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About PhotoPrayers

For a tentative man like me, this is a wildly optimistic and daring project. Every time I pair a photo with a prayer, I'm stretched, and not always pleasantly. Finding a resonant combination of words and image is neither obvious nor straight forward. And, if you've already looked at the photos and prayers on this website, you've seen the variety of my success.

Sometimes I start each week with a photograph, something that makes me happy, usually something shot recently. As much as anything, this project is simply a way of sharing what I've photographed with visitors to this website and to subscribers.

I have been taking photographs for decades. The world is full of light and meaning. It speaks non-verbally and I try to listen. "Look at me!" the world says. "Look at this!" it says. I run for my camera.

Usually, rather than starting with a photo, I start each week by choosing a prayer. I look over the Sunday service at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Delaware, until I find a prayer that touches me, one that might work with a photo. Then I start looking over my photos, usually hundreds of them. This is a process of saying "No" repeatedly until I can say "Maybe." Rarely can I say, Yes!" Rarely does a photo obviously resonate with a prayer.

Having tentatively chosen a prayer and photo, there is still work to be done to make them resonate. The resonance can be as different as bass and soprano notes working together. To get them in tune, I tweak the prayer to make it fit its new context, perhaps replacing one word with another, sometimes re-writing the prayer entirely. I am not an ordained minister or even a learned Christian, so this is not an easy task for me. My guess, though, is that this creative process is intrinsically difficult and would not be any easier were I ordained or full of learning. It's a matter seeking and finding, of trusting something excellent to appear at the end in spite of the awkwardness of the steps leading there. Do I pray while I'm working? You bet!

While photos can be seriously modified these days, I do not, not here. I want to show the world as it is. Besides, the world and those in it don't need improvement by me. The world is glorious just as it is; the people, splendid. We don't always see them that way. Usually we don't; at least I don't. Hopefully these photos and prayers are reminders of the truth, that with thankful hearts we may see the gifts God shares, and every blessing.

These photo prayers would not happen at all except for the weekly deadlines given me by Westminster Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Delaware. These photos and prayers appear at the top of the e-newsletter it sends out to some six hundred members. That's how this project started, as a way of putting something prayerful at the top of that newsletter, back when I worked at Westminster as their communications coordinator. After twenty weeks or so, I got the idea of collecting these photos and prayers on a website. Thankfully, even though I no longer work at Westminster, they continue to publish these photos and prayers in their e-newsletter, so this website continues to grow.

Thinking these photo prayers work better individually rather than as a collection, I have started sending them to subscribers every week (every two weeks in summer). Click here if you would like to subscribe.

If you would like to use these photos and prayers on-line or in a publication, you are welcome to do so. If you do use them, please click here to contact me, especially if you want a high resolution version. I'd love to know others enjoy them.

—Danny Schweers

Return to the Photo Prayers.

To see more of Danny's photos, visit his website.

Notes:

2009_20 The first line of this prayer is from a poem by Richard Lovelace (1618-1657): "To Althea, from Prison." Here is the last of the four stanzas.

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free;
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty.