The Contemplative Masters Series: Emily Dickinson

Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of

living is joy enough.

   Emily Dickinson wrote all her 1800 poems either in her garden or in the bedroom of her Amherst, Massachusetts home.  I believe that if she had been a photographer, she would have done the same.  She would find her inspiration in her surroundings and would never feel the need to seek it outside the perimeter of her daily existence.

   The soul should always stand ajar, ready to

 welcome the ecstatic experience.

    If one cannot find inspiration, joy and the ecstatic experience near to hand than it is unlikely you will find it in any other place.  But if you can take pleasure in how a spot of sun illuminates you bedroom curtain or marvel at the color of grass after a spring rain, then you are well equipped my friend.  

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,

 One clover, and a bee, And revery. 

The revery alone will do, If bees are few.

Today is the 100th anniversary of Thomas Merton's birth. For me, Merton is the most important contemplative master. I've created a collage of images of my trip to Gethsemani Abbey in 2013. You can read my post on my experience in my daily photojournal...

Happy Birthday,
Thomas Merton!

The Contemplative Master's Series - Richard Rohr

There is nothing that is not 

spiritual for those who have

learned to see.

   Richard Rohr of the Center for Action and Contemplation is one of my contemplative masters.  I eagerly await his daily messages and I always find them so illuminating...like the quote above.

   Every tiny detail in life is rich in the spiritual essence of Nature.  It is in its DNA.  It merely takes an eye that looks deeply into things...an eye trained to see.  To stand transfixed by the fluffy snow that clings to a thin branch is to see beyond the mere beauty of the landscape and into this divine connection.

   Rohr calls this The Great Chain of Being.  Every link in the chain has a connection to the source of all being, however you wish to define that term.  Nothing is without a spiritual relationship...the branch, the snow...all caught in the web of being of which we and all created things share a part.

   This is why I, and anyone who cares to look, can find the divine fingerprint in the landscape.  There is nothing that does not forge a link to that source.  What a wonderful gift we are given as photographers.  We can not only experience this great chain of being but record it as well. 

The Great Chain of Being

The Contemplative Master's Series - Rumi

The Poetry of Place - July 17, 2014

Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.  It will not lead you astray. 

 Rumi, the 13 century Persian poet and Sufi mystic, is one of my favorite source for contemplative insight. The quote above is one that is at the core of my practice as a contemplative photographer.  If you allow yourself to be drawn in by what you truly love, you will see what your soul needs you to see.

Everyone sees the unseen in

proportion to the clarity of their heart.

    To see the landscape through the eyes of the heart is an essential element of contemplative photography and it ties in very nicely with the first quote.  It is also the focus of my visual listening exercises where I allow the landscape to open up the conversation while I just quietly sit and listen.

    This final quote from Rumi seems to refer to the metaphorical capacity of the landscape to speak directly to our hearts and it is one that I constantly remind myself of.  Absolutely everything you encounter in the landscape, any landscape, has the capacity to teach us profound truths if we open our hearts to the message.  I've added the parenthesis...

Be grateful for whoever (or whatever) comes because

each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

Contemplative Masters Series - Freeman Patterson

   More than any other photographer, Freeman Patterson has taught me the beauty of the abstract image.  He has given me the permission, in a manner of speaking, to really play with my camera, to see it as a paintbrush more than a machine.

   I have to admit that until quite recently, I hadn't been doing much in this line of contemplative image making but a cheeky frog at the pond changed all that.

   The sudden movement of the frog, and the resulting splash which disturbed the water reflection, caused me to move just as I was releasing the shutter.  I nearly deleted it thinking "Oh, that will be a blurry mess!" but instead, I took the time to look at the resulting image.

   What I saw was a symphony of color and swirling shapes and I thought, "Freeman would love this!  Surprisingly, I do too!"

   When I got home, I took out his book, Photography and the Art of Seeing and re-read the part about "thinking sideways".  He invites you to break the rules while photographing, like the one about always holding your camera steady as you make your photograph.

   Contemplative Masters allow us to perceive our world with new eyes.  They give us the tools to experience the world like we never have before.  The pond, the frog, and Freeman Patterson all conspired to awaken me to the abstract possibilities of what I am seeing.  I will always be thankful to all three of them!

"Seldom do we look sideways, that is, search for other premises or new beginnings.  We avoid introducing new factors, technical or emotional, into our photography for fear that we won't be able to control them.  A good way to break the grip of an idea that controls the way you see and photograph is to pretend that it doesn't exist.  You must break the rules."

   Think about one rule that you always apply to your camera work and then forget it exists!  Go out and spend the day breaking the rules.  You might be as pleasantly surprised as I was!

 

Contemplative Master's Series - Henry David Thoreau

   No series on the contemplative masters would be complete without Thoreau.  I've written about him frequently on this blog.  I make my annual pilgrimage to the banks of Walden each year, as I have for nearly 40 years, and I plan to do it again this summer.

   I'm including an excerpt from his contemplative masterpiece, Walden, still one of my favorite books of all time.  He devotes a whole chapter to solitude.  The opening sentence sends chills up my spine every time I read it.  It is the way I try to experience the landscape when I photograph.  His masterful words clarify the relationship I wish to have with Nature.

The whole body is

 one sense.

    I am also impressed by Thoreau referring to Nature as "herself".  We are so trained to think in masculine terms, this feminine take is refreshing. Discovering the feminine side of divinity was apart of my time in Glendalough.  He was a man way ahead of his time in many respects.

   But it is his transcendent approach to Nature that resonates most with me.  When I struggle to find the words to express the experience I am having I remember that some things transcend our best efforts to put it in either words or pictures.Sometimes it is well to remember, as a contemplative photographer, that there are times when it is best to put the camera away and just experience the power of place to transform us.
 

