The Process of Remembering: a photoblog by andrew huth

“Early Morning In Westerlo”

A couple of weeks ago I went up to my old stomping grounds in NY for a quick visit with some old friends.  It was good to catch up with Scott and Karen even though it was only a 24 hour whirlwind trip.  Perhaps it was the lengthy conversation we had late into the night that kept me from being able to drift off to a deep and long sleep.  Whatever the reason, I awoke at 4:30 in the morning unable to go back to sleep. With my room slowly filling with the cool blue morning streaming through the window, I picked up my camera and took a walk around their beautiful property.  I photographed.  I watched.  I listened to my part of the world wake up.

It is a sad fact that we rarely take the time to be still and surround ourselves with silence.  I know I rarely do.  We are perpetually chasing after the next thing not unlike a dog after it’s own tail—moving and expending energy and yet failing to consider the worthiness of the task. We, particularly in the west, seem to associate being busy with having worth.  To be sure, there are things worth chasing and being busy working towards, but we also need the moments of stillness and silence in between these endeavors.  We need these moments to help give us fresh eyes and allow our experiences to wash over us and give us direction.  We need these moments to help us realize that it is not only important to talk and act, but also to listen and reflect.

More and more I realize that we are all truly a bit of a mystery to each other.  As such complex beings, it is a miracle that we can claim to truly know anyone at all with any measure of depth.  I fear that without continually being committed to the practice of listening and being still with one another, we will move further away from the hope of any understanding of each other.  This is vitally important because we naturally fear things and people we do not understand and fear is often the opposite of love.  Love is the grandest and most powerful of acts we can extend to one another because at its house there lives compassion, grace, mercy, selflessness, empathy and forgiveness.