jordan timothy @jordantimothy - Tumblr Blog

Hana, Mauii

would you believe this is Hawaii?

Waimea Canyon Kauai HI

#waimea canyon #hawaii #paradise #nature #explore #discover #vscam #iphone

frame grabs from a project I'm working on... Trying to push myself into exposing for the highlights and using light as a shaping tool.

#mustang #fs100 #cowboy #equine

an (old) love story

#love #love story #dementia

Maybe This Is Hope...

But what is hope? Move past dreams and fears and memories. Move past who we will meet, who we will become, and what we will do with the vapor of our lives. What can we hold onto in the shit storm of life?

To really find hope would be to find God. Not a god. Not a deity made by man, but to find hope would be to encounter the Unknown. It would be to find that Mysterious Love we long for. It would be to have our darkest parts encountered and blessed. To have the person we hoped to be but never became pushed aside in the name of love. It would be to find our longings, our truest deepest longings and pains, shrouded in mystery and shame unmasked and revealed. And then to be celebrated and mourned all at the same time.

To truly find hope, wouldn’t we need a hint at redemption? We try to imagine escaping our past as hope. I always want a house in the wilderness. The place that her and I can go and escape all that haunts us. To run from the demons. But that is not hope. No, hope needs to believe that all the shit, all the pain, all the ruin and rubble and aching and fighting and dying and living will be made right. Hope needs to know that someone sees this struggle, validates it, asks for it, pays a price for it, then calls it good.

Hope needs to look me square in the eyes, grab my hand and say lets go through hell. Hope needs to promise it will be there every step of the way. Hope needs to promise me it has been there every step of the way.

Hope can only have one hope then- that somewhere, near us and feeling very distant in the same moment, is Hope. Calling, beckoning, leaping over mountains and running through the fire that consumes us is an approaching Wonder we can only describe as the fullest of Hopes.

Piercing the darkness and roaming the forsaken ground of our souls, Hope comes, and brings its promise: I will wipe every tear; all things will work together. Hope is the guide who promises that they have been here before and that this ground is holy. Hope calls our lament a Psalm and our suffering gold. Hope seems purest in trial; strongest in pain. True Hope never dies. True Hope lives through eternity and promises we can too, all shit welcome. Hope has a plan.

Oh, and Hope doesn’t mind the word shit. Hope invites honesty and struggle. It is the ground Hope lives to occupy.

#hope #faith #God #spirituality #mystic

“Our society claims that those who are dependent lead lives that are of less worth, and so we have legalized abortion and face increasing pressure to legalize assisted suicide. Our faith overturns the values of the world. The king of the universe appears as a small baby, and puts himself in human hands to be put to death. The powerful people who have all the goods of this world lose the one thing necessary; but the weak, the poor, and the humble inherit the kingdom of God. Our lives and our values are transformed by the coming of Christ and his kingdom, and so we need to transform our thinking about care and dependency.

The gospel commands us to become like children (Matthew 18:3). We are to recognize our dependence on God for everything, our essential neediness. If we are in a period of our life when we have bodily strength and mental acuity, we can forget this. A sudden accident can render us helpless and remind us of the true state of affairs: every breath we breathe is the breath of God.

All of us are aging, advancing toward a time when we will need the care of others. We do not want to admit this. Our fear of dependency prevents us from accepting ourselves and from caring for others with true compassion. When we recognize our own dependence and fragility, we can care for oth- ers, not as an act of condescension, but as equally vulnerable human beings. We will know the truth and the truth will make us free (John 8:32).”

Christine M. Fletcher On the Value of Caring Work

I am challenged to admit my own dependence, and love from that place. I am, as the quote says, “equally vulnerable”. I would like to think I am powerful. I am strong. I am doing the world a favor. But I am weak. Perhaps the weakest, in my pride and illusion. This neediness is shared. This neediness is my equalizer. I am dependent, just as my newborn daughter is: frail and fragile. God, help me to see this. Help me to love from this place.

#dependant #baby #christian reflections #needy #hopeful