Dancing with Fog

 Right now on the central coast of California, it’s March.  THIS March, in particular, as well as this whole winter, has been nothing less than remarkable.  It’s been sunshine, clarity, visibility, and the pervasive charm that comes with glorious weather on a coast that pushes rocks into surf.  As I transition from a state of being temporarily grounded to being a full-fledged aviator again, I naturally consider what’s coming my way this May and June, the season soon to come.

In May and June comes something as predictable to San Francisco as gravity is to apple trees.  The fog comes.  If you’ve ever lived on the central coast of Cali during the summer months, you know what I’m talking about.  It’s insidiously beautiful the way it blankets the entire bay and it’s close valleys, morning after damp gray morning.  It pulls back, often, during the afternoon hours just a little bit- sitting offshore waiting, and then moves in during sunset and envelopes everything with a moist blanket, like it’s tucking the bay into bed.  It’s profoundly gorgeous.  It’s hauntingly ominous.

Feeling the fog move in from the vantage point of one of the valleys or mountainsides in the central coast is an exercise in mystery if you don’t know the mechanics of it.  For those of us who fly around and in it, it’s an exercise in the physics of air and moisture, pressure and temperature, wind and geography, beauty and risk.

During the morning hours, unless it’s someplace close to get to, there’s a good chance that we’ve got to conduct an instrument takeoff into the fog, then climb up on top before we get to wherever we’re going.  During the afternoon, the fog has usually cleared out and dissipated to it’s temporary home offshore, allowing us freedom to maneuver and go almost anywhere we please- up to a point.  At night, it moves in like it owns the place, which it does, and blankets everything from Point Reyes to Concord.  At night, during the summer, it just plain gets dicey- offering us fewer options to search at low levels and turning it into an instrument flight environment.

So when the fog overtakes the bay, we’re limited to conduct an instrument takeoff into the white mystery.  Doing so really isn’t a big deal if you prepare for it.  We do an instrument flight plan, we carefully taxi out to the same runway that the jets use, and we stay on the instruments.  We “keep the dirty side down”, as is frequently said.

It raises the pucker factor for some of us helicopter pilots who don’t often get a lot of cloud time to jump back into instrument mode.  Honestly, it’s so easy though it feels like cheating.  For those of us who are used to dodging the Bay Bridge and flying underneath the Golden Gate, it’s awkward to throw all of your faith into these proven systems when you’re so used to being a visual navigator.  But the systems are laid in place, the practices are set in stone, and all you have to do is follow what you already know.  On top of that, sometimes, somebody’s life may be in jeopardy that you have to go find and rescue… but don’t feel too rushed.

On my first flight out of San Francisco two Julys ago, I was flying with a capable new Aircraft Commander by the name of Chris.  When Chris and I took off, something was wrong.  Due to a maligned inter-working mechanism of the wheels and flight controls, we had no functional Automatic Flight Control System (AFCS).  He had the flight controls on takeoff, so it was my job as the safety pilot to call him out on abnormal attitudes.  I got busy.  Just after takeoff, I attempted to give him “the modes” which is short for the flight control modes, which engage different automatic capabilities.  They didn’t work… at all.  Pretty soon, our attitude indicator read that we were nose low, rolling a little bit, and probably a couple other bad things.  Chris, being the fine aviator that he is, focused on what he knew, listened to my callouts, and brought us safely on top of the clouds where we were more capable of trouble shooting the problem and subsequently correcting it.  We fixed the problem (the front wheel needed to be straightened out and secured), and continued the rest of the day uneventfully.

There’s actually an established emergency procedure for “abnormal attitudes” which, if not promptly abated can lead to a condition called “spatial disorientation”.  The exact bold-step procedures, which we must have memorized verbatim are:  1)  Level the wings.  2)  Nose on the horizon.  3)  Center the ball.  4)  Power – Adjust to maintain level flight.   Four profoundly simple acts that can save the life of you and your crew.  And yet if the situation wasn’t as disconcerting as it is, it wouldn’t have been the cause of so many accidents throughout the years, such as JFK Jr.’s crash off of Martha’s Vineyard, which ironically occurred as I was getting my instrument training at Ft. Rucker, Alabama.

The fog will be coming back to San Francisco soon enough.  But I’ll be ready for it, of course, because we’ve got the systems we need and I’ve laid the groundwork necessary to confront it with the respect it deserves.  There’s no fighting it, because it does what it wants.  Rather, in some romantic fashion, we learn to dance with it here.  It guides us through this dance and let’s us step where we want often enough, though occasionally it keeps us from stepping where we want.  When you’re dancing, you don’t always get to step where you want…

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My oldest son, Brendan, just turned 13.  Things are just starting to become complicated.  I’ve bragged in other essays I’d written that my boys still ran to me when I came home from work, well, they don’t really come running to me anymore.  As a matter of fact, Brendan has taken to saying “Oh, it’s you” only jokingly, with his nose in a book as I walk through the living room.  Cameron, my youngest, usually puts down the Nerf gun long enough to come give me a hug, but he’s still my affectionate sweetheart.  With both of them though, our father/son rule-sets are changing rapidly, I’m deep into low visibility here and I’m afraid to say there really is no navigational chart.  They don’t run to me when I come home, I don’t have to baby-sit them constantly, they dress themselves (if you can call it that), they have their own relationships, and my perceived usefulness to them is markedly decreasing.

