Photographing the ordinary. 

I photograph the ordinary.  The everyday.  It is often dull, unexciting, except for one thing.  There is nothing ordinary about the ordinary. 

As the clock ticks by amazing things happen that we pay no mind to.  We would be well served to re think how we view these small moments. 

In a small moment we make the choice to love or not.  In a moment we make the choice to bring life to another with our thought, with our words, with our actions.

There is nothing ordinary about these moments.  They are moments of eternal significance. They happen so quietly, so quickly.  Do not be blinded by the loud noises, the flashing glitz, the demanding requests for the all too frivolous activities of nothingness.

Stop and see the quiet beauty that passes every day before you. 

Denise shares a moment of love.

Music therapy at St. Edmonds. Joe plays music and sings along to the children. While they are limited in communication it is clear they appreciate and enjoy a good time!

I awaken to the adventure, to the surrender.  May it be his will and not mine.  The surrender will call forth the beauty, the joy, the resurrection. But the garden of gethsemane, the sweating drops of scarlet red come before the sunrise.

-Joe M

Photo:  Stone Harbor, NJ  Credit:   Joe Molieri

When we step into the world it is often with our guard up, and for good reasons.  There is the social self and the inner self, which we protect and hide from others a great amount of the time. 

When we have a stable sense of our self-worth, we step into the world with the ability to reveal only so much.  We interact with others without the need for affirmation or connection because we have a confidence and sense of love based on another source.  For some that source maybe a successful career, a loving family, a spouse, or a solid community.  You have a foundation and sense of who you are and that you belong somewhere.  This feeling of belonging allows you to freely interact with others without the need to be affirmed and given a sense, from them, of who you are. 

Yet there are times we become disconnected from our source of love and self-worth.  This often occurs when we become deeply wounded from that which we placed our trust and identity.

In these times it becomes difficult to interact in social contexts without revealing our pain. This is a difficult thing for it can often drive away what is desired by those who are hurting; The presence of others.  In our culture we have little knowledge of how to be present with others in their pain, especially when they are not close to us.  Our culture has little tolerance or patience when there is no immediate solution to a problem.  Many people are often abandoned in their pain because others grow frustrated and step away when they realize they cannot heal that person.

We have tolerance for a time but become anxious and tell others to just get over it or we step away from that person.  The reaction to step away comes when another’s pain jeopardizes our need to keep moving in our own life.  The issue, however, is our culture has a very low tolerance to be with people when they are hurting.    

An illustration:  In the city the homeless man sits on the street.  He is passed everyday by hundreds of people who do not stop.  Many times the thought in the passerby is:  I can’t help this guy, there’s nothing I can do for him that will change his situation.  The thought to stop and just be present, say hello and chat for a few minutes rarely comes to mind and even less is put into action.

With this occurrence there seems to be an imbalance on both ends.  One who cannot step into the pain of another and be present may have a shaky foundation of joy and identity in their own life.  It is like a person drowning and a nearby person cannot help because they have no firm footing of their own from which to attempt to reach out.   This makes for an even more strained situation.  The pained person needs the presence of others and so reaches out even more and those that cannot be present for fear of their own happiness run further away.

The imbalance on the pained person’s part is in their attempt to reach out to those who cannot stand by them.   Henri Nouwen experienced this pain greatly as have many of us.  The pain of complete rejection from others when it is most needed.  However, rather than succumbing to suicide, bitterness, or anger he speaks that only in this complete rejection can the space be created from which we can experience God so completely.  In ones complete emptiness God can enter in fullness not otherwise possible. 

With this third dimension added, the presence of God, a solid solution can be found.  While we need stable individuals in our life, it is unhealthy for us to continually lean on them indefinitely.  Each individual blossoms into full beauty when they can grow into their own independence, their own identity.  In my experience this self-assuredness best comes when one finds God as their source of self-worth and self-assuredness.

-Joseph Molieri

Through writing, art, and many forms of expression I attempt to share and connect with others.  Sometimes there is a meaningful and personally fulfilling connection made.

For the artist one of the most gratifying experiences is when a person tells you how powerful an impact your work has had upon them.  And one of the most frustrating can be when the work impacts no one, or seemingly impacts no one.

