“…that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him”. (John 5:23)

God had impressed me to write about his Sovereign design of the father/son, about inter-relating in loving unity, which I had seen so clearly in the Gospel with the divine Father and Son. It was a very emotional subject because my son had just spent a week visiting from British Columbia. I often think about being closer to my son, through joint business for example.

Nathan and I did a lot of travel together. He slugged my cameras as I explored ruins doing art photography. He also directed my itinerary. During this time of travel Nathan was moving out of his youth into manhood. I also wanted him to experience history, art, and culture.

We traveled to the many ancient ruins of Italy and France once a quarter for one or more weeks, to photograph ruins and primary historical sites. I also found myself studying the photographic potential of the abstractions of modern architecture and oddities in urban and city settings. Old ruins in ancient settings interested me the most.

There is a theological connection with ruins. As a biblical teacher/writer I am very keen about naming the Old Covenant as a period of ruined hope, now focusing on the beauty of the distinctiveness of the New Covenant as taught by Jesus Christ.

In my traveling heyday, I was a much more complicated man. Now I de-access materialism, craving more time with my children and grandchildren. My daughter Christin has commented lovingly and frequently in our best moments, “Dad, you’ve changed” during which time I proudly see my little girl all grown up.

God was working in several ways to lead me. I was simultaneously led by the Spirit in another parallel project. Going over 40 years of photography, I thought “What could a ruin represent as a shadow-type of my life?” Perhaps, metaphoric milestones, representations of a progression or regression of my spiritual life-view over time could give me distinctive wisdom.

Now 62, looking over subjects I photographed. I reassessed my values, the scope of my personal growth, noting blind spots, revelations, foolish hindrances to vision, deafness to God’s voice, avoiding mindfulness in any present reality, and the glorious truths, as well as the dark side of my life’s journey.

Unearthing our distant past is hard work Similar to the ruins of Rome or Pompeii or Greece, my photographic images, in my mind’s eye, could never model a ruin to testify to my past terrifying ruin — the dissolution of familial love in my childhood family as the eldest of five siblings. My mother called on me as a boy, saying fraught with fear, I can hear her now: “you are now the man of the family.”

This would present to me a very serious loss to my psyche, my father, whom mother distanced us from.

Ruins depict the unknowableness of place and time. In a photo, it hides a different and disconnected past as hidden as my own (psychologists call this repression). It is looking back, a seeking for something, perhaps a reconstruction of a time that once was real. Freud wrote of ruins:

Imagine that an explorer arrives in a little-known region where his interest is aroused by an expanse of ruins…when they have been deciphered and translated, yield undreamed-of information about the events of the remote past, to commemorate which the monuments were built.

Ruins persist in the disorder of time, now to return as a metaphor for my very own past. My childhood family fell into ruination. Like the photographed ruins of Mars Hill during my trip to Athens, Greece, a time and place which resisted repression, thanks to the Apostle Paul’s preaching of the Gospel, ruins helped reactivate the repressed foes of my psyche with the help of the Holy Spirit leading.

Two writing projects coincided. It became clear to me that while dealing with my metaphoric journey, the present truth about Father and Son became powerfully activated. Nathan had recently told his friend in my presence about our last Italian dinner together after traveling to Rome, then Florence, and finally in Venice together. I listened. My mind was now very present in the conversation, and this past recalled the moment, though it was God working with my quest to understand more about my soul. Love, via the Spirit of God, flowed into my heart as I looked at Nathan before me, now twice the age of that evening’s memorable meal together. It was a kind of the last supper with him as our trip came to a close.

The reality of that unity with my son brought me resounding echoes of joy. Jesus prayed for His disciples before the cross. “Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one” (John 17:11)

The assessment of my photography of ruins coincided with recalling my son’s visit, bringing me to a revelation of the divine nature of father/son unity: “one as we are one.” I began to understand the relationship that Jesus would have me enjoy with the heavenly Father, unity, and the oneness that time with Nathan echoed.