Berndnaut Smilde (Dutch, 1978–), Nimbus II, 2012. Lambda print, 125 × 186 cm. Saatchi Gallery, London.
Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole congregation of the Israelites, ‘Draw near to the LORD, for he has heard your complaining.’”
And as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the Israelites, they looked toward the wilderness, and the glory of the LORD appeared in the cloud.
—Exodus 16:9–10
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SONG: “I Cry Out” by a ship at Sea, on Awake, Awake (2012)
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This is one of several passages in the Old Testament in which God appears to Israel in a cloud during their desert journey to the Promised Land, signifying both his aboveness and beyondness and his withness. Here he shows up in response to the Israelites’ groans of hunger, showering down quail and manna (see earlier Artful Devotion, “Open Your Mouth”).
Dovetailing with this divine manifestation described in Exodus is Berndnaut Smilde’s photograph Nimbus II, which shows a cloud hovering inside the sixteenth-century Lady Chapel (Mariakapel) in Hoorn, the Netherlands. Smilde created the cloud by misting the area with water vapor and pumping smoke from a machine; the water particles then stuck to the smoke to form a fleeting installation, lasting only about thirty seconds. The photograph plays with the idea of presence and absence: the Lady Chapel has been vacant since 1968, and yet filling the emptiness is this sign of God’s glorious presence. Like us sometimes, the ancient Israelites had trouble seeing God in their wilderness wanderings. But he was overshadowing them in his protective care the whole time. When they truly looked (per Aaron’s instruction), they saw. When they cried out, God answered.
Nimbus II is one of many photographs from Smilde’s Nimbus series, shot in a variety of locations, from museums and factories to castles and dungeons. The title is a play on words, as a nimbus is both a type of cloud and another word for halo, the divine radiance that encircles the head of Christ and the saints in religious art. For more on this series, see “An artist creates miniature clouds in spaces around the world” by Jim Martin or the book Builded Remnants. You can also take a glimpse behind the scenes in this short video, and this one.
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 13, cycle B, click here.
Stephen Watson (American), Breadth, 2013. Tape-measure shards. From the solo exhibition “Slapdash and Sacred” at the Arnold Art Gallery, Shorter University, Rome, Georgia.
I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
—Ephesians 3:18–19
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SONG: “O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus” | Words by Samuel Trevor Francis, 1875 | Music by Thomas J. Williams, 1890 (Tune: Ebenezer) | Performed by the John Brown University Cathedral Choir, 1997
O the deep, deep love of Jesus,
Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free,
Rolling as a mighty ocean
In its fullness over me!
Underneath me, all around me,
Is the current of Thy love;
Leading onward, leading homeward
To my glorious rest above.
O the deep, deep love of Jesus—
Spread His praise from shore to shore!
How He loveth, ever loveth,
Changeth never, nevermore!
How He watcheth o’er His loved ones,
Died to call them all His own;
How for them He intercedeth,
Watcheth o’er them from the throne.
O the deep, deep love of Jesus,
Love of ev’ry love the best;
’Tis an ocean vast of blessing,
’Tis a haven sweet of rest.
O the deep, deep love of Jesus,
’Tis a heav’n of heav’ns to me;
And it lifts me up to glory
For it lifts me up to Thee.
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SONG: “The Love of God” | Words and music by Frederick M. Lehman, 1917, with third verse by Rabbi Meir ben Isaac Nehorai, ca. 1050 | Performed by Jonathon Strauss Brenner, 2018
The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled,
And pardoned from his sin.
O love of God, how rich and pure! How measureless and strong! It shall forevermore endure— The saints’ and angels’ song.
When hoary time shall pass away,
And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,
When men who here refuse to pray,
On rocks and hills and mountains call,
God’s love so sure, shall still endure,
All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to Adam’s race—
The saints’ and angels’ song.
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.
Frederick M. Lehman, the writer of this hymn, says it was inspired by lines scrawled on the walls of a psychiatric hospital cell (the third stanza), which as it turns out are from an eleventh-century Jewish liturgical poem by Rabbi Meir ben Isaac Nehorai, a cantor (Heb. hazzan) in Worms, Germany. Written in Aramaic, the ninety-line Akdamut (Prologue [to the Ten Commandments]) is chanted in Ashkenazic services on the first day of Shavuot (Pentecost) before the reading of Exodus 19–20, the revelation on Mount Sinai.
