Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius

It’s Good Friday and a good reason to post some doors from churches.  However, Norm Frampton, our Commissioner of Doors has the church door photo compositions down to an exact science so any attempts from me would look amateurish at best, but I’ll give it a try with a back story.

Last year, my family and I took a tour which visited Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Russia.  In Moscow, Russia we took a local tour to the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius Monastery and my initial thinking was it would just be another church tour but I was mistaken.  I found the monastery to be inspiring and full of beautiful history and architectural buildings with pilgrimages of the faithful from everywhere while crowds of international tourists being their usual self of pushing their way in lines and taking selfies in sacred spaces.

The monastery was initially constructed of wood and later reconstructed in stone after a fire; it has a long history beginning in 1337 or the 14th Century but it would be difficult for me to cite its history in this short blog so follow this Wikipedia link for more information: Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius

Our tour guides took us to the important cathedrals and chapels and explained the historical significance of each place and ended the tour with our visit to the chapel holding the relics of St. Sergius; the sacred chapel asked for respect by requesting no photography but that didn’t stop the rude tourists from doing cell phone selfies and other shots.  I was tempted to take a shot because it was such a beautiful place with exquisite lighting but I was a visitor and had to respect this sanctity of this Saint.  At the conclusion of the tour we were given free time to roam around the premises with reminders that many monks and clerics visit the monastery to practice or attend religious studies and we should respect their privacy and not take their close up photos without permission.  I took this opportunity to wander on my own hoping to do a doorscurion but the tour crowds made photography difficult by walking in front of my camera when I was about to shoot something so I retreated to find other places of solitude.

This was the Bell Tower building; there was a nice door at the top of the steps.

The door can be seen better in this cropped shot.

The Assumption Cathedral.

This is the Church with the Holy Spirit

As you can see from the photos above, there were crowds so I found a path heading behind the Bell Tower and found this little building with a monument which seemed deserted.  After taking a few photos a monk approached, signaled to me to not photograph him so I watched as he said a prayer and kissed the monument before departing.

A few minutes later, it seemed like the crowds spotted me (a photographer with camera in hand) and within minutes my solitude was no longer so I walked away looking for another quiet spot.

I found some gravestones and shot a few photos and turned around to see these doors (sorry they were cut off when composing the shot).

Then, I saw something and I had to compose a shot quickly in fear losing the composition.

While I got the doors in the above shot, the composition was not right; it was missing something.  I quickly took some steps to my left and there was the composition I was looking for to make this image have a story; the Bell Tower was the missing piece of the puzzle.

This person made a pilgrimage to this holy monastery and found that prayers did not have to be said in the church; God listens wherever you are and churches do not need walls.  This was my shot of that day that told the story of the monastery.

I hope you enjoyed this back story.  If you are interested in seeing more great photos of doors, visit the Door Commissioner’s (aka Norm Frampton) Thursday Doors website, read his post for the week and then press the blue frog button to get the doorman to open the portal and view the door posts from other Thursday Doors bloggers from around the world.  If you have a door to post, upload it and share it with everyone and be prepared to become addicted to door blogging.

Thanks for visiting my post and thanks to Norm 2.0 for his creation of the Thursday Doors website.  For more posts and photos of doors by others please go to: Thursday Doors.