Art & Theology

Neumünster is a Catholic parish church in Würzburg, Germany. Dating back to the eleventh century, it was first built as a Romanesque basilica, but it underwent expansions, renovations, and remodels over the next seven centuries to match prevailing tastes of the times, the most major being the construction of its Baroque west facade and Baroque interior remodel, including its frescoed ceiling and new altar, in the eighteenth century. These features still stand today, restored from the heavy bomb damage the church suffered in World War II.

Neumünster was originally a collegiate church, where the Daily Office was maintained by a college of canons. But in 1803, during German secularization, the church’s associated religious chapter was dissolved, and the church passed into state ownership. From 1809 to 1811 and again in 1814, the military used it as a munitions depot. Worship services resumed in 1821, and at last in 1908, the church received its independent parish status. It is dedicated to St. John the Evangelist and St. John the Baptist.

Located on Kürschnerhof street, a pedestrian thoroughfare, Neumünster is wedged between two retail apartment buildings. It was a gray, rainy day when I was there, so it was quite dark inside. (For a brighter photo of the interior, see here.)

My main reason for visiting Neumünster was to see the Schmerzensmannkreuz (Man of Sorrows Cross) in its left altar niche, a polychrome wood crucifix made circa 1350 and extensively restored in 2007.

Just over seven feet tall, this Gothic sculpture is rare because of the unusual position of Christ’s arms: Instead of being pinned to the horizontal beam of the cross, they’re curved in front of his torso, as if he’s cradling an invisible someone or something—but two enormous nails still puncture his palms.

The iconography may be based on a mystical vision of the French abbot and theologian St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153). While praying before a crucifix one day, the Christ figure supposedly came to life and embraced him.

A Würzburg folk legend claims that the Schmerzensmannkreuz didn’t always look like this; that, sometime in its early history, it miraculously changed from its original form to demonstrate the love of God to an aggressor. The story goes that when a thief tried to steal the gold and silver jewelry that pilgrims had draped around the crucifix, the Christ figure unloosed his arms from the cross and wrapped them around the thief in a hug, which caused him to repent. The crucifix then remained fixed in that hugging posture.

The Neumünster congregation wants everyone to feel the embrace of God. Christ’s affectionate clasp is not just for Bernard, or for thieves, but for anyone who desires it. Be held in my love, says this Christ of Neumünster.

I’m reminded of the 2006 song “Circle Me” by Jeff Johnson, a setting of an ancient Celtic lorica (prayer of protection). “Circle me, O God, let your arms enfold me. Circle me, O God, let your love surround . . .”

But to me, this Jesus looks less like he’s placing his arms around an adult’s back and more like he’s holding a baby, perhaps even rocking one to sleep. His mouth is open—maybe he’s singing a lullaby! This imagery evokes Bible verses about the maternal love of God, such as Isaiah 49:15, where God compares his tender, devoted care and affection to that of a breastfeeding mother; Isaiah 66:13, where God assures, “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you”; and Psalm 131:2, where the psalmist describes being “calmed and quieted” in the Lord, his soul “like a weaned child with its mother.”

The Christ figure’s protective embrace also evokes passages in which God is described metaphorically as a shepherd who gathers his lambs in his arm (e.g., Isa. 40:11).

Characteristic of the Gothic style, the Schmerzensmannkreuz emphasizes Jesus’s suffering, and in naturalistic terms. He’s gaunt, he’s battered, he’s dripping with blood that’s modeled in relief. And his gaze is filled with compassion.

In the opposite altar niche on the right side of the church, we see Jesus as a baby being held by his mother—a stone sculpture by Tilman Riemenschneider, carved in 1493. The figures’ gazes are too detached for my liking, but it’s sweet how Mary touches Jesus’s foot, a not-uncommon detail found in other renditions of the subject.

In 2007–2011, Neumünster underwent another major renovation, fixing some post–World War II restoration flaws and incorporating contemporary German art.

To line the nave, they commissioned the neo-expressionist artist Thomas Lange (b. 1957), a key figure in the Neue Wilde movement in 1980s West Berlin, to make eight oil paintings of scenes from the life of Christ, all taken from the Gospel of John. He chose to depict Christ’s baptism in the Jordan, an evangelistic encounter, five of Christ’s miracles, and a passion scene. They progress roughly chronologically as you move down the nave, starting with the Wedding at Cana and the Baptism of Christ nearest the west end and concluding with the Washing of the Disciples’ Feet and the Raising of Lazarus near the east. I’ll share them here in the order they appear in John’s Gospel.

Thomas Lange_The Baptism of Christ — Thomas Lange, *The Baptism of Christ* (John 1:29–34), 2009

Thomas Lange_The Wedding at Cana — Thomas Lange, *The Wedding at Cana* (John 2:1–12), 2009

Thomas Lange_Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at Jacob's Well — Thomas Lange, *Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at Jacob’s Well* (John 4:1–42), 2009

Thomas Lange_Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand — Thomas Lange, *Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand* (John 6:1–15), 2009

Thomas Lange_Jesus Walks on Water — Thomas Lange, *Jesus Walks on Water* (John 6:16–21), 2009

Thomas Lange_Jesus Heals a Man Born Blind — Thomas Lange, *Jesus Heals a Man Born Blind* (John 9), 2009

Thomas Lange_The Raising of Lazarus — Thomas Lange, *The Raising of Lazarus* (John 11:1–44), 2009

Thomas Lange_Jesus Washes the Disciples' Feet — Thomas Lange, *Jesus Washes the Disciples’ Feet* (John 13:1–20), 2009

I’m compelled by Lange’s style, merging abstraction and figuration. However, I found some of the paintings difficult to interpret and, as there were no titles or other information available for them on signs or in brochures, had to email the Diocese of Würzburg to verify their subjects. My husband and I had exchanged guesses, most of which proved to be wrong—Joseph of Arimathea preparing Jesus’s body for burial? No, Jesus washing Peter’s feet. The Resurrection? Close, but no, that’s Lazarus. The risen Christ appearing to his mother? No, the woman at the well. (But why doesn’t he have a shirt on?) The conversion of Saul? Nope, that’s the man born blind, being made to see for the first time. (I like the implicit juxtaposition of sighting and blinding, but the distance between the two figures doesn’t fit the intimacy of the story in John 9, and the shooting light beam is a far cry from the earthy, dirt-and-saliva method Jesus uses to restore the man’s vision.)

The figures, I think, Lange extracts from traditional Baroque paintings, though I can’t pinpoint any exactly—but most come from different narrative contexts than the ones represented. Maybe the artist intended these to be merely faint impressions of Christ’s ministry, of his circle of friends and followers, with different episodes melding into one another?

