Roundup: Advent as a season of pregnancy, an Oh Hellos Christmas, jumbo cathedral tapestry, new film column, music education ministry

“ART OF ADVENT” SERMON: In his chapel address last December at Wheaton College, assistant professor of art history Matthew Milliner opened with a marriage analogy: If you love your spouse, you’ve got to love their parents. Do we love Mary and Joseph? Have we even met them? “Before the swaddled baby comes the swollen belly,” Milliner reminds us. He helps us dwell in those nine months before Christ’s birth, showing examples of the Virgin of the Sign icon (“ultrasound Jesus”) and Marc Chagall’s modern interpretation of it; these images are good for “target practice,” he says: for focusing our primary affections on Christ. He also shares how Mariko Mori’s video piece Miko No Inori (The Shaman-Girl’s Prayer) reminds him of a Visitation sculpture group by a fourteenth-century German artist, who inset Mary and Elizabeth’s bellies with a gem. Advent is a season of pregnancy, in which we are called to bear Christ within us. Not only that, it’s about “the pregnancy of a groaning planet,” waiting for deliverance from suffering. This address was given a few weeks after the death of Wheaton English professor Brett Foster, and Milliner notes how putting Brett’s body in the ground was an Advent act, in that we wait for it to rise.

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CHRISTMAS EXTRAVAGANZA TOUR + MUSIC DOWNLOAD: The Oh Hellos—folk rock sibling duo Maggie and Tyler Heath (and my husband Eric’s favorite band)—are hitting up eight US cities on their Christmas Extravaganza Tour this month, each show “an evening of Christmas music, carols, originals, bad jokes, sing-alongs, dancing, revelry, and all the holiday cheer you can squeeze into one room!” Sure to be featured are the four “movements” from their Family Christmas Album, which blend carol excerpts: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” with “The Coventry Carol”; “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night” with “O Come, All Ye Faithful”; “Silent Night”; and “Joy to the World” with “I Saw Three Ships.” I’ve embedded the first one in the player below. They’re offering this Christmas album for free download at NoiseTrade (tips appreciated), or if you want a physical disc, you can purchase it from Bandcamp.

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VISUAL MEDITATION: My latest visual meditation for ArtWay is on the gigantic Christ in Glory tapestry by Graham Sutherland that hangs behind the altar of Coventry Cathedral—one of many modern church art commissions in England necessitated by World War II bomb damage. Visiting the cathedral in 2013 was one of the most spiritually rich experiences I’ve ever had, and I plan to share it on this blog sometime in the future. Such a variety of artists were involved in the interior decoration program, and somehow it all comes together, collectively testifying to the power of resurrection. Sutherland wrote of his aspirations for the Christ figure: “The figure must look real—in the sense that it is not a rehash of the past. It must look vital; non sentimental, non-ecclesiastical; of the moment: yet for all time.” I’m taken by the final result, but an elderly gentleman who observed me staring at it for a while approached me and told me how much he hates it, how he thinks the eyes look unkind. (The man has lived in Coventry his whole life and remembers worshiping in the original cathedral before the war.) What do you think?

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FILM COLUMN: This fall I’ve really been enjoying film critic Jeffrey Overstreet’s new Christianity Today column, “Viewer Discussion Advised,” designed to help Christians discuss and explore a broad range of films. His kickoff article on the foreign drama Timbuktu, which is about the city’s occupation by Muslim extremists, highlights how it “bears artistic witness to the sufferings of our neighbors.” (Quoting Frederick Buechner: “If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors.”) “Christians can choose to dwell on—and invest in—movies that show us what we already like, tell us what we already know, assure us of our own salvation, and make us feel happily entertained. That isn’t wrong. But might we make better use of our time? Might we exercise courage and conscience, step outside of our comfort zones, attend to our neighbors, and learn from their experiences?”

In addition to Timbuktu, Overstreet has covered the comedy The Station Agent; the US criminal justice system documentary 13th; the Hitchcock thriller Vertigo; the biographical drama A Man for All Seasons; the Marvel superhero flick Doctor Strange; the Coen brothers’ comedies; and the sci-fi feature Arrival, ending each article with group discussion questions. Overstreet has been writing about art, film, and faith for more than a decade at LookingCloser.org and is the author of Through a Screen Darkly: Looking Closer at Beauty, Truth, and Evil in the Movies. He is currently teaching an online film course for Houston Baptist University and creative writing at Seattle Pacific University. To receive weekly installments of “Viewer Discussion Advised” to your email inbox, sign up for the CT Entertainment Newsletter.

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MUSIC VIDEO: My friend Nabil Ince is a third-year music major at Covenant College who writes and produces music under the rap name Seaux Chill. After an internship this summer he became assistant program director for the New City Fellowship–based nonprofit East Lake Expression Engine in Chattanooga, Tennessee, whose mission is to provide children in the East Lake neighborhood with a free music education in a gospel-centered environment. Inspired by the El Sistema movement, the organization believes that music is an effective avenue for developing children’s creativity and problem-solving skills and for building up a strong community. They provide year-round classes on music history, theory, composition, and performance, including choir, bucket band, and orchestra. Below is the music video for “It Always Rains on Tuesdays,” a song Nabil wrote for the kids. The refrain is “Feed the plants / Clean all the cars / Fill the potholes / Tears from the stars.”