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Invitation to Photography: Listen With the Ear of Your Heart

Welcome to the our second Abbey Photo Party

This is a new experiment and sort of a twist on the regular Poetry Parties.  Instead of my selecting a theme and image and inviting you to respond with words, I select a theme and poem and invite you to respond with images

Since you can’t post images directly in the comments section here, I invite you to add them to the Flickr Group I have created.  Please do leave a comment below to let us know you have joined the party and feel free to link back to your own blog and post your image there too.  If possible I’d love to have them all in the Flickr group as well (joining Flickr is free)!  Share as many as five of your images in response to the theme. Feel free to take your image(s) in any direction and then if you have a blog, please post the invitation and encourage others to come join the party!

On Friday, July 17th – I will draw a name at random from those who participate and send the winner a copy of Sacred Poetry: An Invitation to Write.

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Photo Party Theme: Listen with the Ear of Your Heart

ears listen, eyes look,
hearing, seeing below ground
to the sacred source

I am away leading a retreat on Lectio Divina and creative expression.  I am inviting the retreatants to explore the rhythms of lectio (read, reflect, respond, and rest) with a listening and seeing heart (Rule of Benedict and Ephesians) through different mediums of art-making.   How might photography be a process of lectio with the world?  

Let this Photo Party be an exploration of what we discover when we listen and see deeply.  Feel free to offer images that invite different interpretations of the theme.

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© Christine Valters Paintner at Abbey of the Arts:
Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts

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20 Responses

  1. Hi, this is my first interaction with this group. The poem is beautiful and I posted two images that mean a great deal to me and I believe reflect the intent of the poem. “yellow” and “New Mexico Door.” Thank you for the opportunity. Kind regards, Karen

  2. I posted a few photos from my recent trip to Illinois. I went with an attitude of “looking and listening for beauty”…and “where is God in all of this?” in a place that challenged me so much as a child. It was a great meditation and made the trip so much different than usual.

    Sharie

  3. I was browsing the beach all morning with these thoughts in mind and my camera. Unfortunately, I forgot the cable that connects my camera to the laptop :-(

    But my thoughts on images I saw…
    two favorites…

    There is a skeleton of a gray whale with a historical marker describing a whale seen during the Lewis & Clark explorations. I thought of a song my daughter wrote that starts…”We follow the path of our ancestors.” Calls to the unseen cloud of witnesses who have gone before us.

    And fabulous birds, literally hundreds, grouped together worshipping the fogged in sea, listening and waiting for their chance to dive in and get that which sustains them. That was my favorite.

    I can’t wait to get home and get the pictures from the camera into the computer so I can start tinkering!