LOOK: Parched Earth by Emily Dickey
Taken near Mars Desert Research Station in Hanksville, Utah, in 2019, this photograph shows yellow and purple flowers peeping up through the dry cracks of a desert floor. It’s a superbloom, “a rare desert botanical phenomenon in which an unusually high proportion of wildflowers whose seeds have lain dormant in desert soil germinate and blossom at roughly the same time. The phenomenon is associated with an unusually wet rainy season” [source]. View more photos here.
LISTEN: “Isaiah 35” by the Opiate Mass, on From the Belly of a Woman (2011)
Even the wilderness and desert will be glad in those days
The wasteland will rejoice and blossom with spring crocuses
Yes, there will be an abundance of flowers and singing for joy
The deserts will become as green as the mountains of Lebanon
As lovely as Mount Carmel or the plain of Sharon
There the Lord will display his glory
The splendor of God
With this news, strengthen those who have tired hands
And encourage those who have weak knees
Say to those with fearful hearts:
Be strong and do not fear
Your God is coming
He is coming to save you
This electronica chant sets to music a popular Advent scripture: Isaiah 35:1–4. Sung by Tara Ward [previously] of the Opiate Mass, it was recorded live on December 4, 2010, at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Seattle.
According to the band’s Facebook page,
The name [The Opiate Mass] is a nod both to the Christian liturgical form and to Karl Marx’s assessment that religion is the opiate for the masses. Perhaps it is. Or perhaps the common desire for comfort, rest, escape, or relief are more complicated and mysterious than we know.
In our pursuit of creating spaces of beauty and awe, we find ourselves partial to cathedrals, antiquity, ambience, pipe organs, samplers, synthesizers, incense, tongues, silence, joy, meditation, ambiguity, the abstract. We strive to avoid pretense, hype, cliché, certainty, celebrity, egotism, greed, noise.
Art & Theology 