About the painting: Before he became a world-famous pioneer of geometric abstraction, Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) spent his early artistic career painting pastoral images of his native Netherlands in an impressionist style—churches, windmills, fields, rivers, sand dunes, and lighthouses. He made several paintings, using different color palettes, of the “tall lighthouse” of Westkapelle, which stands at the entrance to the village. The structure is actually a fifteenth-century Gothic church tower that was converted into a lighthouse in 1818 after the church burned down. It is still active, serving along with the “short lighthouse” to lead vessels coming in from the northern part of the North Sea. The loose pointillist technique Mondrian uses here enables him to fuse the lighthouse with the surrounding sky, producing a sense of vibration and ethereality.
About the singer: Blind Willie Johnson (1897–1945) was a gospel blues singer, slide guitarist, and evangelist from Texas about whom little is known. Besides the one-time payments he received from Columbia for his studio recordings of 1927–30, most of his income was earned by performing and preaching on the streets; appreciative passersby would drop coins into the tin cup tied to his Stella. Johnson is known for his unique style of singing: in a gravelly “false bass,” or growl, which he drops into in verse 2 of “Let Your Light Shine on Me.” His is the earliest known recording of this traditional gospel song.
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To view all the Revised Common Lectionary scripture readings for Proper 26, cycle A, click here.
Predella of the San Domenico Altarpiece at Fiesole, ca. 1424, probably by Fra Angelico (Italian, ca. 1395–1455). Tempera and gold leaf on panels, 32 × 244 cm. National Gallery, London.
This week the Revised Common Lectionary assigns an additional set of readings, on top of Sunday’s, for the special celebration of All Saints’ Day (Hallowmas) on November 1. Among them is John’s vision of a multitude of angels and faithful departed surrounding the enthroned Christ in heaven, sounding forth his praise.
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
—Revelation 7:9–12
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O quam gloriosum est regnum (“O how glorious is the kingdom”) — A cappella motet for four voices composed by Tomás Luis de Victoria, 1572 | Performed by the University of Utah Chamber Choir
O quam gloriosum est regnum in quo cum Christo gaudent omnes sancti! Amicti stolis albis, sequuntur Agnum quocumque ierit.
O how glorious is the kingdom
in which all the saints rejoice with Christ!
Clad in robes of white,
they follow the Lamb wherever he goes.
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Explore the individual panels from Fra Angelico’s “court of heaven” predella in greater detail on the National Gallery of London’s website, and rejoice this All Saints’ Day in the Christian witness of those who have gone before us!
Probably Fra Angelico (Italian, ca. 1395–1455), The Virgin Mary with the Apostles and Other Saints, ca. 1424. Tempera and gold leaf on panel, 32 × 64 cm. From the San Domenico Altarpiece predella, National Gallery, London.Probably Fra Angelico (Italian, ca. 1395–1455), Christ Glorified in the Court of Heaven, ca. 1424. Tempera and gold leaf on panel, 31.7 × 73 cm. From the San Domenico Altarpiece predella, National Gallery, London.Probably Fra Angelico (Italian, ca. 1395–1455), The Forerunners of Christ with Saints and Martyrs, ca. 1424. Tempera and gold leaf on panel, 31.9 × 63.5 cm. From the San Domenico Altarpiece predella, National Gallery, London.
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To view all the Revised Common Lectionary scripture readings for All Saints’ Day, cycle A, click here.
Christian confessions, Jewish prayers, Islamic surahs, Buddhist sutras, and Vedic Sanskrit hymns are de- and re-constructed in contemporary artist Meg Hitchcock’s typographic collages—or “text drawings,” as she calls them. Seeking to highlight the beauty of the world’s various religions, she cuts individual letters from one religious text and then rearranges them on paper in an intricate pattern that spells out the beliefs of another tradition. The continuous, run-on line, which weaves in and out without spaces or punctuation, creates a “visual mantra of devotion,” Hitchcock says.
Meg Hitchcock (American, 1961–), Jesus Loves Me, 2013. Letters cut from the Koran, 8 1/2 × 8 1/2 in. Weaves together a Christian children’s song with the Shahada.
When asked how she responds to reactions of horror that she is cutting up and reauthoring the word of God, she said, “I’m very respectful of a person’s faith, and would never intentionally insult anyone. If my work is seen as an affront, it’s only because that person hasn’t heard the meaning behind the work. In short, I don’t see it as a desecration, but a celebration of the word of God.” (Read the full interview at StudioInternational.com.)