I think the most successful painting in the set is the most straightforward one: The Baptism of Christ. John the Baptist holds a cross-staff in one hand and with the other pours water from a shell onto Jesus’s head, while a light from the heavens shines down, representing God’s blessing. The men are awash in blues and greens.

Jesus Walks on Water also works well, the wispiness of Jesus’s form lending credence to the disciples’ fear that he’s a ghost—even though Jesus seems to be heading away from the boat, not toward it.

I’m curious to hear what you all think.

Another contemporary artist the church commissioned is Markus Fräger (1959–2020), who was based in Cologne. He painted four oils for the entrance area, depicting, I later found out, the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel.

Markus Fräger_Isaiah — Markus Fräger, *Isaiah*, 2009

Markus Fräger_Jeremiah — Markus Fräger, *Jeremiah*, 2009

Markus Fräger_Daniel — Markus Fräger, *Daniel*, 2009

Markus Fräger_Ezekiel — Markus Fräger, *Ezekiel*, 2009

Again, I didn’t quite jibe with them. I see streaks of rain, the glow of city lights, people in shadow. (Referring to the artist’s larger oeuvre, Galerie Friedmann-Hahn wrote that “Markus Fräger staged his pictures like scenes from an American film noir.”) The paintings seem to portray the malaise of modernity, giving off a mood of alienation. The figures are looking out, altercating, contemplating, or making direct eye contact with us. Do you see a connection to the Hebrew prophets? What do the paintings make you feel? Are they fitting for a place of worship, and why or why not? What is the function of church art, anyway?

One of the newer art additions at Neumünster that works brilliantly (both literally and figuratively!) is a painting of the Crucifixion by Jacques Gassmann (b. 1963) that hangs above an early eighteenth-century bronze of Christ recumbent in the vestibule of the east crypt.

Jacques Gassmann_Passion — Jacques Gassmann, *Passion*, 2010; *Effigy of Christ (Christ in His Grave)*, ca. 1700

In Gassmann’s Passion, the crucified Christ is a gold, diaphanous silhouette composed of wafer-thin sweeps of ink. His head droops down in death but is streaked with light. Because there’s no cross, he appears suspended in space. The background is a warm brownish-yellow, reminiscent of tarnished metal.

Gassmann lives in Würzburg and Berlin, dividing his time between the two cities, with a studio in each. I encourage you to peruse his website, https://ogrody.org/, and to follow him on Instagram @jacques_gassmann_. He’s completed over thirty artworks for churches (including a set of three paintings in Würzburg Cathedral that I’ll share in part 3!), a monumental Apocalypse cycle, and various other projects.

Because there was a service going on inside the crypt while I was at Neumünster, I didn’t enter that space. It houses the graves and relics of St. Kilian and his companion martyrs and, among other pieces, a contemporary painting of Christ Triumphant by Michael Triegel (b. 1968).

All photos in this post are my own.

Day Trip to Würzburg, Part 1: Marienkapelle

October 13, 2026October 14, 2026 Victoria Emily Jones7 Comments

All photos in this post are my own.

Late this August, my husband and I flew to Frankfurt, Germany, and from there traveled south, spending nine days in the state of Bavaria. I built our itinerary mainly around religious art I’d been wanting to see, an interest my husband indulges and even appreciates (just not to the same degree I do!).

Bavaria is most associated with the Baroque and Rococo art and architectural styles, which are not styles I gravitate to. I was on the lookout for medieval treasures mostly, but with an openness to surprises.

I planned for us to stop in the city of Würzburg en route from Frankfurt to Rothenburg ob der Tauber because I wanted to see a unique fifteenth-century tympanum relief in the north portal of the Roman Catholic Marienkapelle (pronounced ma-REE-en-kah-PEL-lay), or St. Mary’s Chapel, depicting one of my favorite Gospel stories. More on that below.

Situated in the town’s Marktplatz (market square), the Marienkapelle is a Late Gothic place of worship built in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It was heavily damaged by an Allied bombing raid on March 16, 1945—the same raid that, in less than twenty minutes, destroyed 90 percent of the historic city and killed an estimated five thousand people—and was rebuilt and restored in 1948–61.

Various little “swallow shops,” selling gifts and pastries, are built into the exterior base and buttresses.

Because of the building’s size and central location, the Marienkapelle is often mistaken for Würzburg’s cathedral, but it is not: A cathedral is the official seat of a diocesan bishop, and that’s St. Kilian’s, a five-minute walk away. In fact, the Marienkapelle is not even technically a church, according to canon law, because it does not have its own independent parish. It’s legally classified as a “chapel.” However, it is a church in the loose sense of the word, as it hosts regular worship services, administered by the united parishes of St. Kilian’s and Neumünster, which we’ll visit in separate posts.

Thankfully, although the Royal Air Force incendiaries destroyed the timber-framed interior of the Marienkapelle, the heavy masonry portals and recessed entryways largely protected the medieval relief carvings on the exterior.

The tympanum of the main, west portal, through which you enter the chapel, portrays the Last Judgment. Jesus Christ is seated on a rainbow throne, being crowned by an angel. Drawing on Revelation 1:16 and 19:15, two swords protrude from his mouth, the one on his right a (likely mistaken) departure from traditional iconography, which has a lily instead, symbolizing mercy, which acts alongside his justice.

Last Judgment, west portal, Marienkapelle

He is flanked by angels carrying instruments of his passion—a cross, a column and whip—and two others blowing trumpets, which wakes the dead from their graves. Mother Mary and John the Baptist intercede for those rising to judgment.

On Christ’s right (our left) are the blessed, and on his left (our right) are the damned, being dragged by a hairy devil into a gaping hellmouth. Among the latter group are kings, knights, and bishops, showing that wealth and institutional status earn you no favors with God, and that outward acts of piety or noble deeds count for nothing if they proceed out of an impure heart.

I love the detail at the bottom of people’s skeletons taking on flesh as they push aside the lids of their coffins! This is the general resurrection, the promised reuniting of body and soul prefigured in Ezekiel 37.

On the trumeau (central pillar) of the west portal stands a copy of a stone Madonna and Child from around 1441; the original is located inside the chapel. The Christ child holds an apple.

Copy: Virgin and Child, ca. 1441, from the west portal of the Marienkapelle

Another entrance to the church is on the south side.

The south tympanum portrays the Coronation of Mary, an extrabiblical subject that grew out of the belief that if Jesus is the King of kings, Mary is the queen mother. To either side of them are St. Barbara, holding a chalice, and St. Catherine of Alexandria, holding the breaking wheel on which she was sentenced to be executed.

The most striking feature of the south portal is the Adam and Eve sculpture pair by the preeminent German sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider (ca. 1460–1531). Exquisite! Carved in gray sandstone, they are actually copies (all the freestanding sculptures on the exterior are); the originals, from 1493, are in the Museum für Franken, also in Würzburg—which I’ll share about in part 4. Adam and Eve stand on plinths decorated with foliage, sheltered under tabernacles (tower-like crowning structures).