So, a San Francisco summertime has dawned on my relationship with my sons.  It would have been nice to delay it another year, but sure as hell… the fog has rolled up against the hills, and it’s spilling determinately through every channel of our relationship.

I can kind of see through it, I think I can anyway, or maybe it’s my mind playing tricks on me- something akin to one of the many visual illusions we talk about in aviation.  I’m not certain though either way, and due to my lack of certainty I really have no choice but to rely on the few things that I know, the systems we’ve put in place, the “procedures” if you will, that just may save our father/son relationship as we bust headlong into poor visibility.

It befuddles me something crazy to watch some parents get to this critical period and start seeing the clarity of their parent/kid rule-sets fog up.  It seems many don’t make the transition to the changing environment.  I can only believe that if you don’t have the systems and training (borrowing a term here) in place by the time you reach this point, you just may be tragically unprepared.  Heck, we’ve had 13 years to mind-mold and live by example.  What’s done is quite nearly done!  In my case, struggling to maintain complete clarity within this changing environment has led me to become a touch disoriented, and my abnormal attitude toward Brendan in particular, has led to transient breakdowns in both trust and communications.

Between Brendan and I, I no longer carry that Daddy-knows-all authority.  He argues back vehemently and belligerently.  We have bitter disputes.  I think he’s a slob, and he has no idea what I’m talking about.  He’s his own young man.  Despite all this, whenever I get a report from a teacher or another parent about him, it’s glowing praise.  When I observe from a distance, he consistently makes mature decisions, he takes the hard right, and he is relatively unswayed by the pop-culture-driven teenage froth that surrounds him.  He’s his own young man, and I am consistently captivated with his driven sense of self and purpose.

Whoever he is now, it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with anything I’ve done over the past year or two.  It goes without saying that he is who he is as a result of a mixture of training and watching his parents over the past decade plus.  So pretty much, if we didn’t already have the systems and training in place NOW to bust headlong into the fog of his teenage years, we’d be dependent upon luck and chaos.  I don’t prefer luck or chaos in any aviation context either.

Brendan and I are gonna rise above the fog sometime after several years, but in the mean time, I’m just going to have to be ok with the mystery.  Our system is in place, and I’ll maneuver with him when I have the freedom and opportunity to maneuver, realizing that I won’t get to step wherever I want to step.  It’s the dance we do.

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Dancing… was something my wife Lisa and I were fairly getting used to back in Jersey before she had a serious back injury.  I quite digged it, actually, and am looking forward to doing it again.  I’d like to think there were moments where I didn’t just look like a 30-something year-old white guy making an idiot out of myself.  The jury is still out on that one.

When we embarked on this marital mystery 16+ years ago we just barely did more right than wrong.  Fully enveloped in our fog of infatuation, I can’t take much credit for success other than already having a few “systems” in place, our own navigable waypoints, which helped keep us right side up.  I can’t say it was religion, although we launched from the same place, and miraculously flew parallel on climbout from it.

As this dance has unfolded, I inevitably step where I’m not supposed to step quite a lot.  More than Lisa does, I’m certain.  If we spiral into a trailer-trash fight, it’s usually me apologizing during the recovery. The last part of the emergency procedure that states “4) Power – Adjust to maintain level flight” is the one I forget the most perhaps, coming out with all my guns blazing and pulling ALL available power.

Looking back at this 16 year dance and realizing it’s ebb and flow in sine-wave-like fashion, I realize that I never really could have accurately predicted, let alone controlled, its outcome with any premeditation.  Given the sheer reality of how different Lisa and I have both become, who could positively say that the outcome would be assured?  To do so, certainly, would be folly.

Because I’ve been lucky enough to accomplish just a few key goals I set a while back, I’m foolishly tempted to believe that life can be scripted.  I want to be the prime determinant for what’s occurring 20 years from now and it bothers me that, in truth, I can’t.  From experience I do know however, that I CAN set a paradigm into motion, and that by simply thinking and acting in that positive direction consistently- amazing things will happen.  That’s why I love the word “collaborate”.  Because if we’re both listening and acting on life’s challenges, like negotiating fog, raising a teenager, and repeatedly falling in love with someone on purpose, we’re fully vested collaborators- not prime determinants.

Ah… but for right now it’s March 2012 on the central coast of California.  Freakin’ gorgeous… sunshine, clarity, and visibility.  I’m in no hurry.  Each day I peer out to the Pacific though, I think about that impending wall of mystery coming my way.  Hopefully when it gets here, I’ll be re-enrolled in dance lessons.

