Juneteenth (June 19) is a holiday that celebrates the end of race-based chattel slavery in the United States. It rejoices in the expansion of freedom, but it also reckons with the shadow of freedoms still denied. It is thus both backward- and forward-looking. (For more on the holiday, see the article that historian Jemar Tisby published this morning: “Juneteenth Is the Counter-Narrative to America 250.”) Below are a few artistic pieces that speak to the themes of Juneteenth.
ARTWORKS: From my two most recent visits to New York City.
>> The Floating World: Lotus (125th) by Sanford Biggers:Lotus (125th) is part of the 2013 Floating World series by the multidisciplinary artist Sanford Biggers, employing paper collage, stencils, screenprint, and spray paint to construct layered compositions that blend Japanese aesthetics with African American history. “Floating world” translates the Japanese term ukiyo-e, referring to Edo-era woodblock prints, and “125th” likely refers to the main street in Harlem. The work features a mandala-like lotus flower whose petals are eighteenth-century diagrams showing enslaved humans tightly packed into the cargo hold of a ship. What looks pleasing from a distance is, on closer inspection, horrifying.
Sanford Biggers (American, 1970–), The Floating World: Lotus (125th), 2013. Screenprint and collage, image: 27 15/16 × 26 3/8 in. (71 × 67 cm), sheet (irregular): 27 15/16 × 26 3/8 in. (71 × 67 cm). Edition 1/30. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, New York Public Library. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]
Biggers lived in Japan for three years in the 1990s, where he became greatly influenced by Zen Buddhism. In Buddhism, the lotus is associated with awakening, purity, transcendence. The slave-ship-lotus is a motif the artist has used in other works—see, e.g., here and here—and I’m not exactly sure what to make of it. Is it about how the pain, trauma, and destruction wrought by slavery can be transmuted into enlightenment, progress? Or is the disjunction between beautiful flower and ugly abuse meant to be ironic, perhaps a statement about how we tend to palliate the vile parts of American history?
>> Contending with Contingency I by Kenturah Davis:Kenturah Davis is a multidisciplinary artist working between Los Angeles and Accra. Oscillating between facets of portraiture and design, her work explores the fundamental role language has in shaping how we understand ourselves and the world. Contending with Contingency I is the first work in a series engaging the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which abolished slavery, with one exception: Those convicted of a crime can be subjected to forced labor. The amendment was a milestone, but the punishment clause creates a contingency under which slavery can remain legal. (Ava DuVernay’s illuminating documentary 13th, on Netflix, examines how this loophole has and continues to be exploited to disproportionately incarcerate Black people.)
Kenturah Davis (American, 1984–), Contending with Contingency I, 2021. Carbon pencil, pencil, and blind debossing on nine sheets of paper, 132 × 81 in. (335.3 × 205.7 cm). Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]
The eight pieces in Davis’s Contending with Contingency series depict a Black woman dancing over transcripts of the 1864–65 congressional debates regarding the language and provisions of the Thirteenth Amendment, and whether to pass it. Here’s an excerpt, for example, of the opinion given by Senator Lazarus Powell from Kentucky:
I do not believe it was ever designed by the founders of our Government that the Constitution of the United States should be so amended as to destroy property. I do not believe it is the province of the Federal Government to say what is or what is not property. . . . You seem to care for nothing but the negro. . . . You seem to be inspired by no other wish than to elevate the negro to equality and give him liberty. . . . I believe this government was made by white men and for white men; and if it is ever preserved it must be preserved by white men.
“The structures that shape our experience in the world extend from the ways we use language,” Davis says. “The implications of this language are activated through our bodies.” The legislators’ oppositional words, and the legacy they reflect and perpetuate, impede the free movement of the dancing figure—but she appears to be pushing past the obstacles, resisting dissent, claiming her right to liberty. I read the work, especially in light of the whole series, as ultimately emancipatory.
>> “Joy” by Raye, Mike Sabath, Tom Richards, Amma, and Absolutely: This song appears on the second studio album of the British singer-songwriter Raye (the stage name of Rachel Agatha Keen), This Music May Contain Hope, released in March. It’s based on Psalm 30:5: “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” Here’s Raye singing it on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert with her sisters Amma and Absolutely. (A worship song on late-night TV!) See also the recent cover bythe Good Shepherd Collective.
>> “Someday We’ll All Be Free” by Donny Hathaway and Edward Howard, performed by the Good Shepherd Collective: In 1973, the American soul singer Donny Hathaway wrote the melody to this classic, and his friend Edward Howard wrote the lyrics. Howard said he intended it as an encouragement to Hathaway, who was struggling with paranoid schizophrenia; but it has since become an anthem of Black American civil rights. It’s sung here by Charles Jones for a Good Shepherd New York digital worship service.
+++
COMPILATION:“Early Photographs of Juneteenth Celebrations,”Public Domain Review: Many of the photographs that survive from turn-of-the-century Juneteenth celebrations in Texas depict elegantly dressed groups in horse-drawn carriages elaborately decorated with flowers down to the wheels.
Martha Yates Jones (left) and Pinkie Yates (right), daughters of Rev. Jack Yates, park their decorated carriage in front of Antioch Baptist Church in Houston’s Fourth Ward on June 19, 1908. Photo courtesy of the Houston Public Library Digital Archives.
+++
POEM:“Gospel”by Rita Dove: This poem is from Rita Dove’s Pulitzer Prize–winning collection Thomas and Beulah (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1986), based on the lives of her maternal grandparents, who moved from Tennessee and Georgia to Akron, Ohio, during the Great Migration. Opening with the instantly recognizable phrase “Swing low” from the African American spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” it describes her grandparents’ Black church congregation as “a humming ship of voices / big with all / the wrongs done / done them,” but that “ride[s] joy.” Hymns, gospel songs, and spirituals have had a formative influence on Dove, a member of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church, as they did too for her predecessors, lifting them out of the miseries inflicted on them by Jim Crow America and into heaven, a place of wholeness, affirmation, and triumph, where racism and lynch mobs can’t touch.
+++
CHORAL-ORCHESTRAL WORK:Requiem for Colour: A Journey through Lament and Joy by Jeffrey L. Ames: Composed by Dr. Jeffery Ames, Requiem for Colour (2022) is a thirteen-movement work for SATB choir, soprano, tenor, orator, rapper, orchestra, and African percussion that adapts the form of the Requiem Mass, traditionally offered for the repose of the souls of the deceased, to tell a story of Black enslavement and liberation. Gentry Publications, who publishes the score, provides this description:
Requiem for Colour by Jeffery L. Ames is a powerful choral and orchestral work that honors the lives and legacies of enslaved Blacks from 1619 to 1865 and contemporary Black martyrs who sacrificed for equality and freedom. This masterwork skillfully blends idiomatic Black musical genres with Western European composition styles, creating a unique and profound musical journey. The requiem traces the Black experience from West Africa, through the Middle Passage, slavery, and sharecropping in the South, to the Civil Rights Movement and today’s ongoing fight against racism and injustice. The libretto incorporates narratives from enslaved people, sharecroppers, and contemporary activists, offering an aesthetic experience that both commemorates and challenges. This deeply moving work is a testament to the resilience and complexity of Black American history.
In this February 5, 2025, performance at the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Belmont University in Nashville, Ames conducts the Belmont University Oratorio Chorus and Orchestra, comprising over 450 students. The performance features soprano NaGuanda Nobles, tenor Rodrick Dixon, and orators Jasmine Simmons and Elliott Robinson, plus a lyrical rap by the composer’s daughter, Lydia Ames. The concert and its recording—which aired June 18, 2025, on WNPT, Nashville’s PBS station—were made possible by a grant from the Creative Arts Collective.
The American Visionary Art Museum, located right off Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, is midway through its two-year exhibition The Strength to Be Joyful: Messages from Mary Proctor. Exuberant, colorful, and eclectic, the paintings on display, many of them collaged with buttons, cloth, and found objects, are filled with stories from Proctor’s life, lessons taught to her by her grandmother, and prayers and scripture. Her work celebrates faith, love, friendship, creativity, and self-worth.
Mary Louise Proctor (née Cooksey) was born June 11, 1960, in Lloyd, Florida, a small town in Jefferson County, about twenty miles east of Tallahassee. Her mother Paulina gave birth to her at a young age, and she was raised by her maternal grandparents, Frank and Hattie Cooksey. She had an especially close bond with her grandmother, who formed her in the Christian faith and whom she describes as tender, wise, and forgiving.
