Roundup: Hymns for Lent; the insistence of spring; female Christian poets; prison art; summer courses

HYMNS FOR LENT: A list of fifty-plus hymns for Lent, including free sheet music downloads, compiled by Dean B. McIntyre, director of music resources at the Center for Worship Resourcing at the United Methodist Church’s Discipleship Ministries in Nashville. Most of these hymns—either their tune, their words, or both—are contemporary, and I believe they were all either written or arranged by members of the UMC. I love that so many of them are minor-key! (There’s such a dearth of minor-key hymns in my evangelical tradition.) “The Desolate Messiah Dies” is a real standout for me—WOW. Here are the others that I really like. The first three would work particularly well for a Good Friday service:

• “The Desolate Messiah Dies” – Words by Gareth Hill, 2004 | Music by Len Olds, 2004
• “Behold the Savior of Mankind” – Words by Samuel Wesley, ca. 1709 | Music by Henry Purcell (“Dido’s Lament”), 1680s, arr. Dean B. McIntyre (alternate tune: Tennessee Harmony, 1818) [Note: The Purcell tune, originally written as an opera aria, makes a gorgeous pairing to this hymn text, but I feel that it’s better suited to a soloist; the Tennessee Harmony tune would be easier for a congregation to sing.]
• “On Friday, When the Sky Was Dark” – Words by Andrew Pratt, 2005 | Music attributed to Jeremiah Clark, 1707
• “God So Loved the World” – Words: John 3:16 | Music by Ludwig van Beethoven, 1798 (Sonata Pathétique), arr. Dean B. McIntyre
• “Jesus, for All You Came to Earth” – Words and music by Andrew Duncan, 2010
• “O What Delight Is This” – Words by Charles Wesley | Music by Ryan D. Neaveill, 2006
• “O Jesus, Full of Grace” – Words by Charles Wesley, 1756 | Music by Ryan D. Neaveill, 2006
• “Give Me a New, a Perfect Heart” – Words by Charles Wesley | Music by Ryan D. Neaveill, 2007
• “Holy God of Power and Might” –Words by Lawrence A. Wik, 2013 | Music by Thomas Hastings, 1830 [tune for “Rock of Ages”]
• “Holy, Holy, Lord of Mercy” – Words by Lawrence A. Wik, 2013 | Music: French carol melody [tune for “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence”]
• “Sovereign Most Holy” – Words by Lawrence A. Wik, 2013 | Music by Johann Crüger, 1640 [tune for “Ah, Holy Jesus”]
• “Hosanna (Save, Mighty Lord)” – Words by John Cennick, 1743, and Reginald Heber, 1811 | Music by J. A. and J. F. Wade, 1854 | Words and music adapted by Ryan D. Neaveill, 2005

+++

SONG: “You Can Never Hold Back Spring” by Tom Waits, covered by Lowana Wallace: I’ve had this song on repeat for the past several weeks—Lowana Wallace’s rendition is simply gorgeous. “This cover is a tribute to Canadians in March. Winter will end, you guys,” Wallace writes. “And maybe Tom didn’t mean for this song to point Christians to the beauty of Lent leading to Easter, but it did for me.”

Lowana Wallace is a singer-songwriter from Caronport, Saskatchewan. If you’ve listened to the Porter’s Gate Worship Project’s acclaimed album Work Songs, you will have encountered her work: she cowrote the song “Day by Day.” Check out more of her music videos, a mix of covers and originals, on her YouTube channel—they’re all great! To help her make more of these, consider becoming a Patreon supporter. You can also download four of the nine tracks from her Christmas jazz album, Hymns and Carols (2009), on NoiseTrade.

+++

POETRY: “5 Female Poets of Faith”: March is Women’s History Month, and Jody Lee Collins has compiled a list of five women poets you should know, whose Christian faith infuses their work: Abigail Carroll, Barbara Crooker, Jeanne Murray Walker, Laurie Klein, and Marjorie Maddox. I heartily second these recommendations! For each poet, Collins has selected a representative poem, giving you a taste of their style, and has provided links to the poets’ published volumes.