The reference to all the seas being ink and all the reeds pens is found also in Christian and Muslim traditions, as well as in earlier midrashic writings. It is unknown who originated the expression—for Jews, its ultimate formulation is the opening of Rabbi Meir’s Akdamut; Christians know it best from the hymn “The Love of God” (though it is also present in medieval Christian literature); and Muslims have it enshrined in the Koran (Surah Al-Kahf 18:109 and Surah Luqman 31:27).
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Stephen Watson is a multidisciplinary artist and an assistant professor of art at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Many of his artworks originated as accompaniments to the Sunday services at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where they would be temporarily displayed throughout the year in the church foyer. “My art is my contribution to the church body,” says Watson, “and I aim to meaningfully expand the worship experience for the congregation with each artwork I share.” His liturgical installations are fantastic, and I plan to feature more of them in a future post. In the meantime, you can follow Watson on Instagram @stewatson.art.
Inspired by Ephesians 3:18–19, Breadth emphasizes the absurdity of trying to measure God or put limits on his love, a love that, as one of our songwriters puts it, is “vast, unmeasured, boundless, free.” The Breadth installation shown above, consisting of tape-measure shards arranged in a zigzag pattern, is from a gallery setting, but the concept has also been iterated in sacred spaces—for example, as a twisting, tangled mess of tape measures descending from the ceiling like a beam of light, or as a series of looped-tape sunbursts gradually opening from the niches along the north and south walls of a sanctuary.
Stephen Watson (American), Breadth and Length and Height and Depth, 2012. Temporary installation at Trinity Presbyterian Church, Tuscaloosa, Alabama.Stephen Watson (American), Breadth (detail), 2014. Site-specific installation of tape measures, Sojourn Community Church, Louisville, Kentucky.Stephen Watson (American), Breadth (detail), 2014. Site-specific installation of tape measures, Sojourn Community Church, Louisville, Kentucky.
When I was little, my mom and I would try to outdo each other in expressing with the extent of our arm span how vast was our love: “I love you THIS much!” “Well, I love you THIS much!” How much more immeasurably does God, whose arms are infinitely wide, love us.
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 12, cycle B, click here.
John White Alexander (American, 1856–1915), Landscape, Cornish, N.H., ca. 1890. Oil on canvas, 30 3/8 × 45 in. (77.2 × 114.2 cm). Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul . . .
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil:
for thou art with me;
thy rod and thy staff,
they comfort me.
—Psalm 23:1–3a, 4
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MUSIC: “Sheep May Safely Graze,” from BWV 208 | Composed by Johann Sebastian Bach (1713) | Performed by London Symphony Orchestra, on Night in Berlin (2001)
The aria “Schafe können sicher weiden” (Sheep May Safely Graze) comprises the ninth movement of Bach’s Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd (The Lively Hunt Is All My Heart’s Desire)—known informally as the Hunting Cantata. Written for the thirty-first birthday of Duke Christian of Saxe-Weissenfels, the cantata was performed as a surprise at a banquet at the ducal hunting lodge, and it’s full of flattery. The text of “Sheep May Safely Graze,” written by Solomon Franck, praises Christian for his wise, protective leadership (in actuality, he was a lousy ruler):
Sheep may safely graze and pasture
In a watchful shepherd’s sight.
Those who rule, with wisdom guiding,
Bring to hearts a peace abiding,
Bless a land with joy made bright.
At 1:31 in the above recording, you can hear potential danger lurking nearby, but the attentive shepherd neutralizes the threat, keeping safe his flock.
Bach originally scored this piece for soprano with two recorders and continuo, but it has since been transcribed for orchestra and countless other combinations of instruments and is most popular without words. I enjoy playing Egon Petri’s transcription for solo piano, performed here by Alessio Bax:
Its pastoral mood, befitting Psalm 23, and its celebration of a good shepherd’s care have led it to be applied to the Good Shepherd and performed in church services. I’ve even come across some piano arrangements that interfuse it with “Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us” (for an intermediate arrangement of such by Cindy Berry, see Classical Hymns).
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To view all the Revised Common Lectionary scripture readings for Proper 11, cycle B, click here.
Blood that bled into a cry!