One particular episode she recalls from her childhood is accidentally breaking a stack of her grandmother’s Blue Willow plates while reaching for a teacake. “I thought she would whip me,” Proctor recounted in paint in 1997. “Instead she held my hands and said, ‘I forgive you cause just yesterday God forgave me.’ And she said one must forgive to be forgiven.” The door painting Story of Grandma’s Old Blue Willow Plates portrays Proctor’s grandma reaching out to her as a child to remove her shame and console her, assuring her of her unconditional love. The clothing of the two figures is rendered in shards of the broken chinoiserie dishware, veined with gold paint, kintsugi-like—a metaphor for repair. Centered at the top of the door, round and gleaming like a sun or a halo, is an intact plate. Below it two angels—one Black, one white—resembling the plate’s turtledoves, swoop in and support the title Proctor has given this sacred memory.
Mary L. Proctor (American, 1960–), Story of Grandma’s Old Blue Willow Plates, 1997. House paint, acrylic, liquid nails, Blue Willow plates, and hot glue on door. American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore.Mary L. Proctor (American, 1960–), My Grandma’s Old Blue Willow, 2004. Acrylic, spray paint, cut paper, cut metal, liquid nails, Blue Willow plates, and hot glue on window. American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore.
Memories of her grandma, and her grandma’s wisdom sayings, feature in much of Proctor’s work. One painting enumerates eleven “things my old grandmoma told me yesterday [that] holds me today,” such as “Tell you bussiness to God” and “Every body that smile in your face ain’t your friend.” One proverb her grandma would regularly recite is “You can take a mule to the water but you can’t make the sucker drink,” teaching her that we can offer help to other people but ultimately can’t control their choices.
Left to right: Story of Grandma’s Old Blue Willow Plates, 1997; My Grandpa Old Overalls, 1995; The Things My Old Grandmomma, 1995
Proctor dropped out of school in ninth grade and, after escaping an abusive relationship, married Tyrone Proctor in 1980. She worked as a nurse’s aide until a nerve injury made the job unfeasible, at which point she pivoted to collecting and selling miscellaneous objects for a living.
In January 1994, tragedy struck when Proctor’s grandmother, aunt, and uncle died in a house fire. Proctor was traumatized by seeing the charred bodies removed from the wreckage, and she sunk into a depression. She wrestled with God and even considered suicide.
“The most beautiful personality you ever seen was my grandma. She loved everybody,” Proctor tells. “And I was like, what happened to my grandmother? I mean, why, Lord, why did you allow her to go? That’s my best friend. I was wondering why such a woman had to go like that. Why did it happen?”
While she didn’t receive an answer to that question, she did receive a new direction for her life. In February 1995, while praying and fasting, God spoke to her, telling her to “paint the door.” Not quite sure what he meant, she grabbed three detached doors that she had in her yard and painted the likenesses of her family members on them. This was the beginning of her healing process and her career as a folk artist.
Proctor was already used to salvaging things, from dumpsters and roadsides, that others deemed trash, and making good purchases at flea markets. Now instead of cleaning them up to sell or resell in their current forms, she found uses for them in her art making, and started saving other discarded items as well. Buttons, beads, shells, nails, coins, mirrors, sticks, Spanish moss, coffee cans, toys, shoes, pails, patches of cloth—any of these are worthy art materials for her, along with her go-to house paint. With them, she embellishes doors of all sizes and other types of discarded wood, which she’ll often cut into shapes that suit her.
For her, the reclamation of cast-off things reflects God’s redeeming work in our own lives—how he rescues, restores, mends. This work of mending was also modeled by her grandma, who, rather than throwing out old clothes with missing buttons or tears, would lovingly fix them up. “When I was a child,” Proctor reminisces, “my grandma would keep all her old button[s] in a jar. She would keep em there to mend our cloth. When one fell of[f] she would mend on another. Now we all need to be mended like Gram mend them old button[s]. Mend us all, Lord. Mend us all.” Two doors tell this story, showing Gram handing a young Proctor a mended garment or a jar of buttons, the two figures themselves constituted of buttons. In the wispy blue background, angels shower yellow flower petals over the scene, a rain of mercy.
Mary L. Proctor (American, 1960–), Mend Us All, 2003. Acrylic, liquid nails, spray paint, house paint, buttons, and hot glue on door. American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore.Mary L. Proctor (American, 1960–), The Story of Grandma’s Old Buttons, n.d. House paint, acrylic, buttons, liquid nails, mason jar, and hot glue on door. American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore.
Black women are Proctor’s most frequently depicted subject, whether herself, specific relatives, or more generic women. Her most iconic image type, which exists in many variations, is of a Black woman looking and reaching up, signifying trust in God. For these, she often cuts her substrate into a narrow vertical orientation, emphasizing the seeking of things above, a stretching toward the heavens. Her husband calls her paintings in this format “slims.” Two such slims counsel women to walk by faith, per 2 Corinthians 5:7, and to practice self-love.
Another, much larger slim, approximately life-size, insists on the salubrious impact of art making. “Creation heals the body, mind, and soul,” it reads. “Every day I look up and pray and say, ‘Lord, what can I create today to show a little sunshine, a little hope, a little mercy, a little joy, a little grace.’ In these dark times as these, let this little light shine”—the latter phrase a reference to Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount (see Matt. 5:14–16). Lit by the Spirit, by whose power she shares the gospel, Proctor prays that her art will benefit not only herself but all those who encounter it.
Mary L. Proctor (American, 1960–), Creation Heals the Body, Mind, and Soul, 2012. Paintbrushes, house paint, and liquid nails on door. Courtesy of Drs. Dahlia Hirsch and Barry Wohl.
When she makes art, she says, she feels free, like a butterfly.
It’s a feeling that’s well captured in It’s a Woman’s World, an unironically titled painting that revels in the abundant life Jesus came to give both sexes (John 10:10), all us descendants of Adam and Eve. The painting shows four Black women in beaded jumpers leaping impossibly wide in the air, their arms outstretched, hearts floating.
Mary L. Proctor (American, 1960–), It’s a Woman’s World, n.d. Acrylic, spray paint, and beads on Masonite panel. American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore.
In the article “From Zora Neale to Missionary Mary: Womanist Aesthetics of Faith and Freedom,”Ada C. M. Thomas identifies the womanist (Black feminist) theology expressed in Proctor’s art, which “celebrates Black women as bold, audacious, and determined to embrace their lived experiences”; her figures “embody a prideful yet humbled aesthetic. They are self-possessed and possessed by an intimate, activist faith. The women’s eyes are frequently cast upwards in hopefulness and anticipation.”
Indeed, Proctor considers it part of her mission “to get a message out to broken womens [sic], a message to help and glorify them,” she says. “I’m going to get a message out so men can search their hearts, learn to respect us and treat us the right way.”
She believes everyone is a child of God, and she wants her art to connect people to the hope, peace, joy, and love that’s accessible through him. She calls herself a missionary, often using that title in signatures of her name. “The Lord spoke, and he said, ‘You are on a mission to get a great message out into the houses and hearts,’” she testifies.
In Look and See the Angel Is You, by using a mirror as the face of the holy figure, Proctor preaches the imago Dei (image of God) in every person, encouraging viewers to recognize their inherent dignity and worth, imbued in them by their Creator.
Mary L. Proctor (American, 1960–), Look and See the Angel Is You, n.d. Wood glue, spray paint, acrylic, beads, buttons, jewelry, and mirror on wood. Courtesy of Drs. Dahlia Hirsch and Barry Wohl.
In Every Child Was Born to Rise Up and Be Creative, she echoes the cultural mandate God gave to humans in the garden of Eden: to develop and rearrange the raw materials of creation for the flourishing of all. While not everyone is called to be an artist, we are all called to create.
Mary L. Proctor (American, 1960–), Every Child Was Born to Rise Up and Be Creative, 2023. Acrylic, liquid nails, and paintbrushes on wood. American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore.
We ought also to cultivate our own selves. Proctor often uses the metaphor—popular in the Middle Ages—of the soul as a garden in which we grow “flowers” of virtue. For example, a series of wood cutouts portrays women holding pails, with signs like “Let love live in my garden” and “Let grace live in my garden.” Another declares and beseeches, “I refuse to let hate live in my garden. Love, help me grow.”
Mary L. Proctor (American, 1960–), I Refuse to Let the Hate Live in My Garden, 2022. Acrylic on cut wood. American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore.
Besides vows and petitions, Proctor’s art also contains testimonies. In the Black church, testifying is a sacred tradition of sharing personal stories of survival, deliverance, and praise. Encouragement is a key component. One of Proctor’s painted testimonies reads, “It may seem dark at times, yet I hold on, I know the sun will shine.” She knows God will never forsake her, though he may occasionally seem absent.
Other paintings by Proctor mark milestones in her spiritual journey, such as her baptism in Lloyd Creek in 1975 at age fifteen. One such painting references the African American spiritual “Down by the Riverside,” its refrain about relinquishing hatred and violence—“Ain’t gonna study war no more”—taken from Isaiah 2:4 and Micah 4:3. Members of her Missionary Baptist church community gather round, dressed in white and golden robes. At the bottom center, two elders raise up Proctor’s arms as she emerges from the baptismal waters, cleansed and reborn.
