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A different kind of grateful

by Steve Brock on May 24, 2012

The setting

My wife’s parents are in town, the first visit in many years. As I write this, today is Sunday. Our plan is to take them to church, come home, have lunch, show off a bit of Seattle, have some dinner, return home.

I tell myself I have no travel plans for this day. But then I wonder: At what point did I discount such a journey and decide that so short a trek no longer counts as travel?

Travel comes in journeys of all lengths and types…

The reflection

Before church I take a different kind of trip. I wander through the bible. I have no itinerary, no planned destination. Yet somehow, I arrive at Psalm 104. I peruse the lines until verse 28 seems to enlarge and beckon. I am drawn in.

In the previous verses, the writer describes the great works of God and His provision for all creatures of this earth. Then verse 28 reads, “When you (God) give it (food) to them, they (the animals) gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things.”

Those last six words capture me: How often am I satisfied with all the good things God has bestowed?

The idea

I can’t let such a thought go: when God alerts us in these subtle ways, we do best to respond. So today, I will attempt to notice those good things. To name them. Call attention to them. Invite others to join me. I will make our short trip into Seattle an exercise in gratitude, a hunt for good things.

The trip

It rains the entire day. Not your typical Seattle spittle but rain. Real, hard rain. The result is that we drive, beholding the city through car windows. I feel like the driver of a Greyline Tour only without the bus or the tourist stops.

  • We pass through neighborhoods I’ve never been to before witnessing houses with impeccable yards and enough curb appeal to make a realtor swoon.
  • We behold rhododendron plants the size of garbage trucks, blooms almost neon in their proliferation.
  • We circumnavigate a cheese festival at Pike Place Market each of us doing very bad Wallace renderings of “It’s the cheese, Gromit, the cheeeeeese.”
  • We pass the Seattle Center and glance at the new Dale Chihuly temple of glass in honor of…Dale Chihuly.
  • We wave at the passengers on a departing cruise ship as it leaves dock for Alaska.
  • We marvel at something as simple as the grid patterns of the raised drawbridge as we wait for it to descend and let us pass into Ballard.
  • We wonder about the history of the Freemont troll.
  • We laugh. A lot.

The results

I saw a city that is so overly familiar to me that I don’t really see it any more. I saw it anew for two reasons.

First, I went with the eyes of gratitude, hungry to be more aware of the good things I have been given.

Second, my in-laws saw and processed the city in ways totally different than I normally do. They saw with new eyes and as a result, so did I.

They helped me to see so many good things in the place I live and its environs. But as we drove home after a wonderful dinner, a wonderful day, I realized that though we barely left our vehicle this day, we didn’t need to.

What I was most thankful for – the very best things – were there in the car with me all along.

9 comments

Making vs. taking – Part 2

by Steve Brock on April 19, 2012

I have many other photos from a trip to Naples, Italy that are technically better, but the people in this one make it personal and take me right back there

Last time we saw how you can either make or take a photo or a trip. When you “make” it, you invest more of yourself, you’re more intentional and the results are usually more meaningful.

This time, let’s explore five additional ways in which making a great photograph and making a meaningful journey are similar.

  • Time. My family thinks I should have my own show on the Food Channel called “Cooking with Steve.” Each episode would only take ten minutes because the distinctive would be that everything has to be done fast. My theory is, if the recipe says set the oven to 350 degrees, I say bump it up to 425 and save yourself the wait. Why sauté when you can stir fry in half the time? But as I’m finding with learning to bake bread or making sauces, some things simply can’t be rushed. Some food is better prepared in a crock pot than a microwave. Similarly, most photographs and trips also turn out better when you don’t rush them. There’s a place for the fast-paced trip or photo, but in general taking time leads to making better images and memories. 

  • Effort. I hate this one. After all, who goes on vacation and wants to work? But meaningful journeys cost you more than the price of your airfare and hotel. Same with photography. I’ll never be a great photographer because I like sleep (instead of getting up for the great pre-dawn light) and dinner (which I would have to forego to get that great evening light) too much. Making great photos is a lot like sales: Most sales people give up after the third rejection. Most sales, however, are made after the sixth one. With photography, while your first shot is often your best because you capture what you first see, many times the most distinctive shot comes after trying a dozen or more different angles or approaches. Most of us give up after two or three tries. 

