This weekend I’m answering a call that shouts out from deep inside me to create — more specifically, to work on something I can touch and feel and turn over and hold. Not something on a computer. And so, I’m “scrapping.” Rather, I’ve taken an empty scrapbook/photo album that has been languishing in the guest room and I’m filling it with my “photographs sans people.”

I frequently photograph flowers, trees, landscapes, squirrels, ducks and the dogs. I have images of ginger flowers and a great shot of a duck in Hawaii from the 1970’s (scanned from Kodachrome slides no less); I have plants I can name, and ones I can’t. I have a duck from Hawaii and a seagull from Montauk, NY. I have dogwood and azalea blossoms and crepe myrtle from summer and winter. There are pictures of daylilies from Alabama to Maine, and columbines where the seeds were brought from Maine and planted here in Alabama (beautiful flowers).

It started simple — put the pictures in a book and make a note about what, where and why – or something about what what going on at the time. But, it didn’t last that way. The impression is so much better if you frame the shot. You know — maybe a bit of cropping, or a bit of color around the edge. Follow that with something other than just centering the photo on the page. Group things that go together. Frame it!

Frame it. Not everything can be the most important all the time, all at the same time. Frame it so that there is a focus to the shot. Frame it to free up the observer to get the point. Pick up the proper colors. Use the best mat color and size. Frame it to make my point. And in the process, I begin to understand it all better myself. And I make it solid so I can go back and remember what I thought I learned.

In reading back over what I wrote above, it strikes me that in many ways Jesus is the image of God’s love… framed within the Gospel stories, framed in the shape of a human being, framed by the effect He had and continues to have on people. God’s Love made solid. Something we can touch and feel and at times hold.

[Note/Update: After posting this, I found that a friend had posted following link on Facebook: The Case for Working With Your Hands. Is there something in the air? I tell you, there are no coincidences. Or, maybe I’m just focussed on the same thing as Claire.]