Several pieces highlight Proctor’s whimsical sense of humor. It Ain’t Over Till the Fat Lady Sings God Bless America, a patriotic adaptation of a well-worn idiom, made me laugh. So did the adjacent painting, The Story of the Two Maxwell House Friends Mrs. Lilly and Mrs. Dilly, married to Willie and Billy; the women, Proctor narrates, would meet in Philly, get chilly (and so sip their coffee), and giggle about matters silly. Proctor affixed two teacups to the wood, giving the work three-dimensionality.
From left to right: When a Man Loves a Woman, 1997; It Ain’t Over Till the Fat Lady Sings God Bless America, 1996; The Story of Two Maxwell House Friends Mrs. Lilly and Mrs. Dilly, 1996; If the Cows Can Dance in Green Pastures, 2012; I Cry Unto Thee When My Heart Is Overwhelmed, 1995
A sense of delight infuses Proctor’s art. She’s attuned to the beauty of the ordinary, the sacramentality of the everyday. She identifies a spirit of joy and gratitude even in animal life. “Every day I pass the cows,” she writes in one painting. “In the sunshine or rain the cows dance. If the cows can dance in green pastures why can’t we?” Speckled and smiling, her cows bear signs that say “Enjoy life,” “Be content,” “It’s going to be fine.” Cattle are among those named as being part of the cosmic choir of creation in Psalm 148, praising the Lord—Proctor goes even further and imagines them dancing.
Mary L. Proctor (American, 1960–), If the Cows Can Dance in Green Pastures, 2012. Acrylic, house paint, liquid nails, and buttons on door. American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore.
In the hallway outside the exhibition gallery, it’s a trio of women who dance. The central painting shows Proctor’s signature upward-gazing gal, in a fringed dress, opening her hands to receive divine love, symbolized by the red hearts that angels pass down to earth in one long chain. “It’s the love of God that makes the world go round,” Proctor preaches. “Pass the love from above.”
Mary L. Proctor (American, 1960–), Love Makes the World Go Round, 1997. House paint, acrylic, glass, ceramic, beads, and hot glue on wood. American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore.
Flanking this painting are two wire sculptures of worshipping women who wear crosses and heart-shaped bangles inscribed with “Near the Cross” (the title of a popular hymn by Fanny Crosby) and psalmic phrases such as “Shout for joy,” “Rise up,” “Lead me,” “Shine on me,” and “My heart is glad.”
Mary L. Proctor (American, 1960–), Woman with Crosses, 1998. Copper wire, copper sheet metal, crosses, rebar, house paint, and cut wood. American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore.Mary L. Proctor (American, 1960–), Woman with Hearts, 1998. Copper wire, copper sheet metal, rebar, house paint, and cut wood. American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore.
Proctor acknowledges that some may look at her art and see only messy pictures or rubbish. But paraphrasing the apostle Paul (1 Cor. 1:26–31), she says God uses foolish things—like scrap wood or twisted wire decorated with cheap paint and baubles—to confound the wise.
Shortly after getting married, Proctor moved to Tallahassee with her husband Tyrone, where they raised three sons and a daughter. They now live back in Lloyd but operate a small gallery in Tallahassee proper, where they sell Proctor’s work. Follow them on Instagram @marysvisions or on Facebook.
Don’t miss two more works by Mary Proctor that are on display in the third-floor café, each titled Music Heals the Body, Mind, and Soul. Made of mixed media on wood, they show a man with a guitar and a singing, dancing woman, and scattered across the backgrounds are sheet music fragments from a Christian hymnal.
Mary L. Proctor (American, 1960–), Music Heals the Body, Mind, and Soul, 2000. Acrylic and found objects on wooden door. American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore.Mary L. Proctor (American, 1960–), Music Heals the Body, Mind, and Soul, 2000. Acrylic and found objects on wooden door. American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore.
If you download the Bloomberg Connects mobile app and search “AVAM,” then select “The Strength to Be Joyful,” you can access seven audio interviews with artist Mary Proctor (transcripts included), which are tied to different displays in the exhibition. The exhibition also runs a video interview on loop.
But also, here’s a 2003 news segment shot with Proctor in the “art yard” outside her house:
And a more recent interview clip, from 2022, of Proctor talking about her grandmother’s importance in her life:
My roundups aren’t typically thematic, but in this one I’ve pulled together content around the Psalms—plus a link to my new monthly playlist, from which I call out particular psalms.
SPOTIFY PLAYLIST: June 2026 (Art & Theology): Most months of the year, I release a playlist of thirty songs, mostly by Christian artists—an assortment of psalms, hymns, and other spiritually inclined music. The psalm settings I feature this month are Psalm 10:1 for choir by the South Korean composer Jung Jae-il (known for his work on Parasite and Squid Game); “Psalm 55” by Poor Bishop Hooper (they’ve set all 150 songs from the Psalter!); Psalm 97:11 in Hebrew (“Light dawns for the righteous and joy for the upright in heart”) by the Jewish women’s a cappella ensemble Vocolot; Psalm 103:1, a new cover of Andraé Crouch’s “Bless His Holy Name” by Paul Zach, Jessica Fox, and IAMSON; Psalm 117, in English and Spanish and with Latin rhythms, by The Soil and The Seed Project (see below); a song by the indie singer-songwriter Sam Wilson that uses Psalm 119:103 as a refrain; and “Psalm 139” by the New Jersey–based DJ duo (and married couple) KNGDM REVIVAL.
+++
NEW ALBUM:Psalmsby The Soil and The Seed Project: Released last month, this double album contains thirty-four new songs and one re-release. The first disc consists of word-for-word settings of psalms using the NIV or NRSV translations—hence why the album is classified as part of their “Bible Memory Collection”—whereas the second disc comprises songs inspired by the Psalms—loose paraphrases and, more commonly, songs that talk to God in a psalmic vein, encompassing the same broad emotional range as the biblical Psalter. There are songs of praise and gratitude, of weariness and lament, as well as petitionary songs seeking rescue or direction, presence or protection, stillness or fruitfulness.
Here’s the bilingual Psalm 117 setting “Praise the LORD, All You Nations”—the shortest psalm and the shortest chapter in the entire Bible—by Seth Thomas Crissman and Jorge Eliecer Triana, sung by Nicolas Melas and Lauren Yoder. I’ve followed it with “Lord, I Get Grumpy” by Clara Weaver, which she sings with Nichole Barrows while, it sounds like, doing dishes! “Lord, I need your patience” is something I pray a lot; now I can sing it.
Led by my friend Seth Thomas Crissman (MDiv, Eastern Mennonite Seminary), The Soil and The Seed Project is more than just a songwriting collective; they create all kinds of “creative resources that help us together turn towards Jesus in the ordinary moments of life.” Their latest Psalms package includes, in addition to the album, coloring pages and a Little Liturgies booklet with responsive readings, reflection questions, and suggested activities, all written with children in mind. You can download all these resources for FREE from their website!
>> “Considering Lament: Psalms of Protest, Pain and Hope,” Presbyterian Church in Ireland: This video presents Considering Lament: Psalms of Protest, Pain and Hope, a suite of eight lament psalms composed in 2026 by David and Karen Campbell based on the experiences of victims and first responders to the Troubles, a violent ethno-nationalist-religious conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted from the late 1960s to 1998 but whose wounds are still felt. The suite grew out of a project conceived by the Peace and Reconciliation Panel of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland’s Council for Public Affairs, which involved Rev. Dr. Karen Campbell and her husband David convening Psalm study groups in eight locations across Northern Ireland over the course of two years. The stories, thoughts, and feelings shared in response to the eight given lament psalms—Psalms 5, 7, 39, 59, 64, 82, 109, and 140—and in relation to the sectarian traumas the participants have endured informed the Campbells’ musical adaptations of these psalms. Click on the link above for the song list.
The lament psalms, Campbell says, “provided vessels to channel all kinds of emotions – from disappointment, anger, betrayal and sorrow – without losing hope,” an avenue “to present our hurts before the One who knows what it means to experience pain . . . and grief.” The Considering Lament suite was recorded by local artists in a studio in South Armagh and is available for free streaming, and you can download an accompanying booklet that includes sheet music. It premiered March 26 at an evening of live worship (see video) that interwove the eight songs with painful stories told firsthand, with a liturgy to connect them and to guide worshippers in prayer and reflection around the theme of suffering and loss.
To learn more about the Considering Lament project, read this wonderful interview with Karen Campbell, conducted by Joan Huyser-Honig for the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship.
