2011‑2022, and is preserved here for archival purposes.
Is there anything more free than venturing out on the water?
The soft edges of this photograph evoke a dreamlike quality for the viewer. To where will this humble vessel transport its inhabitants today? Is there anything more free than floating over the water? Not for the apostle Peter, whose walk on the wet matter s...
As the geese skim the waters edge, photographer Linda Couture reflects on the power of nature to signal a shift in time.
Something Told the Wild Geese
by Rachel Field, 1894-1942
Something told the wild geese
It was time to go,
Though the fields lay golden
Something whispered, "snow."
Leaves...
Many moments of transcendence are found in the every day. Ottawa photographer Ruth Dick pays homage to a transcendent connection on the streets of Montreal with her camera lens.
"A child brought to a parade in Montreal and a performer in the parade created this moment of close, joyful, transcending connection in the midst of a big, loud, moving spectacle."
...
The cycle of creation is made manifest in the details of an old motor vehicle gradually being subsumed into the earth.
An old, discarded automobile sinks under the weight of branches and leaves in a rural wrecking yard. The shadows in the hollow behind the detritus of shattered glass seem to be pushing the car further into the earth, but they also provoke vivid memory of wh...
Light and shadow serve as a lens to illuminate reverent solitude.
The melding of light, colour and darkness can bring the wonder of the transcendent, the mystery of the sacred, to almost any space. The photo was taken in a small café on Preston Street but the vivid yellow of the young woman's textured hat, set against the...
Judy Csillag shares a photograph taken by her brother Ron with Convivium viewers and reveals how a place of deep suffering can become holy ground.
Looking at this picture you may be asking yourself, "How has a death camp that murdered approximately 1.6 million Jews could be a sacred space?"
As a child of two Holocaust survivors, it is the cemetery where most of my family was exterminated. When ...
Photographer Linda Couture leads the viewer through a contemplation of silence and the sunset.
The different phases of a sunset are always pure joy to watch. The lines, the colors, and the shapes that we can observe take different dimensions at night. We can contemplate in silence, and admire the unique beauty that is right there in front of us, a gr...
Photographer Dave Andrews brings the people of Carp together to mark Canada Day in the beauty of the Canadian landscape.
In the second of our two part series preparing for Canada Day, we reveal the fruition of photographer Dave Andrews dream to fill in the space created in the shape of a Canadian flag on Haskell farm. "The townsfolk of Carp filled the maple leaf Canada mornin...
Photographer Dave Andrews shares a shot, as envisioned in a dream he had back in the middle of Canadian winter, to celebrate Canada in the middle of an open field.
Capuring the sacred beauty of Canada and the indominability of the Canadian spirit, this Sacred Spaces capture features the beauty of Haskell farm. "This shot was the result of a dream I had the previous January," notes photographer Dave Andrews. Taken in J...
Photographer Linda Couture leads the viewer into an experience of being suspended outside the finitude of one season and the welcoming of a new one.
To watch others witnessing the power of ice breaking on the surface of the lake is to stand, suspended outside the finitude of one season and the welcoming of a new one. Day in, day out, life and death: the passing of time, growing older together.
Lo...
Photographer Peter Stockland takes Sacred Spaces viewers behind the scenes, encouraging them to view the world with the clarity of a child once again.
A reflection from photographer Peter Stockland: "It was day of bright spring morning sun, and I noticed the peculiar way the light reflected from the bare branches of the trees around a square in front of a church in Montreal. I spotted this little boy on a...
Photographer Hayley Lockrem captures the essence of Canadian communities of faith, standing side by side, facing the future in faith and friendship.
Theologian C.S. Lewis speaks of the power of friendship in his book The Four Loves, describing the posture of friends as being "...side by side, absorbed in some common interest." The power of photographer Hayley Lockrem's photograph lies in her ab...
Photographer Linda Couture reveals the beauty of dawn in its promise of new beginning and the surprise of colour that awaits all those willing to seek it.
Dawn is always a spectacle of colors and surprises for one’s eyes. It gives time to think of the day that seems to be holding still yet is already beginning to pass; of the people we will meet that we know and love – or that we’ve never met before; of the m...
New life often serves as the moment when the veil between heaven and earth appears to be lifted, hope made possible in the form of an immeasurable gift - a child.
The hint of a yawn, the curve of smooth new skin - new life. Few things serve as quite so tangible a reminder of the sacred present in our midst than a newborn. In capturing a shot of this new spirit, fresh from the womb photographer Jaydene Freund reminds ...
Photographer Laura Brandt's capture of the craggy landscape of Iceland, the viewer is prompted to ask, "Where does the essence of ordinary grace unfold?"
Nestled in the midst of craggy outlooks scattered under open sky, small figures cluster on outskirts of an outcropping. Photographer Laura Brandt's shot evokes a sense of smallness, the figures juxtaposed against her landscape in such a way so as to suggest...
Photographer Peter Stockland captures a shaft of light that evokes, for him, a sense of anticipation.
Framed so as to position the viewer almost as a member of the Good Friday processional as captured by photographer Peter Stockland. The sense of presence in the photograph is nearly palpable. Notes Stockland, "I was at the front of Montreal's Notre Dame Bas...
Photographer Annie Spratt's expansive photograph invites the viewer to consider the intersections of time and space.
The expanse of space inspires a sense of vast unfolding in Annie Spratt's image of rural Iceland. The sense of negative space contrasted with the possibility made visible by way of a highway strikes the viewer. Where does space and boundary intersect? Does ...
Photographer Jamie Delaine Watson reminds Sacred Spaces viewers that wherever love is so too is there holy ground.
A look, a moment of love. The joining of two in marriage - holy ground. It is author Alice Munro who said, "In your life there are a few places, or maybe only the one place, wher something happened, and then there are all the other places." How beautiful th...
Light, dappled goodness, prayer, would we continue to seek to see goodness in the land of the living.
Dappled sunlight threads through the branches; shards of sunlight slip through. We have come to this place to pray. But instead of bowing our heads we raise them to the sky. "Lord of the heaven and the earth. The one who created these very trees. Root us we...
Photographer Linda Couture's piece inspires the viewer with a sense of awe and heavenly reverence as the scale of the structure reminds us of our need to always, always, rise.
"So we rise," the sculpture beckons us, arms stretched the length of their span. The splayed hand, the bowed head, the precision with which a ribcage has been wrought - reminders of man's simultaneous fragility and resiliance. And so, just as we rise, we bo...
Explorer Brianna Vyn reminds Sacred Spaces viewers of the importance of pause and praise.
Write Convivium reader Brianna Vyn in response to this photo, "Just as we don't love the moon less when it is not whole, our Creator does not love us less when we miss the mark time and time again. There are few things so representative of grace than the ri...
There are so few spaces here on earth in which we realize that we cannot be afraid. In those places particularly, the presence of God is palpable.
It is a special place where I brought a dear friend whose days of life were numbered, and she had never visited that area. The rocks are solidity, the water fluidity. The trees and bushes are intimacy. The church steeple always brings us to a place of safe...
In the midst of a crowd, the Cross rise high, signifying the presence of the sacred in silent prayer.
The photo of a public worship service in downtown Montreal appeals to me because of the way the Cross signifies the sacred, but the heads bowed in silent prayer affirm its presence. I chose to shoot the photo with the Cross in the bottom right corner, whic...