In addition to these, Riemenschneider and his workshop supplied sculptures of the twelve apostles for the buttresses, and of Christ and John the Baptist, who are situated above Adam and Eve. Christ, as Salvator Mundi, holds a globe, and John the Baptist holds a lamb, a symbol of the self-sacrificial Christ, who takes away the sin of the world.

But now, what I consider the most thrilling artwork at the Marienkapelle, immensely amusing, is the Annunciation tympanum in the north portal, carved around 1430.

It’s in the least prominent of all three portals, tucked away off the main square, next to, when I was there, a fence banner advertising a local wine festival. No one was stopping to look at it.

View from the west portal — View from the north portal

Annunciation, north portal, Marienkapelle

But I knew to search it out—this peculiar carving that visualizes the theological idea, introduced in the fourth century and solidified in the fifth, that Mary conceived Jesus through her sense of hearing. Known as the conceptio per aurem, this teaching stems from a typological connection between Eve and Mary: Whereas Eve listened to the serpent’s lies and conceived death, Mary listened to the angel’s truth and conceived life. The teaching presents Mary as a model of attentive listening to God’s word, which produces fruit; for receiving it into ourselves, bearing it about. It also serves to desexualize the encounter between Mary and Gabriel, focusing attention away from Mary’s genital region and onto her head.

Look at how this artist visualizes the conception by ear! God the Father sits at the top center inside a flowery mandorla, blowing into a serpentine tube that’s attached to Mary’s ear. As he does, a gleefully naked infant Christ glides down the tube on his belly like it’s a waterslide—only it’s not water that’s propelling him; it’s the Father’s breath.

Journeying down this transdimensional slide, he twists and turns and plunges right into his chosen mother’s open auditory canal, where the Holy Spirit as dove enunciates a sacred whisper: “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus . . .” All three persons of the Trinity are present at this moment—their number echoed by the three-branched lily in the vase on the floor.

Behind Mary, two angels hold up a cloth of state, befitting royalty.

The conceptio per aurem was developed in both the East and the West by Christian writers and preachers such as Ephrem of Syria, Augustine of Hippo, Theodotus of Ancyra, Proclus of Constantinople, Cyrus of Panopolis, Zeno of Verona, Athanasius of Alexandria, and Bernard of Clairvaux. To learn more, I recommend the excellent book Divine Conception: The Art of the Annunciation by Sarah Drummond (Unicorn, 2019) and Proclus of Constantinople and the Cult of the Virgin in Late Antiquity: Homilies 1–5 by Nicholas Constas (Brill, 2003), each of which devotes an entire chapter to the motif.

Also on the exterior of the Marienkapelle are a handful of fantastical creatures in the jambs and archivolts and under corbels, and red sandstone grotesques on the eaves.

Grotesques above the west portal, Marienkapelle

Moving inside, the locally quarried pink and white sandstone columns that support the rib vault down the length of the nave are lovely. So are the post–World War II stained glass windows in the choir. But the main visual attraction is the high altarpiece, painted by an unidentified Franconian artist in 1514.

The central scene, consisting of two panels, shows the Annunciation, set inside a well-appointed domestic interior. Mary is interrupted from her prayers by a ruddy-faced messenger, whose banner bears his greeting: “Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.”

The left wing depicts the Nativity inside a half-built or dilapidated structure that’s exposed to the elements. Mary has laid the infant Christ on the ground, cushioning him as much as possible with her extended cloak. Shepherds peep through the metal bars of the window, craning their necks to see. An ox and ass have front-row seats. Joseph holds a candle, and a trio of angels sing from a song sheet.

The right wing depicts the Adoration of the Magi. The three foreign men of means present gifts to the Christ child while their entourages stand by patiently in the background. As is traditional, one of them is portrayed as Black.

Stay tuned for my next Würzburg post, where I’ll share photos from Neumünster, a church that was on my radar because of the unusual crucifix that hangs above one of its side altars.

Roundup: Modern santero, flamenco-style Lord’s Prayer, the horror genre, and more

October 5, 2026 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST: October 2026 (Art & Theology)

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VIDEO: “Relatable Retablos, Vince Campos”: In this segment from ¡COLORES!, a production of New Mexico PBS, Faith Perez interviews santero Vince Campos (@santero_riteno), who paints retablos, a centuries-old Hispano-Catholic sacred art form, but in a contemporary idiom. Campos likes to relate the stories of the saints to those of people he encounters in his everyday life. Here he discusses his retablos of San Lorenzo (St. Lawrence), San Francisco (St. Francis), San Rafael (St. Raphael), and more.

Campos, Vince_Saint Francis of Assisi — Retablo by Vince Campos, showing St. Francis (the patron saint of Santa Fe, animals, and the impoverished) with the legendary wolf of Gubbio

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SONGS:

>> “Padre Nuestro” (Our Father) by Diana Navarro: Diana Narvarro is a singer-songwriter from Málaga, Spain. In this flamenco-style setting of the Lord’s Prayer, originally featured on her 2011 album Flamenco, she is accompanied by guitarist Juan Antonio Suárez “Cano.” [HT: Tamara Hill Murphy]

>> “Shaddai’s Shadow” by Joseph Henry Cortese: Joseph Henry Cortese is a pastor, musician, songwriter, and record producer from the Bronx. Last year he released his original song “Shaddai’s Shadow” as a single; it’s performed here at his church, Crossroads, with Amber Ojeda and Ashley Carbaugh on vocals, and he’s on drums. (See the YouTube video description for the full list of credits.) It’s inspired by Psalm 91, which opens, “You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.’”

(Related post: “Psalm 91: Fifteen musical versions”)

I’m very grateful to Crossroads for financially supporting Art & Theology with an ongoing monthly contribution. Their validation of my ministry of curating, writing, and resourcing the church to engage the arts has been an immense encouragement. If you are a church and would like to set up a recurring donation to help me continue this work, please let me know by email! (Of course, individual contributions are welcome as well; see my Donation page.)

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NEW BOOK: Be Afraid: What Horror Reveals About Facing the Darkness by Kutter Callaway: Publishers sometimes send me books to consider for review, and this is one of the recent standouts. Part of IVP Academic’s Discovering God in Pop Culture series, Be Afraid by theologian and psychological scientist Kutter Callaway “explores how our Christian faith is made better when we engage with the horror genre.” One of the book’s key assertions is, as filmmaker Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street; Scream) puts it, “Horror films don’t create fear. They release it.” “The power of horror,” Callaway expounds, “isn’t just in generating fear—it’s in giving us a space to express, externalize, and process the fears we already carry. It’s a kind of emotional purge” (25).

