Friday, October 31, 2025
All Hallows Eve (Halloween)
Viewfinders
Praise the Lord, Jerusalem.
He has granted peace in your borders;
with the best of wheat he fills you.
He sends forth his command to the earth;
swiftly runs his word!
Casey, Michelle and I dined on homemade chili and talked about many things, including what we were reading, had read and wanted to read. Jan Karon, Fareed Zakaria, Rod Dreher, Michael Heiser, Giles Milton, Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming, Nikos Kazantzakis … our cups runneth over, and in our enthusiasm we had to wait our turn.
My 24-year-old friend Nick reflected on his past and present. He just graduated college with a theology degree. “I watched YouTube videos and now I listen to books. I tended to forget the videos, even if they were the same content as the books I’m reading. While I’m mowing or on a tractor, I listen for an hour and then I turn off the book and am silent for an hour.”
Nick reminds me what I have been reminded of countless times, that my task is not to read everything there is on my never-ending list; it’s to settle in to what I do  read and then rest, so that  what I’m reading can take a back seat to my silence and my prayers, to what I might hear from God, discern from a source outside myself.
I remembered the movie Into Great Silence. Casey and I both might have chosen to be monks if life had taken a different turn. In the film the silence surrounding the monks is palpable. You can taste it and smell it. The goal, I think, is for this external “great” silence to infuse the mind and body of the monks. As I write this the silence around me feels warm and alive, and thoughts find themselves on paper rather than circling incomplete and unsatisfying in my head.
Walking on the docks at Caddo Lake State Park I talked with a wedding photographer and a nature photographer. I told them I was a little jealous of their equipment – fancy SLRs, lenses, tripods. They were working hard to make their art, as was I with my phone. One thing we had in common was the “viewfinder,” and what the three of us put in that frame was sometimes wonderful, sometimes nondescript.
I think the viewfinder applies to reading too, that what I take from a book depends on my thoughts before, during and after I spend some time to read. I’ve told myself this many times, but without any accountability or discipline I return to the gathering rather than moving toward the meditation, the piling up of book after book rather than sitting with one at a time, in no hurry.
Casey makes notes as he reads, often in the book, sometimes in a notebook. He holds a wooden pencil in his mouth. This discipline creates a rhythm that allows him to rest in his reading. I like that. I also like Nick’s new habit of reading an hour, followed by an hour of silence.
A painting hangs on the wall across from my bed in their guest bedroom. A Â cardinal perches on a snowy branch while the snow falls around him. I think Michelle painted this. Did she have an easel, did she create a studio environment and lose herself in it while she painted? How did she use her time painting, to start and stop, back up to see what was happening on her canvas? When did she know she was finished?
My sheep hear my voice, says the Lord;
I know them, and they follow me.
Reading can be as creative as photography or painting or prayer. Time is God’s gift to me and I can use it mindlessly or with some level of care, allowing the Holy Spirit’s viewfinder to become mine. I can start this … today.
(Romans 9, Psalm 147, John 10, Luke 14)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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