SKIP MCKINSTRY

The Wind Ran Out of Breath (Mark 4:1-2; 35-41, The Message)

He went back to teaching by the sea. A crowd built up to such a great size that he had to get into an offshore boat, using the boat as a pulpit as the people pushed to the water’s edge. He taught by using stories, many stories…

Late that day he said to them, “Let’s go across to the other side.” They took him in the boat as he was. Other boats came along. A huge storm came up. Waves poured into the boat, threatening to sink it. And Jesus was in the stern, head on a pillow, sleeping! They roused him, saying, “Teacher, is it nothing to you that we’re going down?”

Awake now, he told the wind to pipe down and said to the sea, “Quiet! Settle down!” The wind ran out of breath; the sea became smooth as glass. Jesus reprimanded the disciples: “Why are you such cowards? Don’t you have any faith at all?”

They were in absolute awe, staggered. “Who is this, anyway?” they asked. “Wind and sea at his beck and call!”

There might have been only one flower ever created. Its beauty unimaginable. Its ability to reveal the splemdor of its Creator, unmatched. But there is not merely one flower. There are uncountable billions. And they are not simply some Platonic ideal of flower-ness diluted and divided by the uncountable billions of iterations. Instead each is complete—a unique and unmistakable revelation. 

It started as whimsy. I blame Bridgerton. Surprising even me, the work turns out to be a statement about love, marriage, and the commodification of women in the 19th century. As Fanny Price, Jane Austen’s lead in Mansfield Park put it, “I was quiet, but I was not blind.”

She threw them to the ground with a crash, yet she could not deny their beauty any more than she could deny his love.

Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy. —Benjamin Franklin

(Titles based on lyrics by the late Mark Heard.)

STARTING WITH PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE FLOOR IN A RESTAURANT CLOSED BECAUSE OF THE PANDEMIC, I HAVE ATTEMPTED TO CAPTURE SOMETHING OF THE EXISTENTIAL ALONENESS OF SOCIAL DISTANCING—WE ARE CREATED FOR COMMUNITY. AS DIFFICULT AS IT HAS BEEN, THERE IS ALWAYS LIGHT. AND WHERE THERE IS LIGHT, THERE IS HOPE

"We do not truly see light, we only see slower things lit by it... and what we call light is for him a thing like water, a visible thing, a thing he can touch and bathe in..."
C.S.Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet

You must also know that this darkness and this cloud will always be between you and your God, whatever you do.

(Cloud of Unknowing, Anon., trans: Carmen Acevedo Butcher)

Then rest: until
God moves to lift the veil
From our impatient eyes

(From "The Gate of the Year" by Minnie Louise Haskins)

Let that joyful stirring of love make you resolute ... Then beat on that thick cloud of unknowing with the sharp arrow of longing and never stop loving, no matter what comes your way.

(Cloud of Unknowing, Anon., trans: Carmen Acevedo Butcher.)

You only need a naked intent for God. When you long for him, that's enough. 

(Cloud of Unknowing, Anon., trans: Carmen Acevedo Butcher.)

A series of images, based in photography and digital collage, exploring the considered cost of creation; the loss of innocence; free will and God's sovereignty; the struggle to function in a wild and overgrown world separated from its source of life; and finally, redemption. 

These works were shown first in a preliminary form from March 30-May 21, 2017 at Luther College, Decorah, IA, in conjunction with the school's commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. The current iterations are 40x22 archival pigment prints on watercolor paper and 20x11.25 archival pigment on Palo Duro Baryta Fiber 300 photo paper.

Human existence is about anxiety. Being pulled every direction. Afraid of shadows. Chasing shadows. Shape without form. Form without content. Running to. Running from.
Pretending. Waiting for daylight. Waiting for light. Denying the light. Accepting the light.

It is always an escape from Plato’s Cave.

"The adolescent is not a researcher in a laboratory, he’s a believer.
We are all adolescents when we are enthralled by the absolute."
Julia Kristeva

In this life we are always moving through The Land Between.

THE RHYTHMS OF THE DAY & NIGHT

A simple, low resolution photo of an embedded, tile street marker in New Orleans spawns endless variations. Like any good mystery, this one is full of surprises and I just keep looking to see what might be there. 

Ah, but I was so much older then, 
I'm younger than that now.
Dylan

Science bring to the light of day everything man had believed sacred. Technique takes possession of it and enslaves it. 

Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society

WE ARE ON A ROAD—IN SPIRITUAL, NOT SPATIAL TERMS— AND ONE BLOCKED AS IT WERE BY THORNY HEDGEROWS. — ST. AUGUSTINE