About Photo Prayers
by Danny N. Schweers
For a tentative, usually pessimistic man like me, this is a wildly optimistic and daring project. Every time I pair a photo with a prayer, I'm stretched, and not always pleasantly. Finding a resonant combination of words and image is neither obvious nor straight forward. And, if you've already looked at the photos and prayers on this website, you've seen the variety of my success.
Sometimes I start with a photograph, something that makes me happy, usually something shot recently. I have been taking photographs for decades. The world is full of light and meaning. It speaks non-verbally and I try to listen with my eyes. “Look at me,” the world says. “Look at this,” it says. I run for my camera.
Usually, rather than starting with a photo, I start each week writing a prayer. Something will have touched me. I will have made a note. From that follows an hour or two of usually hard work refining the words and the ideas behind them, and praying.
Once I have a prayer, then I look over my photos, usually hundreds of them. This is a process of saying "No" repeatedly until I can say “Maybe.” Rarely can I say “Yes!” without hesitation. Mixing the visual and the verbal is difficult. When it works, image and text resonate, each offering new insights into each. When it doesn't work, the image becomes a narrow illustration of richer associations suggested by the text, or the text becomes an weak afterthought. I am not an ordained minister or even an amateur Christian scholar, so I find the work difficult. Perhaps it is difficult for everyone. I search and experiment, trusting something excellent to appear at the end in spite of the awkwardness of the steps leading there. Do I pray while I'm working? You bet! The prayers themselves are often an answer to prayer. Usually, because I have a deadline each week, I come to a stopping point and publish what I have, trusting in God and readers like you to find something excellent in what I have offered.
While photos can be seriously modified these days, I do not, not here, or only rarely. I want to show the world as it is. The world and those in it don't need improvement by me. The world is glorious just as it is; the people, splendid. We don't always see them that way. Usually we don't; at least I don't. Hopefully these photos and prayers are reminders of the truth, that with thankful hearts we may see the gifts God shares, and every blessing.
These photo prayers would not happen at all except for the weekly deadlines given me by Westminster Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Delaware, and more recently by Urban Bridge Church in Edmonton, Alberta. These photos and prayers appear in emailed newsletters these churches send weekly to some 700 members. That's how this project started, as a way of putting something prayerful in a newsletter, back when I worked at Westminster as their communications coordinator.
Because these photo prayers work better individually rather than as a collection, I send them to subscribers. Click here if you would like to subscribe.
If your church might like to use these photo prayers in its emailed newsletters, please click here.
To see more of Danny's photos, visit his website.
Notes
2009_20 The first line of this prayer is from a poem by Richard Lovelace (1618-1657): "To Althea, from Prison." Here is the last of the four stanzas of that poem.
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free;
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty.
Question
Beth, of Edmonton, Alberta, asked: Do you take a new picture each week for that week's prayer or do you have a bunch of pictures you've already taken to use when the right inspiration comes?
Thanks for asking! I once made a photo to fit a prayer: the toothbrush floating in outer space. It is not one of my best but perhaps it is memorable.
I have thousands of photos to choose from, easily accessed in a database. A few are excellent. Of those few, only a few lend themselves to prayer or work well in a small 500-pixel-wide horizontal format. That means that, if I go searching for a photo, I may need to search back months and months before I find inspiration. So, sometimes, rather than do all that searching, I select a photo first, then write the prayer. But prayers are hard to write, inspiration slow to materialize, and confining myself to a particular image can make writing more difficult.
I make lots of photos. When a photo is fresh, I am eager to share it. So this week it was sunflowers and, the week before, a fox. Older photos may be better, but I quickly get tired of looking at a photo. As time goes by, its shortcomings become more evident. After a few months, I may still respect it, but my passion is diminished. One of the challenges of faith, marriage, friendship, and career is sustaining passion. Same for photographs!