James Shull
Half Moon Bay, CA.

On flying, photographs, and religious thought.

-DC patrol, the shadows of two Dolphin helicopters flying formation over the Potomac.

For my friends who enjoy open theological dialogue…


Those of us who practice the art and science of flying take for granted the progression that we all inherently, albeit painfully, grow through. I speak for many when I say that there aren’t too many things more humbling than learning how to hover. It’s been almost a decade since I first learned how to fly helos, but the memory is indelible. Somewhere between the awe, bewilderment, terror and faith that the rotor would stay at 100%, we baby-stepped our way into something that resembled competent aviators. I emphasize resembled quite loosely!

Baby stepping is what it took: First the pedals; “here’s what the left does and here’s what the right does”. Then the collective; “lift it smoothly and watch it climb, but don’t forget about the pedals because that collective also affects the overall torque in the main rotor system- increasing the need for more pedal”. Lastly the cyclic, the stick between your knees that pushes you fore and aft, left and right. Each control is uniquely different from the rest but directly affects the inputs of the other. You can’t change one without another! It’s one thing to elaborate on the academics, but there’s no genuine understanding without physically getting/growing through those baby steps.

So step by baby step we studied and flew, and studied and flew. We dedicated the bulk of our lives for a year and a half to institutional code and formulaic exactitude. Underneath the tutelage of our Ft. Rucker instructor pilots we were the ultimate legalists, pending review by our “Sanhedrin”. You see, in the beginning, it’s formula. The curriculum is laid out- black and white. The delineation for success and failure is quite clear and we knew precisely the end state we desired.

Progression is human, and it’s ubiquitous. Those of us who practice the art and science of photography also take for granted the progression we grow through along the road to becoming something that resembles competent visual artists.

In photo school I had a passionate agenda that eclipsed religious zeal. Any rulebook I could get my hands on was game. I fondly remember some of the beginners’ guides I would read, such as the Kodak book on “How to take good pictures” or Ansel’s “The Negative.” Such texts would thoughtfully lay out all of the most common “composition” techniques like using “S” curves in the foreground, using the rule of thirds, increasing your depth of field by stopping down and increase it further by using a wide angle lens. And what about the zone system? While making photographs, my mind would literally churn through the technical prerequisites: “Remember though that if you change over to a more telephoto lens the smallest available aperture will change. Reciprocity and reciprocity failure, incident angles, specular reflections, and pushing/pulling your film, fill-flash ratios and the inverse square rule.” Indeed, Brooks Institute was one of the most technically oriented photo schools available and I was, then as well, an astute disciple.

Back at Brooks it was a lock-step curricula, repetitious, prescribed, and rigorous. One teacher told me, quite accurately, that you could “smell a Brooks portfolio coming a mile away.” I knew he was right too, because we were so often locked-on to technical methodology that it easily bred a certain sameness. Photo school, like my flight school experience several years later, was formulaic, with institutional standards to be kept, and well defined “gates” to pass.

Looking back, it’s plainly appealing to muse over the baby steps. So many stories have been told about learning to fly to make mine passé. But what if, now, after establishing myself as an aviator for almost a decade, I still struggled with hovering? It’s downright jovial to witness the hover learning process as fledgling pilots jerked those Jet Rangers all over the stagefield, but it’s only really funny for about a week, because everyone is expected to “get it” and move on with doing solos, learning instruments, getting an advanced airframe and so on and so forth. Stopping the progression is pathetic and sad, shameful even.

Now I’ve been fairly serious about making photographs for about two decades. If I were still fixated on the basic elements of reciprocity, exposure and just focusing the darn camera… you get my reasoning.

Our early spiritual baby steps are endearing to consider as well. Within the institution that I grew up in we hammered those doctrinal nails into our personal crosses of discipline with assuredness and piety. Ok, not so much with the piety… if you were like me and actually wanted to be Dudley Do-right as a teenager though, you’d understand!

I’m reminded as I watch my two little ones pray from time to time, of a faith that I sometimes really miss. That absolute unquestioning adherence to what you just knew that you knew that you knew, back when there wasn’t the onslaught of conflicting information to even the simplest of assumptions, just the straight and narrow progression. Perhaps the dearth of ethical gray area helped retain a world that seemed so right, so constant at the time.

Indeed I miss it, and equally so I miss belonging to the semi-exclusive institution that laid everything out so well for me back then. Step by baby step we’d study with come and go zeal, dedicating core aspects of our lives to institutional code and formulaic structure. Under guidance and tutelage of our church-school teachers we worked to internalize the formula, if not actively, then most certainly in a passive way. The delineation for success and failure was quite clear and we knew precisely the end state we desired.

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These days when I’m photographing there are actually very few rules that I’m thinking about. People ask me quite frequently “What is it you look for in finding a good picture?” and quite honestly I come up empty handed. The absurd irony is that I probably could have discussed with great authority, back in college, how to compose, how to expose, how to “see.” These days I have a hard time giving an honest answer because it’s too complex, as I honestly just kind of “feel” an image somewhat. Sometimes they just feel like they work. Sure, the methodology is still there, it’s just latent. Nevertheless, I often feel as if I’m still standing at the starting point, looking up at this never ending uphill climb to become better at it.

