Living in a larger world

People occasionally ask how I choose which images to post here.  It's a bit hard to answer -- a combination of what-have-I-photographed-recently-that-I-like  and, when I haven't been out with my camera lately, what have I shot in the past that I may have overlooked.  Mostly I just trust that, when looking over the images, something will call to me; I just have to figure out why.

This is what called to me this morning; it's a doorway, shot in Orvieto Italy in 2008, and I can think of at least two reasons why it spoke.  The first is that last night was the monthly First Friday Artwalk on Bainbridge, and the theme of the show at Bainbridge Arts and Crafts Gallery was "Main Street." There were lots of pictures of doorways and windows, even some of Italy, and so that probably planted itself in my brain. 

But the other reason, I suspect, is that since my husband was laid off (about 6 months after this picture was taken) we haven't really done any traveling, except for the annual Thanksgiving trek.  We've both been missing that exposure to other worlds and other ways of seeing, and so reading about Jeremiah's efforts to study and speak to other nations this morning made me think about that again, and made me wonder what sorts of pre-conceived notions I've brought to my travels over the years.

"Crossing the boundaries and exploring the horizons," says Eugene Peterson in Run with the Horses, "develops our own deepest health.  For we cannot be whole enclosed in our own habits...we cannot grow to maturity confined within our own coterie... The larger the world we live in, the larger our lives develop in response."

I know that my world view shifted significantly with my first visit to Italy.  And I know there's room for more growth, and more opening.  And so I suspect that part of what triggered the choice of this photo is hope: hope that the job currently looming on my husband's horizon might come to fruition; that we might eventually replenish those depleted family coffers and actually someday be able to travel again... We've been living a bit in that dark cavern at the lower section of this image, and I'd like to think the time has come for that bright door at the top to open.  What the heck; a girl can dream!