This weekend wedding season drew us to Chicago. I’ve never been to the Windy City so my wife and I drove downtown to meet our friend Josh Coy and see what we could see of the city in 3.5 hours. A monumental task. I’m certain this put strain on my wife & our friend to try and provide the best experience in the shortest amount of time; they never fail me in this department!
After a great meal in a local hipster dive and the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had(a la sir Coy’s recommendation) we wound our way downtown. From Wicker Park we journeyed through the city on a crowded bus, the best way to experience the people, and ended up on Michigan & Randolph at Millennium Park. Touristy for sure but what a great way to feed the aesthetic appetite of amateur photographer.
My wife guided us over to ‘the faces’. She offered no further description. As we wound around the corner and down a flight of stairs, there in front of us, emerged the most fascinating cultural-melting-pot–water-park–play-ground–meeting ground I’ve ever experienced. The air: absolutely filled with laughter. The scene: two towers with faces on them spewing water & hundreds of children of all races…splashing, laughing, and otherwise joyously romping together as their parents laughed and chatted with one another. I hurriedly left my coffee and camera bag with my gracious host and equally gracious wife and pressed in to devour the scene.
I felt like a child myself, dumping my things with my wife and friend, and running down the steps with giddy excitement. The scene was like nothing I’ve experienced. You could literally pluck the joy from the air, harvesting with your ears an almost choral arrangement of fun, laughter, and playful yelling.
I went straight to shooting. I’m lucky I came away with any pictures…there were hundreds of faces with smiles ear to ear, little tikes stomping and splashing, the elders chasing the younger to hoist and hold under the water streaming down from the 3 story columns. I didn’t know where to point my lense, my senses absolutely overwhelmed. I watched kids stare at the water, trying to gird themselves up to withstand the cold shock before they burst toward the water as if shot from a cannon (this is not a pun, I use a Nikon). I watched parents hoist skyward their children to catch a face full of water. All most as if raising them to the heavens in praise and baptism.
The journey to get there however, had taken so long that we had only 20 minutes to take the scene in before we departed, late for the wedding reception. I walked away, my appetite mostly satisfied, with a joy I hoped would linger.
A question raises: what if our baptisms in the church looked like this. People from a hundred different nations, giddy with joy, over the sacrifice of Jesus. People of the world pressing in with one another to taste grace. People absolutely bursting with joy at the gift they’ve received. People dripping with jubilation and the fruits of the Spirit. I don’t think our baptisms are representative of the joy we ought to have over the grace we’ve received. If it did I think we’d get alot more inquirers about our ‘living water’.
Reflecting back on this experience here from my office, the joy still wells up from my chest. I would trade a whole day in any city in the world for that 20 minutes, to photograph those baptized in Millenium Park.