You can purchase select photos at my photo store and have them shipped to your home.
Photography is an integral part of my journey, having been featured on television, in several galleries as well as published in the National Geographic Traveler magazine. But even if the aforementioned honors never happened, I’d still be taking a lot of pictures. Photography is featured here on my blog in two fundamental ways.
- Visio Divina is a practice of seeing, and praying with images or other media. I’ve been a keynote speaker and seminar leader on an emerging (though in some ways ancient) practice using photography, or visuals, as a spiritual discipline. While Lectio Divina is a method of praying with scripture, Visio Divina (Latin for “divine seeing”) is a method for praying with images or other media. While many Christian traditions have long practiced praying with images through icons, Protestants, and more specifically evangelicals, have been less comfortable with this type of prayer. But as a cursory glance through scripture will show, images have been an important part of God’s way of communicating. Ezekiel’s vision of dry bones, and Peter’s dream on the rooftop in Acts 10, as well as the many parables of Jesus, are just a few important examples of how God communicates with us visually.
- Visual Peacemaking. Images have a powerful role in telling stories and framing human perceptions and experiences, especially of peoples and places unfamiliar to us. Photography has come to serve as an important tool for me in building bridges between cultures and people who normally do not engage each other, helping tell stories back and forth across a divide that often is posted with a huge “NO TRESPASSING” sign. In a world where divisions seem to be growing and prejudices hardening, the work of visual peacemaking is critical.
Again, photos can be purchased and shipped to you from my photo store here.
What others have said about my photography:
“I got totally lost (in a good way!) in perusing this visual feast. The thing about Andy’s photographs is that they pull me into their world. Reverence, delight, laughter, anticipation, exultation. Nice to take a vacation without leaving my computer screen.”
“I SO get the connection between the visual and spiritual, they are not separate things. The other one that surprised me with it’s strong sense of anticipation was the snowy forest path with the figure in the distance. Maybe it was also strong nostalgia I was feeling, as being in that kind of setting is one of my favorite and indelible visual memories of many stages of my life. I will definitely peruse the photos when I need a break.”
I’ll be reading you.
Hi Andrew,
These words remind me of Dr. Ted Ward’s articulation of what it means to be spiritual beings. In his book “Values Begin at Home” he suggests that we can think of the physical, intellectual, emotional, social and moral dimensions of our existence as streams that feed our spiritual beings. Tilden Edwards in “Spiritual Director, Spiritual Companion” echoes this by asserting that we are not “human beings on a spiritual journey” but rather “spiritual beings on a human journey”. He adds “We are embodied spirits, embodied souls, on a mysterious journey from, in and to the Holy One.”
Blessings as you persist in the adventure!
Carl
Thanks Karl. I think I might have even used that quote on last year’s calendar. Was it from Dallas Willard originally though? Regardless, it deeply resonates with what I sense in this journey. Thanks for doing the same in your context.
Thanks, Andrew. Edwards attributes the essence of the quote to Teilhard de Chardin.
Carl