An intriguing argument, and one I enjoyed following throughout as the author wove together wisdom culled from his two fields with quotes from interviews he conducted with Hollywood filmmakers and others. He writes about The Babadook, The Exorcist, Monsters, Inc. (part of a whole chapter on horror tropes in Pixar films!), A Christmas Carol, and more.

Along the way, Callaway addresses the common Christian objection “Why dwell on so much darkness when the world is already overflowing with evil?”

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NEW EP: Turnaround by John Millea: On September 14, singer-songwriter John Millea from Oklahoma released four new songs “for the ones who feel like giving up, the ones who want to hang on, and the ones who are praying for a turnaround.” Here’s the first, “Good Earth,” inspired by the parable of the sower in Matthew 13:10–17:

“But Not with Wine” by Jessica Powers (poem)

September 28, 2026October 5, 2026 Victoria Emily Jones4 Comments

Aleiby, Afifa_Enchantment — Afifa Aleiby (Iraqi, 1953–), *Enchantment*, 2001. Oil on canvas, 100 × 80 cm.

“You are drunk, but not with wine.”
—Isaiah 51:21

O God of too much giving, whence is this
inebriation that possesses me,
that the staid road now wanders all amiss
and that the wind walks much too giddily,
clutching a bush for balance, or a tree?
How then can dignity and pride endure
with such inordinate mirth upon the land,
when steps and speech are somewhat insecure
and the light heart is wholly out of hand?

If there be indecorum in my songs,
fasten the blame where rightly it belongs:
on Him who offered me too many cups
of His most potent goodness—not on me,
a peasant who, because a king was host,
drank out of courtesy.

This poem was originally published in the Catholic World 173 (April 1951), and then in The House at Rest (privately printed, 1984), and is compiled in The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers, ed. Regina Siegfried and Robert Morneau (ICS Publications, 1989).

Jessica Powers (1905–1988) was an American poet and cloistered nun from Wisconsin. She took vows at the Carmel of the Mother of God in Milwaukee (later relocated to Pewaukee) in 1942, taking the monastic name Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit, OCD. She had an active writing career for over sixty years, publishing under her birth name. She was influenced by the works of other Carmelite writers, such as Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross, and Thérèse of Lisieux.

(Related posts: “Hurrahing in Harvest” by Gerard Manley Hopkins; “Tripping over Joy” by Daniel Ladinsky)

Roundup: Mary Magdalene exhibition, “Grief Songs,” seeing God in Japan, and more

September 23, 2026September 29, 2026 Victoria Emily Jones2 Comments

EXHIBITION: Mary Magdalene. Sin. Pray. Love., September 17, 2026–January 17, 2027, Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany: The first comprehensive art exhibition in the German-speaking world dedicated to Mary Magdalene, presented by the Städel Museum in collaboration with the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung, opened this month. It was heavily advertised throughout Frankfurt when I was there in August, and I regret that the timing of my visit didn’t coincide!

Gonzalez, Nieves_La sfida — Nieves González (Spanish, 1996–), *La sfida* (The Challenge), 2025. Oil on canvas, 116 × 81 cm. Private collection.

The poster image, The Challenge, one of over a hundred works on display, is an oil painting by Nieves González. It portrays Mary with her characteristic long, auburn-blond hair, dressed in an oversize red puffer jacket and holding a red skull.

Mary Magdalene is traditionally shown in red, a color representing her intense spiritual passion but also alluding to the legend of the first Easter egg. One version of the story goes that when Mary went to Rome to proclaim the Resurrection to Emperor Tiberius, a basket of hardboiled eggs in hand (she had brought them with her to Jesus’s tomb for sustenance), Tiberius scoffed and said that Jesus no more rose from the dead than those eggs she carried were red. Well, right then, the eggs changed color from their natural white.

I love the unexpected clothing choice in this painting. I bristle against a historical image type of Mary Magdalene, especially popular among sixteenth-century Italian aristocrats, that shows her only partially clothed, her breasts exposed, ostensibly to emphasize her stripping away of worldly vanity, and even her return to the innocence of Eden—but methinks the Renaissance and Baroque penchant for sensuality had more to do with this representation than did any kind of biblical or theological reasoning. González’s Mary does not bare her body for the titillation of viewers.

Nor is her gaze passive; it’s strong, assured, unashamed. “The challenge” of the title could be Mary’s defying her mischaracterization throughout history as a reformed prostitute—probably the number one thing your average person, whether Christian or non, most associates with her, but which comes from erroneously conflating her with other New Testament women. What the Bible tells us about Mary is that Christ delivered her from seven demons, after which she joined his movement, traveling with him and the other disciples and financially supporting his ministry, which suggests she was a woman of independent means; faithful in her devotion to Christ, she was present at his crucifixion and, two days later, was the first person to whom he appeared in his risen flesh, commissioning her to go and tell the others the news. Although church tradition presents her as the model penitent (which the skull symbolizes), we really don’t know what her former life looked like, nor her life after the events of the Gospels; only that Christ wrought a spiritual transformation in her, and that she boldly followed him. Her pose in The Challenge is one not of arrogance or smugness but of confidence, confidence in who she is, and in the Gardener who called her name.

Another challenge in Mary’s gaze could be for us to consider, if Christ chose her to be the first witness of his resurrection (an event of immense theological import) and ordained her to preach the same, why so many pockets of the church continue to restrict the ministry of women.

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ONLINE COURSE: Stories about the End with Dr. Mary McCampbell, October 13–December 8, 2026: Starting next month, my professor friend Mary McCampbell [previously] is teaching an online course on Tuesday evenings that will examine contemporary works of dystopian literature, film, and television. The reading/watching list includes novels by Don DeLillo, Douglas Coupland, Octavia Butler (in graphic novel adaptation), and Margaret Atwood; Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men; and a to-be-voted-on television series.

“Why is our culture so drawn to fantasies of death and destruction that often provide no ultimate redemption or regeneration? To begin exploring this question, we will analyze how dystopian narratives are (typically) the result of the modern and postmodern secularization of the concept of ‘apocalyptic.’ We will then examine contemporary works of literature, film, and television to investigate how these stories are told and what they reveal about the contemporary cultural landscape. Through close reading of cultural products, we will look at the relationship between dystopian narratives and the centrality of Western consumerism, the practice of religious belief, the experience of grief and loss, the threat of sinister environmental factors, and questions about the presence or absence of a human condition.”

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LIMITED SERIES: The Lord of the Flies (2026), dir. Marc Munden: Speaking of dystopian fiction, the recent BBC adaptation (bought by Netflix) of William Golding’s classic novel is phenomenal. The script, the acting, the cinematography, the score, the costuming—perfect. A dark story about thirty-some British schoolboys aged six to twelve who attempt self-governance when they find themselves stranded on a desert island, it explores democracy versus autocracy, vulnerability and violence, and the dangers of groupthink, probing the savage instincts of humans.

