Jyoti Mutschler, when asked, is quite happy to explain how to pronounce her name properly:  “It’s JO-tee.  No D!”  Jyoti’s mom, Cathy, came to Washington several years ago from Minnesota to attend Trinity Bible College (then Lutheran Bible Institute) and made Washington her home.  On September 27, 1988, Jyoti, Cathy’s newly-adopted daughter, arrived from Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), India, via Thai Airlines.  Together, they lived in Bothell where Cathy served as an Associate in Ministry at Bothell First Lutheran and Jyoti made early, long-standing friendships that continue to this day.  Cathy was called to serve as Youth Director for Faith Lakewood, so they moved to Arlington when Jyoti finished the 4th grade.  Around that time, she began to ask her mom for a dog.  

It took a while, but Jyoti finally convinced Cathy that this was important, doable and had to happen.  Jyoti didn’t want just any dog, she wanted a Dachshund.  The summer before 8th grade, she went off to Wilderness Ranch Camp in Claresholm, Alberta, Canada.  She had picked her dog out of a litter of ten Miniature Short-haired Dachshunds.  Misty, a female pup with white on her chest, was going to be hers--but not until after she returned from camp.   Jyoti and Misty were together for 15 years until Misty contracted cancer.   It was a hard experience;  Misty’s life and death affected Jyoti so deeply she wrote a blog about it, a “testimony of the miracles” that seem to have attached themselves to her heart and stayed.

Jyoti graduated from Pacific Lutheran University with a degree in Anthropology and she has plenty to say about human beings.  She has more to say about animals (especially horses), about God and about  living out her faith in her own unique way.

Q:  How/Where does God show up in your life?  It depends on how open you are to receiving God--to me, God shows up every day.  God’s omnipresent--like a friend who doesn’t know personal space. God speaks in silence, in the empty space--not with a Big Bang, but in the little stuff. You have to take the time to allow the little moments to make their impact.  You can’t always be looking for neon signs.

A big thing for me--photography helped God be obvious.  In other words, I feel God’s presence when I take photos: everything just feels right.  The animals aren’t spooking, but doing what they do, and I can take my shots without them being disrupted and nothing else matters in that moment but the subject and the photographer. . . . I feel calmest when I am doing my own photography. . . . I share space with the animals, I’m not above them.  I wouldn’t be able to bond with animals if I wasn't quiet, learned their body language, made it not about me.  

Q:  How were you introduced to Photography?   I started taking pictures of architecture while traveling in Europe for the first time; I was a tourist in Germany, Norway, and England.  Then, when I had NMDA, my friend Colette, a fellow PLU alumna, sent me a camera.  Taking photos aided in my recovery.  I had to learn how to manage the camera, to understand how to do things, about the care that goes into getting the shot.   It got my mind off the hallucinations.  

Q:  Wait.  What? Hallucinations?  From the NMDA.  [WebMD explains:  “NMDA--Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis: a rare disease in which the immune system attacks the brain and disrupts normal brain signaling.”]  Nobody knows how I got it.  I don’t remember a lot.  I was at Providence in Everett, spent nine months hospitalized at UW Medical Center and had mental hallucinations for over a year.  Good friends from Bothell graciously took care of “Misty b” while I was sick. I had to learn to write, to type all over again.  Didn’t feel like talking and didn’t go to church for several months--I just couldn’t function.  There was a turning point.  I graduated.  Slowly, it went away.

And now she works for Sunglass Outfitters at Cabela’s.  

Q:  Where does God show up there?  In the people--good co-workers, a great boss. In learning things like how to interact with people.  It’s interesting; I have more skills than I thought!  I’m open to learning, being corrected gently, and I’m willing to take advice, critique that’s intended to help improve me.  I’m learning to listen to customers, to figure out what they really need, to help educate them and tailor their purchase to their actual needs.  

Jyoti has to balance all this with staying alert, paying attention to/looking out for shoplifters.   It turns out that, as a student at PLU, her work study job included doing video surveillance.  She developed instincts, can detect patterns in behavior.   The work gets overwhelming when it’s busy.   So she spends her down time alone or with friends--some of whom are four-legged. 

Q:  So, why horses?  So many of your best photographs, the most beautiful ones I’d say, are of horses.  What I love about animals is musculature--the rippling body.  With horses, it’s the power, the gentleness.  And their lips.  Prehensile lips.  Pre--what?  Prehensile (pree·hen·sl).   They can grasp things with their lips--it’s delicate eating.

In addition to horses (and dogs), Jyoti loves to travel.  Jyoti went to school with two kids she knew from Faith Lakewood and over the years, she’s become friends and travel-buddies with their mom, Peggy.  This fall, Jyoti and Peggy will journey  to Ireland on a trip postponed last year because of the pandemic.  

I can’t wait to see the pictures.