I haven’t thought much about hovering in a long time either. I dedicate a bit more brain power to it when we practice turning off the Automatic Flight Control System in the Dolphin, but even then it really is a “nothing burger”. All of those basics, those baby-steps that I learned a decade ago now, are fully expected of me pretty much without error. So now that the “feel” of flying is pretty much programmed into my muscle memory, it’s onto more graduate level stuff. For what we do within the Coast Guard context, well, the challenging stuff is hovering offshore with a swimmer dangling below you, looking offshore at the vast horizonless void of night- may as well be outer-freaking space. It’s guessing the closure rate of an oncoming aircraft who’s violating DC airspace, and not confusing their position lights with the multitude of ground lights that wash out the green ambience of the night vision goggles. Other thoughts compete for attention, such as: “How does our crew of four really feel about what we’re doing? Are they speaking their mind?” “Did JFK tower really intend for me to cross the approach path of the oncoming 747 or did they misunderstand my last request?” “Am I going to fly through the wake turbulence of that Airbus?” “Is that too much of a crosswind to accept for this confined approach?” “Does the potential benefit of this mission justify continuing into this messed-up weather?”

With flying, I’ve learned and experienced so much; but as before it’s as if I’ve just begun a never-ending max-performance climb. The infinite amount of variables that exists not just in flying, but in every area of life, gives me pause to wonder just what on earth I can be completely certain about. Seems so prideful to consider oneself certain about many of the things we do.

It’s cute when my boys ask a deeply complex and relevant question about creation, or God, the idea of “the flood”, how they were born, how car engines work, why we’re at war in Iraq, or why the cats seem to run outside just long enough to eat grass and then throw it up once they get inside. I have to boil down the facts into something fathomable for them. For which they take in bite-sized kid pieces and make a resolute judgment of certainty on it, banishing further consideration until of course they inevitably grow older and more capable of perceiving intrinsic complexities. It seems perfectly right for children though doesn’t it?

-Bren and Cam, boy-steppin' the Coast Guard Cutter "Vigorous" on a cold, blustery day.

How fondly I miss those days when, upon scanning the ingredients of a can of Mountain Dew, I knew with absolute certainty that it would be a “sin” to drink because it contained caffeine! Never mind the fact that it’s got a cane field of sugar and a lab’s worth of obscure additives… I knew not to drink, and it just felt nice to be certain about something.

I’ve learned so much and yet realize; I’ve just begun. So, if even the measurably finite occurrences in my life, like flying, making photographs, or watching my kids grow up, all extrapolate themselves into vastly complex variables with less and less definable progressions, then what of the most profound questions? Am I to be content with settling for the institutional formula that removes the nagging doubt for so many others… about life’s most enduring questions like the character of God? And where we go when the lights turn off for good?

No. Returning to a formulaic structure in order to piously assume clarity of life’s most profound questions, albeit comfy, is every bit as absurd as baby stepping back through nursery school, learning how to hover again, or figuring out “just what do apertures do anyway?” For someone who’s already grown through it properly, there’s no return to Cradle Roll. The mystery we’re left with is uncomfortable to be sure, but you’ll hear me humbly pledging “I just don’t know” far more often. Of all the things I miss about youth, I miss certainty the most… of that I am quite certain!

JS

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Magazine Interview: "James Shull's Shore", NJ Savvy Living

Been procrastinating in getting this nice interview posted. George Anderson, the editor of NJ SavvyLiving, and I had a pleasant conversation which lasted nearly an hour over the phone. We discussed everything from families to photos. I appreciate the kind things George had to say:

James Shull's Shore
West coast transplant finds beauty in the mundane.
NJ Savvy Living, June 2008. By George Anderson.
http://www.njsavvyliving.com/

James Shull has traveled around the world in a military career as a helicopter pilot first with the Army and most recently with the Coast Guard. And with him every stop along the way has been his camera and his love for finding visually exciting images among the mundane objects and everyday scenes that we come to take for granted.

Shull’s latest posting brought him to New Jersey and Absecon.

“Being a West Coast guy (Shull was born and raised in California), I’ve always been attracted to the ocean. What was an eye-opener for me was seeing the variation that New Jersey offers in terms of the Atlantic Coast,” Shull says. “The Jersey Shore is a completely new environment to me and exploring it is exciting. There’s a heck of a lot more swampland and wildlife areas than I imagined. I was surprised and delighted in that sense. There’s a lot to explore here and tremendous artistic opportunities.”


Shull quickly adapted and found his unique visual perspective beyond the boardwalks and beaches gained him fans including an exhibit with the Noyes Museum of Art’s Atlantic County Libraries Exhibition and an artist’s gallery on the Discover Jersey Arts Web site.


