Dignity and the stories of little people

I made reference yesterday to the dignity of humanity....Chirstianity teaches that each human being bears the dignity of the image of God...and that each human being suffers under the depravity of the curse of sin.

That said, we can emphasize a redeemed humanism. Not a humanism that puts man as the measure of all things, but a humanism that sees each individual's story as a mini-epic drama/comedy authored by the Creator. Our stories are significant because they're His stories (that is, after all, a part of believing in a sovereign God.)

There are any number of websites that strive to help people tell their stories....to reach behind the public facades that we put on to ease the social obligations to those around us. In the past I've profiled such interesting sites as:

* PostSecret -- the site where individuals make postcard artworks sharing a deep secret they hold within themselves. Some are touching, many are disturbing, and a few are just bust a gut funny. New postcards are posted online each week. (see my original 2005 post)
* Look at Me -- this site is a collection of "found photos"....vintage family photos that were either lost, stolen, or thrown away. They are nameless and we have no idea of knowing who the subjects are. Yet strangely there is great power in the pictures. (see my 2006 post)

Here's a new one for you. I saw this video of artist Jonathan Harris talking about several of his projects. It's an interesting 18 minutes or so.



His most interesting project is one called We Feel Fine, a web project that seearches all weblogs for the phrase "I feel" then it copies the whole sentence and any photo that might go with the post. The website allows the end user to creatively browse through these snippets of feelings. One can click on the montage feature and see photos, or one can organize by age, feeling type, location, even weather.

Again, we see stories of both dignity and depravity .... and they teach us of the deeper heart cries to which the healing balm of Jesus can be applied.

Excelsior

Russell