The elements
felt its touch and trembled,
heaven heard their woe.
O life-blood of the maker,
scarlet music, salve our wounds.
—“Antiphon for the Redeemer” by Hildegard of Bingen, translated from the Latin by Barbara Newman
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 10, cycle B, click here.
Brandon Maldonado (American, 1980–), Transcendence, before 2010. Oil on panel.
. . . a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
—2 Corinthians 12:7b–10
For a collection of commentaries on this scripture passage, visit Textweek.com.
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SONG: “Cold Is the Night” by the Oh Hellos, on The Oh Hellos (2011)
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 9, cycle B, click here.
Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890), Enclosed Field with Rising Sun, 1889. Oil on canvas. Private collection.
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
—Lamentations 3:22–23
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SONG: “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” | Words by Thomas O. Chisholm, 1923 | Music by William Marion Runyan, 1923 | Arranged and performed by Sam JC Lee on bass, with Gabriela Martina on vocals, 2013
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 8, cycle B, click here.
Consenses is a global, multidisciplinary arts initiative developed by singer-songwriter Sally Taylor in which participants contribute to “interpretive chains,” responding to an assigned artwork in their own medium. The aim is to promote a more expansive view of the world through the engagement of all five senses and through exposure to diverse ways of seeing, as well as to foster connectedness across geographic divides. I found out about the project two years ago when proofreading herbalist Holly Bellebuono’s The Healing Kitchen: she said she was invited to interpret a photograph of a woman reclining in the sunshine as a tea blend—which was in turn brewed and enjoyed by another artist, who interpreted the blend as a short film.
Launched in 2012, the initial series of chains went like this: Taylor collected twenty-two photographs, each by a different photographer, and then commissioned twenty-two musicians to write a song based on one of those photos. Those songs were then given to dancers to interpret as movement, and then recordings of those dances were given to painters, whose painted responses were given to perfumers, who extracted the essence of the paintings and gave the resultant perfumes to poets, whose poems were given to chefs, whose culinary creations were given to sculptors. And no artist in this chain was allowed to see more than one link back. The final chains were then given to set designers, who created a physical space within which all the art could live. These twenty-two sets opened to the public in August 2014 and toured for four months, attracting more than seven thousand attendees.
Here’s a video excerpt of one of the chains:
Consenses continues, in part through a “Monthly Challenge” posted on the website—a catalytic work of art that invites creative responses. This month’s is a photograph titled Dreamhouse. The media in past months have been very diverse, including a woven basket, a graffitied wall, a comic strip, and a LEGO set.
Dreamhouse, a photograph by Jane Rosemont, is the prompt for Consenses’s June 2018 Monthly Challenge. Rosemont writes, “I recently photographed a remote town on the Salton Sea, in California. Many homes are abandoned and trashed. Someone lovingly placed items of comfort in one of the dilapidated homes, and it almost brought me to tears.”
Over the past few years, primary and secondary schools and colleges have approached Taylor, wanting to incorporate Consenses into their curricula, so she has been hard at work designing and overseeing those efforts. The fruits of one such partnership are about to go on display at MASS MoCA’s Kidspace in North Adams, Massachusetts, where “Come to Your Senses: Art to See, Hear, Smell, Taste, and Touch” opens tomorrow (June 23) and runs through May 27, 2019. In this exhibition, paintings by fifth-grade students in North Adams and Northern Berkshire schools will be on display, which respond to the prompt of either “Joy” or “Fear.”
Taylor met with these kids last year and guided them through first steps, telling them to close their eyes with the blank piece of paper in front of them and ask themselves, “What would fear taste like if it were a flavor? What would it feel like as a texture? What would it be as a weather system? What would it look like if it were a painting?” She did the same with “joy.”
One child wrote, “Fear is sticky. It is large rocks. It is fire. It is the sound of thunder. It is the last petal falling. My pain of this is fear of darkness and large spiders. This is something trying to escape. Trying to escape from terror.” Another wrote of joy: “If joy were a flavor it would be cotton candy. It would be pink and light and smell like lemons on a sunny day. It would be confetti, balloons, night mist and starlight in the night sky. My painting is a starry night with confetti over it. It gives me joy because it reminds me of bright colors in the world.” (Read more about Taylor’s process with the kids here.)
