Touched by Divine humor

There are moments, as a photographer, when you know beyond any shadow of doubt that what you're seeing through your camera is just... well, amazing.

It's not an ego thing: I didn't create the boat, or the still water, or the morning sky; I just took the time to go out and watch it, and found the spot where I could stand and see the proportions were just right.

Inevitably, however conscious I may have been in that moment, something comes along later to surprise me. In this case, it's those three little weeds that are suspended from the top left corner of the picture -- and I love them!

These little surprises resonate for me because they somehow remind me that God is present in these moments. This will sound a little odd, but let me explain.

As I think I may have mentioned before, my brain has a habit of rehearsing what-if's: if this happens, this is how I should probably respond; if that happens, I could try that response. When I get into stressful situations, this brain pattern goes into overdrive.

One of the times in my life when the pattern consumed me the most was in the final year or so before my divorce. Though it was about 30 years ago, I remember those days all too well, the constant chewing over of possible outcomes and encounters, and what I eventually came to see was that however elaborate my imagined possibilities, reality always turned out different than anything I might have planned -- and, surprisingly, better. It felt like God, and it seemed to me that God was infinitely smarter than me; that all the outcomes had a way of benefiting more people and solving more problems than anything I could have dreamed up -- and often with a surprising touch of humor.

I'm not under that kind of stress now, and for the most part that activity level no longer dominates my brain. But at a time when creativity is my passion, it's lovely to see that God is still better at it than I am; that whatever I can visualize, God can enhance or surpass in delightful ways, and that humor is still often a factor.

So I smile at those three tiny weeds in the corner, and don't erase them. Like the mistakes built into a quilt, they serve as a delightful reminder that I am only human, that creativity is truly Divine, and God is still present and participating somehow in all that I do -- often with a twinkling eye and a sense of humor.