Super-real

How much brighter, more intense, more real it is to view a photo through a computer or TV screen. Almost, I'd say, super-real.

Totally by chance (I'm a techy-wuss) I put a sweet pic of my grandson gurgling up at his Daddy as my screensaver. I smiled when, through our modern technological magic, it appeared soon after booting up. My heart melted.

But after a while, I took it away, and went back to sky blue with a couple of white, cosmic swirls. Why? Because I realized this image was becoming too fixed in me. Instead of being able to slip into experiencing my grandson in my daily prayer and meditation time, that image appeared. It overrode any other experience, any subtler, more spiritual seeing.

In a way, I suppose this applies to any photos that I look at too often. And maybe that's why I have so few on display in our house. There's a small gallery of six frames in my study and that's it.

There's a link between image and imagination, of course. Both have to do with creativity, and my challenge is always to keep things in flow.