Most of Shull’s images are shot in black and white. He counts Ansel Adams, Paul Caponigro, Brett Weston, Ed Weston, and John sexton, among his influences. “I just felt a strong connection with what they did. The black and white imagery just resonated with me,” Shull says. “From an early age, my teen years, I just started taking in as much technical information as I could to try
and do it well. It’s stayed with me ever since.”




What’s also stayed with him is a desire to find the visually exciting where others do not see it. “I like to look in that space between nature and man’s influence. I think even a lot of people from here don’t really consider their environment as being all that picturesque. Where I see something that’s visually exciting, maybe they see the everyday or mundane. So, in a way, coming here from the outside gives me kind of a fresh view. It’s something I enjoy sharing.”

Churning through Moral Absolutes

Esther,

Your response has had me thinking since I first read it a couple days ago and I’ve been trying to let it sink in and get a feel for what comes to mind.

You know, there aren’t too many organized religions that fully embrace scientific thinking and actually claim, like the Friends (Quakers) do, that there aren’t any conflicts between what they believe and modern scientific thinking. But then again, when you have no functional creed or doctrine, like the Friends, then that’s never really a problem to begin with is it? (I attended a Friends meeting twice--VERY intriguing, much like the Unitarian Universalists, but the Friends DO have at least a subtle creed).

In addressing your response though, I couldn’t help but consider some the scientific parallels. I’m no scientist, though I’m a big fan of what they do. They are after all in the truth-finding business, which is always appealing to me. Of course dogmas and cultural prejudices abound there as well, but by-and-large, the scientific community has built into it’s own source code- it’s scientific method, a means for self-doubt, self correction, and the cultural understanding that if we can all measure this separately and find the same results- it must be true. The motivations for disproving the hypothesis remain high because that means one less variable or concept to lead you astray- not to mention professional kudos.

Now, sensationalist Big Bang theories aside (that’s a different discussion, and I’m completely fine with the Intelligent Design variant as well- Irreducible Complexity makes sense to me), your queries in regard to moral absolutes seem to have relevant parallels to current scientific conundrums. According to Hawking, the gleam in the eye of every physicist is to find a “unifying theory.” The explanation that ties it all up together into one package, that explains how the mass of an atom works- all the way up to explaining the apparent lack of measurable mass that must be spread throughout the universe in order to affect the observable trajectory of planets and galaxies as we see them. There are gaps in what we know that have prevented any such “unifying theory”, admittedly so.

What I like and respect though about Hawking’s world, is that for the most part, everyone readily admits they don’t know or at least provides a percentage of accuracy. Sure, theories abound, but the culture prevents mystery from being explained-away in order to accommodate preordained conclusions. There are always a variety of theories on the table to be explored. What makes something absolute in the scientific realm? Well, pretty much the fact that it can be observed, tested, and agreed upon predictably by others. Of course, you may agree, this is completely relative too. But it’s relative to any human who is willing to patiently observe and can make a measured quantitative analysis on an observed event.

Might those of us who are spiritually minded perhaps take a lesson from this? How much can we dare admit that we just don’t know? How much mystery are you ok with? It's uncomfortable isn't it? Kind of like growing up.

Segueing from that, but getting back to your response… what makes a moral absolute, well, absolute? It’s peculiar to discover, if you’ve studied many other world religions, how strikingly similar most of them are in their moral codes. Crazy fertility cults aside, look at the world religions that have stood the test of time; the Abrahamic triad is far more similar than they are different in their moral codes. The far-eastern religions too, have a moral code that is fairly compatible with our own. If you had a devoted Sikh neighbor and a devoted Buddhist neighbor, you’d probably find yourself in a relatively safe and decent neighborhood. Heck, I’d probably choose them over many of the SDA’s I’ve known.

There have been plenty of scholars by now who have laid out many of the notable similarities between Christianity and other world religions. Most notably Joseph Campbell, who often talked of the same “motifs” such as virgin birth and sacrifice as being timeless fascinations of the human psyche. He believed humankind so revered these concepts that we kept “re-creating” them in our religions throughout the ages. The evidence is there.

My point in bringing up all of these other religions is that there almost seems to be something written in our operating system, our very DNA, that brings us to these moral expressions of right and wrong, a mutual human understanding if you will, or perhaps, even more sublime… that Holy Spirit that we talk about? Another delightful paradox about us humans that always stands in the face of the evolutionist purist… how is it we can be so willing to sacrifice so much of ourselves, our lives, for our moral codes?

You asked (as we ALL do) for a moral yardstick, and I likely threw more questions at you than anything else. That very well may have been my point. We don’t necessarily ever get the answers to these questions so that we can thereby “move out smartly” like they’d say in the Army. Our unchecked desire though, of prematurely boiling down certain presumed paradigms into easily codified doctrine, often at the declaration of a prophet, seems clearly to come at the exclusion of some other truth. It seems one basic attribute of humanity is our ever present need to boil down otherwise complex topics and codify them with a “sound bite” or designation that tricks us into thinking we have a working understanding of them. I guess I’d like to avoid that method of passively thinking for something more... active.

