The Invitation | Reflecting God's Greatness

The Invitation

Look Around. Pay Attention. Notice.

I grew up in the church. My first nine years of education were in the church. Most Sundays, I was in the church. The significant milestones of my childhood were marked by church traditions, ceremonies, and rituals.

I learned the words. I knew the prayers. I participated in the ceremonies. But for all those years surrounded by the language and imagery of the church, something was missing.

I never felt what people called faith. I never experienced a personal connection with God's presence. I never owned a Bible, much less opened one. The familiar religious images didn't speak to me. Not the illustrations in the Sunday missal. Not the religious artwork that surrounded me. Not even the magnificent paintings and sculptures of the Renaissance.

I could appreciate their beauty and artistry. But I couldn't find myself in them.

So, with all the youthful exuberance and certainty available to a fifteen-year-old, I decided: "I got this." And I walked away from the church.

It would take more than half a century for me to recognize how mistaken I had been, and to confront where that certainty had led me. But it would also take those years for me to begin seeing something I hadn't recognized before.

I've been taking photographs for nearly sixty years. My first venture into photography began with a garbage-picked enlarger and a few chemical trays I set up in my childhood basement.

Why? Because I was curious. I wanted to see what would happen.

Sixty years later, I still don't consider myself a particularly accomplished photographer. Ask me about f-stops, shutter speeds, or the rule of thirds, and you'll probably get a rather unconvincing explanation. Perhaps even confusion between an f-stop and a bus stop.

I've never approached photography as a technical exercise.

People have asked me how I do it. My answer is usually something along the lines of:

"Dunno. I just shoot what interests me. What catches my eye."

A landscape. A child's face. A bird taking flight. A weathered truck. A bench beside a pathway.

Sometimes something simply catches my attention, and I press the shutter.

I don't necessarily know why. And for most of my life, I didn't feel any particular need to explain it.

What has changed in recent years isn't necessarily what I photograph.

It's what I've begun to recognize in the photographs.

In September 2022, after years of grief, fear, loss, and an increasingly desperate struggle to find my way, I surrendered my life to God. I didn't suddenly understand everything. Far from it.

But I began to recognize His presence in places I had never thought to look.

A moonrise over a quiet pond in New Jersey. The words of a stranger. The kindness of a friend. A physician who listened. The photograph of a man on Black Elk Peak, ten weeks after undergoing cardiac catheterization.

None of these images was created to illustrate a Bible story. None was intended to prove anything. They were simply moments in my life. Moments I had noticed.

And increasingly, moments in which I began recognizing what I understood to be God's greatness. Contemporary images of God's greatness. Not distant scenes from another time and place. Not necessarily extraordinary events.

The extraordinary in the ordinary.

Something else began to happen.

The photographs hadn't changed. But I had.

I didn't necessarily see things when the images were made.

That's an important part of what I want to share here.

You don't have to understand everything you see.

You don't even have to know why something catches your eye.

You can simply notice.

In April 2024, while confronting another frightening medical diagnosis, I began creating what would become Reflecting God's Greatness.

Something that had begun as my own effort to share what I'd seen became an opportunity for other people to share something of themselves.

And that has helped me recognize what I really want Reflecting God's Greatness to become.

Not simply a collection of my photographs.

Not a gallery devoted to technical accomplishment.

Not a place where visitors are expected to admire my interpretation of the world.

Instead, an invitation to a conversation.

The photographs and reflections I've shared here are mine. I don't expect everyone to see what I see.

Perhaps you have a photograph that means something special to you.

Perhaps it's beautifully composed. Perhaps it's blurry, crooked, badly lit, or taken on a phone through a dirty window. Perhaps you took it years ago and only recently recognized why it mattered.

Or perhaps there's no photograph at all. Just a moment. An unexpected kindness. A moment of forgiveness. A reminder of hope. An experience that caused you to stop and wonder.

And that's where this begins.

What do YOU see?

I've shared some of what I've noticed along the way. But this conversation isn't just about what I've seen.

What have YOU noticed?

What experiences have shaped the way you see the world?

What have you discovered that I might have overlooked?

Tell me. Share with me. Help me see it, too.

Perhaps we'll both discover something we hadn't noticed before.

Will YOU Join The Conversation