When events are spread out over time, say one now, another in a week, a third two weeks later and the fourth a month after that, we aren’t as inclined to see them as being connected as we would be if they happen over the course of two hours.

I had been working on an image that came out of the camera club trip to Adams Mill, a trip I wrote about in an earlier post.   This is one of those images that seemed like a good idea at the time but which resisted giving up the image within an image, the image with personal meaning that I hoped was in there somewhere.

This was of a set of ropes hanging by a door.  As shown here, it is essentially what came out of the camera.  The subject – whether the ropes, the door, the colors, the texture or some combination of elements – wasn’t coming clear to me.

Easter morning arrived and I was involved in the usual Sunday morning battle with myself over whether to go to church.  My wife and I belong to a wonderful church with an excellent minister, good friends, a strong bent to community service, and people tolerant of one another’s political and religious beliefs.  But I have never liked going to church and the feeling is getting stronger over the years.  Aside from delivering an elderly lady to church who had (thankfully) lost her driver’s license, I had no special demands on me to go.  I could drop her off and go to Fort Harrison State Park to do some shooting.  Or I could go to church.

I was in my studio reading ‘The Courage to Create’, a book by Rollo May.  He was making the point that any creative act is an encounter, essentially an interaction between an individual and a situation, scene, problem, another individual, etc.   The intensity of the encounter is a major force in deciding the outcome.  The encounter for me would be with a scene and later perhaps with the image as it (and I) matured.  The camera, lens, Photoshop and printer are secondary to the encounter; they provide the means for realizing it, or expressing it.

At this point I felt compelled, driven, pushed,  to stop reading and go back to work on the image in Photoshop.  What was needed now seemed entirely clear – crop it down to show some of the ropes and the door and darken the image to emphasize the light seeping in around the door and through the knothole.  That was it.  The light is what this image is about.

I emailed  the completed image to a friend, not telling her the title.   Here is her response:

‘My initial reaction was curiosity and I liked the warmth of the brown wood and the texture of the rope. A moment later,  I began to assign my own projection of danger to it and realized something bad could be lurking on the other side of that door or within the dark space.’

I then told her the title – ‘Doorway into the Light’ – and she responded:

‘That would definitely work. One could definitely anticipate good things on the light side – and there might be a hellish aspect to the dark door and the heavy or possibly threatening rope.’

I was glad to get that response, it is consistent with what I saw.

I decided to go to church, if only to see if it seemed like a mistake when I was in the church service.  This Easter Sunday the minister did not give the usual sermon about resurrection.  Rather, he talked about the essence of the Christian experience being an encounter with Jesus.  There was that word again.  Encounter.  In my frame of reference that made an encounter with Jesus a creative act.  Reflecting on Jesus’ dialogs with various disciples and other followers, in all the cases I can think of, someone asks a question and Jesus answers in an unexpected way, a creative way.  This encounter with Jesus absolutely requires intensity, giving oneself to it.  Through that intense encounter comes transformation.

It was all coming together.  The encounter with the scene of the ropes, door and light; the resolution of the problem of what the image was to be; understanding better the nature of creativity;  coming to see  encounter with Jesus as critical to the Christian experience.

The image now takes on additional meaning.  It can be frightening to pass through that doorway, not knowing exactly what is on the other side.  Better perhaps, to stay on this side of the door in the comfort of what we know.  But hanging there are those ropes which can bind us to the present, hold us back.  That fear can indeed make the experience of passing through the door, the encounter,  intense.  This gives us a better idea of what May meant when he titled his book ‘The Courage to Create’.  It does take courage to step out and create something new, whether it be a photograph or a spiritual transformation.

I think I’ll give church another chance.