Mountaintop Selfie

I’m always the person behind the camera, by choice, the one snapping shots.  Just ask my son who hates having his picture taken, much to the chagrin of his mother.  Over a five-year span, preteen and into the teen era, every photograph discloses a perturbed expression that must have mirrored that of the exasperated photographer.   Out of love and self-discipline, he now tolerates my obsession that has only intensified with the advent of high-resolution smartphone cameras.  An intangible “Cloud” is filled with my attempts to capture the essences of people, fauna, flora and even the heavens.  For some reason, though, my sunset, sunrise, full moon, and cloud-rippled sky shots forsake their true majesty.  I guess the same can be said about all photographs; regardless of the subject or abilities of the one behind the lens, the sacred essence is often left wanting.  Yet, I persist.  Click.  Click.  Click.

Last Sunday, many Christian churches celebrated the Transfiguration, a pivotal moment, for Christians, where human nature encounters God:  the meeting place of the temporal and the eternal with Jesus as the connecting point.  In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus takes Peter, James and John up the mountain where Jesus “was transfigured before them; his face shining as the sun, and his garments became white as the light.” (Jesus was always divine; it took transfiguration for Peter to see it.)  When Elijah and Moses also appeared, Peter suggested erecting three tents for Jesus and the two prophets. Was this Peter’s attempt to keep the moment, to hold on to the glorious?  If Peter had a smart phone, would he have snapped a few shots?  Would he have asked Jesus, Elijah, & Moses to pose, with a mountain backdrop, for a photo?  Would he have jumped in for a mountaintop selfie?   

I understand.  I, too, yearn to hold on.  Like Peter, I do not always recognize the holiness in all I see. Nevertheless, the sacred surrounds us, shining through the faces of those we meet and those we love, in the divinity of nature and in the moments that cannot be replicated or contained.  When it is revealed (on a mountaintop, or a Walmart parking lot), I want to capture it, keep it, stow it away … take a picture … so that I may revisit and cherish the moment.  In so doing, though, I chance creating a barrier between myself and what I am called to see and feel.  

My child, who hates posing for pictures, encourages me to experience, to put down the camera, and to be truly present and not behind a lens.  And so, I try.  

Soak it in.  Be a sponge.  Absorb the holy.  Walk on the beach.  Listen to the waves.  Breath the salt air.  Feel the sand. Become one with the pelican.  Make eye contact with those you pass.  Let the splendor of the Divine fill your soul.