+++
HISTORICAL PSALTERS: Barberini Oriental 2 and Ethiopien d’Abbadie 105: As you know, I’m very interested in Christian material culture, and if a cultural object has an appealing aesthetic, all the better! Here are two psalters (a volume containing the biblical book of Psalms) I photographed at the Africa and Byzantium exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2023. The first, dated to somewhere between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, is a pentaglot (five-language) psalter from Dayr al-Suryan, a multicultural and multilinguistic monastic community in Egypt. From left to right in parallel columns are Ge‘ez, Syriac, Coptic, Arabic, Armenian, and Syriac again. This format would have facilitated comparative study of the Bible as well as common readings in the liturgy.
Pentaglot Psalter, Egypt, 12th–14th century (restored and rebound 1636). Ink on parchment, 14 1/2 × 11 × 2 3/4 in. (36.8 × 28 × 7 cm). Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Barb. Or. 2, fols. 2v–3r. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]
Another psalter, from fifteenth-century Ethiopia, was open to a full-page illustration of King David, the author of many of the psalms, playing an Ethiopian box lyre called a begena, traditionally played by elite and royal men. He is shaded by an attendant with a ceremonial umbrella. In most countries at the time, it was common practice for artists to contextualize the Old and New Testament saints of the ancient Near East to their own culture. (Think, for example, of the contemporaneous Italian and Dutch Renaissance paintings.) This anonymous artist has signified “imperial ruler” by giving David the familiar trappings of an Ethiopian emperor. The manuscript would have been used by a priest or monk in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in both his personal devotions and liturgical services.
David the Musician, from a psalter from Tigray, Ethiopia, 15th century. Ink and tempera on parchment, 11 7/8 × 8 1/4 in. (30 × 21 cm). Ethiopien d’Abbadie 105, fols. 13v–14r. Collection of the Académie des Sciences, Institut de France, on deposit at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]
OLD HUNDRED is a famous hymn tune from the Genevan Psalter, so named because it came to be associated with William Kethe’s metrical paraphrase of Psalm 100, “All People That on Earth Do Dwell.” In her early poem “OLD HUNDRED,” written in the latter half of the 1960s, the African American poet Lucille Clifton (1936–2010) also engages with the Hundredth Psalm, interleaving its first line with the opening lyric of the spiritual “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” and blues-like phrases to create a multitextured expression of praise and lament.
Like the Psalter itself, life encompasses both gladness and sorrow. While many of the psalms call us to rejoice and give thanks, others express deep pain and questioning. The vocalist and composer Ruth Naomi Floyd says the greatest blues line ever written is Psalm 22:1, which Jesus “sings” from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Clifton had seen trouble; so had Jesus. (“Nobody knows but Jesus . . .”) And Jesus is a friend who stands with us in hardship, weathering it alongside. When God’s promises seem far off and we can’t muster a hallelujah, looking to Jesus can give us the strength, both to be honest about our trouble and to put it in God’s hands and so lay hold of joy. “OLD HUNDRED” wrestles through that.
Does this poem feel disjunctive or integrated? What do you make of Clifton’s use of all-caps? After reading the poem, read Psalm 100 and the lyrics to “Nobody Knows” and compare them. Consider how they both fit into the church’s repertoire of songs.
“OLD HUNDRED” can be found in Clifton’s Collected Poems, a volume I highly recommend.
Käthe Kollwitz (German, 1867–1945), Mary and Elizabeth, 1929. Woodcut, sheet 14 × 13 1/2 in. (35.6 × 34.3 cm). Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, New York.
In the morning it takes the mind a while To find the world again, lost after dream Has taken the heart to the underworld To play with the shades of lives not chosen.
She awakens a stranger in her own life, Her breath loud in the room full of listening. Taken without touch, her flesh feels the grief Of belonging to what cannot be seen.
Soon she can no longer bear to be alone. At dusk she takes the road into the hills. An anxious moon doubles her among the stone. A door opens, the older one’s eyes fill.
Two women locked in a story of birth. Each mirrors the secret the other heard.
John O’Donohue (1956–2008) was an Irish poet, philosopher, and best-selling author of Anam Cara (1996), Conamara Blues (2001), and To Bless the Space Between Us (2008), among other books. Ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1982, he retired from priestly ministry in 2000 to devote himself to full-time writing and social activism. He was deeply influenced by Hegel, Meister Eckhart, and Celtic spirituality, and much of his work has to do with beauty, friendship, and how the material and the spiritual intertwine in human experience.
Film studies and creative writing professor Jeffrey Overstreet grew up in conservative evangelical communities in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s and ’80s. Though he is grateful for some of the gifts of that upbringing, especially the love of Jesus and of story that it cultivated in him, he regrets the posture he was taught to assume of distrust, fear, and rejection of “the world,” of secular culture and its supposedly corrupting influence—including movies.
Part memoir and part film criticism, Lost and Found in the Cathedral of Cinema: A Spiritual Journey (Broadleaf Books, 2026) is built around Overstreet’s discovery that over the years, engaging films from Hollywood and beyond has actually caused his faith not to falter but to grow. From The Muppet Movie to Do the Right Thing, The Secret of Kells to Columbus, the movies, Overstreet claims, are a place where God is at play. (“Christ plays in ten thousand places,” as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins put it.)
The author describes his book as “a testimony about how certain films, like pillars of cloud and fire in the Old Testament stories, have illuminated my journey from a small, supposedly secure, ‘Christian’ world and into the ‘dark’ world I am called to live in and love. . . . I’m here to testify that films have led me from faith to faith, from an insular and fearful practice that stifles questions . . . into a freedom where I am learning from everything, everywhere, all at once” (9, 11).
He uses the metaphor of cinema as a cathedral, “a place of reverent attention, self-examination, awestruck mindfulness of the created and the Creator” that “occasions intimate fellowship, confession, and celebration with others past and present, near and far” (26). Film can be a sanctuary that restores the soul, he says; a site of revelation and/or wonder, where beauty, goodness, and truth shine; a formative and even transformative experience, emotionally, spiritually, morally, or otherwise.
Perhaps these claims about the capacities of film sound too grandiose. Of course, not every movie we watch is going to have a meaningful impact; in fact, most won’t. (We could be better at selecting for that potential, though, instead of restricting ourselves to the light and diverting.) And what resonates strongly with one viewer may not resonate at all for another. But Overstreet demonstrates that, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, the movies can hold so much.
Lost and Found is Overstreet’s guide to his own cathedral of cinema, tracing how, through film, his early imagination developed, his convictions about good and evil took shape, his political inclinations were influenced, and his theology has evolved. Covering twenty-one films, the book unfolds in three parts: Early Films (childhood), Transitional Films (adolescence), and Films for the Fearless (adulthood).
Through the Japanese animated fantasy My Neighbor Totoro (1988), written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, Overstreet discovered that the Divine might offer us shelter from our storms by inviting us into acts of generous play; that the world is alive with goodness and grace. Carroll Ballard’s The Black Stallion (1979) caused him to reconsider his definition of success. Martin Rosen’s Watership Down (1978), with its dark surrealistic visions and animal carnage, “challenged [him] not to look away, not to deny the consequences of claws and teeth” (109).
My favorite section of the book is on Paterson, a 2016 drama about a Paterson city bus driver and poet in New Jersey, written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. The film, Overstreet writes, invites us to see as poets see. Here’s the trailer:
Overstreet does not replace religious belief and practice with film—he’s still a Christian and a dedicated churchgoer who reads the Bible, prays, and participates in liturgy and finds deep meaning in doing so—but rather, he regards film viewing as part of his life of faith. For him, there’s no sacred-secular divide.
Some Christians approach the movies in a very limited and limiting way. Overstreet cites, for example, an unnamed popular Christian filmmaker’s list of three things he wants from a movie: that it (1) aligns with his worldview, (2) doesn’t offend, and (3) entertains. Perspective-affirming, innocuous, enjoyable without a hint of discomfort . . . so much for films that provoke, that value learning, growth, and diversity!
In chapter 10, Overstreet describes how the windows of his small world were smashed open by international cinema and by films whose main characters he couldn’t relate to in many respects because of their different backgrounds and therefore life experiences, especially in terms of culture, race, or nationality. Once he learned to venture beyond only those movies that reflect his own familiar world and preferences—embracing movies whose characters don’t look or talk like him—he found himself learning from neighbors he otherwise wouldn’t have, understanding them better and even growing in love for them. We can’t love our neighbors as ourselves—the second greatest commandment, according to Jesus, after (but inextricably linked to) love of God—if we wall ourselves off from them, if we don’t listen to their stories.
Overstreet encourages Christians to attend to movies with conscience and discernment but also openness and humility, knowing that God is active, too, outside our narrow subcultures. “I know the arts now as an essential language through which I can hear God speaking,” he writes (257).
Reading Lost and Found made me wonder, How would I plot my life through film? I have a list of movies I hold in high esteem, but which would I say have been the most formative to who I am or how I understand God or life in general? It’s something I’m pondering!