Hitchcock was raised Methodist. She had a “born-again experience” (her words) at age twelve and continued in that profession until age thirty, when she decided to step away from the faith. Now, she says, she’s not religious or even spiritual, but she’s definitely “not an atheist.” She says she follows a “pathless path.”
Despite the distance she keeps from organized religion, she is fascinated, she says, by its texts—not necessarily what they say, but what they mean to the people who deem them sacred. The words are so alive and true to communities of believers who recite them, sing them, chant them, pray them with all their heart and soul. People seek direction through these words. They seek comfort and healing. They seek meaning, and self-definition. And in the seeking, believers across all faith traditions are united. It’s this universal impulse—to connect with something larger than ourselves—that Hitchcock wants to explore.
Right: Mary Magdalen at the Foot of the Cross, Netherlands, ca. 1420–30. Alabaster, 8 7/16 × 3 11/16 × 4 1/16 in. (21.5 × 9.3 × 10.3 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. This fragment served as the base of a now-lost crucifix.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment.” (Matthew 22:37–38)
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SONG: “More Love to Thee” | Words by Elizabeth Prentiss, 1869 | Music by William H. Doane, 1868 | Arranged and performed by One Eighty (Amy J. Kim, Joon Park)
“O Lord, from now on let me love You as intensely as I have loved sin.”
—John Chrysostom
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“To Thee alone my spirit cries;
In Thee my whole ambition lies,
And still Thy Wealth is far above
The poverty of my small love.”
—Dhul-Nun al-Misri, 9th-century Egyptian Sufi mystic (trans. A. J. Arberry)
This post belongs to the weekly series Artful Devotion. If you can’t view the music player in your email or RSS reader, try opening the post in your browser.
To view all the Revised Common Lectionary scripture readings for Proper 25, cycle A, click here.
Affiliate links:Art & Theology is now a participant in the Amazon Associates program, an affiliate marketing tool that enables me to potentially collect a little change by hosting Amazon links on my website. I already do that anyway—link to Amazon product pages when I mention books, movies, or less often, music (I try to drive sales directly to the artist’s website, if one exists)—so you will not notice any change in blog post appearance or the frequency of links. But now that I’m registered, if you were to click through one of those Amazon links (for example, Shout Because You’re Free or The Seventh Seal below) and make a purchase, any purchase, I would earn a referral fee of 2.5% to 5% of the purchase price. I have to generate at least three purchases every 180 days to stay in the program. As of now, this is the website’s sole income stream.
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EXHIBITION: “The Ivory Mirror: The Art of Mortality in Renaissance Europe,” June 24–November 26, 2016, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine: Skeletons, skulls, and other dark images of death from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were meant to remind their owners of life’s brevity and thereby prompt repentance. Some target specific sins, like clinging too tightly to one’s wealth or good looks. “This exhibition represents a significant contribution to our understanding of the rich visual culture of mortality in Renaissance Europe. The appeal of the memento mori, featuring macabre imagery urging us to ‘remember death,’ reached the apex of its popularity around 1500, when artists treated the theme in innovative and compelling ways. Exquisite artworks—from ivory prayer beads to gem-encrusted jewelry—evoke life’s preciousness and the tension between pleasure and responsibility, then and now.” A symposium, “Last Things: Luxury Goods and Memento Mori Culture in Europe, ca. 1400-1550,” will be held November 3–4. You can read a review of the exhibition at Hyperallergic.
Ivory prayer bead, France or southern Netherlands, 1530. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. On one side of the carving is a man, on another a woman, and grinning sardonically between them is a skull, worms crawling through its bared teeth.Vanitas, Germany, ca. 1525. Boxwood. Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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ART COMMENTARY:The Seven Works of Mercyby the Master of Alkmaar: The corporal works of mercy, seven in number, are a traditional Catholic practice of serving the physical needs of others. Derived from Matthew 25:31–46 (cf. Isaiah 58:6–10) and Tobit 1:16–22, they are to: (1) feed the hungry, (2) give water to the thirsty, (3) clothe the naked, (4) shelter the homeless, (5) care for the sick, (6) visit the imprisoned, and (7) bury the dead. Earlier this month Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker wrote a two-part visual meditation on a Netherlandish polyptych (altarpiece with four or more panels) from the sixteenth century that treats this topic. In the background of each contemporary enactment of mercy stands a silently affirming Jesus. To view the panels in high resolution, visit the Rijksmuseum website.
