Dragonfly Paradox

The picture (it's awesome isn't it) was taken by an incredible local photographer named Gary Norbraten. There's a lot more of his work here: http://www.blaryphotography.com/ his site is also linked at the bottom of the page. Trust me, you won't be disappointed. What always amazes me about photography is the ability to capture a single moment, an instant, in a constantly moving world. The ripples in the water, the wings of the dragonfly, these are object always in motion but in the photograph, they are still. It is when everything is still and everything is quiet that we begin to notice subtle movement. Think about sitting in an airplane (I recently flew to and from Luxembourg with my family; a nine-hour flight with two kids is a penance). The plane is moving at a mind boggling speed (at least to me it is). The earth is moving, the clouds are moving, but we hardly notice it. Now, think about standing on a corner waiting to cross the street as traffic whips by. That is movement you really notice. If we run with the wind we don't feel it. It's not until we stop that we know the wind is blowing.

A great paradox of our spiritual lives: it's not until we learn to be still that we can know the movements of God. It's not until we come to a stand-still that we really begin to move. We have to be willing to listen for the "still, small voice", but we can't hear it if we don't stop talking. For us modern-type Americans there are few things more difficult than to be still. We don't like it. Stillness makes us uncomfortable. A nagging feeling that we should be doing something, anything, so long as it moves in some direction that we can label accomplishment washes over us the moment we try to sit. We don't like it because it is quiet, it is stillness.

The question is why are we so afraid of stillness and silence? In our world of iphones and emails and TV and the multitude of daily distractions we face there is a siren-call opportunity to never know stillness and silence. Well, my best guess, and let me know if you think I'm way off base; we are scared of what we might find in the silence. St. Bonaventure is attributed as saying (paraphrase) that if you "ask a man about his image of God you are more likely to get his image of himself". The frightening aspect of still-silence is that we must accept God as He comes, which also means facing ourselves as God sees us. All of our illusions of who God is begin to fall away and we realize that even if we know creed and sacrament very often we have made God in our image instead of the other way around. We have to take Him as He has revealed Himself to us. We don't get to pick and choose, that option has not been left open. However, He has chosen to reveal Himself in a way that is without coersion, so we are able to hold on to our idols.

Back to the photograph. We are like that that dragonfly perched on the tail end of a tiny stick in a great, moving stream. We convince ourselves that we like our pinpoint existence because we are afraid to leave the perceived safety of our little stick. We know there is an ocean around us. We think we can be planted firmly in our shaky tower and we won't be washed away. But as soon as we take the first step off the branch we realize that our stick was never any consolation. It was false security, a cardboard castle. We realize that there's nothing be afraid of by letting go, by dying to the pathetic world we've created. Playing in the ocean is so much more fun than hiding on the beach.