With the feast of Pentecost coming up this Sunday, celebrating the gift of the Holy Spirit and the mission of the church, here are a few items of interest from around the web.
VISUAL COMMENTARIES: “The Risen Christ Appearing to the Disciples” by Victoria Emily Jones: This spring my latest exhibition for the Visual Commentary on Scripture was published, on Luke 24:36–49 and John 20:19–23, where Jesus appears to his frightened disciples after his resurrection, giving them peace, assurance, renewed purpose, and power. (In John’s telling of this episode, sometimes referred to as the Johannine Pentecost, Jesus breathes his Spirit onto them!) I selected and wrote about paintings by a medieval German artist, an Italian Renaissance artist, and a contemporary Indian artist that triangulate these parallel passages.
>> “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing,” arr. Christopher M. Smith, performed by the MNU Heritage Choir: Smith arranged two stanzas of this Wesleyan hymn for the student choir he directs at MidAmerica Nazarene University in Olathe, Kansas. They perform the song inside the Bell Cultural Events Center, which has lines from the hymn inscribed on the walls.
>> “Citizen” by Philippa Hanna and Israel Houghton, performed with Moses Bliss
>> “For Your Gift of God the Spirit” by Margaret Clarkson (words) and Darwin Jordan (music), performed by musicians at Philpott Church in Hamilton, Ontario
+++
ARTICLE: “Vivid Spectrums of Color Radiate from Chris Wood’s Intricate Installations of Dichroic Glass” by Grace Ebert, Colossal: When I saw photos of this artwork by the Cambridgeshire-based light artist Chris Wood, with its prismatic colors and outward expansion, I thought of Pentecost—of the radiant gospel of Jesus Christ, from the launchpad of his resurrection and subsequent giving of his Spirit, going out to the world via and to various people groups, setting it ablaze. The artist says she was inspired by the logarithmic spiral of the nautilus shell. “We find in this a representation of how radiance can be embodied within us, as projected to those around us,” she says.
Chris Wood (British, 1954–), 40 × 40, 2022. Dichroic glass, diameter 160 cm. Commissioned by Clé de Peau Beauté.
40 × 40 was commissioned in 2022 by the Japanese luxury skincare and makeup brand Clé de Peau Beauté for its fortieth anniversary. The work comprises forty spirals, each made up of forty pieces of dichronic glass, each forty millimeters long.
“Dichroic is a material that is colorless, but it has an optical filter on it,” Wood explains. “So when light hits it, certain wavelengths, which are manifested as colors, reflect back, and the remaining wavelengths pass through, creating two colors. Those colors change depending on the angle and quality of the light and the viewpoint. It’s just the most eloquent description of the magic of light that I could find.”
+++
VIDEO: “The Lord’s Prayer: One Church, One Prayer”: ICF (International Christian Fellowship) Rotterdam-Noord, an intercultural church in the Netherlands, recently put together a video compilation of some of its members praying the Lord’s Prayer in their mother tongues; represented are English, Papiamentu, Dutch, Malayalam, Swahili, Arabic, Twi, Spanish, Tagalog, Chinese, and German.
Rotterdam is a diverse city, home to 170 different nationalities. In the neighborhoods ICF North serves, 70 percent of residents have a migrant background. Every Sunday the church, pastored by Fred Kappinga, offers an Arabic-Dutch service and an English-Dutch service, with translations into other languages when necessary and possible. They sing Christian worship songs from around the world and host guest preachers of various ethnicities.
Occurring forty days after Easter, Ascension Day is this Thursday, May 14, and will be celebrated by many churches on Sunday, honoring Jesus’s ascent to heaven. This historic event “represents both a conclusion and a commencement,” writes Ashley Tumlin Wallace: “Jesus finished his earthly work while setting into motion the gift of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church.” Below are a few items for the occasion.
QUOTE: “In the mystery of the Ascension we reflect on the way in which, in one sense, Christ ‘leaves’ us and is taken away into Heaven, but in another sense he is given to us and to the world in a new and more universal way. He is no longer located only in one physical space to the exclusion of all others. He is in the Heaven which is at the heart of all things now and is universally accessible to all who call upon Him. And since His humanity is taken into Heaven, our humanity belongs there too, and is in a sense already there with him. ‘For you have died,’ says St. Paul, ‘and your life is hidden with Christ in God.’ In the Ascension Christ’s glory is at once revealed and concealed, and so is ours.”—Malcolm Guite
+++
ARTICLE: “Ten Reasons to Celebrate Ascension Day” by John Witvliet, Reformed Worship: John Witvliet, senior scholar and professor of theology, worship, and the arts at Belmont University, answers the question “Why does Ascension Day matter?” He concludes with two book recommendations and some suggestions for corporate worship.
+++
ALBUM: Ascension Songs by Cardiphonia: This compilation album from 2012 features nineteen traditional hymns about Christ’s ascension, seventeen of which have been retuned by contemporary singer-songwriters and worship leaders. I featured one by Sarah Majorins back in 2019; here are two other favorites, the latter from the Sacred Harp tradition:
>> “Today Our Lord Went Up On High” | Words by Johann Zwick, 1542; trans. Catherine Winkworth, 1858 | Music by Rebekah Osborn, 2012
>> “Jesus, My All, to Heav’n Has Gone”| Words by John Cennick, 1743 | Music (NORTH PORT) by R. R. Osborne, 1850 | Arranged by Bruce Benedict, 2010
ORATORIO: Lobet Gott in seinen Reichen (Praise God in His Realms) by J. S. Bach: Known as the Ascension Oratorio, Bach’s BWV 11 was composed for the Feast of the Ascension almost three centuries ago. It is structured in eleven movements in two parts and runs about a half hour. Its libretto comprises some original texts (likely written by the German poet and Bach’s regular collaborator Picander) as well as quotations from the Bible and hymns by Johann Rist and Gottfried Wilhelm Sacer. It both mourns Christ’s bodily departure and extols his universal reign.
The oratorio’s closing chorale fantasia (starting at 25:48 in the video above) is often cited as one of many examples of Bach’s sophisticated expression of theology through music. The orchestra plays in D major while the chorus sings in B minor—“When shall it happen, / When will the dear time come, / That I shall see him / In his glory?”—conveying the human state of waiting and hoping for Christ’s return and the fulfillment of that hope. Both jaunty and full of longing, and harmonious between the two, movement 11 anticipates the day when we will be reunited with Christ in the flesh. Craig Smith writes,
The final chorale is an amazing tour de force. A verse set to the melody of the grave chorale “Von Gott will ich nicht lassen” is imbedded in the brilliant trumpet- and drum-dominated D Major texture of the orchestra. The B minor of the chorale never loses its identity but is simply swallowed up in the D Major. Bach understands the melancholy of being left behind, and profoundly includes it here in this ostensibly joyous festival.
The above performance from 2013 is by the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner. An English translation of the German lyrics is given as subtitles, but you can also follow along here.
+++
REFLECTION: “Let me go, because then the Spirit will come” by Jonathan Evens: Jonathan Evens, a vicar in the Church of England, shares the reflection he gave on Ascension Day at St Martin-in-the-Fields in London in 2020, which concludes with a verse-style meditation that I really like. Here’s the first stanza:
Touch me not. I am not yours to have and hold, in this shape in this form. Let go. Let me go. Let my Spirit come. Divine my Spirit, know me within.
+++
PAINTING: The Ascension, ca. 1340–50: Last fall while I was in Cologne, I visited the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, which has an excellent collection of medieval German art. Here’s a lovely little Ascension painting I saw:
It’s from a small triptych made in the mid-fourteenth century in a Cologne workshop for a Poor Clares cloister in the city. The object would have been used by the nuns for private contemplation. Its central scene is the Crucifixion, and the wings portray, in addition to the Ascension: the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Descent of the Holy Spirit.
Triptych with Depiction of the Outworking of God’s Plan for Salvation, Cologne, ca. 1340–50. Tempera on oak. Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, Inv. 1. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.
As is common in medieval paintings of the Ascension, that panel shows Jesus from the waist down, rising out of frame, leaving behind a set of footprints on the Mount of Olives. To me, that physical impression is a reminder of how Jesus, the God-man, has a body—he walked the earth in it, feeling dirt between his toes, and went to heaven with it, prefiguring the day when those who are in Christ will also, soul and body, join the Father in glory. That little mark on the mound, a negative space where Jesus’s weight once pressed, speaks both presence and absence. Ten days later, he’d send down his Spirit on the same gazing group, and many more besides, and their beautiful feet would carry the good news of his risen life far and wide.