+++

2 FILMS + ART EXHIBITION: Incarceration is the theme of two HBO movies that premiered on television last month (following a positive reception at 2018’s Tribeca Film Festival) and the tie-in pop-up art exhibition, sponsored by HBO, that ran from February 20 to 25 at Studio 525 in Chelsea, Manhattan.

Written by Stephen Belber and directed by Madeleine Sackler, O.G. is an introspective drama that follows Louis (Jeffrey Wright), who, after spending twenty-four years in prison for murder, is about to be released. Groundbreakingly, it was filmed almost entirely inside an active prison—Pendleton Correctional Facility in Indiana—with a cast made up largely of inmates and correctional officers, who also consulted on the script. Read an interview with Wright, a professional actor best known for Westworld, and one with supporting actor Theothus Carter, who is serving a sixty-five-year sentence at Pendleton. When he was offered the role of Beecher, Carter said, “I was so happy, it was like being jolted alive back from the dead. I know I’ve never been dead before, but being dead has to feel like being in prison, because here it feels like you don’t matter anymore. This made me feel like I mattered again.”

It’s a Hard Truth, Ain’t It is a companion film to O.G. that is directed by Madeleine Sackler and thirteen incarcerated men at Pendleton, who reflect on their lives and the consequences of their crimes in front of and behind the camera. When Sackler received permission from the prison to lead a filmmaking workshop for inmates, she hadn’t intended to make a documentary, but she was so moved by the depth and intimacy of the conversations that were arising in that workshop, as participants shared their personal stories, and they all decided these stories and perspectives needed to be captured on film, crafted together, and shared more widely. An animator was brought on to bring the men’s memories to life.

Coinciding with the HBO premiere of these two films was a six-day exhibition in New York City called The OG Experience, curated by Jesse Krimes and Daveen Trentman. Like the Hard Truth film, this exhibition offered an insider narrative about the US prison system, as the art was all by formerly incarcerated individuals. The pieces on display included an installation of reclaimed cafeteria trays, a re-creation of a prison cell that invited viewers to sketch on the wall with a screwdriver, a video of the artist boxing with a projection of himself, a self-portrait in pastels over legal documents, and a mural of newsprint images transferred onto prison-issued bedsheets using hair gel (a method developed, and a work begun, by Krimes while in solitary confinement).

On seeing his work on display, Krimes said, “It was really emotional because so much of that experience and what our prison system is designed to do is pretty much destroy you. It’s designed to take away your identity, it’s designed to take away your humanity, and I think in creating that work and investing myself in something meaningful, and coming home and getting to see the final thing . . . it was something that made me feel like I came out of this situation intact, like I’m still a whole human being, and that this thing did not destroy me and it did not take away who I am at my core or change me in a way that it was designed to do.” Since his release from prison, Krimes cofounded the Right of Return Fellowship to directly support formerly incarcerated artists.

I particularly like the works by Russell Craig (also), a self-taught artist from Philadelphia. In his seven-piece set of unstretched canvases, E-Val, pairs of eyes peer out hauntingly from within Rorschach blots made of ox blood; “Craig, who was given Rorschach tests as part of his psychological evaluations during his time in the foster care system, wanted to represent the trauma felt in black communities,” the exhibition text says. Another work, a self-portrait he drew over his prison documents, “symbolizes the stigma of being a criminal,” Craig explained. “No matter how much you change your life around, you’re still viewed as a criminal.”

For more photos from the exhibition, see the Hyperalleric review, “Formerly Incarcerated Artists Visualize Healing.”

+++

SUMMER COURSES: Regent College, a graduate school of Christian studies in Vancouver, is offering six arts courses this summer—week-long intensives. The topics are prehistoric art and meaning making; George Herbert; John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress; grace and forgiveness in contemporary theater (with key scenes played out in class by guest actors from Pacific Theatre); love and longing in poetry and theology, taught by Malcolm Guite (the reading list includes Dante, Herbert, Tennyson, Eliot, Augustine, Aquinas, and Lewis); and “Moral Imagination: Peacebuilding Using the Arts.” There are no prerequisites, and you don’t even have to be enrolled as a seminary student to participate. The cost to audit is CAD$350 (about US$261), with for-credit options costing more. For more information or to register, visit the links.