“Once I was lying on the forest floor, trying to shoot a picture of a wild calypso orchid that waved above a thick mat of moss. I nudged my amazing macro lens to the right setting and was about to click when I noticed tiny white flowers on the moss, flowers that were invisible to the naked eye. They were so pearly, so perfect, unseeable except to one another, that I began to weep with awe. The prayer of the eye needs no words because what we see dances straight through our whole brain and nervous system and imprints forever on memory and spiritual life.” (Kristen Johnson Ingram*)

Μany of us walk a natural pathway to God through nature. We see; we worship.  I love this description of the “prayer of the eye.”  Sometimes we see holiness that we can’t describe; the grab for words only seems to put distance between ourselves and God’s creative power.  Taking a photo doesn’t help.  It captures the image, but not the wonder. Perhaps we should just relax, as this writer says, and let what we see “dance” through our nervous system and imprint itself on our souls.  We can glow and grow from “prayers of the eyes.”

*Doing Prayer, Seeing Prayer, by Kristen Johnson Ingram from  Weavings: A Journal of the Christian Spiritual Life, Vol. XVII, No. 3 (Nashville, TN: The Upper Room, 2002), 30-31.