Stolen Moments of Delight

I nearly always have my camera with me when I'm out and about, so while my husband took care of sorting the recycling at a recycling center on North Atherton Street, I hopped out and snapped a few pictures of the pretty yellow flowers. It set me thinking. Some days it only takes having one thing to look forward to, to get through a day.

I pondered these stolen moments of delight, with the camera. It's just a thing I do naturally. Taking pictures is like breathing to me. I can't help it. When I am in the water swimming, I wish I had cameras in my eyeballs somehow, so that I could take pictures and show you what the water looks like, when you are inside the water as it is being kissed by the everlasting sky.

My husband and I have been talking, and one of the things that amazes me is the process of people discovering what they were absolutely BORN to do. The first time Mark Knopfler picked up a guitar, for instance. That day that Meryl Streep decided she might take up acting.

I was on Instagram the other day, and I came across the story of a woman who has a strange but interesting ministry - she doesn't call it that, but I will! Her name is Cristina Zenato. (Her Instagram is here.) She removes fish hooks from the mouths of sharks. (YouTube video here.) She stumbled into it quite accidentally. 

She was diving. A shark came by. It approached her again and again. She saw a fish hook in its mouth, and pulled it out. The shark came back, acted grateful. More sharks with fish hooks found her; they find her everywhere she goes. She dives every day now. She says she loves sharks and she just wants to remove their pain. She has a collection of the fish hooks she's removed: more than 300. 300!!!! Wow!

So I told my husband about the woman, and about the sharks, and about how she does it, against the wishes of her family and friends, who think she's nuts, of course (as people are wont to do). Who would have ever thought up such a thing?

And we talked some more, and I told him about a photo project I have planned, to try to help ease someone I know's pain. "My pictures are my ministry!" I said, suddenly. And those words felt true coming out of my mouth, for the first time ever. "Write that down," he urged me; "I mean it. WRITE IT DOWN." And so I did. And now I'm telling it.

This is my ministry.

My soundtrack song is Glass Tiger, with A Lifetime of Moments.