On earth as it is in heaven

On Wednesday evenings I take my daughter to Communicant's class, which is the Presbyterian equivalent of catechism. The teacher is walking her and her classmates through the articles of the Westminster Confession. At least that's what I suppose they must be doing. After the first few sessions, I'd quite "religiously" grill my daughter about what they were teaching her. Then I'd thoroughly explain to her (in what turned out to be exruciating detail) all the alternative ways of thinking about what they taught her. For example, I noted that not all people reject the existence of dinosaurs. (That was low. It's a beautiful program, and the teacher is a gem.) Still, after a few sessions I think she began to wonder, with all my alternative explanations to what she was learning in the class, why I permitted her to attend the program at all.

After I drop her off I have an hour to kill. I could attend an adult church function at the same time, but why would I want to spoil a perfectly good hour with nothing to do? So sometimes I find an empty room and read. Other times I go to Starbucks and read. And other times I wander up and down our single downtown road, Broad Street, and take photos and try to avoid getting reported to the police. "That creep is back! Every dang Wednesday he comes back!!"

I took this set of photos in a tiny one-room prayer chapel in the building of our former church. The room was dark, but there is a stain-glass window, an over-size Bible made apparently for a race of future Bible-reading behemoths, and a simple silver cross.

I made all of these images by photographing the back of the shiny metal cross so that it reflected the stain glass window. The scene of the crime:



My challenges were these:

1. Squeezing the camera behind the cross in such a way that neither I nor the camera were captured in the photo.

2. Capturing an image of something representational--I never hit the jackpot, which would have been a close-up of Jesus's face--instead of capturing mere abstract colors and images. This meant I had to move the cross off its station and point it in odd positions while holding my camera in the other hand.

3. Avoiding excommunication from the church.

4. Avoiding arrest.

5. Avoiding my daughter from disowning me.

This photo below is my favorite in the bunch. It's the photo that inspired the title for the series.



This photo below nicely captured some ambient light that looks like light streaming from the cross.



And this one shows how I positioned the cross on its edge to produce some interesting effects. I must say I had to assume that crosses are not like the American flag--that once they touch the ground you must burn them. I decided not to burn the cross because for one thing it was made of metal, and I didn't want to first burn down the church, and because, second, here in good ol' Georgia (Joe-ja) cross burning evokes unpleasantness I'd like to avoid altogether.

"No, Officer, we're not exactly sure what he's doin'. It's either blaspheming God or committing a hate crime. Probly both. But whatever it is, we do know he's gonna be excommunicated from the church. And arrested. And disowned by his daughter. That we do know."

"We got it from here, sir. Believe me, we got ways of puttin' the fear o' god in 'im. To the pokey he goes."