fierce enchantment

"The magical proposition of the gospel, once free from the clasps of fairy tale, was very adult to me, very gritty like something from Hemingway or Steinbeck. Christian spirituality was not a children’s story. It wasn’t cute or neat. It was mystical and odd and clean, and it was reaching into dirty. There was wonder in it and enchantment."
Donald Miller



These stupendous images are from the Hubble telescope, once it was fixed and focused. I know it was a huge scientific debacle that originally the camera did not take pictures in focus, but I feel wistful that we all take a little bit of time to get sharply in focus. I think if I have been snapping vivid photographs this whole time I have been living, quite a few would be beautifully blurry and fuzzed around the edges, especially those glowing nights with friends, laughing and crying and telling stories. And the little girl running in joyousness would also cause some blurring-in-motion. Life needs capture in ways other than sharp edged focus.

Anyhow, the scientists voted for their very favorites, of all the photographs of magnificent space and stars and blackness, and these are two of my favorites of theirs. I find it really endearing that all these very cerebral, lab-brained people settled down to pick the images that struck them with great beauty. Maybe all I really want today is a remembering of Something I find beautiful. Some new way to recapture it. The words won't come, but I am longing to build on the images and pick my favorites. My patient's MRI scan came back to today, and even scrolling up and down through the inky black and bright white of bone and brain, I was sort of startled at how beautiful it was.