PODCAST SERIES: Dissident Cinema Marathon, Filmspotting: Over the next two months, Filmspotting, my favorite film podcast, is running a marathon on the theme of politically dissident cinema, exploring six films that confront authoritarian power and state abuse. They come from the US, Italy, Japan, Greece, France, and Iran:
The Great Dictator (Chaplin, 1940) – Kanopy, HBO, Amazon Prime, Criterion Channel, etc.
Rome, Open City (Rossellini, 1945) – HBO
No Regrets for Our Youth (Kurosawa, 1946) – Criterion Channel
Z(Gavras, 1969) – HBO
The Sorrow and the Pity (Ophuls, 1969) – Kanopy, Kino Film Collection (free trial)
The first episode of the marathon aired May 4 (see below). It reviews Charlie Chaplin’s first true sound film, The Great Dictator, a political satire denouncing Hitler and Nazism. Chaplin stars as Adenoid Hynkel, the delusional, power-hungry, self-obsessed “phooey” (parody of Führer) of Tomainia. Chaplin started writing the script in fall 1938 and began filming it in September 1939; the movie was released in the US in October 1940. At a time when European nations were making concessions to Hitler and many Germans, swayed in part by his charisma and promises, were supporting his ultranationalist ideology, and others were simply conveniently ignoring him (Chaplin’s own adopted country was trying to maintain neutrality), Chaplin had the guts to call a spade a spade and openly mock the world leader and, in the character of a Jewish barber who’s mistaken for Hynkel, deliver a sincere and rousing speech against his fascist rule.
Chaplin realized, says cohost Josh Larsen [previously], that “it’s a crucial thing . . . calling out a dictator, whether it’s Hitler or someone we’re living with. You call him out as an idiot, because as a comedian, this is what Chaplin is going to be able to do: lampoon the inherent silliness . . . the puffery, the pageantry, the needing of arches and ballrooms and your face on every frickin’ thing everyone looks at. . . . It takes a comedian to spoof all of this self-important buffoonery that, to my mind, is really just an attempt to mask a lack of moral authority.” The movie contains one of cinema’s most memorable and prescient scenes: the demented globe dance, where Hynkel gracefully tosses, kicks, and balances a balloon globe, imagining a “pure Aryan world” with himself as a god.
To participate in the marathon, watch the films on your own (above, I shared the streaming services they’re on, but you might also see if DVDs are available at your local library), and listen to the podcast discussions that will be released one by one in the coming weeks on YouTube and your favorite podcast platform.
What do you remember most about the movie—what stands out for you?
What was a highlight for you, and what was a challenge?
What questions does the film raise for your own life or for the world as you see it?
And he suggests several more questions to consider as and after you watch.
This excerpt is published on the Substack Soul Telegram, which Norris and Higgins also jointly author. The second half comprises Norris’s reflections on Life Itself, a 2014 documentary about the famous film critic Roger Ebert.
+++
PODCAST EPISODE: “Songs for Public Faith, with Jon Guerra,”Conversing, February 10, 2026: “Singer-songwriter Jon Guerra [previously] joins Mark Labberton to explore devotional songwriting, public faith, and the tension between the kingdom of Jesus and American cultural power. Through music and reflection, Guerra considers how art can hold grief, courage, and hope together in turbulent times.” Guerra says he wants his music to help orient people to higher and longer and deeper things. He discusses his songs “American Gospel,” “Love Your Enemies,” “The Kingdom of Jesus,” and “Citizens” (last two embedded below).
+++
DOCUMENTARY: Listers: A Glimpse into Extreme Birdwatching (2025), dir. Owen Reiser: In 2024, twenty-something brothers Quentin and Owen Reiser, the latter a wildlife photographer, embarked on what birders call a “big year,” traveling the contiguous United States attempting to witness and identify as many bird species as possible, trying to beat the record of 751 birds. They undertook this challenge on a meager $16,000 budget (in contrast to most big year competitors, who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars), driving and sleeping in a Kia Sedona and eating mostly beans and canned tuna. Listers—a term describing birdwatchers who keep detailed records of the birds they encounter—is a documentary about the Reisers’ whimsical excursion, learning the ins and outs of birding by poring over field guides, calling rare bird hotlines, interviewing members of the birding community, and simply doing. The film alternates between high-resolution footage of the birds they observe and handheld camcorder footage of their other experiences on the road and in the wild. They delve into relevant controversies and debates, such as the playback of recorded bird calls to attract birds into view and the increasing gamification of birding through the citizen science app eBird.
But the film also encourages an appreciation of the beauty and variety of North American birds. It closes with an intertitle quote by the naturalist Kenn Kaufman, from his book Kingbird Highway: “As trivial as our listing pursuit may be, it gets us out there in the real world, paying attention, hopeful and awake. Any day could be a special day, and probably will be, if we just go out to look.”
The Reisers received distribution offers from Netflix, HBO, and Amazon but turned them all down, as they want Listers to be freely accessible to everyone. Watch the film here; trailer below. They also self-published their own field guide as a supplement.
+++
ARTICLE: “Lessons from the Hidden Vault of Thomas Kinkade” by Michael Wright: After Thomas Kinkade, the best-selling evangelical Christian “painter of light,” died of an overdose in 2012, his estranged family found a vault in his home containing hundreds of off-brand paintings he had made. Dark, moody, experimental—they are a far cry from the idyllic cottages that made him rich and famous. These previously unseen paintings are featured in the recent documentary Art for Everybody, directed by Miranda Yousef. (See trailer below.) Michael Wright shares some thoughts after seeing the film, which he says cultivated sympathy in him for Kinkade and the pressures he faced to be a “Good Christian Leader” and softened his harsh opinions of the artist into more complicated questions, such as “Why does an artist hide vital parts of himself for the sake of success? What happens when we curate branded versions of ourselves? Why do we continue to see this cycle of Christian leaders wrecking their lives? How can we imagine new social landscapes?” How can the market make room for an artist’s whole self?
Death is hard. No matter your religion and its consolations, whether you’re the one dying or you’re saying goodbye to someone who is or has, it’s often a painful ordeal.
For the Christian, death holds a tension. It’s something to grieve, as Jesus did at the grave of his friend Lazarus; it was not part of God’s original design and so in that sense is not “natural,” even though it’s inevitable. We can and should mourn its power to (at least temporarily) sever. But death can also be something to celebrate if the deceased was in Christ, since as the apostle Paul wrote, “to be absent from the body [is] to be at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8), in a state of blissful rest.
Christians regard death as an entrance to the dwelling-place of God that we call heaven or paradise. Contrary to popular conception, that heaven is not our eternal home—not really. It’s a temporary holding place for the souls of the Christian departed, who await the general resurrection, at which time our souls will be reunited with our bodies and heaven will be remade and brought down to a new earth, where we will dwell forever, as whole, embodied persons, vibrant and active, with God. That, as the New Testament scholar and theologian N. T. Wright has been reiterating for decades, is our ultimate hope: not an ethereal existence in the skies, but physical resurrection, cosmic renewal, and God making his forever home with us here. The joining of heaven and earth—God’s space and ours—in a lasting embrace.
When my paternal grandpa passed away in May 2017, I began building a private Spotify playlist of songs about death to help me move through that loss. I’ve been adding to it for the past nine years, and now I want to make it public.
I hesitated for a while on whether to share the list, because I worry that overall, it does promote a lopsided hope, a truncated view of what eternal life looks like. Wright’s Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Churchwas paradigm-shifting for me, and I’ve wrestled with its implications on the theologies we articulate, including through song, at funerals. Wright decries how Platonism, with its degrading of bodies and of the created order in general, has infected whole swaths of Christian thinking, misleading people into supposing that Christians are meant to devalue this present world and our material selves; that our goal is to escape them both.
The early Christian hope was not, Wright declares, to be rescued from this world, but to be rescued with and for it: that is, that the world itself, people included, would be liberated from its present state of corruption and decay. They centered this hope firmly on the resurrection. They talked very little about “going to heaven” when they died; instead, they emphasized the promise of the dead being raised on the last day to image God in a new bodily existence in a newly remade world. If they did refer to heaven as a postmortem destination, Wright says, those early Christians seemed to regard it as a temporary stage on the way to the eventual resurrection of the body.
Wright laments that so many Christian songs look forward chiefly to “life after death” (the intermediate state, entered immediately after one’s death, in which one’s soul resides in heaven while one’s body remains “asleep” in the grave) instead of “life after life after death” (the eschaton; the resurrection; the descent of the New Jerusalem; the new heavens and new earth), which is God’s whole telos. This glut of songs that focus on the prelude to eternal life as the biblical authors envisioned it has contributed to many Christians’ ignorance of the two-step narrative of life after death, with step two being what we should really be singing about.