Esther, I DO believe in moral absolutes. However when moral absolutes become codified (turned into doctrine), human beings have a habit of no longer laboring through the critical mind-work necessary that brought them to the “absolute” in the first place. Moral decision-making often is and should likely be gut-wrenchingly difficult. It’s thoughtful, it’s painstaking, it conscientiously churns through ethical parameters and it’s what defines us in history books, resultantly, as visionaries or cowards.

Bottom Line: Science and religion have both given us “clues” in regards to what moral absolutes there may be. Neither of them though, are substitutes for reasoning through the moral dilemmas that shape our lives. Codifying these “absolutes”, is nothing other than a veneer for laboring through the legitimate suffering necessary to face these dilemmas in truthful honesty and dignity.






Afterthought: After reading the account of Victor Frankl in “Man’s Search for Meaning”, a holocaust survivor turned existentialist/professor, I came away with an idea that stuck: Ours is not to keep asking the question, ours is to answer the question. These questions that we continue to ask regarding morality, “How then shall we live? What is moral? What makes right, right?” -Are largely answered by us throughout the ages of humanity and the individual stories of our lives. Our lives are the answer to that question.

Responses to: On Growing Up (and out of your Church)

The following is a response to a good friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, and had genuine questions about what I’d written. I’m flattered by the sincere thoughts, so here was my reply:


The risk of titling an essay “On growing up (and out of your church)” can, upon first impression, give one the sense that in order to have one- you must have the other. By simply throwing this item out on the table, I instantly risk sounding both unnecessarily heady or like a know-it-all, or both. The title was not intended to imply “In order to grow up you have to leave your church.”

It would be a self-contradiction for me to counter-respond with any degree of certainty. After all, the point of the essay was my admission of not knowing! It’s just that I don’t believe anyone else’s claims to certainty either.

From time to time, when I dump that amount of verbiage onto my laptop screen, I don’t do it to challenge or threaten the sincerely held beliefs of my friends, if there were to be any hidden agenda on my part- it would largely be me “trolling” for like-minded thinkers who are interested in sharing similar adventures. To which I’ve enjoyed some success. More importantly though, I sense a deep responsibility to my children and even my grandchildren who very well may ponder, some day long after I’m gone, why I’ve made the decisions I have. How have I come to these conclusions? These kinds of decisions have multi-dimensional impacts and I fully realize my accountability, indeed to generations.


Recently, one familial association of mine laughed quite heartily when I shot from the hip saying I “thought my way out of the church.” Upon closer inspection though, one has to ask if there is any other legitimate course in this regard? The examples are many of those who backslide out of the church and into chaos. That was my father, who grew up well within the moral boundaries of the church’s nurturing. His was no positive direction “out” of the church. What about the more subtle variety though, the even more well known process of fading away slowly, going through the motions once in a while, feeling disillusioned but not really doing anything about it. The half-assing your way out of the church because it “never really did anything for me anyway” routine isn’t exactly the purpose-driven life either- more of a stagnant non-directional flop out of the church. Standard institutional groupthink, on the other hand, typically sees either harmonious alignment to truth within the church, or the backslidden “fall from grace” as it were. To say you “thought your way out” or came to other rationally induced conclusions doesn’t compute to anything other than theological syntax error, and is henceforth redistributed to the “fallen from grace- prayer list” file.

I guess the greatest paradox, in considering institutions, is how they can simultaneously be both absolutely necessary and also, diabolical. Like I mentioned in regards to my Father, I don’t know where he could have found the support structure anywhere else but within the church as he ironed out so much of the flagrant chaos in his life. During his last 10 years, the church provided the “source code” and shielding relationships that finally brought him peace. True, like the analogy goes, he first had to “die to himself” before moving on within the confines of institution. It really worked like a charm too, re-inventing his map, as I remember haggling over ice cream with him and his response: “But it’s the ONLY VICE I have left!”, which was true.

Diabolically though, churches latently exist (like any group or institution) for the furtherance of the church as a cohesive organization more than for the individual development of it’s members. Consider if you will the static theological plight of a paid SDA minister. I’ve met many that I liked. If any true-to-reason minister comes to the conclusion that part of the doctrinal structure they always believed in isn’t quite as sensible as they originally thought it to be, well, what are their options? How much doctrinal flexibility is there in Adventism? On the 27 fundamentals there isn’t really any. The choices for an SDA minister who decidedly comes to a more dynamic (that’s as opposed to static, or unmoving) understanding of certain doctrinal conclusions (Des Ford) really has no room for OPEN exploration within the confines of the church. The church would quickly take away the more direct pragmatic needs in his life, his way of making a living! With a degree in theology and 10 or so years logged as a clergyman, it’s kind of difficult to re-invent your way of making a living. So maintaining the status quo (intellectual dishonesty) or complete divorce from the institution (and it’s retirement plan) often are the only choices for a clergyman with that dilemma. I truly feel bad for anyone who intellectually grows out of the very institution that pays his or her bills. It’s a system that doesn’t nurture true theological exploration, but structural rigidity.