The Master of Alkmaar, The Seven Works of Mercy, 1504. Oil on seven panels, 120 × 472 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
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ALBUM:Spirituals and Shout Songs from the Georgia Coastby the McIntosh County Shouters: The McIntosh County Shouters from coastal Georgia are the last community in America to perform the traditional ring shout, a shuffle-step devotional movement, accompanied by singing, that is rooted in the ritual dances of West Africa and was forged by the Atlantic slave trade. Shouting differs from traditional black religious music in repertory, style, and execution, Art Rosenbaum writes in Shout Because You’re Free: The African American Ring Shout Tradition in Coastal Georgia. In 1980 two folklorists, astonished to find the form still in use, encouraged practitioners to take it public. The community thus assembled a small touring group, and in 1984, under the Smithsonian Folkways label, they released their first album. This year they released their second, with a mostly new selection of songs (all but three) and all-new performances. You can watch “Jubilee” below. (Thanks, Global Christian Worship, for the tip!)
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FILM: The Seventh Seal (1958): After receiving several recommendations, I finally watched this classic of world cinema, directed by Ingmar Bergman, and actually enjoyed it more than I expected. It follows the medieval knight Antonius Block as he returns, disillusioned and exhausted, from a decade-long Crusade, only to encounter Death, whom he challenges to a fateful game of chess. (This central image, Bergman said, was inspired by a church fresco, reproduced below.)
Albertus Pictor (Swedish, ca. 1440–ca. 1507), Death Playing Chess, 1480s. Fresco, Täby Church, Uppland, Sweden.
The movie’s title is taken from Revelation 8:1—“And when the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour”—establishing the silence of God as a major theme. Antonius’s monologue in the chapel confessional evinces his struggle between doubt and belief:
I want to confess as best I can, but my heart is void. The void is a mirror. I see my face and feel loathing and horror. My indifference to men has shut me out. I live now in a world of ghosts, a prisoner in my dreams. . . .
Is it so hard to conceive God with one’s senses? Why must He hide in a mist of vague promises and invisible miracles? How are we to believe the believers when we don’t believe ourselves? What will become of us who want to believe but cannot? And what of those who neither will nor can believe? Why can I not kill God within me? Why does He go on living in a painful, humiliating way? I want to tear Him out of my heart, but He remains a mocking reality which I cannot get rid of. . . .
I want knowledge. Not belief. Not surmise. But knowledge. I want God to put out His hand, show His face, speak to me. . . . I cry to Him in the dark, but there seems to be no one there.
But along his way he ends up meeting a “holy family”—simple and with pure faith and hope—whose names, Mia and Jof, are diminutives of Mary and Joseph. Bergman presents their worldview as a contrast to the bitter skepticism of Antonius.
Larry Poncho Brown (American, 1962–), Every Round Goes Higher, 2009. Acrylic on canvas. Commissioned by the Douglass Memorial Community Church Inspirational Choir, Baltimore, Maryland.
Oh sing to the LORD a new song;
sing to the LORD, all the earth!
—Psalm 96:1
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SONG: “Come on Children, Let’s Sing” | Traditional, performed by Mahalia Jackson
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To view all the Revised Common Lectionary scripture readings for Proper 24, cycle A, click here.
For Christmas 1999 my parents bought me, a sixth grader at the time, the newBest of Simon and Garfunkel album released by Columbia. I was already familiar with about half the songs, which played frequently on Oldies 100.7, the station to which my family’s radios were always tuned. (Even so, who hasn’t heard “Mrs. Robinson” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water”?) The other half I taught myself through repeated listening on my boombox, following along with the lyrics printed in the CD insert. I’m grateful to my parents for educating my musical tastes beyond Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears.
Simon and Garfunkel, 5th Avenue and 53rd Street subway station, New York City, 1964. Photo: Henry Parker (cover shoot for Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.).
It wasn’t until after college that I ventured into the duo’s lesser-known discography. That’s when I discovered their debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. “Exciting new sounds in the folk tradition,” the cover boasts. Released October 18, 1964, to lukewarm reviews, it was a commercial failure, selling only one thousand copies in the first eight months. Even today critics say it pales in comparison to their subsequent work. But I actually love this album—it’s one of my favorites not only of theirs but of any artist. I was pleasantly surprised to find it chock-full of biblical references, many of them explicit.
Its seven covers include an upbeat gospel song, a Negro spiritual, a Renaissance canticle (adapted), a visionary antiwar song, an atom-bomb lament, a traditional Scottish ballad, and the Dylan classic “The Times They Are a-Changin’.” The five originals include a fable about loving the immigrant, an elegy for a civil rights martyr, a farewell song (in the voice of a criminal), and two poetic expressions of urban loneliness.
