June 10, 2009
Editor's Note: The majority of the blog posts you'll find here are from David's time as a pilgrim. These newer posts are from both David and Katie, and will differ in style. We will do our best to indicate which person is posting. For starters, here is Katie's first blog about her time in Kenya.
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I have a confession to make. I’m an awful tourist. Even when I lived abroad in Europe, in Berlin for goodness sake, I forgot to take pictures of it until the very last day I was there. I abhor cheesy tourists with their cameras, and had a bad experience with them when I visited Auschwitz (seriously, that’s like take a picture of someone’s grave). Maybe the bad taste in my mouth from that experience means that my “inner photographer” wants more than just a snapshot of some random people or a random place that no one will really understand no matter how much you explain it to them. Because really, really, who looks through every single one of your photos anyway? Why not show them the one that means something to you and tell them the story with it? And how can you capture an experience in one little snapshot? How do you capture another human being’s divine spark in a photograph?So when people asked me right away when I got back if I had pictures, I wanted to ask them:
have you ever tried taking a picture of God?Because I did experience God in the Kenyan mountains in a way that I never have.
And that’s what I want to share.
And what happens when you’re awful tourist? Invariably, your favorite moments, the ones you want to share with everyone, are those moments when your camera is sitting in your bag out of reach or with someone else or just running out of batteries or decides to break.
Of course, someone prepared would always have their camera.
But that someone isn’t me.
So when I tell you my story, you’ll have to be content that maybe you won’t see everything and you might have to use your imagination a little.
And maybe if you read between the lines, you might find God too.