  • Personal. Great trips and photographs matter most when they touch you in a unique way. What’s meaningful to you may not matter to another soul. That’s OK. Find what is important to you, in an image or a trip. As they say, personal is powerful and if it moves you, it will likely stir others as well. 

  • People. Our best trips and often our best photographs include people. To a landscape photographer, people might be seen as messing up a photo. But to me, they often provide scale, context and a dynamic element. We ooh and aah over mountains and sunsets. Yet God’s greatest creation walks and talks and looks a lot like us. So get more people into your trips and your shots! 

  • Homework. Often the most meaningful part of a trip comes once you get home and you reflect back on your experience. Often photos that look so-so on your camera can become masterpieces with some effort on your computer at home. Trips are taken abroad, but they are made at home.

Well, that’s my list of ten similarities between great photos and great trips.

How about you? What have you found that makes either a photo or a trip more interesting or meaningful?

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An ordinary day

by Steve Brock on July 6, 2011

Our ordinary dog sleeping after an ordinary walk to an ordinary store on a not-so-ordinary ordinary day.

I arrived home late last night from a family vacation to Boston and Canada. I’ll fill you in on that trip in upcoming entries, but for now, I want to focus on something that happened not on the trip, but as a result of it.

I got up, worked from home on the emails and calls that inevitably accumulate during one’s absence, and then around noon I took a walk with my wife and our dog.

We strolled the mile or so up to a nearby store. While my wife picked up a few groceries, I waited outside with the dog on a beautiful, sunny day. Other than the weather, nothing about the store or the parking lot or anything else around us had changed.

Yet as I sat there, I felt an intense appreciation for something that I normally flee, something that encompasses me daily yet hides in plain site. I became aware of the wonder of the ordinary.

Normally, I’d be antsy to go, get back, get things done. But being away helped me to be present and to see that familiar place with renewed gratitude. I began to value what surrounds me every day yet goes unnoticed just as often.

I was reminded of a cartoon that Ronald Rolheiser describes in his excellent book, The Shattered Lantern: Rediscovering the Felt Presence of God. The cartoon is an old one, “Hi and Lois,” but one as relevant today as ever.

In the first frame, Hi, the father, is off to work as an accountant. You see him thinking, “Another dumb day going to that same dumb office, to work on those same dumb numbers that I must have worked on a thousand times before.”

In the next frame you see the mom, Lois, cleaning the house and thinking, “Another dumb day cleaning this same old house again.”

In the third frame, the older children ride on the school bus and say to each other, “Another dumb day going to the same dumb school, with the same dumb teachers, working on the same dumb stuff we’ve been working on for a thousand days already!”

Finally, the last frame shows Trixie, their two-year-old standing in her crib, arms raised, facing the sun, joyfully crying out, “Another day!”

Today, as a result of being away from home, I was able to see home and the world around me a bit more as Trixie does. Having experienced the extraordinary of a new place, I was able to come back and appreciate the ordinary in a whole new way. Or maybe a whole old way. I’m not sure.

But I do know that for the first time in a long while, I grasped something that slips by me almost every other day:

In God’s world, there is no such thing as an “ordinary” day.

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Too soon to tell – Part 2

by Steve Brock May 5, 2011

When you first return from a trip as I recently did from Peru, you’ll want to show all your photos to friends. But wait. What you show later will mean more to them and to you. And you might just see things you didn’t realize on your trip…

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Too soon to tell – Part 1

by Steve Brock May 2, 2011

As I’m finding out after returning from Peru, you need time when you get back from a trip to process what you’ve learned, but more importantly to understand the story that lies within the facts surrounding your journey. That fuller story only becomes clear with time.

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How was your trip?

by Steve Brock April 26, 2011

How do you answer the question, “How was your trip?” when you first get home from some place like Machu Picchu? You don’t. Or rather, you wait until you have the appropriate answer…and that might be a long wait.

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Querencias, Creativity and Meaningful Travel

by Steve Brock January 18, 2011

Travel both feeds and undermines the creative process. Understanding how travel affects our creativity and the role that querencia (a place of safety) plays can help you travel in a more open and creative manner.

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