The example of a minister is more of an extreme case, I know, but the de-motivators for swapping out life’s biggest navigational aides loom over all of us. Once again the paradox; that a truly spiritual (and by that I equally mean mental) walk is one that will likely change considerably from beginning to end, but churches pretty much remain unchanging, as is their nature in order to survive as organizations with identities to uphold. Should there be limits on the influence of groupthink and institution in our life?

This brings us back to the reason we’re discussing this in the first place. Continuing your participation in a church organization, whether it is for the sake of your spouse, your kids, or for other people in your sphere of influence, may very well be the most profound act of sacrifice and giving you could offer. Genuine, because you’re purposefully putting yourself into a territory that isn’t necessarily nurturing to you, but by being there, you’re furthering the growth of someone else at a time they need it most. Sacrifice, hmmm…. there’s nothing in it for you, but everything to gain.

I truly hope you’re furthering someone else along to become conscious, more capable, more honest and giving like yourself. That really is the goal isn’t it? Because if we’re going to whatever church we do in order to receive something, then I’m afraid we’re all going to remain spiritually unchanging, which isn’t actually spiritual at all now is it? Well, I guess that ultimately depends on whether or not religion has a binary conclusion to you- the saved/lost motif. I see no evidence of life being reduced to such binary conclusions anymore.

On a personal note though, in order to genuinely belong to an organization, you actually have to internalize the goals and cultural norms of that organization. As you deftly stated “we need to be sharing the truth about God's character” implies that one assumes a convinced understanding of the Creator. Now, you know the model of God’s character and government that I LIKE to think about, but regardless of how much I’d LIKE to BELIEVE it, I can’t bring myself anymore to the intellectual posture necessary that assumes:
“Since I happen to be more adept and certain in understanding the Creator of the universe, more than you do anyway, then I inherently have a waiver at performing one of the most profoundly intrusive acts a human being can do; attempt to influence or change your belief system- to make you believe as I DO.”
This is a goal of the church in which I can’t rationally align myself.

All of the most simplistic/fundamentalist religions in the world, to include Branch Davidians, Mormons, Southern Baptists, Sunni Muslims, and your most culturally retrospective “Historical” Seventh-day Adventist believe they hold this waiver more than anyone else does. Everyone in absolute certainty of the truth…

As my essay forthrightly told, I know less now it seems than I ever did before. I’m less certain now about what I seemed to have had all locked up when I was younger. More over, I’m ok with it. The mystery I’m left with has become a source of wonderment for me. And to speak certainly… life is no less miraculous!
.

Winding Down Weatherly

Like most other visual pursuits of mine, Weatherly and the Trainworks began not as a coordinated or preplanned event, but as happenstance that grew into somewhat of an affection. Weatherly, even the name seeps with quaintness. It’s simple, and when the church bell isn’t ringing it’s also fairly quiet.

Now I’m pretty much a misplaced Californian, so my fondness of byway Pennsylvanian boroughs and towns doesn’t come from being a local, nor does it come from being a tourist. In California I am inundated with the new- oh there’s texture to be sure, but you wouldn’t necessarily know it by driving through a random neighborhood. Towns in central Pennsylvania stand in contrast, where the economical designs of the past, together with the flaking paint and peeling siding interweave with John Mellencamp’s “Small Town” as I drive through.

That cultural contrast is what my mind stumbled upon when I first rolled into Weatherly, (known once upon a time as Black Creek) in order to visit an old Army buddy back in 2000. Since then, my visits have been dual purpose, friends and exploration.

On one of these walks around town, I stood on the main thoroughfare staring at an aged industrial building that appeared to be older than anything else. With train tracks leading into it and a river running alongside, I couldn’t resist. What was once the Weatherly “Train Works” seemed so central to this Pennsylvanian discovery of mine. With the assistance of a long-time resident by the name of John, whom I believe worked there when he was young; I was graciously given the opportunity to photograph the place inside and out. The images came easily.

Still, I’m a semi-routine observer, just visiting with a sense to pause. Every time I do I’ve come away with something new and worthwhile. Perhaps new only to my west-coast sensitivities, but old compared to me! I won’t attempt to verbally extrapolate the images, that’s not something I do (I find it silly when artists do that!) but maybe you’ll get a feeling like I did at the Train Works- something that felt somewhat gritty but familiar, something industrial of course, something… American? Rational or not, it was visually exciting!

I never really “complete” a place that interests me, and there may be more images to be made from this place that is so terrifically commonplace. After all, my old Army buddy expects another visit from me soon I suspect. I’ll look some more, however the most indelible impressions have largely been made in my mind’s eye. I think about them as we make our journey back home and the kids bug me to play what they want to hear from my iPod. They oddly ask me to play “Allentown”…

Posting Images Troubles

What gives with blogger? I attempted many photo uploads tonight with no avail....

