I think a lot about the relationship between our physical senses and our spiritual understanding of our selves and the universe of which we are a part, particularly as I wander the streets in the early morning hours of the day. And more often than not, I am thinking about the importance of what we think we see and what we think that means, an importance that informs our identity and our interactions with life around us. I mean, what do we do with these images? I keep thinking about this quotation from Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem, “The Turning Point,” (translated by Stephen Mitchell):

The work of the eyes is done.
Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.

The fact is that these images, these things we think we see are subjective. What we extrapolate from that ability to use our physical sense of sight is even more subjective. For example, take a moment with this picture. What do you see? What does that image invite you to feel? To me, a shaft of light streaming through the mist evokes a feeling of something holy, like I might be glimpsing a moment of God’s interaction with creation. I took this picture because I saw that shaft of light in my peripheral vision as I walked. This sight, this image, took me by surprise, because as far as I noticed, while the air was suddenly cooler, the morning did not seem to be a foggy one.

But let me set for you some context about the actual photo. I captured this moment from over a block away. I used the zoom feature on my Samsung S22 (which I totally love), so you cannot see the parked cars and street signs that linger around the edges of the scene. And yes, I may have stood in the middle of the street for a moment, just to get the crop that I wanted, but it was early and there was no traffic (well, not much). And, I was correct in my analysis that there was no fog, so what I was seeing, the image that I was creating, really intrigued me.

After I recorded a few frames, I continued my walk for another block, away from that spot and turned a corner on my normal morning path. And there, I saw the “truth” of what I had photographed. In the park ahead, the landscaping teams were hard at work, mowing and trimming and cleaning with their big machines. That’s right, those machines and those caretakers using them were kicking up giant plumes of dust and smoke. And the wind, doing what wind does, had picked up that dust and smoke and sent it floating along the edge of the park, the edge of that park I photographed from a block away, as I had stopped in awe of the mixture of light and “fog”.

What is the truth here? What did I really see? And what was seeing here? Was the act of seeing as important as the image that seeing created for me? The real question is evening bigger. What is the truth here, in this moment? Is it the thing we experience with our senses, or is it something bigger than that, something larger than what we can touch, see, taste, hear, or smell? Or, is it the part of all these things that we carry on with us, the image we create from the experience?

These are bigger questions than I can possibly answer on cloudy, rainy, Sunday evening. But I think about these things, I think about all the ways that I use a camera to see what I cannot see; I think of all the ways that we use technology to augment our senses and, in a way, our access to something true. I think about all the ways that we use technology to hold on to that moment, that image, that truth that we experienced.

Okay, so I was feeling overly philosophical as I walked this morning, asking all the big questions that have no satisfying answers, at least to the 21st century mind. But just as I turned that same corner again on my path from one park to another, as the sun continued to shine, as the fake fog continued to roll, I thought — maybe the only truth that comes from our seeing is that contained in that simple moment of awe, before I “decided” to take a picture, before I began to question the presence of the “fog”, before I discovered the park maintenance activities. What if that fleeting and yet powerful experience of awe on my morning walk was the only truth of the whole experience? What if that was the moment of true sight, when the physical senses come together with all the parts of our human and divine selves that have no workable names? What does my sight, my vision, what I see, say about me, say to me? Maybe, in that moment, I created an image of my own sense of awe.

I know that my thoughts are fixed on the concept of awe, as my Jewish friends are in the midst of the Yamin Noraim, or the Days of Awe, the days that pass between the birth of the world (Rosh Hashanah) and the day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). Awe is a funny word for most of us; the Hebrew word for this idea is yirah, and it carries within it two competing ideas in the English language, the idea of fear and the idea of respect. Sadly, many biblical translators have chosen to translate yirah as fear, and whole schools of destructive teaching have followed, particularly when the teacher forgets (or does not know) the inherent ambiguity present in the original Hebrew text.

Personally, I am known for embracing ambiguity more often than not. And I think that true sight, sight that creates a precious image for Rilke’s “heart-work,” might just be those precious moments when truth and awe combine. Maybe these are as the ultimate moments when all ambiguity is resolved, like shafts of light streaming through the fog of daily living and too many questions, and the work can begin.

As I put aside my questions for the evening, I am left with the simple sight of light in my picture. I know that I will keep asking questions another day, keep chasing a way to hold images of those moments of all whenever I can. There is some truth in the old phrase, “seeing is believing.” But that truth comes, as Rilke suggests, from the work that we do with what we see, the image within us that the act of seeing unlocks, the awe that seeing inspires. Maybe I had some answers after all…