TITLE: Gathering the Fragments
BLOGGER: Sharon Brown Christopher
Images have fascinated Sharon Brown Christopher since she was a child. The characters and scenes from stories and poems read to her and written for her by her mother captured her imagination, and the photography hobbies of her father and aunt drew her to her very own Kodak box camera.
Her seeking, searching eye has carried her around the world and across the United States noticing, focusing, and seeing with her heart’s eye the inner landscape of our human family in all its diversity. This blog weds her threading verbal and visual images into a picture that reveals life’s mystery, depth, and greatness.
Sharon is a member of the Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church, serving in retired relationship. She lives with her spouse, Charles, in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.A.
INTENT: In this virtual space I share with verbal and visual images what I have come to know as a way of gathering the fragments of my life and threading them together into an integrated whole. Through this process I invite you into your own journey of seeing your life with eyes wide open and gathering the fragments of your life. I am learning such gathering is a means of grace.
THE BACKSTORY: The practice of gathering fragments began for me as a child. While in elementary school, I took a paper tablet and my dad’s old belt, climbed the big sycamore tree in our front yard, fastened the belt around the tree trunk, wedged the tablet and a pencil between the trunk and the belt, covered it all with waxed paper (to protect it from the rain,) and retreated to this treetop sanctuary to consider the stirrings of my soul.
I’d record spats with my siblings. I’d lament about how the boys I liked were not giving me the cleats off their football shoes to wear around my neck as a symbol of their affection, and I’d ruminate about what I was going to be when I grew up. This was the beginning of my seeing with eyes wide open and recording what I saw. The spiritual practice of observation.
As I grew older and got bigger, I recorded my musings in paper-bound journals and in the last two decades on computers. Enriching my habit, the church introduced me to a way of abundant life that includes
- the story of gathering the fragments as revealed in the biblical account of the feeding of the 5,000 found in John*,
- the discipline of Ignatius Loyola called the daily examen which invites us to name the sorrow, gratitude, and confession/repentance or the “sads, glads, and sorries” of each day,
- the practice of contemplation, drawing me into the other world in the midst of this world.
Reflecting on life both within me and around me has led me to the discipline of fine-art photography. The camera has become for me a tool for noticing.
I offer to you this blogging enterprise in the spirit of poet Mary Oliver and her instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
(The poem “Sometimes” found in Red Bird, 2008, published by Beacon Press)
* Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.” One of his disciples, Andrew, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was a great deal of grass in the place, so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. (John 6: 4-13, NRSV)