David McElroy

But when I thought how to understand this,
it seemed to me a wearisome task,
until I went into the sanctuary of God….
— Psalm 73:16-17 (ESV)

As I listened to the people around me squabbling with each other Monday night, I felt a vague sense of unease. They snapped at one another. They were petty. On the surface, things were almost civil, but you could feel the hostility of unhappy people taking their feelings out on others.

I felt completely out of place.

I felt as though the boiling anger in these people’s spirits should be obvious to everyone. Much of what I was seeing seemed to be outward projections of internal rage at self. The tension in the air felt emotionally painful to me.

Once more, I felt like an alien among creatures who made no sense to me. Once more, I needed to find peace somewhere. I needed sanctuary from the world. I needed a person, a place or a loving spirit which made sense — which gave me refuge from the storm of this world’s banal and routine hatred.

Again and again, I’ve tried to make sense of this world — and of the people of this world — and I’m left frustrated and feeling alone. What’s more, I can’t find a sense of peace. And like the ancient psalmist, I found myself needing sanctuary — where there might be refuge and understanding.

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In my dream of Christmas Yet to Come, I see a loving mother and I see our children. I see us in a church service together on a Christmas Eve.

I see bright and curious faces experiencing the wonder of something transcendent. I see two parents who love each other and are eager for their children to feel the wonder of something bigger than themselves — to feel the joy and love and connection of Christmas with people who know there is some mysterious power bigger than themselves, something which binds a community of people together through some wisp of spirit inside each heart.

I grew up in churches where the brain was more important than the heart. Nobody would have said it that way, but what mattered was doctrine and rational explanations, not experience or any powerful sense of wonder. We were vaguely disdainful of people who felt too much or expressed too much from the heart.

We quietly extinguished the transcendent from the sacred in most respects — and I believe we lost something important as a result.

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I hate wedding photos.

It’s not that I hate marriage or the people in the pictures. I just don’t see the glamour or fantasy or happiness that so many people associate with those photos. Instead, I associate them with shallow fantasy and excess spending by people looking — consciously or not — to paint a false picture for the world.

I’m often asked why I don’t make money on weekends by taking wedding photos, but I could never be a wedding photographer unless I could take the photos the clients want and tell myself I’m doing parody instead. My over-the-top satirical take on cliched “life event” photos would be exactly what many others truly want and find meaningful.

I’m really big on symbolism and finding meaning in metaphor. I find that wedding photos tend to be shallow expressions of fantasy to cover up the reality of relationships that are shallow and unhappy. Those photos let people lie to others about their marriages for years. More importantly, those photos let people lie to themselves.

My friend Keith Hall shared a story Sunday that neatly illustrates the unintended irony of the American obsession with the wedding facade, which I see as representative of the marriage facade.

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