Tuesday, May 22, 2012

One Thousand Gifts - A Photo Project

"When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows."
-One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp


Recently, some friends and I have started reading through One Thousand Gifts together.  We meet every other week to discuss what we've read, and have shared with one another ways to better see God's gifts in our seemingly mundane lives.

The premise of the book (or, what I understand so far from the first three chapters) is that the author names 1,000 things to be thankful for in her day-to-day life, explaining her journey to eucharisteo.  It truly is a different way of thinking - to give thanks in all situations.  In the good, the bad, and the ugly.  To experience deep, life-giving joy.

I don't know about y'all, but that just sounds hard to me.  Hence, why I'm really excited about reading this book! I am really looking forward to digging deeper with these girls and experiencing joy and thanksgiving like never before.

As I finished up my reading for tomorrow's meeting, an idea came to me.  Ann described taking a photo of grated cheese on a plate and how she was able to capture a moment of thanks by doing so.  The idea of writing out one thousand gifts didn't necessarily resonate with me, but - taking 1,000 photos? That I'd love to do! I've been wanting to do a photo-a-day project for some time now, but never really had the inspiration - until now.  I'm not going to limit myself to one picture a day, though, and I don't plan to stop until I reach 1,000.  But, don't worry.  I won't post a thousand single photos here, but I do want to share my moments of eucharisteo with y'all.  For those of you who follow Kelle Hampton's blog, I'm thinking about inserting them into a collage much like what she uses for "Friday Phone Dump".  And, if I did the math correctly, that will equal sixty-two and a half collages of straight-up thanksgiving.

And, since you've got to start somewhere, I give you moment of thanks number 1...


Here's to the 999 to come!

5 comments:

Jenn said...

I love a good butt-in-the-air nap. I love that book, too!

Derek Hill said...

Love it! Have fun photoing!

Shannon said...

Great idea! Love the pic! :)

mossfamily said...

i LOVE this idea! Now, if you could show me how to make a collage in good 'ole PSE, then I might could get on board myself. I love the idea of the phone dump too, simply because i always have my phone & I always seem to capture the off hand moments that way. I think I might look into that book too... sounds like a great challenging read...

Mattie said...

I love this idea! You should make it a linky or blog hop!

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