I get what Wright is saying. But I think he sometimes overstates his points. He hates the phrase “going to heaven,” preferring instead “heaven coming to earth”—and yet “going to heaven” does accurately describe what the Christian soul does at the moment of bodily death. He also disparages lyrical expressions like “way beyond the blue,” “a faraway strand,” “up over yonder,” “the great beyond,” anything that suggests otherworldly distance . . . but again, if what is being described is that interim place of souls where God’s throne currently is, which is outside the space-time continuum but for which the Bible uses directional “up” language, such descriptions seem to me to be appropriate.
And the word heaven, I feel, can also encompass the final reality: the marriage of heaven and earth. I see the word as shorthand for “where God is.” Of course, Wright is correct that heaven-as-stopover (out there and we as incorporeal) and heaven-as-new-creation (right here and we gloriously corporeal) often get muddled in our songs, and that greater theological precision might be warranted. But we also have to consider the limits of sung verse—especially particular forms, like the spiritual, which is meant to be simple and repetitive so as to be transmitted orally—to convey nuanced ideas or to express all aspects of a given theme.
Wright also eschews the “just passing through” spirituality that infuses much hymnody, folksong, and preaching—the idea that earth is not our home; heaven is. That idea, he claims, treats the world as irrelevant at best and evil at worst, when in fact, God loves the world and wants to and indeed will redeem it, not evacuate us from it. This earth will be transformed one day into our eternal habitation.
I do agree that there’s a dangerous strand of escapist theology that has arisen in Christianity, which nurtures aspirations to flee the world, to regard is as mere dross and so to care nothing for its welfare. But I also don’t automatically dismiss hymns that describe this present life as “night,” for example, or that mention “earth’s vain shadows”—Wright negatively references both in Surprised by Hope. This present world is incomplete. It’s groaning for redemption, and we in it. We see through a glass darkly. We often stumble. We’re tempted to pursue pleasures or glories that are ultimately empty. Pain, toil, and fragmentation are part of the human experience. I think it’s right that we don’t feel entirely at home here, even as we anticipate God’s future purposes for the world—healing, transforming—through concrete actions, living as new-creation people. The apostle Paul says we’re citizens of heaven (Phil. 3:20), which is in part where the concept of “our heavenly home” comes from. The kingdom of heaven is the place from which Christ reigns. And yes, one day that will be earth, but right now, it’s not.
In the grand scheme of things, our mortal existence is short—so the idea of us being transient between this life and the next is not, I think, out of step with the biblical view, many passages of which comment on life’s brevity and the fleetingness of the flesh, which fades like grass.
While Wright stresses the continuity between earth as it is now and earth as it will be, there is also—and he does concede this—discontinuity. The earth will be itself and yet radically new when God re-creates it. It will be somehow both familiar and other. The same is true of our bodies, which—hallelujah!—God redeems along with our souls. (We are saved not as souls but as wholes, Wright quips.) These bodies we have now are good, yes, but they also break down and can be burdensome—hence why so many Christian songs of death express a yearning to cast off the body. Even the apostle Paul, in Romans 7:24, bemoans, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Like Wright, though, I do wish there were more songs that coupled that desire with the anticipation of a renewed body, as Paul does, instead of suggesting that a bodiless existence is the consummate state. As Wright argues, a focus on the soul’s immortality, on leaving the body behind, is a distraction from the supreme hope of the resurrection.
The funeral song that theologians, both professional and armchair, love to hate on most for its supposed Gnosticism is the Southern gospel classic “I’ll Fly Away” by Albert E. Brumley. They object to its anti-this-worldly stance that celebrates the soul’s breaking free “like a bird from prison bars has flown” (“no more cold iron shackles at my feet”), which implies that this world or this body, or both, is a prison keeping our true self captive. But is that sentiment not in some ways consonant with Romans 8:19–21, which says that “the creation waits with eager longing . . . [to] be set free from its bondage to decay and . . . obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God”?
I see how the metaphor of the body as a prison can be problematic, but imagine it from the perspective of a person in advanced age, losing their vision, hearing, speech, reason, memory, strength, dexterity, mobility, bowel control, appetite, and so on. Or someone with chronic illness, or a debilitating disease, or on life support. That’s not at all to say such people should just die, or that they bear God’s image any less—but for them, life in the body is an immense struggle, and if they long to leave it to be with God, that’s not sinful or misguided. Many faithful Christians throughout history have prayed that God would take them or their loved one out of this life, out of their suffering.
The refrain “I’ll fly away” is actually mentioned in two biblical psalms:
My heart is in anguish within me; the terrors of death have fallen upon me.
Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror overwhelms me.
And I say, “O that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest;
truly, I would flee far away; I would lodge in the wilderness; Selah
I would hurry to find a shelter for myself from the raging wind and tempest.”
—Psalm 55:4–8
For all our days pass away under your wrath; our years come to an end like a sigh. The days of our life are seventy years or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.
—Psalm 90:9–10
I wouldn’t program “I’ll Fly Away” for a Sunday morning worship service, but I happen to think it’s a great funeral song—I’ve included three different versions on my playlist, first from the movie soundtrack that in 2000 popularized it for a new generation—expressing an exuberant sense of release from suffering and joy in meeting God. I’d leave it to the preacher, and a fuller song set, to place it in context of the greater Christian hope of the resurrection of the body and the renewal of this world.
SONGWRITERS: To you I extend the challenge of expanding the repertoire of Christian music about last things, composing songs that capture the grander biblical vision of God’s intent for what he’s made. Give us new songs that anticipate the merging of heaven and earth! That trace the line of new creation from Jesus’s resurrection to our own. That celebrate not so much our going to live with Jesus when we die as Jesus’s coming to live with us when he brings his kingdom project to full fruition. Help us to see the goodness of our bodies and the world and to treasure God’s promise to redeem both; enlarge our concern about final destinies to encompass the whole cosmos, reorienting our hope around being raised to life in God’s new heaven and new earth. Remind us that our labor on earth is not in vain but will last into God’s future. Draw together Genesis 1–2, Isaiah 65, Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 15, 2 Peter 3:13, and Revelation 21–22.
In his engagement with Wright’s Surprised by Hope and what it means for funeral reform, John L. Drury suggests “we can still talk about grandpa going to heaven and being with Jesus. We just need to also talk about grandpa coming back with Jesus to reign with us in the new heavens and the new earth.” He advises that “one must also transform the language describing the present state of the person to express its interim character. We can still say they have gone to a better place, but we must then immediately modify this by saying that they will one day enter the best place of all, the new creation. We can still say they have entered into rest, but we must then immediately modify this by saying they are resting in the sense of waiting, waiting for the final act in God’s story.”
Why have I spent so long discussing Wright in this article that is supposed to be introducing a playlist of funeral songs? Because his teachings on eschatology, which includes the subject of heaven, have been vastly influential, not just for me but within Protestantism at large.
No doubt he will object to some of the entries on my “Funeral Songs” playlist. In building it, I eliminated some egregious offenders, but I feel comfortable putting forward these remaining songs. Even if some refer primarily to the deceased’s temporary residence “on high” or temporarily immaterial state—rather than their final, physical state in restored creation, i.e., the new heavens and the new earth—there’s still value in celebrating this initial phase of postmortem life they’ve entered. At funerals, it’s good and right to look forward to the consummation of all things, but it’s also good to assure those who grieve that their late beloved is presently in a place of rest, joy, and refreshment. It’s “home” insofar as home is where God is.
Consider the different metaphors for death represented in the playlist: Crossing the Jordan River into the promised land. Summiting a mountain. Culminating a pilgrimage. Laying down a burden. A valley. A sunset, to be followed by dawn. Death as a mode of transport, by train, chariot, or even airplane! The safe arrival of one’s ship, after a turbulent journey, into harbor. Death is conceptualized in terms of homegoing, meeting Jesus face-to-face, reunion with family, freedom, happiness, repose, healing, inheritance, victory, glory. It’s a threshold into an indescribable new reality.
Some songs incorporate descriptions of heaven or the New Jerusalem drawn from scripture, which have unfortunately become hackneyed: pearly gates and gold-paved roads (Rev. 21:21), mansions (John 14:1–3), harps (Rev. 5:8; 15:2), angelic choirs, white robes (Rev. 7:9–14) and gleaming crowns (Rev. 2:10). Concentrated mainly in the book of Revelation, these details were the writer John’s attempts to convey something of the beauty, purity, perfection, and grandeur he saw in his heavenly visions.
The playlist opens and closes with “I Bid You Goodnight,” aka “The Christian’s Good Night” or “Sleep On, Beloved,” a hymn for the lowering down of caskets written in 1871 by Sarah Doudney, with music, in 1884, by Ira David Sankey. (View the sheet music.) It was sung at the funeral of the preacher Charles Spurgeon in 1892. It later made its way to the Bahamas, where it was adapted and recorded in 1958 and 1965 by Joseph Spence and the Pinder Family. Spence’s sister, Edith Pinder, sings lead, ad-libbing a number of calls in the latter half, such as “One of these mornings, bright, early, and soon,” “Walkin’ through the valley of the shadow of death,” “His rod and staff shall comfort me,” “Goodness and mercy shall follow me on,” “John Divine said, ‘I saw the sign,’” and “Gonna walk in Jerusalem just like John.”
