Sabbath Devotional :: Already Light: We are Loved and Chosen

Photo by Melissa Askew, courtesy Unsplash

In 2013, London-based Japanese photographer Chino Otsuka undertook a unique project: an essay series where she inserted her adult self into photographs of her childhood to envision what meeting herself as a child might be like.

Outside a French bakery, adult Chino nibbles on a pastry alongside childhood Chino. Together they take a stroll on a beach, board a train, build a snowman, nap in a hotel. They share a face, a posture, a spirit, a body — just at different knots in the fabric of time.

When I first discovered these photos, I imagined entering my own childhood photos, where adult me, the present me, interacted with childhood me. I spoke to her; I held her; I told her how deeply good she was.

I was astonished by my reaction, and I almost couldn’t bear it. I closed the computer and wept at my desk.

Who, I wondered, was experiencing this — which me? Was it me now, feeling so tenderly for the little girl who had so much before her — the unforeseen joy she can’t yet imagine, and the sorrow that might smother her in her sleep — while my adult self stood nearby, informed but unable to protect or mend or even warn her?

Or was the little girl in my soul experiencing that shock, the girl who looked at her future self and asked, “Please, will you take good care of me? Will you always show me that I matter?”

Years ago when I went to the temple for my own endowment, I was left unattended for a few minutes. I was told to stay and wait, during which I had an unexpected experience: I watched this room full of mature and purposeful women in white as they worked. I assumed they were all wives and mothers and returned missionaries, or other kinds of “important.” And then it came upon me, clear and bright and calm, that I mattered exactly as much as they did. Which thing I never had supposed.

This mattering wasn’t because I was there with a fiancé; I was not. It wasn’t because I was with my important mother; I was not. It wasn’t even because I had a mission call; I did not. The mattering was mine.

So my brain rooted around for a way to explain this beautiful awe, so I could forever point to a concrete proof and declare, “This is why I matter.” My search for a functional reason was fruitless, but I was steeped in delight at the new knowledge. I began daring to believe that my value might be intrinsic — that it already existed. It wasn’t waiting to be grown, performed, or proven. I already mattered to God. Period.

Father Gregory Boyle, Jesuit priest and author, has a personal mission to make sure people know they matter. Father Greg writes,

“Jesus says ‘You are the light of the world.’ I like even more what Jesus doesn’t say. He does not say, ‘One day, if you are more perfect and try really hard, you’ll be light.’ He doesn’t say, ‘If you play by the rules, cross your T’s and dot your I’s, then maybe you’ll become light.’ No. He says, straight out, ‘You are light.’ It is the truth of who you are, waiting only for you to discover it.”

And Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun, says that the truest measure of compassion “lies not in our service of those on the margins, but in our willingness to see ourselves in kinship with them.” There is no one on earth God loves more than you, and there is no one on earth God loves less than you.

I have a photo of myself at eleven years old, cuddling my first dog to my cheek after blowing out my birthday candles. I am beaming. My joy fills the frame. I have no trouble believing that little girl matters. I also know she is still inside me, and she is not to be pitied. She is a powerful, beautiful light who loves me back.

My task is using my imagination to consider an interaction with a stranger in the same way. I can imagine such a moment is like an Otsuka photograph: How I enter the frame matters; the joy I share matters.

I matter, and the stranger matters, because we are all “loved and chosen” (as Anne Lamott says), and our hearts ever seek kinship. “If ye are not one, ye are not mine” (3 Ne. 11:27).

“God, who is greater than we understand, has only one thing on Her mind, and that is to drop, endlessly, rose petals on our heads. Behold the One who can’t take His eyes off of you. Marinate in the vastness of that.” — Father Gregory Boyle