasm and minimal regard for the fact that Bach was not in fact a romantic and may not have approved of my rather dramatic take on his dynamics. I took piano lessons until I was nineteen, so Bach became a fixture of my practicing time as I moved gradually from Inventions, to Sinfonias, to finally working on a hauntingly beautiful Prelude and a hauntingly terrifying Fugue to prepare for my final exam.

What has continually drawn me to playing Bach (besides the fact that he was an integral part of the curriculum) is that he always resolves so beautifully. Each piece is composed of different melody lines working through the same motif. The melodies are like threads that weave in and out of one another, bouncing motifs off of one another throughout the piece until they finally resolve with a conclusive cadence at the end. And regardless of whether the piece is stormy and frantic in a minor key, or jubilant in a major key, the loose ends are always eventually drawn together.

It is so satisfying to know that whatever my external circumstances, Bach won't leave me hanging. He will always masterfully weave in the loose ends in and give them purpose.

In the midst of the final exam madness this semester (side note - I just survived my first semester of grad school. not that it's a big deal or anything....) one of the figures I have been studying is Julian of Norwich. A mystic living as a reclusive anchoress in the fourteenth century, Julian lived in an era of true crisis. The church was shaken by emerging heresy, the papacy was corrupt, new Renaissance ideas were just beginning to challenge traditional understandings of life, and let's not forget the Back Death, waves of which Julian would have experienced twice within the first twenty years of her life.

And how did Julian respond? In her Showings of the Divine Love she describes the concerns of the world as nothing more than the size of a hazelnut. And she recites the words of the Lord, spoken to her in these times of crisis:

I will make all things well, I shall make all things well, I may make all things well and I can make all things well; and you will see that yourself, that all things will be well

Because I can only begin to understand God by seeking to understand him through the lens of earthly things, I see something of Bach in God. Like Bach pulling the separate threads of melodies through a sometimes harrowing melodic experience into a conclusive cadence, God will, somehow and unbelievably, pull us through the knotted mass of threads that is this life - and he will be better at untangling the mess we've made than even Maniac Macgee.

I can't help but think about the hope that Julian suggests in these times of crisis, where children(!) experience trauma and evil in their schools. It is hard to see that hope when we are knotted up in the midst of it all. All I can do is sit down at the piano I am so very blessed to have in my living room, and I can play my preludes and sinfonias with the hope that the cadence will come, in spite of all odds.

How I Feel About Raindrops

Sometimes I come to a place in life when I fail to recognize all the marvel and wonder that is this world around me with all of its rain forests of moss and vines, and its oceans that teem with sharks and plankton, and its billions of people, each with their own unique stories and perspectives. And when I fall so deeply into those moments that I cannot even see the birds that soar in the sky, all I need in the world is a five year old little boy peering over my shoulder at a picture book about sharks to remind me that this world we live in is truly marvellous. 

One definition for "refracting" is "to alter by viewing through a medium." Light changes as it passes through different mediums, and sometimes it refracts into the glory of a rainbow that bursts with colour. In spite of my deep love for university biology labs, I am far from being a scientist. But for the purposes of this blog I am going to appropriate this word "refracting." 

Sometimes I need to view life through the eyes of a five year old child who thinks that the white shark is the coolest thing ever and that the world is a better place because it exists. Sometimes I need to see the meaning of life through the perspective of a twelfth century mystic. Sometimes I need to see life more clearly through the lens of my own writing. 

Raindrops are probably one of my least favourite things ever. I just do not love being wet or cold. Life is refracted when I peer through my raindrop-covered glasses and can only see the world blurred before me. But sometimes I need to see raindrops themselves refracted through the lens of reflection, through a friend's perspective, through writing. And it is with the goal of refracting the raindrops around me that I am starting up a new blog, for a new phase of life.