Artist: Michael Theophan Lujan
Member of the Orthodox Church in America
This is an image of a Mexican Bird of Paradise bloom, photographed in my parents’ backyard, 30 minutes north of Tucson.
To see the sacred in Nature, one is in some sense going backward or forward in time: back to Eden at the beginning of time, or forward to the New Heaven and the New Earth at the end of time, and seeing in the present moment that timelessness distilled. Time is thereby one factor usually preventing sacred seeing, and so what is aimed for is a sense of timelessness, or of being outside of time, in order to witness Creation at its Alpha and Omega—incorrupt, beautiful, forever and abundantly alive.
For prints and to learn more about the artist, click here
Michael’s essay on seeing the sacred in nature: If thine eye be single