The photo above of our food drop today probably isn’t going to be anyone’s favorite, but it is mine (you can see others at the Cornerstone Flickr Food Drop set). Today was all about motion, going, doing, and I love the look and feel of this shot above with my nephew taking a box in a people train line from the lady next to him. Today was another great day of the church being the church. Cornerstone people collected over 14 tons of food, and then, as planned, today took it out into the community, it was a great day.
I had mixed emotions about this day for months leading up to today, but thank goodness I’m not in charge, God is, and we had probably 3-4 times the number of people show up at church today to help load the boxes and take them out into the areas designated to us by the Food Bank of East Alabama. I’m sure we will make some adjustments for next year, and I know we have learned a lot as a church body today. Hopefully the people in the Auburn-Opelika community were blessed today, and more importantly I hope they saw the love of Christ in those who went out today.
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This year at our church to celebrate Christmas, instead of doing fancy decorations and traditional garland we have been planning for quite a while now to do a “food drop” for the Auburn area. So if you were to walk around the church right now you will see boxes everywhere. A Christmas tree made out of boxes, presents made out of gigantic boxes, and the filled and returned boxes we started to give out this past Sunday. The way we have tried to communicate this on our own website is that we are never more like Jesus then when we serve others. And throughout the month of December, Cornerstone members and attenders (or anyone who wants to be a part giving back to our community) will be given the opportunity to serve others using a simple box. We are asking everyone to:
- Pick up a box and packing list from the Cornerstone lobby.
- Pack the box full of food for families in Lee County.
- Return the filled box to the church by January 1, 2012.
- Saturday, January 7, gather at Cornerstone and pack the SUV’s, minivans and pickup trucks with these boxes and head out to specific communities to pass out these boxes to families in our area. (We will work with the Food Bank of East Alabama to target the communities in the greatest need.)
This is an opportunity to make a tangible difference in someone’s life by offering basic necessities that many of us take for granted. We can make the New Year great for our community with our simple gift of a box of food, and we are trying to have over 1,000 boxes filled by January 1st. For more information you can also visit the Cornerstone Food Drop 2012 info page, or visit Lee’s blog post as well.
If you are reading this and saying to yourself, I don’t go to Cornerstone so that’s nice and all but who cares… well, you don’t have to, but you can still participate. If you are in the Auburn-Opelika area, just come by the church lobby and pick up a packing list and a box and return it before January 1st.
Either way, whether you participate or not, I hope you can make it a priority this Christmas to go beyond the normal gift giving and remember others who are not as fortunate. I love that about Cornerstone, and I love seeing the church be the church. We need to think, learn, study, and understand God’s word, but we also need to go… and do. How can we say we believe what the scriptures say unless we actually do what it says. I hate the commercialization that always goes along with this time of year, but I love this. Hope you will help make it a success as well.
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I just can’t believe it is almost the middle of November, Veterans Day, or Auburn Arena’s opening night for the 2011-2012 NCAA Men’s basketball season. It’s really all been a blur since about October 1st, like having frosted lenses in your glasses, but seen through the venue of the calendar, if that makes any sense. Where did October go? Leading up to the beginning of October was so focused on our trip to Uganda, then a few days after I returned from Uganda Deborah got sick, and then ended up having to be in the hospital for a while, where we spent Halloween before she got to go home the next day.
It actually feels pretty good to be here writing on my blog again, which is something of a normalcy issue for me anyway, something I have tried to make a normal part of my week for the past 10 years. It feels strange to me when I go a few weeks without posting, but the gaps mean about as much to me as consistent posts. I have come to learn and appreciate over the last 12 months or so that when someone you know and care about gets sick, friends, family, your spouse, priorities tend to shift around to triage mode. You do the things that need to be done and forget about all the other stuff you normally do that uses up time each day.
Everyone I know is so busy it sometimes seems like if anything out of the expected happens the whole system of time will shut down and collapse, and in some ways, it does. It’s like getting on a transatlantic flight. Time still moves forward even though you are stuck in a small metal tube for 12 hours. Inside that room (or cabin), time stands still while everything around you motors on at light speed, your “normal” is temporarily on hold until you get out of that time warped room. When we took off from Atlanta for our overnight flight into Amsterdam only our world stopped. As soon as we hit the ground in Europe I turned on my phone to find out that Steve Jobs had died while we were in flight. It was only our world in the plane that became timeless for 12 hours.
I have no doubt in my mind that being “busy” is not a biblical mandate. In fact, the opposite is true. Psalm 46.10 instructs us, to be still, and know that I AM God. But how do you balance this with the noise and chaos that is our world today? I still fight hard for margin (being still) every single week but sometimes it just doesn’t work.