Noyes Museum Gala! & Facebook

Long time no post, but here's something! The Noyes Museum Gala is coming up this summer. On July 13th they will be auctioning off a collection of fine artwork, to include mine. Two prints will be offered by the Noyes.

Looks like I should give up some more images after this...

On other fronts, I thought I would enlarge/enliven the blogging concept with a Facebook profile, which shows a little more of my professional life as well. Look for the James Shull profile with a helo on Facebook.com and click the make friends button... that is if you have a Facebook profile account... and if you're friendly of course!

Update to Gallery Site

Please have a gander at the latest portfolio I've placed into the LightWalk gallery site at http://www.lightwalk.us/

Capsized Johnboat, Oyster Creek, NJ 2007

At the top of the Portfolios link, I've inserted "Atlantic City and the Jersey Shore". This is my most recent body of work.

I've still to put in: "Weatherly and the Trainworks" portfolio (this is still ongoing), as well as making each image individually viewable.

Stay tuned for a possible magazine interview...

Merry Xmas

Aerial photo. Pine trees in a ice/snow covered pond. Upstate NY, around 2002-2003.

Atlantic City Boardwalk, Nighttime

Unused Billboard, Atlantic City Boardwalk, NJ 2007

I feel a tad guilty admitting I like this image in color more than it's black and white equivalent. The eery light of Atlantic City is reflecting off of the low cloud ceilings and creating a wonderful orange-esh glow. Color it will stay.

I'll be making more of an effort here to photograph Atlantic City. The Casinos pose a challenge for me since I'm not interested in revealing with obvious intent which casinos they are. I have no particular interest in casinos (though they have great restaurants!) other than the night-light imaging possibilities they provide. Besides, I can't rightfully conceive of a Jersey Shore project without including a strong dose of Atlantic City. MY Atlantic City.

Pier end, Atlantic City, NJ 2007

New Light Walk Gallery Site!

The link is going to soon be the same as it always has been... I hope, so don't change the link quite yet. In the mean time, it's temporarily visible at http://lightwalk.homestead.com/

This is the temporary site until I unlock the old domain. What's to see? A comprehensive portfolio of Salton Sea, next will be Kansas, then .... you'll see.

Noyes 2007 Associate Artist Exhibition

Here we go with another show at the Noyes. As the card states Nov 2-25. Two of my recent images will be on display there along with a fine selection of paintings and works from other Noyes associate artists. I will be there at the reception, which is on 16 Nov @ 5-8pm.

Nicely enough, the good people at the Noyes used my recent "Steel Door, Columbia, Ca" image for the announcement card. Pleasant surprise.

Just had a large batch of negatives processed- neat things coming from PA and NJ.

Trainworks...

Still digging into the negatives here, worked on about 4 images tonight for some preliminary results.

Current article

This was the press release put out by the Pleasantville - Absecon Current. Not bad. I'm curious how they got the second image however, as I only remember submitting the top one.

This article discussed the JerseyArts showcase gallery that I have been featured in during the month of Sept., which can be found at http://www.jerseyarts.com/gallery/index.html

Please check it out, if it's past September 2007, then it will be in the Past Exhibits section.

Back from Cali

It's nice to be back from my not-so-restful vacation back west. Don't get me wrong, I loved getting back to Cali for the first time since 03, however we went nonstop.


My opportunities for acquiring images were few, but I snuck a few in, particularly in Columbia and Monterey. Here's my treasure:


Steel Door, Columbia, Ca. 2007

Door Painting, Columbia, Ca. 2007

Stucco and Shadow, Monterey, Ca. 2007

What do you do when you're standing in line at Disneyland?

Had to just post these for fun...
Of course though, when you're with camera, you're never really bored. Not even when you're waiting in line for your kids to ride the new Nemo submarine adventure.
Taken in August.

Noyes 2007 Biennial

I trust the opening went well at the Noyes for the 2007 Biennial. I wasn't there as I had a family camping trip up in the Delaware water gap- beautiful! Even a few images made.

Anyways, the folks at the Noyes were kind enough to put my image on their homepage, http://www.noyesmuseum.org/index.htm . Have a looksee.

The image used for the show was this, Public Pier, New London, 2006.

...and if you look closely, you can see a USCG 25' patrol boat in the center of the river. You see, it's an action photo!

On other fronts, Jersey Arts, http://www.jerseyarts.com/index.cfm , will likely give me a gallery slot in their online feature artist gallery sometime this fall it appears. Perhaps this will coincide with the upcoming Noyes Museum 2007 Associate Artist Members Exhibition?

Oyster Creek. Visit 2

Really recent digital work from this last weekend...









And left over from visit #1...

Atlantic County Public Library- Mays Landing, NJ

Here's what Michael Cagno and company from the Noyes Museum of Art put up in Mays Landing:

It's a library after all, so we can't expect gallery lighting, but hey, it was a great presentation none the less. Thank you all.