After the kids finished their paintings, Taylor enlisted the talents of musicians, dancers, poets, photographers, painters, perfumers, a tea maker, a chef, sculptors, animators, and set designers to respond in Consenses-like fashion; among them were Taylor’s parents, James Taylor and Carly Simon, the latter of whom will be performing, along with others, at “An Evening with Sally Taylor and Friends” at MASS MoCA on opening night (Saturday, June 23).
To learn more about Taylor’s background and her vision for Consenses, listen to her TEDx talk from 2015:
Also be sure to check out https://consenses.org/, where you can browse past interpretive chains and participate in new ones.
Paulo Medina (Mexican, 1964–), Navecilla, 2007. Acrylic on canvas, 100 × 80 cm.
Some went down to the sea in ships,
doing business on the great waters;
they saw the deeds of the Lord,
his wondrous works in the deep.
For he commanded and raised the stormy wind,
which lifted up the waves of the sea.
They mounted up to heaven; they went down to the depths;
their courage melted away in their evil plight;
they reeled and staggered like drunken men
and were at their wits’ end.
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
He made the storm be still,
and the waves of the sea were hushed.
Then they were glad that the waters were quiet,
and he brought them to their desired haven.
Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!
—Psalm 107:23–31, describing one of four groups of exiled Judahites whom God rescued in their distress
On that day, when evening had come, [Jesus] said to [his disciples], “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
—Mark 5:35–41
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SONG: “Stand by Me” | Words and music by Charles A. Tindley, 1905 | Performed by Seth Avett, 2013 | United Methodist Hymnal #512
Paulo Medina’s painting Navecilla (Ship) was inspired by a letter St. Thérèse of Lisieux wrote to her older sister, Céline, on July 23, 1893, which references the narrative from next week’s Gospel lectionary reading and says in part,
Be assured, dear Céline, that even though your dinghy is far asea, it is perhaps already very close to your harbor. The wind of suffering that is propelling it is a wind of love, and that wind is faster than lightning. [translated by Victoria Hebert and Denis Sabourin]
Read the full letter, in an alternate translation from the French by John Clarke, at the Archives du Carmel de Lisieux.
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 7, cycle B, click here.
I had every intention of completing an essay for publication yesterday on the fatherhood of Joseph as expressed in the visual arts, but as I got into the thick of research, the field of discovery proved much vaster than I had anticipated. So that I can do the topic justice (and so that I can continue trying to track down artist, dating, and location info for particular paintings), I will be postponing the essay until a later date. In the meantime, here’s a charming little neo-Coptic icon I found of Joseph holding the Christ child; the narrative scenes in the corners are the Nativity, the Presentation in the Temple, Joseph’s Dream, and the Flight to Egypt. For more on Coptic (Egyptian) iconography, read an interview with the artist from Orthodox Arts Journal.
Stéphane René, Saint Joseph of the House of David. St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, Bunhill Row, London.
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OBITUARY: RIP Clarence Fountain, founder and lead singer of the Blind Boys of Alabama: Clarence Fountain of the five-time Grammy Award–winning gospel group the Blind Boys of Alabama died June 3 at age eighty-eight. Fountain formed the group in the mid-1940s along with five friends from the Alabama School for the Negro Blind in Talladega, and the group, though it has gone through iterations in membership, has been touring continuously ever since. (Fountain retired from touring in 2007.) Ray Allen, a folklorist and music historian, said that over the years the Blind Boys’ sound evolved from the more staid style known as jubilee gospel into one that is distinguished by “a prominent lead singer shouting and preaching and backed by a rhythm-and-blues band.” Below you can hear Fountain sing “Look Where He Brought Me From” and the group’s signature song, “Amazing Grace” (to the tune of “House of the Rising Sun”):
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ART EXHIBITION: “The Morality Theatre Project: The Art of Barry Krammes,”Green Art Gallery, Biola University, La Mirada, California, April 25–June 29, 2018: Only two weeks left! For this exhibition, the culmination of seventeen years of studio work, Barry Krammes has assembled nineteen open-ended narrative scenes—reminiscent of miniature theater sets—using objects and figures gathered from flea markets and dumpsters, estate sales and antique shops. Although the exhibition title references a genre of medieval drama intended to inspire Christian virtue, the artworks do not preach or provide straightforward moral lessons; rather, they stand as little worlds of mystery that invite association and contemplation. If you’re not able to see the exhibition in person, stay tuned for the forthcoming catalog: I’ve been informed that one is in the works, to be published later this year.