The book was written during the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation. It deliberately subverts the colonial narrative found in many books of the period that touted the “civilizing” authority of the British.

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KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN: Grief Songs, an album by the Porter’s Gate: Last year, a group of roughly sixty scholars, pastors, and musicians gathered to share personal stories of loss and, out of that, wrote songs “meant to be sung by congregations who are willing to sit, to wait, to watch, and to pray with those who grieve.” The Porter’s Gate [previously] has selected a handful of these to record onto an album, and although most of the work has been done, they need some additional funds to bring the project across the finish line. “May these songs give voice to what has been wordless, and may they help our communities become places where the brokenhearted can bring their whole selves and still find themselves held.”

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FILM: Space and Time (2024), dir. Keone and Mari Madrid: Keone and Mari Madrid [previously] are a Filipino American husband-wife duo of hip-hop choreographers, dancers, and directors. In 2023, they suffered a series of losses, one of which they interrogate and transfigure in this forty-three-minute dance film, which shows the couple traversing the landscape of grief after a miscarriage.

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PODCAST EPISODE: “Seeing God in Japan” with Roger Lowther, The Purpose of Beauty, July 31, 2025: Podcast host Anna Gardner Herren interviews organist Roger Lowther [previously], an American missionary to Japan (for over twenty years) and founder of Community Arts Tokyo, about the role of beauty in missions. They discuss the popularity of Bach in Japan, and how Bach has opened up in many Japanese people a curiosity about and receptivity to Christian truth (he has stories about his language teacher attending one of his concerts and having an emotional connection to how it elucidated hope; and about his conductor for the St Matthew Passion asking him to explain the significance of the text being sung, since he was the only Christian in the room!). They talk especially about the necessity of beauty to combat despair after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.

Lowther then goes on to recount stories from the ethnodoxology (“praise of the nations”) movement, which seeks to discerningly use indigenous art forms (musical, dramatic, visual, etc.) in Christian worship; he tells of the professional koto (traditional Japanese zither) player Chieko Ozawa (see this short film), who, when she became a Christian, initially thought she had to quit her instrument because of its association with Shintoism but soon realized it could be used for God’s glory.

(Read the transcript.)

James K. A. Smith on the challenge and joy of contemporary art

September 12, 2026September 17, 2026 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

The following two excerpts are from James K. A. Smith, Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark: Mysticism, Art, and the Path of Unknowing (Yale University Press, 2026). Reproduced by permission of the publisher.

When I look back at my own path to a contemplative phenomenology, I am surprised to note that the places I learned to befriend mystery were rarely “religious” in the usual, institutional sense. Religious institutions seem as committed as Descartes was to certainty, clarity, and binary conceptions of knowledge. Instead, I have learned to love the inscrutable in spaces devoted to the imagination. I see now that the art gallery has been a “desert” of sorts into which I have retreated to find a stillness that makes me available for surprise. The cinema has been a cloister for contemplation. The novel has been a sanctuary into which I would retreat, only to discover the utter mystery of human beings on kaleidoscopic display. The wager of my book is that the modes of attention and contemplation that characterize “the aesthetic mindset” [Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross, Your Brain on Art, xiii] are analogous to the spiritual itinerary of contemplation that we find in ancient desert dwellers, medieval mystics, and twentieth-century sages like Thomas Merton, Howard Thurman, and Henri Nouwen. In our culture of distraction and self-absorption, as well as skepticism and doubt, one of the best paths for cultivating openness to mystic contemplation is to engage regularly with contemporary art in all its conceptual upending and difficult beauty.

Contemporary art invites an itinerary that tracks with monastic contemplation: we withdraw from the grind of the everyday to retreat to a space of reflection. Whether we are reading a poem or facing a painting, we have to still the chatter and noise to be present for the encounter. But one of the reasons I am specifically arguing for the contemplative significance of contemporary art is that the vanguard of the avant-garde is a terrain in which our expectations are upended. Unlike confrontations with “classics” (which, of course, have their depth and profundity), engagement with art and literature from our own generation means encountering art for which we don’t yet have established habits. And so I find myself drawn to the avant-garde and the experimental. By subjecting myself to such art, I forgo control and comfort. I can’t rely on existing habits of perception. Such art disrupts my predilections and demands that I make myself available for the aesthetic encounter in a new way. Sometimes this is maddening, even alienating. Sometimes it leaves me cold. But this, too, is an aspect of the mystical experience. To engage the experimental and avant-garde requires “a beginner’s mind.” “Isn’t a beginner’s mind,” Henri Nouwen asks [in The Genesee Diary], “a mind without the thought, ‘I have attained something,’ a mind opened for grace?”

Art holds together contradictions that discursive rationality disallows. The best artworks make room for the messiness of the world around us, the swirling complexity of the soul within, and even, sometimes, the infinite mystery of the divine. Where a syllogism has to resolve to a conclusion, a poem remains open. While a treatise has to make an argument, a sculpture can evoke fourteen feelings and seven ideas all at once, and all of them can be true. A movie like Terence Malick’s Thin Red Line doesn’t take sides; instead, it immerses us in a world that is a heart-rending conflation of good and evil, darkness and light, beauty and horror, and we recognize all of it.

Next to the antiseptic precision of binary logic, art is messy and maddening. Michael Kimmage, in a provocative essay “The Bad and the Beautiful,” describes this as “art’s salutary impurity.” This, he says, is a central endeavor of what we call modern art: it “defies expectations by rejecting the expected structures, pushing sense and language and image in bizarre, unpredictable directions, breaking up straight lines, flirting with ugliness, defying representation, leaving much unsaid, smudging borders, bubbling over into excess.” He takes James Joyce’s Ulysses as a prime example: “the mongrelness of the distinction,” he argues, “is not impurity for impurity’s sake. Joyce was striving to make discoveries about life by defying and discomposing the conventions of language, to take the lid off the consciousness of his characters, to peer into their souls.” It is the disruptive difficulty of the prose in Ulysses that is the means of epiphany, somehow displaying the abyssal mystery of human consciousness in a way that an fMRI never could. And I, curled up on my sofa in what looks like “private” absorption, am, in fact, in solidarity with the beautiful monstrosity called humanity that lies beyond the reach of “philosophy of mind.” By cultivating an “aesthetic mindset” and a contemplative posture, we learn new habits of attention and wonder that underwrite a life of compassion and peace. Contemplation of contemporary art could engender just the sort of rupture and disruption that can make us aware of our ek-static being, our longing for communion, and break us open to the possibility of grace—the arrival and incursion of something unanticipated.

pp. 50–53

In many ways, art has been an occasion for me to practice friendship with epistemic failure. Artworks have helped me learn how to feel at home in the dark. Held by a painting that baffles me, rapt by a poem that eludes me, dazzled by a film that defies my comprehension, I practice dwelling in epistemic darkness. I can find a certain thrill in perplexity. I start to find joy in unknowing. Moments of analytic failure in front of artworks become occasions for a new kind of patience. It’s not that I resolve to stay until the artwork reveals an answer; it’s rather that the aesthetic experience lures me into a strange kind of waiting that doesn’t expect resolution. I am still expectant, even hopeful. But I am learning that what is given will not be a disclosure that can be fed back into my syllogisms; instead, a different kind of truth dawns, on a register of awareness that exceeds binary logic. . . .

