This entry originally posted on 12/9/2007. I’m posting this again because we heard recently that a student named David, who dances in front of the camera towards the end of this video passed away about a month ago. He was exceptional.

Last night Allison, Ava, and I went to a Christmas party held at Children’s Hospital for Allison’s work. Allison works with a program called Project Search where she provides job coaching for people with special needs. Students in the program might have Down Syndrome, or Autism, or some other form of mental/physical disability.

While these students might have a hard time learning how to do certain things in life, I don’t believe dancing is a problem area. Those peeps can dance. You know how you go to a wedding and maybe 25% of the people dance? And that’s at a good wedding! This was nothing like that…at this party there was some serious dancing happening. Without reservation people flailed wildly and it was exquisite. No one cared if they looked cool or dorky. There wasn’t any room for people who couldn’t get over themselves.

Here’s a little taste:

This entry originally posted on April 19th of 2009.

I want to show you some pictures.

When I was 16 years old I took this photograph of my friend Valerie. We were at her and her twin sister Vickie’s farm in Indiana. This was a great day.

When I was 17 years old…I took this photograph of Kayla. She was born on October 10th of 1999 to a girl I was dating at the time. I got caught up in a relationship and found out later that my girlfriend was 4 months pregnant. I stayed with her and fathered a child that wasn’t mine while I was a child myself. I essentially ran away from my dad’s house and took off to take care of my girlfriend and this baby. One week after this baby was born, her mother went back to Ecstasy, Cocaine, and Marijuana leaving me to fend for myself with her. I did everything I could for this baby girl until she was 6 months old, when her mom dumped me. Never have I been closer to taking my own life than when I was trying to support a “family”, working non-stop, and dealing with a drug-addicted girlfriend while I was 17 years old.

When I was 17 years old I took this photograph of my sweet Dalmatian, Teddie. At the time, we had 5 Dalmatians at my mom’s house. It was an average-sized house, and 5 Dalmatians was crazy to be honest, but Teddie was probably the most mild-mannered dog I’ve ever owned. She died several years back and I really miss that one.

When I was 17 I took this photograph of my dad, who got me into photography. He constantly took me on photo-trips as a teenager and I publicly hated it. In secret, I loved these trips and I am so thankful for them now.

When I was 18 years old I did what I had done many times before // I loaded up my little white Toyota Celica with my photo bag and I set out on my own to seek some sort of adventure. I took a drive deep into Indiana with the intent of getting myself lost somewhere. I found a longhorn steer and I used some sort of strange filter to get a creepy effect.

When I was 18 years old my dad and I went to Spring Grove Cemetery and shot a couple rolls of film. As always, he shot black and white and I shot color slides. I remember specifically that this was the day I purchased my Nikon N90s camera and it was an incredible beast to shoot with at the time. We explored headstones and mausoleums…this one was beautiful, as were the clouds that day.

When I was 18 years old I drove slowly up my grandma and granddad’s street looking for something to photograph. I found an old barn on an odd hill and I shot an entire roll of Fuji Velvia ISO 50 slide film. 36 exposures and this was my favorite one.

When I was 18 years old I started experimenting a lot with long exposures. I took this one outside of a Borders bookstore near Northgate Mall around 9pm at night. It was a minute long exposure and during that minute I slowly zoomed the lens from wide-angle to telephoto.

When I was 19 years old I shot this photograph of my lovely wife Allison. She was my fiancee at the time and she also had some seriously hot red hair.

When I was 20 years old I shot this photograph of my sister-in-law Allayna. She was worn out from a day at the beach.

And now I have showed you the things that I wanted to show you.
Feel free to go back to what you were doing.

We’ve been having some strange weather here in Cincinnati lately. I cannot remember a summer where we had this much rain. There has been flooding, electrical storms, and crazy clouds rushing in quickly. As we left the grocery store last night the majority of the employees were standing near the doors and you’d have thought the end of days was here. They were all staring up at the sky and forecasting their gloomy interpretations of what was about to happen. As I pushed the cart into the parking lot, my wife Allison and the kids ran ahead of me. I looked up and saw what the big hullabaloo was all about. Then I grabbed my phone and clicked a picture. Maybe the end was near – or maybe it was just going to rain.

I’ve looked at this photo a lot since I took it last night and for some reason I keep thinking of fear rather than rain. Those dark clouds creeping in over us caused a lot of panic for people even though deep down we all knew what would be behind them…little droplets of water.

So many of the interactions we have in our lives are the result of fear. Someone says something to us that threatens us in some way and we often react out of fear. We don’t want our kids to be less than some other kids and so we make excuses for them…out of fear. We aren’t as strong as someone else and so we quit to hide our weaknesses because we are afraid to fail.

Certain fears are good and rational.

You should be afraid to touch the stove.

You should be afraid to run out into traffic.

But so many of our fears are not good – not rational. This is not how things should be. We have been given freedom. A freedom to experience joy and peace and love without withholding. A freedom to choose and a freedom to feel the safety that we have. Safety is not the opposite of risk. We’re meant to live lives of risk and danger and adventure. Safety is the opposite of fear. We’re meant to have security in the most important thing of all and if we have a blessed assurance in that, then we’re set. We’ll always be okay. The covenant will never be taken away from us.

We are free. That’s the only way we can truly be safe, vulnerable, risky, or afraid.

I’m reminded of this passage from C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity:

God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata–creatures that worked like machines–would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.

Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently He thought it worth the risk.

You are free.

Free to take risks. Free to not be as good at something. Free to fail.

You are free to let go of fear.

Be safe,
Ryan