Barry Krammes (American, 1950–), Of Mystery, 2018. Mixed media assemblage. From “The Morality Theatre Project,” Green Art Gallery, Biola University, La Mirada, California. Photo: Johnny Choura.Barry Krammes (American, 1950–), Of Lamentations (detail), 2018. Mixed media assemblage. From “The Morality Theatre Project.” Photo courtesy of the Green Art Gallery at Biola University, La Mirada, California.
The occasion of the exhibition is Krammes’s retirement in May after serving for thirty-five years as an art professor at Biola University (he now bears the title Professor Emeritus). He has been instrumental in making Biola’s art department one of the top ten among Christian colleges and universities, and moreover, he helped to foster art appreciation campus-wide, designing and directing “Arts in Worship” chapels and organizing a yearly Arts Emphasis Week, which developed into the Biola Arts Symposium. He has also been active beyond the walls of Biola, especially as a founding member of the national organization Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA). To learn more about his art, see “Interceding in the Theatre of Struggle: A reflection on the assemblage work of Barry Krammes” by Betty Spackman, published Sunday at ArtWay, and, from about ten years ago, the Image journal essay “Barry Krammes: Shepherd of the Wasteland” by Christina Valentine.
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VIDEO ART INSTALLATION: Three Women (2008) by Bill Viola, St. Cuthbert’s Parish Church, Edinburgh, May 1–September 20, 2018: Bill Viola, a pioneer of new media art, has said that his works “function both as aesthetic objects of contemporary art and as practical objects of traditional contemplation and devotion”—which is one reason they are so well suited to display in churches. In Three Women, a work from his Transfiguration series on temporary view at a Victorian church in Scotland, a mother and her two daughters pass from black and white through a threshold of water, entering a realm of color and light. The work speaks to me of the experience of illumination, of being drawn into a new and glorious understanding of divine truth. Watch an excerpt of the video at the New York Times.
Bill Viola (American, 1951–), Still from Three Women, 2008.
(Update: Sign up for the free HeartEdge church and culture seminar “Bill Viola and the Art of Contemplation,” September 20, 2–5:30 p.m. Various individuals will speak on Viola’s church-located installations, approaches to curating exhibitions in churches, and art as contemplative practice.)
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NEW IN THEATERS: First Reformed, written and directed by Paul Schrader: I’ve been hearing great things about this movie, which follows Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke), the pastor of a small Dutch Reformed congregation in upstate New York, as he grapples with mounting despair. Schrader is the writer who brought us Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, and the folks from Fuller Studio recently sat down with him to discuss his Christian upbringing and how the unique language of film—especially the transcendental style—helps him explore religious questions.
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FICTION RECOMMENDATIONS: “Ten Novels Every Pastor Should Read”(+ part 2): Kolby Kerr of LeaderWorks is an exceptional literary guide, whose “ten poets” list I commended in a previous roundup. Here he switches gears to novels. But first he opens by addressing the utilitarian inclination of pastors to nonfiction, which they believe will give them a bigger return on their investment. When it comes to novels, Kerr says, instead of asking What will these books do for me?, we should be asking, What will these books do to me? We should read not only to be informed but to be formed. And once again, what a great list! It’s divided into the categories “saints who sin,” “lost and found” “the dark side,” and “let’s get (meta)physical,” and it concludes with practical advice on how to form and maintain good reading habits.
Detail of the Last Judgment, 1240–1300. Mosaic dome, Baptistery of Saint John (San Giovanni), Florence, Italy. Photo: Johann H. Addicks.
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.
POEMS: “The Last Judgment” by Raymond Oliver is darkly humorous and a true account of how some medieval artists stuck it to the man. For a more reverent reflection on the topic, read “Judgment Day” by R. S. Thomas, in which a perpetrator of injustice against the sick and the poor on earth stands before God’s heavenly throne, contrite; the speaker could well be Dives from the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus—or, to name a more recent literary example, Scrooge from A Christmas Carol. She could also be you or me, if we heed not the many commands of scripture to love and support the needy.
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 6, cycle B, click here.
Art & Theology 