Part of the joy I experience with contemporary art is the peculiar elation that comes from being in a “beginner’s” space. It is the joy of perpetually learning something new; the joy of being an eternal novice. To live a life in the company of contemporary art is to be thrown into unfamiliar territory where all of my acquired imaginative prowess seems useless and irrelevant. Like I’m just learning how to see. I encounter such works and, as [John] Carvalho puts it [in Thinking with Images], I don’t know what to think. My inclination is to move on—turn the page, change the song, move to the next sculpture, looking for something familiar, comfortable. But when I look away from what arrives as opaque, I evade possibility. For to run away from the darkness of an aesthetic encounter—the inscrutability, even offense, of the work—is always to run backward, to comfort and familiarity. The challenge of the artwork arrives, then, as something of a threat to self-assurance and command. But what it invites is a breakdown that could be a breakthrough. To dwell with such artworks is to make one’s home in the dark. To wait with them—quietly gazing at the opaque painting, continuing to read the vexing story, staying in one’s seat despite the alienating film—is already an act that unsettle autarky. To trust that something might be happening that you don’t recognize, can’t control, and don’t understand. Who knows?”

pp. 142, 163–64

Roundup: “Presence and Mystery” conference in Philly, rabbi chants 9/11 voicemail messages, and more

September 6, 2026September 17, 2026 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST: September 2026 (Art & Theology)

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CONFERENCE: Presence and Mystery: A Re:Echo Symposium on Art and Mystery, September 24–26, 2026, Resurrection Philadelphia: “Join philosopher James K. A. Smith, theologian Natalie Carnes, filmmaker Benjamin Stamper, and film historian Joe Kickasola for an inspiring exploration of the surprising relationship between art and mysticism; unknowing as spiritual and creative practice; and how the embrace of mystery restores us to the world—a re-enchantment vital to our formation and flourishing.”

The conference is organized by Re:Echo, “a group of professional artists and friends committed to a creative praxis informed by our daily and spiritual life together, and to the holistic flourishing of all artists, the church, Philadelphia, and the world in and through our creative work.” It is part of their 2026 project The Aesthetics of Shalom, a multidisciplinary, extended meditation on, as the Hebrew word indicates, “comprehensive flourishing, wholeness, and peace of and in God.”

The weekend will include lectures and discussions; the premiere of MOYA SEM’YA (MY FAMILY), a film by Benjamin Stamper; the inaugural Re:Echo Journal Literary Salon (following the release on September 9 of the journal’s first issue, available freely online or for purchase in print); the release concert for Each Mortal Thing, an album of original work by Brother Sister, a new project headed by Christopher and Jeremy McDonald; and guided tours through the rich and unique arts offerings of Philadelphia. The cost of the full conference package is $150, or $75 for a day pass.

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WORKSHOP: “Who Taught You What Jesus Looks Like? Power, Imagination, and the Face of Christ” by Victoria Omotoso, October 10, 2026, St. Paul’s Cathedral, London: “How are images of Jesus shaped by culture, history, and power? And how do these images, in turn, shape theology, identity, and discipleship? Drawing on biblical studies, Black theology, and film, Victoria Omotoso, author of Imag(in)ing Jesus in the Universal or Particular (Bloomsbury, 2025), will invite you, in this workshop, to critically reflect on the figure of Jesus and consider how faith is lived in contexts shaped by inequality and representation.” Tickets start at £7.50.

Imagining Jesus — Portrayals of Jesus in *The Lumo Project: The Gospel of Mark* (2014) and *Son of Man* (2006)

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CHANT: 9/11 memorial chant by Rabbi Irwin Kula: This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US [previously]. In the days and years following the attacks, several final voicemail messages from victims to their families were publicly released, sent from the World Trade Center towers and the hijacked airplanes. Rabbi Irwin Kula set some of these words to an ancient mournful Jewish chant traditionally used for the book of Lamentations. He chants them as a memorial. [HT: Nadia Bolz-Weber]

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NPR SEGMENT: “Melting guns and bullet casings, this artist turns weapons into bells” by Neda Ulaby: Artist Stephanie Mercedes (she/they) melts down bullet casings and parts of old guns and casts them into bells (associated with sacredness or mourning) or builds them into kinetic sculptures that make music, transforming weapons of hate into works of beauty. Reporter Neda Ulaby talked with Mercedes at her spring 2023 exhibition A Sky of Shattered Glass Reflected by the Shining Sun at Culture House in Washington, DC. [HT: Still Life]

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HYMNS arranged by Sam JC Lee:

Sam JC Lee [previously] is a jazz bassist, composer, and sound engineer, an assistant professor at Berklee College of Music, and the director of worship at Citylife Boston. Citylife was the church that formed me as a young adult: My husband and I attended during his grad school years from 2010 to 2015. And music was a big part of that formation. I fondly remember the occasional jazz worship services that Lee arranged music for and directed. Here are two of his hymn arrangements.

>> “Doxology”: Featuring vocalist Robbie Pate and keyboardist Jiri Nedoma. Lee has publicly posted the lead sheet in the keys of C, B♭, and A♭.

>> “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”: Featuring Esther Lee on vocals, Sam JC Lee on bass, Leo Maxey on trumpet, Christian Hizon on trombone, Myunghan Yoo on tenor sax, Sunny Eunsun Park on keys, and Byung Kang on drums.

Excerpt from The Circus of the Sun by Robert Lax (poem)

August 31, 2026August 31, 2026 Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment

Sonia Gechtoff_Celestial Red — Sonia Gechtoff (American, 1926–2018), *Celestial Red*, 1994. Acrylic on canvas, 77 3/4 × 78 in. (197.5 × 198.1 cm). Photo: Victoria Emily Jones, at 55 Walker (art gallery), Tribeca neighborhood, New York, August 2022.

In the beginning (in the beginning of time to say the least) there were the compasses. Whirling in void, their feet traced out beginnings and endings, beginning and end in a single line. Wisdom danced also in circles, for these were her kingdom. The sun spun, worlds whirled, the seasons came round, and all things went their rounds; but in the beginning, beginning and end were in one.