1. You Can Tell the World. [Listen] A joyous blast of praise, this traditional black gospel song begins,
Well, you can tell the world about this
You can tell the nation about that
Tell ’em what the master has done
Tell ’em that the gospel has come
Tell ’em that the victory’s been won
He brought joy, joy, joy, joy, joy, joy
Into my heart
It then goes on to extol Jesus’s preaching and testify to the personal revelation God gives.
As is often the case with traditional songs, the tune and lyrics have been adapted over time. Other versions have been recorded under names like “He Brought Joy to My Soul” (Ethel Waters, 1926); “I Can Tell the World About This” (Morris Brown Quartet, 1940); “Joy, Joy to My Soul” (The Soul Stirrers, feat. Sam Cooke, 1951); “Tell the World” (The Tarriers, 1960); and so on. In 1961 Bob Gibson recorded an arrangement he and Hamilton Camp had written, which is what Simon and Garfunkel credit in their liner notes. This was my first time hearing this song that has apparently been making the rounds for decades, and I enjoyed listening to what other artists have done with it. To view a partial list of recordings, click here. (And be sure to check out the choral arrangement by Alice Parker, on the 2010 album Listen, Lord.)
2. Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream. [Listen] In this song, written by Ed McCurdy in 1950, the speaker dreams about a treaty being signed by all nations to put an end to war. As the signers hold hands and pray together, the people toss their guns, swords, and uniforms into trash heaps, for they have been rendered obsolete. A call for world peace, “Last Night” has been recorded in seventy-six languages, and the Peace Corps adopted it as their official theme song in 1980. It’s a little too singsongy for my tastes, but I support the dream 100 percent!
3. Bleecker Street. [Listen] The first original song on the album, “Bleecker Street,” typifies the melodic grace and themes (e.g., alienation, discontent) that Paul would come to be known and praised for. Its title is the name of one of the famous avenues of Greenwich Village, a haven for artists of all types and a major hub of 1960s countercultures. But Paul doesn’t characterize it as a place of salvation. Quite the opposite: he says, “It’s a long road to Canaan / On Bleecker Street.”
It sounds to me like Paul (assuming he’s the speaker here) is voicing his disillusionment and trying to come to grips with humanity’s failings. For all the lofty ideals born and preached there, the Village is no paradise. People were coming there looking to receive and help effect freedom, enlightenment, beauty, and change, but loneliness and suffering persists. Fog covers Bleecker “like a shroud,” blanketing homeless men asleep in alleys and “hid[ing] the shepherd from the sheep.” (Most residents were so self-involved, they couldn’t see God.) There’s a spiritual emptiness, and a loss of real human connection (“I saw a shadow touch a shadow’s hand”).
The poets write, and “holy, holy is their sacrament” (a reference, perhaps, to Allen Ginsberg). But their rhymes are “crooked” (dishonest?), and they sell them for thirty dollars’ rent, a reference to Judas’s betrayal of Jesus.
And yet on the other side of this moral desert, “a church bell softly chime[s],” beckoning seekers to a higher and truer hope, to a promise that will not fail. Its “melody sustain[s]” the human spirit like nothing else can.
4. Sparrow. [Listen] This sung fable, written by Paul Simon, tells the story of a little sparrow “who’s traveled far and cries for rest.” She seeks love but is rebuffed at every turn. The oak tree denies her shelter in his branches, not wanting to lend his strength to such an unworthy creature; for fear of derision from her peers, the beautiful swan declines to speak a kindly word; and the self-interested wheat refuses the sparrow food, preferring to keep all his resources to himself: “I would if I could but I cannot I know. / I need all my grain to prosper and grow.” Continue reading “Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. by Simon and Garfunkel (album review)”→
Gocha Kakabadze (Georgian, 1966–), Descent of the New Jerusalem, 2016. Gouache on paper.
On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,
of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.
And he will destroy on this mountain
the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the sheet that is spread over all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.
Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces,
and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the LORD has spoken.
It will be said on that day,
Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.
This is the LORD for whom we have waited;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.
