In a Certain Light

Our Associate Rector was just ordained and I was asked to photograph his first celebration of the Eucharist. While I'm not really one for all the pomp and circumstance (even after years of attending this Episcopal church), I can appreciate the mystery and history at the heart, the origin, of all these rites and rituals. My faith is just more freewheeling in form and expression.

Recently, a self-proclaimed atheist said to me, "I envy you your faith. It gives you something to fall back on." I just smiled and nodded, swallowing all the smart-mouthed comebacks that popped to mind, like: "Well, faith is free for the taking...", "You have faith in your convictions, right?", "Yeah, the empirical world isn't much of a comfort, is it?" Not very Christian of me, I know....

I wish I had my grandfather's brand of steadfast, unshakable faith; mine is more like quicksand, a candle in the wind. But it's there. Honestly, who can contemplate the Fibonacci sequence in the face of a sunflower and not believe in a higher power? Whether or not he's got my back every minute of the day, well, I'll have to get back to you on that one. The older I get, though, the more inclined I am to agree with Ralph Waldo Emerson: "All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen..."