And in the beginning was love. Love made a sphere, and all things grew within it. The sphere then encompassed beginnings and endings, beginning and end. Love had a compass whose whirling dance traced out a sphere of love in the void; in the center thereof rose a fountain.

This untitled prose poem that opens the “morning” section of The Circus of the Sun by Robert Lax was originally published in The Circus of the Sun (Journeyman Press, 1959) and subsequently in 33 Poems (New Directions, 1988, 2019), Love Had a Compass: Journals and Poetry (Grove Press, 1996, 2019), and Circus Days and Nights (Overlook Press, 2000). Copyright © 1959 by the Estate of Robert Lax. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

The Circus of the Sun is an effusive, metaphysical cycle of thirty-one poems by Robert Lax that presents the circus tent as a microcosm of the universe. The cycle unfolds over five sections—morning, afternoon, evening, the midway, and night—following the daily routine of a traveling circus troupe, from set-up to rehearsal to performance to tear-down.

The poem above is the second in the cycle (it’s preceded by an introductory tercet) and the first in the “morning” section. It describes the origins of the cosmos in the dance of the Trinity, drawing on Genesis 1 and the prologue to the Gospel of John, as well as the title “Alpha and Omega” that’s applied to both God the Father and God the Son in the book of Revelation. God is not so named, but there’s a measuring, loving Being behind the flurry of creativity that’s being narrated. There’s a sense of orchestration and design, with the beginning and the end traced out at once, held together in the mind of God, with all things in between.

Creation (Tiberius Psalter) — *The Creation*, from the Tiberius Psalter, New Minster, Winchester, 1050. British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius C VI, fol. 7v.

Many medieval depictions of the creation of the world show God holding a drafting compass, the tool of an architect, to mark out and circumscribe. Lax imagines the divine compass in balletic terms, its anchor leg fixed while its marking leg points and makes sweeping arcs, bringing about a fiery sun and spinning planets with wide orbits and seasonal cycles and so on.

Circles are symbols of eternity, wholeness, perfection. God is perfection, and God makes a perfect world.

And in the center of that world, this mystic poem suggests, is a fountain, representing the abundant life God is and gives. It’s cool and fresh and overflows. Jesus tells of this primordial fount to a Samaritan woman one day at Jacob’s well, describing it as a thirst-quenching “spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4:14).

The theological orientation of The Circus of the Sun is established in part by its epigraph, Proverbs 8:23–27a (Douay–Rheims translation), where Wisdom personified speaks:

I was set up from eternity,
And of old
Before the earth was made:

The depths were not as yet,
And I was already conceived;
Neither had the fountains of waters
As yet sprung out;

The mountains with their huge bulk
Had not as yet been established;
Before the hills
I was brought forth:

He had not yet made the earth,
Nor the rivers,
Nor the poles of the world:

When he prepared the heavens,
I was there.

Wisdom dances, Lax writes, in the beginning, producing fecundity.

The connection of creation to the circus in the Circus’s second poem is not clear, but it becomes more so as the cycle progresses, as the circular shapes and movements are echoed in rings, balls, and somersaults.

The Circus of the Sun was inspired largely by Lax’s experience traveling with the Cristianis, a long-standing circus-performing family of equestrians and acrobats from Italy. On a writing assignment for The New Yorker, he toured with the Cristiani troupe through western Canada in summer 1949, occasionally performing as a clown in their show.

Lax was fascinated by the Cristianis, especially by how they approached the state of “pure act” (actus purus)—a term that Thomas Aquinas, whose writings Lax engaged deeply, used to describe God, in the sense that God is pure existence and actuality with no unfulfilled potential. Michael N. McGregor, Lax’s biographer, elaborates in the 2015 article “Poetic Man of God”:

The acrobats’ performance, Lax thought, was as close as anything he’d seen to a fully present existence, an ability to be entirely in the moment that was both practiced and spontaneous. This ability, this nearness to the essence of God, came not only from physical ability and mental acuity but also a spiritual awareness, a fullness of love. The family was Catholic and close, trusting completely in the skill and the intention—the whole person—of each other.

The Circus of the Sun—Lax’s first full-length poetic work—didn’t come out until ten years after his illuminating immersion in circus life. It was published in 1959 by Journeyman Press, a small operation founded by the illustrator Emil Antonucci, using money from a Guggenheim grant, expressly to disseminate Lax’s poetry, beginning a lifelong collaboration between the two. Antonucci provided a few line drawings for the volume.

The cycle has appeared in three compilation volumes since then, including, along with Lax’s other circus poems, Circus Days and Nights (Overlook Press, 2000), which composer Philip Glass adapted into an opera in 2021.

The Circus of the Sun marks the end of the early, lyrical phase of Lax’s career. His later poems are much more experimental and minimalistic, alienating some readers (including me!).

But this work, which I think is his best, is brilliant in its grand exploration of, as Lax interprets in one of the poems, “creation and glory, / of rising, / and fall: / and again of the rising / where we are all risen.” For Lax, the circus is a place of glory, grace, daring, mindfulness, joy, play, and wonder that points back to creation, forward to the eschaton, and right here to what the life of faith looks like, nomadic and whimsical and death-defying.

In his introduction to Circus Days and Nights, Paul Spaeth writes,

Circus of the Sun is a blending of devotional poetry, in the Catholic tradition, with the eye of a journalist and the delight of a child. I use the term “journalist” in the sense of being a reporter but also in the sense of one who keeps a journal or diary. Lax, the reporter seeing things with childlike grace, at times relates his vision like an Old Testament prophet, at times like St. Francis composing a new “Canticle of the Sun,” and at times like a kid wandering through the circus grounds eating popcorn.

Hear Lax read the entire poem cycle in this 1983 recording from Patmos Island. (I’ve cued up the creation poem, but feel free to rewind to the beginning.)

Robert Lax (1915–2000) was an American avant-garde poet who is especially respected among practitioners and admirers of concrete poetry. Born to Jewish immigrant parents in Olean, New York, he attended Columbia University in the late 1930s, studying literature under Mark Van Doren. There he became lifelong friends with classmate Thomas Merton (Merton mentions him in his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain), with whom he worked on the college humor magazine Jester and who influenced his conversion to Catholicism in 1943. At various times in his career, Lax worked as a university lecturer, book reviewer, film critic, Hollywood scriptwriter, editor at The New Yorker and the progressive Catholic magazine Jubilee, and even as a circus clown. In 1964 he moved to Greece, where he remained, with the exception of a few brief visits to the US and annual trips to the European mainland, for the rest of his life, writing.

