I heard an interview on the the CBC’s Tapestry today featuring a Canadian documentary photographer (Louie Palu) whose work is based mostly on his time capturing photos in war zones, focusing on those ‘difficult to photograph’ subjects. (Afghan war, Guantanamo prison, violence of the Mexican drug cartel, and even just homeless people in the streets of downtown Toronto). The interview itself is only 18 minutes long, feels awkwardly honest and invoked in me a sense of… ah, yes. The kind of connection you feel when someone puts to words feelings you’ve experienced before but hadn’t quite been able to grasp quite yet. The focus of the interview was Palu’s journey towards (and sometimes away from) his own spirituality. I can understand that journey – that struggle.

When asked about his own spirituality and how his work had affected him, Palu recalls some of the most gruesome images he’s witnessed over the length of his career. He explains consistent exposure to the inhumanity and brutality these events possessed had taken him to a dark place. ‘There are no atheists in foxholes’ he says. (This was a term I admittedly had to wiki: “The statement “There are no atheists in foxholes” is an aphorism used to argue that in times of extreme stress or fear, such as during war (“in foxholes“), all people will believe in, or hope for, a higher power (and there are therefore no atheists).

This reminded me of what a friend told me recently, about how ‘we all innately feel the need for that connection’, leaving the question whether we live our lives aware of it or not. The fragility of life balanced by the eternality of the spirit. A concept I’ve encountered often in sufi poetry – the concept that God exists in our search for him: ‘lo I am with you always’ means when you look for God/God is in the look of your eyes/in the thought of looking’. Of course, the argument is that this only makes sense to you if you believe in that higher power. But the point is that we all do, whether you are conscious of it or not is the changing factor. Reminds me of something I read on the internet a while back: “In religion we call it spirit/ in science we call it energy/ in the streets we call it vibes/all I say is trust it”

I had also read recently about what some are calling “Sunday Assemblies”; a congregation of non-believers, a sort of church for the atheist. I think this concept is so brilliant – and only goes to further prove this point that we all have a need for a connection, a vibe, an energy – even if you happen to be an atheist. I understand how it can get a bit awkward going to church or a mosque or temple, when you don’t exactly believe in ‘God’. Sunday Assemblies address this need for spiritual connection without the requirement of organized religion.

An excerpt from the interview:

“After Afghanistan I could really see the end of my life. I could see the fragility and I could feel my own morality. and I was terrified for a long time. I saw a therapist for a long time. I did two things as well, and it’s about connecting to my spirt. the body and the mind are assaulted in war in such remarkably heavy ways that you need to reconnect them in some way. so I did .. bikram yoga. and that was a practice where I was able to achieve that reconnection. I also did animal therapy. I started grooming horses. I mean, to see that living thing and to try to imagine, to think beyond biology and understanding where these creations came from, and to understand just beyond how the fur feels or how beautiful they are.. there’s something more there. there’s a spirit to all living things.”

this paragraph hit home. I realized that this was the basis to spiritual belief – the acknowledgement that we are not just skin and bones and muscle matter – that all living things have a spirit. that dimension to existence that distinguishes us from inanimate objects. I think it’s from here that any journey into understanding who we are and what we are connected to begins.

Full interview can be found here.

**

Photo: Palu explains the setting for one of his favorite photograph: “It’s a photo of a wounded afghan police officer who got shot, and he’s singing to his pet birds. it’s just this remarkable moment when I saw it, where a human being connecting to another living thing, and they’re the same. They’re talking even though they don’t speak the same language. It’s about the living spirit within each of them.”

P.S. I love the CBC.