The Spence-Pinder recordings became the basis of subsequent folk versions in the US, such as the one that the Grateful Dead often closed their concerts with, and my two favorites: by Kent Gustavson (below) and Sweet Honey in the Rock. These all utilize only the first verse of Doudney’s original seven.
Lay down, my dear brother [sister, mother, father], lay down and take your rest Won’t you lay your head down upon your Savior’s breast I love you, but Jesus loves you the best I bid you goodnight, goodnight, goodnight
The hymn wishes the departed a pleasant sleep before their eternal waking at the resurrection.
Since I shared one of my mom’s funeral picks above (“I’ll Fly Away”), now let me share one of my dad’s: “Peace in the Valley,” written by the Black gospel songwriter and musician Thomas A. Dorsey. Watching reruns of The Ed Sullivan Show, my dad would call me and my brother to the TV whenever Elvis’s performance of this song came on from the January 6, 1957, episode. As he would regale us every time: “The producers didn’t want him to sing a gospel song on national television. They just wanted his rock and roll. But he insisted. It was his mom’s favorite song. He said he wouldn’t do the show if they didn’t let him sing it.”
The Ed Sullivan performance leaves out the second verse, likely for time—it’s included in Elvis’s studio recording released a few months later—but its imagery provides a fuller picture of peace, drawing on the description of the messianic kingdom in Isaiah 11:
Well, the bear will be gentle, and the wolves will be tame And the lion shall lie down by the lamb, oh yes And the beasts from the wild shall be led by a child And I’ll be changed, changed from this creature that I am, oh yes
Dorsey wrote the song as world tensions were mounting in the late 1930s, just prior to World War II. Traveling by train through Indiana, he observed horses, cows, and sheep grazing together in a small valley and wondered why humans across nations couldn’t live peaceably with one another, as these animal species were, sharing the grass. This was also a time of racial terror in America, of lynchings and other acts of anti-Black violence. “Peace in the Valley” asserts that the violence of the world will one day be undone, when creation is made new.
Another famous gospel song by Dorsey is “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.” Hearing it makes me emotional because a dear elderly friend from my church, who has since passed away, often requested it in worship. Here’s a gorgeous arrangement by Arnold Sevier, performed by the Aeolians of Oakwood University:
The genres of gospel, blues, and spirituals are heavily represented in the playlist, all birthed out of the African American experience.
The spiritual “Trouble of the World,” or “Soon-a Will Be Done,” is another song that sounded from my family television set many a time in my childhood, during my dad’s at least once-yearly watch of the 1959 film Imitation of Life. The funeral scene, which features Mahalia Jackson singing this solemn yet triumphant song that originated on Southern plantations during the era of slavery, always got him weeping:
While songs like this convey weariness, others burst with jubilation, like “Joy” by Ruthie Foster, from her 2002 album Runaway Soul:
“When I Get Home,” a traditional revival hymn performed by Elizabeth Mitchell with Dan Zanes, is more gently joyous. They based their version on a 1958 recording by Elizabeth Cotten, who recalled the song from her youth in North Carolina:
For a Christocentric song, consider Andy Zipf’s rendition of “Immanuel’s Land,” aka “The Sands of Time Are Sinking.” The hymn was written by Anne Cousins in 1854 and is traditionally sung to the tune RUTHERFORD, composed by Chrétien Urhan in 1834. Zipf sings three of its nineteen stanzas.
Oh! Christ, he is the fountain, The deep sweet well of love! The streams on earth I’ve tasted, More deep I’ll drink above: There, to an ocean fullness, His mercy doth expand, And glory—glory dwelleth In Immanuel’s land.
Oh! I am my Belovèd’s, And my Belovèd’s mine! He brings a poor, vile sinner Into his house of wine: I stand upon his merit, I know no other stand, Not e’en where glory dwelleth In Immanuel’s land.
The bride eyes not her garment, But her dear bridegroom’s face; I will not gaze at glory, But on my King of grace; Not at the crown he giveth, But on his piercèd hand: The Lamb is all the glory Of Immanuel’s land.
There are also a few choral pieces on the playlist, including “Goin’ Home,” an adaptation of the English horn melody from the second (Largo) movement of Antonín Dvořák’s New World Symphony by one of Dvořák’s students in America, William Arms Fisher, who also added lyrics. Though Fisher says the composition was inspired by African American spirituals, it’s not Christian-specific, but it is compatible with Christian belief, its speaker “just goin’ home . . . through an open door,” to where friends and family are waiting; “nothin’ lost, all’s gain. . . . Real life’s just begun.” The arrangement sung by VOCES8 in the following video is by Jim Clements.
The Silkroad Ensemble, renowned for its unique cross-cultural collaborations, recorded the song in Mandarin and English, featuring Abigail Washburn on lead vocals and banjo, Wu Tong on backing vocals and sheng, Yo-Yo Ma on cello, Johnny Gandelsman on violin, and Kinan Azmeh on clarinet.
As for songs of the end that consider the natural world, I recommend “Over the River” by Jon Foreman, the lead vocalist of Switchfoot. It’s from his 2008 solo album Limbs and Branches:
Hush, hush, hush, hush Hush, hush, hush, hush
I heard a sound come from the ground All of the trees are a-buzz Talking in tongues, talking with lungs Talking of freedom
All of the earth is soon to give birth Look at the mountains alive Birds and the bees, insects and leaves All of us longing, longing for home Home, home is somewhere I’ve never known
Refrain: Over the river Over the river I’ve set my hope Over the river Over the river I’ll find my hope in You, You
Death, where is your sting? Your signet ring? Where is your power? Why all this war? Death to the score Nations are fading
Kingdom of light, setting us right Finally human Give me a tongue It will be done Inside I’m longing, longing for love Love, love is something I’ve never known
Thoughtful lyrics are also a hallmark of the folk trio Ordinary Time, who have several songs on the playlist, two with original words and one that sets a passage, lightly adapted, from the final chapter of Augustine’s City of God, titled “All Shall Be Amen Alleluia.”
All shall be Amen, Alleluia We shall rest and we shall see All shall be Amen, Alleluia We shall see and we shall know We shall know and we shall love We shall love and we shall praise All shall be Amen, Alleluia Behold our end which is no end
For songs on the playlist that I’ve previously featured on the blog, see:
This is just a sampling of the nearly two hundred songs on the “Funeral Songs” playlist. Note that even though I’ve subtitled the list “The Christian Hope of Life After Death,” I mean that to include both the first and final phase of that life, both the soul’s immediate ascent to heaven and its ultimate reuniting with the raised body on a renewed earth—though as I’ve mentioned, existing catalogs skew heavily toward the former, and we’re in need of better balance that reflects Christians’ central hope of resurrection.
What songs have brought you comfort after the death of a loved one or are helping you face your own death? Is there a particular one you want sung at your funeral?
Cover art: The New Jerusalem, watercolor by Lisbeth Zwerger from Stories from the Bible
Illustration by Duncan Robertson for BEHOLD: The Resurrection and the Life trading cards from Fish Coin Press
On that final night, his meal was formal: lamb with bitter leaves of endive, chervil, bread with olive oil and jars of wine.
Now on Tiberias’ shores he grills a carp and catfish breakfast on a charcoal fire. This is not hunger, this is resurrection:
he eats because he can, and wants to taste the scales, the moist flakes of the sea, to rub the salt into his wounds.
From Corpus(Jonathan Cape / Penguin Random House, 2004)
Sharing food with friends was a significant aspect of Jesus’s ministry, so it’s no surprise that it’s one of the first things he does with his resurrected body. Based on the “breakfast on the shore” episode in John 21, “Food for Risen Bodies II” by Michael Symmons Roberts “exults in the renewal of bodily sensations” experienced by the risen Christ, writes commentator Janet Morley in The Heart’s Time. Gloriously corporeal, Jesus enjoys tastes and textures once again and, in my interpretation of the poem’s final line, is even glad to be able to feel pain, because it’s a marker of being alive. (Theologians disagree on whether Jesus could feel pain in his risen state.) Roberts mentions the saltiness of the fish; I think, too, of the stickiness of the honeycomb, which some manuscripts of the parallel passage in Luke 24 mention Jesus ate that day. The poem contrasts the somber formality of the Last Supper with the joyous informality of this barbecue on the beach, this Easter feasting.
Michael Symmons Roberts (born 1963) is an award-winning British poet, librettist, broadcaster, and dramatist. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he is the author of nine poetry collections and a professor of poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Art & Theology 