Passport Photo
A very patient person kindly took my passport photo the other day. Tolerant and long suffering they led me gently through the necessary steps. Then they swiftly sent the image to my trusty email doodad.
Passport photos don’t capture you at your dazzling best. The image that looks back at me is unrecognisable.
The guy that I see is much more lined and jowly than I remember him. And the hair… The shiny brown locks have been subsumed by a curious shade of grey. It’s all a bit disconcerting.
This older bloke stares back at me unwavering and I have to ask ‘Who are you old man?’ I could answer him with things like rector, husband, canon, dad, uncle or husband. And each one of those is true, but only in part. None of them can tell the whole of ‘me’.
The same could be said of my childhood photos. They tell part of the picture. Brother, son, cousin etc. All of the photos leading up until now are an authentic but incomplete snapshot of the someone I am or was.
And there’s the rub! I have been many things to many people over many years; counsellor, priest, friend and client. To be any of those people and all of those people, is a rare, undeserved and unlooked for privilege.
But by far the most important thing is simply to be a child of God. A recalcitrant and rascally brat sometimes. A wilful, stubborn and stumbling juvenile who skins their knee on the same predictable rocks on the same erroneous path. But this is the fellow who looks back at me in the photo. And I might look disheveled and a bit worn round the edges but that can never diminish who I truly am and nor can the years steal who you really are.