—Isaiah 25:6–9 (NRSV)
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SONG: “When Your Kingdom Comes” by the Silver Pages, feat. Mona Reeves, on The Silver Pages: Part II (2015)
Christians are called to be “aching visionaries,” writes Nicholas Wolterstorff in the classic Lament for a Son—much like the Hebrew prophets, who by the Spirit’s enlightening were able to see through the pain of this present era into a future where all things are made new, where sorrow is undone and Love reigns. Blessed are those who cling to this vision, and who actively live into it here and now, not ignoring hurt but acknowledging its wrongness (that’s what lament is: to say, “This is not right”) and co-laboring with God to heal it. For this task we are equipped with God’s Spirit.
The Christian fixation on heaven is sometimes perceived by outsiders as escapist, as opioid. Claiming its promise does console, it’s true. It does give us power to push through pain and guards us against despair. But what it absolutely does not allow is retreat from reality. On the contrary, it helps us to inhabit reality more fully. Talk of heaven doesn’t numb us to the world—or at least it shouldn’t. It makes us hyperaware, especially of history’s path. History is going somewhere! It has a telos, and it has manifestly not arrived there yet. Until then, we ache. We labor. We hope. Rather than having an idling effect, seeing the goal actually motivates us to live presently in tighter line with God’s values, because we see how beautiful a world they usher in. We know that we cannot ourselves create the final fullness that Christ will institute when he returns, nor can we remove the pall of evil (again, that’s only within Christ’s power), but we can certainly live as citizens of God’s kingdom and thus practitioners of the gospel in all its transformative goodness.
Brothers Philip and Paul Zach (The Silver Pages) are aching visionaries who write songs and sing. “When Your Kingdom Comes,” performed with Mona Reeves, helps us to see with greater clarity the glorious future that’s in store for this earth. One day when we come home to it, it will be heaven. The New Jerusalem will descend, and we’ll be wed eternally to its king.
To download the album version of the song (which has more pronounced percussion) along with five other Silver Pages tracks, go to NoiseTrade. It’s free in exchange for your email address.
Update, 9/21/20: Paul Zach posted a solo acoustic version of the song on his Instagram today.
And here he is singing the song with his friend Patrick Bagaza from Rwanda, who translated the song into Swahili:
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[After the Ring is destroyed]
“Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?”
“A great Shadow has departed,” said Gandalf, and then he laughed and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count.
—J. R. R. Tolkien, from The Return of the King
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To view all the Revised Common Lectionary scripture readings for Proper 23, cycle A, click here.
Lauren Kalman (American, 1980–), Tongue Gilding, 2006. Digital print, laminated on acrylic, 32 × 23 in. (81.3 × 58.1 cm). Still from a 12-minute short film. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
“The law of the LORD is perfect,
reviving the soul;
the testimony of the LORD is sure,
making wise the simple;
the precepts of the LORD are right,
rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the LORD is pure,
enlightening the eyes;
the fear of the LORD is clean,
enduring forever;
the rules of the LORD are true,
and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold,
even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey
and drippings of the honeycomb.”
—Psalm 19:7–10
“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!”—Psalm 34:8a
“How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!”
—Psalm 119:103
“Jesus Name So Sweet” was written in 1977 by the Jamaican musician Bobby Aitken (early vinyl pressings had his surname as “Akins” or “Atkins”) after his conversion to Christianity. The song was internationally popularized by Donnie McClurkin in 2000, who performed it in London as part of his “Caribbean Medley”—but as it turns out, I discovered it through a trio of car-riding nuns! I sourced the embedded audio excerpt from the Caribbean Gospel YouTube channel; the names of the performers and the year of the recording are not given, and efforts to track down this info were unsuccessful.
Of the short patois refrain “Every rock we rock upon Jesus,” musicologist Melvin L. Butler writes,
This phrase does not translate easily into Standard English. However, Jamaican churchgoers explained to me that the repetition of the word rock and the idea of rocking “upon Jesus” suggest the idea of “movement” with Jesus—literally, through holy dancing, and metaphorically, through life’s ups and downs. The chorus thus celebrates the “sweetness” of Jesus, who serves not only as a spiritual dancing partner during collective praise but also as a guide and comforter amid the “rocky” road of everyday life. [“Performing Pentecostalism: Music, Identity, and the Interplay of Jamaican and African American Styles,” in Rhythms of the Afro-Atlantic World: Rituals and Remembrances, p. 46]
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[Addendum, 10/20/17]
“The Name of God” by Anya Silver
Like a baker, swaddling the juice and heft of apples in pastry,
I want my mouth to cradle the delicious name of God.
This post belongs to the weekly series Artful Devotion. If you can’t view the music player in your email or RSS reader, try opening the post in your browser.
To view all the Revised Common Lectionary scripture readings for Proper 22, cycle A, click here.
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