  

Contemplative Master's Series - Thomas Merton

   Thomas Merton has been one of my great influences since the mid-1970's when I read The Seven Story Mountain.  It was a biography that influenced my own soul searching in many ways.

   Merton embraced his flaws and showed that all of us can make that journey...if not into an actual monastery, at least into the monastery of our heart.

   I can't understate the impact visiting his hermitage in April of 2013 had for me.  The man was no longer an abstraction and speaking with Brother Paul Quinon, who knew Merton as his novice master 50 years ago, breathed life into the legend. (You can read that post here...)

  The gate of heaven is everywhere.

   I think Merton can offer us a down-to-earth mysticism that is very appealing.  It is made more personally attractive for me because of his embracing of Eastern philosophies.  He saw them, as I do, as just another road to the mountain top.  Once there, we all have the same view.

There is in all things visible

a hidden wholeness.

    As I sat on the quiet porch of his hermitage, I could hear the birds singing.  I like to think they were the descendents of birds Merton listened to all those years ago on this very same porch.  I was overcome with a tremendous sense of peace.  Just at that moment, the wind chime hanging there tinkled softly and I smiled.  "Thank you, Father Louie," I said..."for all you still are to so many of us journeying souls."

   Next January will mark the 100th anniversary of Thomas Merton's birth and there is a new film planned to commemorate it...The Divine Comedy of Thomas Merton.  You can visit the link to see a brief introduction.  It is a film who's time has come...

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Footnote:

   You may recognize the image above as the reflection I photographed in the sap house on Maple Sugar Sunday.  When I went to find an image to accompany this post and the Merton quotation on pilgrimage, it seemed the perfect one to me.  You can never tell where or when any particular image will shimmer for you.  That's why it is so important not to second guess your gut...photograph what draws you in and let the "whys" be answered later.

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Contemplative Masters Series - John O'Donohue

"When you cease to fear your solitude, a new creativity awakens in you. Your forgotten or neglected wealth begins to reveal itself. You come home to yourself and learn to rest within. Thoughts are our inner senses. Infused with silence and solitude, they bring out the mystery of inner landscape."

   I have much to thank John O'Donohue for, not the least of which is his introducing me to the Burren and Ballyvaughan back in 2007.

    He allowed me to come to know and value my inner landscape and its ability to mirror the metaphors I found in the outer landscape.  It is the quotation above that will be central to the third leg of my Threshold Pilgrimage in May.

   John reflected the lyrical love of landscape that all Irish seem imbued with.  The landscape isn't mere "real estate" as we often think of it but a living, breathing and palpitating manifestation of the divine.  You don't walk through it as much as you walk hand in hand with it.  He seemed to be able to reconcile Man's separation from Nature in the most lovely and poetic way.  I can easily state that so much of how I look at the world today is a direct result of having known John and his writings.

My portrait of John, 2007

   John also introduced me to Celtic spirituality. What I've come to love about it is the notion that the divine is not separate from the natural world.  For the Celtic mind, God didn't merely create nature, He is Nature.  This is a concept that is now central to my practice of contemplative photography.

The ancient Celts never separated the visible from the invisible, time from eternity, or the human from the divine.

- John O'Donohue

    Although not a photographer himself, he often said it was a subject he was interested in pursuing.  Had he lived, I believe John would have become the commensurate contemplative photographer.

   Through his writings and lectures, John has reached millions and he continues to do so six years after his untimely death in January of 2008.  I am ending with a link to the trailer of A Celtic Pilgrimage.  I've posted this before but with my own Celtic pilgrimage fast approaching I want you to see why I needed to return once again to the Burren and why John will be a sojourner in spirit with me as I explore this liminal location.  

A Celtic Pilgrimage

   

The Contemplative Masters Series - Minor White

Self Portrait

I have often photographed when I am not in tune with nature but the photographs look as if I had been. So I conclude that something in nature says, 'Come and take my photograph.' So I do, regardless of how I feel.

   This is a series I hope to add to over time because returning to the masters of our practice, be it photography or contemplation, is essential if we are to grow and stretch.  With Minor White, my first and perhaps primary mentor, we have a master of both.  I first mentioned White way back on May 23, 2012 and you can re-read the post here.  High time I re-visited this man's wonderful thoughts and images.

   Minor White's writing is so rich in inspiration it is very difficult to find just one quotation to illustrate his contemplative thought but the one above is one that intensely relates to my form of contemplative photography - forging the co-creative conspiracy with the landscape.  I often experience this whispered message from the landscape as it gently tugs on my perception's sleeve.

Frost on Window by Minor White

   I think that many people regard contemplation as a solitary and solely interior conversation.  I, on the other hand, see it as an external dialogue with the natural world.  I not only see what is before me as it is, in its purity and clarity, but I try to listen for its subtle message for my soul.

   If it is, as Carl Jung suggests, that the soul speaks to us through images then I feel the landscape communicates to our soul through the eyes of our hearts.  It is a circular thing.  Without this circularity of interaction, true contemplative images cannot occur for me.  And it is, as White alludes to in this quotation, sometimes a thing that happens on a more intuitive rather than a conscious level.  We may not be totally aware at all times when it is happening but we clearly recognize it when we see it in our images.  I prefer to keep some of the process mysterious.  The root of the word "mystery" comes from the Greek mystes, "to keep silence" and there is great power in silence.

   Simply being in the presence of Nature we will be silently drawn into its mystery and wisdom.  The more we remain open to the possibility of encounter the more likely it will happen.  So the next time you go out into the landscape, turn off the transmitter of your judgmental ego, become the in tune receiver of the landscape's message and see what you are gifted.