Slowly, things return to “normal”, or if not, you create a “new normal” where you can establish some kind routine again. I’m not sure why routine is the goal but routine often times removes uncertainty and change, which seems to be what we all fear the most, but routine also gives us a continuity of motion for each day. I can’t imagine that Paul’s routine in Acts removed a whole lot of uncertainty for him, and fear in itself always feels like a testing of faith to me. Over the past month or so these thoughts have combined in my mind while looking at three different areas of scripture. The words of Matthew in Matthew 6.25-34 on being axioms about tomorrow, (something I think I have been genetically inclined to do from birth), 2 Corinthians 12.9 where Jesus instructs Paul that “my power is made perfect in weakness”, and 2 Timothy 1.7, “for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”
Tonight starts a new normal routine for our house, a “normal” routine for the second week in November that is, the start of Auburn’s basketball season. This is always something that Deborah and I look forward to each year. Not necessarily because it’s an Auburn sporting event, but because it is a few designated hours we get to spend together outside our normal routine, without much noise or distraction… one of those timeless two hour flights with the added bonus of not having to actually be at 40,000 feet. War Eagle!
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I finally put together everything to get a print actually hung on my wall. Amazing what a process that has become. I’m so use to posting and shooting digital that it just felt like quite a task, and took 4 years if you count when I purchased the frames, or 2 months if you count when I decided to get a print ordered. Anyway, I love the shot and how it turned out, and today it makes for the Photo of the Day.
This black and white of the First Baptist Church of Opelika was taken handheld on the corner of the block just about at high noon, when I would never seek to take a photo since everything normally gets washed out and contrast goes to nothing. In this case I love how the final result turned out, and the photo reminds me of lunch I had that day with a friend of mine, David Olive. On a side note, to me, that’s one of the great things I love about photography. This photo may just be a photo of an unknown church to most, but, to me, it’s a reminder of exactly what I was doing, where I was, and what was going on that day. I had just finished lunch with David and was on my way home and just decided to stop see if I could get anything at all in this 100 degree glaring sun. As soon as I stepped out of the car a huge cloud came over, covered everything in shade, took away all the harsh shadows, and left me with a shot I love of this historical church in Opelika.
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Photo of the day today comes from a shot I took a while back from a cool little place in Opelika called 8th and Rail. This night was an art and music night provided by some local artists.
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This past Saturday I did a live performance photo shoot with Jacob Blount at Eighth & Rail in Opelika Alabama. This was Jacob’s debut performance and he combined it with an art show and an all around creative evening time. A local artist, RC, hung painting, drawings, and photographic prints and dubbed the night “drink-n-draw”. Each table was supplied with a sketch pad (most of which had a few pages of completed sketches from RC) and guests were asked to draw or sketch as they listened to the music from Blount.
It was interesting to hang around with so many creative and talented people and I enjoyed the evening very much. Several of Jacob’s friends and family came for the opening and it was nice to see so many people there in support of Jak but even if you just walked in not knowing anything about the plans for the night you would have enjoyed a great performance from a local band. Below are some of my favorites from the night (click the link at the bottom to see all 6 in this blog post). To see the entire shoot visit the Jacob Blount gallery. (To see all 6 images in this blog post just click the continue reading link below.)
Something I really enjoy about live performance photography is that it is always a challenge. The lighting is always bad changing and you never know what to expect (although it was pretty good Saturday thanks to Dan King), plus you can’t really get any predetermined compositions or portraits. Even the lighting and the sound in the same venue can vary greatly from day to day, but as I told someone recently, 80% of photography is “showing up”. I was certainly glad I showed up on Saturday.
Jak is still working on a website and myspace page but if you would like to check out some of his music you can bookmark these pages jaknoise and http://www.myspace.com/jaknoise, thanks for a great night Jak.
Coming Up
I still have a few edits left from this past weekend. One, the Spurlock family, is next on the list and then I have a series of posts from the Catalyst Conference which will include an incredible act of worship with worship painting from Caitlin Beidler from Redemption Art and live performance photos from Aaron Keyes, Franklin Graham with Samaritan’s Purse, Jeff Foxworthy, and several others from Catalyst08.
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Last Friday I had a chance to shoot for a band at Eighth and Rail in Opelika called Martha’s Trouble. What a great night of music it was last week. Over the last several months I have had a chance to shoot for several different bands. Each one is different but I have really enjoyed getting to know the different band members at each venue, and Rob and Jen are no different, it was great to get to hand with the band a little this weekend. Be sure to check out their website and the new CD’s coming out for Christmas. Below are a few of my pics from the shoot. You can also see the Martha’s Trouble Gallery to see the full shoot of the live performance.
