Photo by Erin Brierley
“But my own wings were not enough for this,
Had it not been that then my mind there smote
A flash of lightning, wherein came its wish.
Here vigour failed the lofty fantasy:
But now was turning my desire and will
Even as a wheel that equally is moved,
The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.”
—Dante, Paradiso, Canto XXXIII
Within every one of us dwells a Dante. No, I don’t mean we are destined to be great poets; but we are each made to be profoundly alive to the poetry of existence. To be made ‘in the image’ of a God who is Truth and Love itself, is to be a being who, by its very nature, is engineered to be sensitive to “truth in its beauty, and love in its tenderness,” as the old Epiphany hymn says. Our destiny, our journey, our very nature, is communion with truth and love.
This is the common story of all humanity. But it also takes on an entirely unique and personal dimension for each of us; and, for some of us, that means exploring communion through creativity.
Let’s think about it: when we call God a Creator, do we mean to say He is creative? Yes, divinely so. As Creator, He not only wills creation, but is at the heart of what is created. Being divinely creative means that He is infinitely imaginative: but what God has created is the sum of His especial hopes and dreams. That is to say, what exists has not simply been willed into existence, but loved into being. And we find ourselves at the summit of that; we are, each one of us, God’s heartfelt prayer.
I don’t think the vocation of the artist, the writer, the creative person, can be separated from this principle regarding the unity of love and creativity. It was Love that first gave rise to creation itself. And just as the Holy Trinity is, itself, an endless life cycle of love, our creativity is a perpetual cycle of response and receptivity. Our sensitivity to God, life, people, the world around us, produces a similar receptivity in others who witness our work; but God is the first initiator, and authentic creativity finds its pinnacle in the raw response to God’s initiative in us.
I’ve always been a creative person, but I haven’t always been aware of the source of my inspiration. Raised atheist, I have found that my creativity has been fruitfully multiplied since my conversion to Christianity. Why? Because everything in life is now a pathway to God; a new way of looking at God, a novel revelation not yet disclosed to me. Though I find that my own creative juices flow in several different directions — writing, crafting, painting — I would acquaint no creative exercise so much with the experience of conversion as photography. I’m not a professional; there’s no technical mastery of the art here. For me, photography is the art of “paying attention;” and, such is conversion.
I am sometimes asked by curious people how my conversion took place — what the journey from atheist to Roman Catholic was like, and what were the steps along the way. No great painting is the outcome of a mathematical formula. The really beautiful, miraculous things we see and experience are the ones we cannot completely understand. The movements of the Holy Spirit, unseen but felt, are what lead painters to paint, writers to write, and converts to convert. My journey to Christ is not something with a specific beginning and end; it took place, is still taking place, within moments, throughout years.
I find photography to be an apt metaphor for the process of conversion. Photographers often talk about light being the guiding principle in making a good photograph, and it’s true: paying attention to the presence of light, its direction and perspective, is absolutely necessary. Equally, being aware of darkness — of the places where shade sharply contrasts with what is illuminated — is important for our discernment of what we view. Just as photographers look at their subject as a harmony of light and shade, so must we learn to look at the light and shade within ourselves, ere we can really meet with God. We must learn to be aware of our darkness in the context of encountering a God who dwells within, in those places within ourselves where we find illumination and enlightenment.
A good photographer simply always has his eyes open to the light: he’ll follow a sunset down the horizon, he’ll trace a sunbeam through a leafy canopy, he’ll catch the first gleam of the rosy aurora, he’ll notice the kindling flame in the eye of a stranger. That is to say, the Photographer is a person aware of light’s universal and unified presence. Yet photography is not only about perceiving light, but wanting to capture, explore and respond to it. Photographers are, in this sense, in a constant process of conversion and enlightenment; what they do with natural light, is what our souls must do with God’s light. Our journey must be a continual seeking and exploration of this light. While we long to capture it, in the end it is the Light who will capture us, and hold us in an eternal communion with itself. Conversion is a process of witnessing light; one day, we simply open our eyes. We finally pay attention to what has always been within and around ourselves. What follows is the great work of the divine Artist: we become God’s masterpiece, ourselves a beacon of that same Light, in a world,
“which most fervid is and living
With breath of God and with his works and ways.”
—(Dante, Paradiso, Canto XXIII).
—written by Erin-Therese Brierley