Roundup: Site-specific dance in sanctuary, the Feast of Creation, botanical portraits of place, and more

August 26, 2026August 26, 2026 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

DANCE: “Seraphim” (2026), choreographed by Lindsey Hanson: This is one of the most unique dances for film that I’ve seen. It’s absolutely mesmerizing! Filmed in Dimnent Memorial Chapel in Holland, Michigan, with a bird’s eye view camera, “Seraphim” features eight female dancers who utilize the space’s pews and at times appear to be swimming in water or floating in zero gravity. They curl and climb and slide and propel. I love the illusion of them ascending and descending a ladder using the bench ends—a reference to the ladder in Jacob’s vision, linking heaven and earth. (Reminds me of the angels on the limestone facade of Bath Abbey in the UK!) In part because of the work’s title, I imagine the dancers as the invisible spiritual presences that move about the church, quietly ministering.

“Seraphim” is the second of four new works created this year as part of the Sanctuary Project, funded by the Creative Arts Collective for Christian Life and Faith. The third work, “Gethsemane,” will be performed for a live audience, who will watch from the stage, on September 5 at the W83 Ministry Center Sanctuary at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City; free reservations are open! Debuting in 2021, SANCTUARY is a site-specific dance made for Redeemer, to activate the architecture of the church’s worship space, and choreographer and director Lindsey Hanson has expanded the concept into a continuing body of work.

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POEM: “Lord of Light and Dark” by Haley Hodges Schmid, Reformed Journal: Haley Hodges Schmid is a sonically driven poet, and that shows in this gorgeous poem published last month, a prayer with internal rhyme, consonance, a verbified noun, and other language play. It’s about “holy darkening,” says Schmid, whose debut poetry collection, Eros Rex, was released earlier this year by Orison Books. She seeks to recover positive imagery of darkness, and so expand our metaphorical associations. I’m reminded of other poets who have similarly explored the biblical paradox of the light and darkness of God, including John Milton (“Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear,” he writes in Paradise Lost) and Meister Eckhart via Jon M. Sweeney and Mark S. Burrows: “You are the One who is in-yet-beyond / the many, Light burning in darkness // and Darkness shining beyond light” (from Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart). There are a handful of contemporary hymns and worship songs that do the same.

“Lord of Light and Dark” was born out of a week-long residency on poetry and prayer that Schmid participated in in Asheville, North Carolina, led by Marie Howe, who had the group write collects, a short, structured prayer form used in Anglican worship.

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ARTICLES:

>> “A feast day for the whole church,” an interview with Kimberly Belcher, by Steve Thorngate, Christian Century: “This spring, the Consultation on Common Texts published an update to the Revised Common Lectionary: It added the Feast of Creation in Christ on September 1, offering biblical texts and other materials for use starting with the current church year. It’s a milestone in a decades-long ecumenical process.” Steve Thorngate talks with liturgical theologian Kimberly Belcher, who participated in the Assisi meetings in 2024–25, about this feast day that has only recently developed in the West but that has been celebrated in the East for more than five hundred years as the Feast of the Indiction. Belcher describes what’s behind the full name, how a feast day is distinct from a world day of prayer, the challenges and gifts of ecumenism, creation as revelation, and more.

Vooys, Mary Haasdyk_Feast of Creation in Christ — Illustration by Mary Haasdyk Vooys for *The Christian Century*‘s September 2026 cover story on the Feast of Creation in Christ, a new addition to the official liturgical calendars of many Western churches

I love the illustration Mary Haasdyk Vooys made for this article, which is used on the magazine’s cover. It shows Christ as Creator, holding a drafting compass and surrounded by diverse animals.

>> “Hillary Waters Fayle Creates ‘Portraits of Place’ from Seeds, Foliage, and Petals” by Kate Mothes, Colossal: Portraits of Place is an ongoing series of botanical artworks by Hillary Waters Fayle that pay tribute to the land and our relationship with it. The artist collects botanical material from a designated place, dries and preserves it, arranges it into an intricate, mandala-like pattern, and then uses that to create a cyanotype. Many of these she does on commission for people who want to commemorate a piece of land that is special to them.

“Penland Pop” by Hillary Waters Fayle — *Penland Pop* by Hillary Waters Fayle

I urge you to explore the artist’s website, which contains many more photos plus other extraordinary projects, including embroidered leaves and lacelike leafcuts: https://www.hillarywfayle.com/.

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WORSHIP RESOURCES: Creation Collection from Reformed Worship: ReformedWorship.org has compiled numerous resources on the theme of creation—worship services, songs, prayers, litanies, a Psalms-based reader’s theater, sermon series, stories, and more.

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SONG: “Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes” (The Heavens Declare the Glory of God) by Heinrich Schütz: This motet from 1648 is a setting of Psalm 19:1–6. It’s performed here by VOCES8 in the Christuskirche in Recklinghausen, Germany.

Reading and writing and ’rithmetic

August 18, 2026August 19, 2026 Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment

Many children, teens, and adults will be returning to school in the coming weeks to start their fall semester, cracking open the books and putting pens to paper (or fingers to the keyboard!), receiving the gift of learning to then hopefully steward.

On a visit to St. Martin’s Cathedral, aka the Domkerk, in Utrecht, Netherlands, in 2019, I was drawn to a bronze statuette of man who appeared to be immersed in study. Located in the Pandhof (cloister garden), an inner courtyard, it’s an early twentieth-century sculpture that portrays, I later found out, the medieval legal scholar and Utrecht cathedral canon Hugo Wstinc (d. 1349), best known as the author of the influential legal treatise Statuta ecclesiae Trajectensis (Statutes of the Church of Utrecht).

Bronze by Jan Hendrik Brom — Jan Hendrik Brom (Dutch, 1860–1915), *Hugo Wstinc*, 1913. Bronze, cast by Jan Eloy Brom. Pandhof van de Domkerk, St. Martin’s Cathedral, Utrecht, Netherlands. All photos by Victoria Emily Jones.

In the figure’s left hand is a penner, a stiff leather case for holding scribal tools like quill pens and penknives. In the Middle Ages, these were often strung together with an inkwell and slung over the belt.

The statuette of Wstinc was designed by Jan Hendrik Brom and executed by his son Jan Eloy Brom, and was installed atop the new central fountain in the Pandhof van de Domkerk in 1913. Spanning three generations from 1856 to 1961, the Utrecht-based Edelsmederij Brom (Brom Goldsmiths) was one of the most important Dutch workshops for ecclesiastical metalworking from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries.

View from the Utrecht Cathedral cloister

I appreciate how, by choosing to memorialize a clergyperson in the act of writing or note-taking, the cathedral honors the importance of gaining, synthesizing, and passing on knowledge.

As I, a philomath (lover of learning), embark on another year of self-study, I remember my reading, writing friend upon the plinth in that Dutch cathedral garden. His labors at the desk are holy. So are ours, if we consecrate them to God, no matter the subject or field.