Stuff in the Basement: 5) Engage with the offscreen world first

Tuesday, January 11, 2022

5) Engage with the offscreen world first

Old barn, 2002

For maybe fifteen years, I spent an abundance of Saturday mornings out taking photographs of our landscape, a space where, most will say, there ain't exactly a harvest of beauty--you know, "good luck with that." The thing is, if you head out at dawn, Old Sol does this Midas thing, so that sunrise turns just about everything into gold--not long, but I swear it happens.

Broken Kettle Grassland Preserve, 2004

[Okay, maybe not hog confinements, but if you leave Sioux County, at least they're not everywhere, like they are here.]

My Saturday mornings out in the country were therapy, not that I was catatonic or even mildly depressed. They were good for me, good for my soul, as Tish Warren might say, because beauty is soul nourishment. What I discovered, Saturday after Saturday, is the awesome beauty of creation at its most glorious dawning moment.

Rock River, north of Hudson, SD, 2006

Had the Lakota sent missionaries to us, at least one of the doctrines we would have had to memorize is the resolution Andy Crouch offered Tish Warren in that NYTimes op-ed I've been riffing on. He says he makes a point out of going out into the world every morning, specifically before looking at a screen. "Often I go outside just for a few moments," he says. "But as soon as I step outside, I not only find my senses coming alive, I also find myself feeling smaller — a creature in the midst of creation, rather than the god of a tiny glowing world."

I like that.

Plains Indians made a habit of pitching their tipis toward the east so their first step out of bed was into dawn (and, get this: we insisted on bringing them the gospel!).

Big Sioux River, west of Hawarden, 2008

Andre Crouch says four years practicing devotions that way has been "ridiculously transformative" and has resulted in an Andy Crouch he says is "far more grateful, far less anxious and far less interested in whatever my screens have to tell me that day."

I believe him.

South of Hawarden, 2010

There's nothing outside these sprawling windows beside me right now but inky darkness. A half-dozen deer or a pack of wolves could be spectators, or some fat raccoons could be eyeing me just outside the window--I wouldn't see anything. Dawn comes late right now, as we slowly escape winter solstice's death-like clutches.

But by the time I quit my own early morning screen rituals--what I'm doing right now--it'll be close to the moment dawn spreads its glorious, divine raiment over the land. Some mornings it's blushes from the kind of orange sky from which no one ever can look away (no matter how late they are for work).

Lake Michigan, 2012

You may have noticed I've scattered some pix throughout the post, precisely to do some homage to what Andy Crouch says. He's right. He's so, so right.