Tripping over to Ann Voskamp’s blog, seeing the most recent posting. Her blog is amazing, moving, beautiful, but it is also nostalgic, opening up a window into a world that I know a lot of people yearn for or are deeply drawn to imagine they can return to. A rural world of beautiful moments, “time in a bottle”, the rural, pastoral, idyllic. I’m glad her wavelength isn’t in one of my idolatrous frequencies or I fear the blog would simply be too powerful. I know people for whom it would be.

Photography, and poetry, are two very powerful image creators and when put together with this kind of skill make for some powerful “magic”.

Today at our Sacramento cluster meeting we had a discussion on people’s incapacity for pain or disappointment, especially among the young. Something about our world has communicated with a generation that somehow pain and suffering are experiences that can be avoided.

Last night I watched the second to last House. At one point House loses it and screams out “LIFE IS PAIN” and he is right. It’s also beauty.

Powerful images, whether conjured by poetry or photography like all powerful things must be handled (by creator or receiver) with care. We are deeply susceptible to images and they work powerfully below our conscious awareness. I remember a discussion of how media shapes expectations and assumptions below the line of our awareness. This is deeply true and something that is hard to fully face.