Suspending disbelief

Much of what my camera does remains mysterious to me.  How is it that in moving it as I shoot, to create pictures with the light, the staircase and the ferry somehow manage to stay stationary?

But the joy of photography, like the joys of faith, art, and poetry, is sometimes in not needing to know, not needing to be rational, or to explain, but perhaps simply in creating -- as Samuel Taylor Coleridge once said -- "a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith."

There's some of that in the Christmas story, as well.  We know what we think we know -- about the spurious timing of the holiday, about the unlikelihood of Mary's virginity, about the much longer travels of the wise men, and the science behind the star -- and yet we still somehow believe -- and rejoice!