The invitation to respond

It's spring, and like many people I tend to go into cleanup mode.  So last night I thought I'd walk through some of my images, tossing stuff I'm unlikely to use.

Easier said than done, of course.

I started at the bottom of the alphabet, a file labeled "wood, stone, rust and sand." This was in the stone folder.

Looking at it, I wonder why I would ever bother to paint when the created world is this beautiful -- but of course, we don't create because we're trying to make a more beautiful world; we create to express our response to this beautiful world -- or this ugly world, or this tortured world... what's important is the response.

Facing beauty of this magnitude, I confess I am struck dumb.  It's a bit like those times as a child when I would struggle through my piano lessons and then my mother would sit down and breeze through some Rachmaninoff Concerto.  Very discouraging. 

But here's the good news: I don't have to be divinely creative.  I don't have to be God. I am, however, invited to respond to Creation's glory.  We all are -- and we can do it with a shout, with a dance, with a hug, or a photo, with a painting, or a speech, with a well-cooked dinner or with time spent on our knees (whether praying or scrubbing) or even with a crusade for justice...

It's really about call and response.  According to Christopher Bamford, writing about "The Gift of the Call" in Parabola, one of the meanings of anthropos, or human being, is "to look up," as one looks up when one hears one's name called.

Think about it.

Have you looked up lately?