I have come to be deeply moved by a subtle beauty I have missed out on in past years.  The impact of our decisions and specifically our art work as artists is immeasurable.

I had fallen into a pit of needing feedback from my art in order to continue making it.  The art became more about my self-worth and being affirmed than creating the art.  What I had lost was the self-confidence to create regardless of feedback.

Ironically, upon re-finding that confidence I have begun to see how our work and our words can have impacts in ways we may never know.  Countless artists have died unappreciated and whose work has now impacted millions.  Van Gogh, in his lifetime sold merely one painting. Emily Dickinson had very little published work before her death.  Numerous artists have lived their life and died without ever receiving affirmation from their work only to have it become world famous in later years.

I have a dear friend I often share close and meaningful insights with who often shows no outward sign of caring or being moved at all.  And yet days or weeks later he will often mention something I said and how he has been pondering the insights from our conversation.

This has taught me two main points.  Our work as artists is important and will be impactful even if we do not experience the affirmation from it.

The other, is to learn how others express their appreciation.  Too often I am expecting and desiring to be affirmed in ways that I expect.  Yet we all as humans have different and varying abilities to express when something is meaningful to us.  Becoming sensitive to how others communicate can and has deepened my ability to receive love and affirmation from others.

Drawn like insects to light, humans are drawn to one another.  The lone man is the strange man.  It is often a man with a painful past that has brought him to the lone life. 

Fond memories of childhood instantly call forth nostalgia.  There is warmth and peace when we are children in our small community we call family.

As one grows older and leaves his family, the desire for the love and caring cocoon he experienced as a child is still desired.  When this need for love and community is healthy it develops into what can bring the healing our world needs. 

For exactly this reason, the healing, we cannot stay in our cocoon; we must go forth.  The unhealthiness and stagnation occurs when we find a community and attempt to keep it exactly as it is indefinitely.

We human beings are creatures with an astoundingly endless capacity to grow.  Our ability to love more selflessly to care more passionately is breathtaking, unlike other traits; the potential does not diminish with age. Developing these traits is a lifetime journey, never an arrival. 

The greatest threat to this growth is fear. Fear can hold us frozen keeping us from discovering ourselves and deepening our ability to love others. 

I have been moved deeply, from a longing for intimacy, to love.  Ironically,  It has left me longing, it has left me yearning.  Relationships and closeness, for a heart that cannot be quenched, tend only to deepen the longing. 

In my journey though I often feel alone, I am enthralled, delighted to find kindred souls.  Not that they have endured the same yearning and lonliness as I, but rather in their yearning they have found the truest meaning of living life to its fullest in every moment.

Of these many lives, for time’s sake, I cite only a few.  Henri Nouwen and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Both lived lives of great frustration and anguish.  And yet both tasted a depth of love and intimacy I am not convinced many ever experience. 

Hopkins lived a cloistered life, and though a greatly talented poet, he never published his work and never received affirmation of his skill.  He suffered greatly, now believed to be from bi-polar or uni-polar depression.  Yet on his death bed he is cited saying “I am so happy, I am so happy. I loved my life”

Henri Nouwen, a man who learned the human heart so intimately, learned it through a pain of rejection.  Often feeling let down from close friends, he struggled with being affirmed and loved as well as with his homosexuality.

In my journey I have learned to not stop at the heartache.  But rather allow my heartache to deepen my ability to experience love.  Imagine that.  Nouwen says “allow earthly rejection to reclaim your first love in Christ”  the fullness of life and love is found in my faith.

At times I wish to reject and curse the path laid before me, and of course what is behind me, for it is a road riddled with heartache and longing but I have glimpsed the peaks available to those who choose to experience the deep yearnings of the human desire for love.  God responds, she reaches to us when we are empty.  It is in our lowest moments we are prepared to experience the deepest glimpse of the beauty and joy of who God is!!

I close with the poem of Gerard Manley Hopkins, to the heart that yearns there is a glimpse of truth and beauty in these words: (it is best read aloud)

As Kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices;

Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is –

Christ — For Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Simply put this poem is exactly what it is titled "What I do is me"  written so beautifully the writing itself alludes to the beauty in what our innate  identity is.  For more info check out the spark notes:

http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/hopkins/section5.rhtml