When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.
—Luke 9:51
The next day the great crowd that had come to the festival [of Passover] heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting,
Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord— the King of Israel! [Ps. 118:25–26]
Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, as it is written:
Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion. Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt! [Zech. 9:9]
His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him.
So the crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to testify. It was also because they heard that he had performed this sign that the crowd went to meet him.
—John 12:12–18
LOOK: Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem from Daphni Monastery
Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, late 11th century. Mosaic, Daphni Monastery, Greece.
LISTEN: “Ride On to Die” by Michael Card, on Known by the Scars (1984)
Sense the sorrow untold as you look down the road At the clamoring crowd drawing near Feel the heat of the day as you look down the way Hear the shouts of “Hosanna the King!”
Refrain: Oh daughter of Zion, your time’s drawing near Don’t forsake him, oh don’t pass it by On the foal of a donkey, as the prophets had said Passing by you, he rides on to die
Come now, little foal, though you’re not very old Come and bear your first burden bravely Walk so softly upon all the coats and the palms Bare the One on your back oh so gently
’Midst the shouting so loud and the joy of the crowd There is One who is riding in silence For He knows the ones here will be fleeing in fear When their shepherd is taken away [Refrain]
Soon the thorn-cursed ground will bring forth a crown And this Jesus will seem to be beaten But he’ll conquer alone both the shroud and the stone And the prophecies will be completed [Refrain]
HOLY WEEK TRADITION: Antigua, Guatemala, is renowned for its annual Good Friday observance, which involves the laying out of alfombras (carpets) of multicolored sawdust through the city’s cobblestone streets, hundreds of feet long. On Maundy Thursday, the city closes so that families and businesses can spend the day constructing the carpets, applying the sawdust to planned designs using stencils and strainers and adding pine needles, flowers, fruits, and other natural materials as well.
People watch while locals make an alfombra (carpet) of dyed sawdust for Antigua’s Good Friday processions, the most famous in Latin America. Photo: Lucy Brown, 2016.
At 4 a.m. on Good Friday, the processions begin, with people carrying floats that bear statues of Christ carrying his cross, followed by marching bands playing solemn music. (This is a remembrance of Jesus’s walk to Calvary.) As their feet pass over the alfombras, the dust scatters. Locals and visitors gather along the streets dressed in black for mourning, and at 11 p.m. a figure of Jesus is laid to rest in the church.
Here are two resources for exploring this tradition further:
>> VIDEO: “Alfombras de Semana Santa en Guatemala,” dir.Federica Dominguez: This short film (in Spanish, with English subtitles) interviews Rolando Ortiz, an alfombrero who is also a shoemaker. He explains that the carpets hark back to Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, when the crowds strewed his path with palm branches (giving him the red carpet treatment, so to speak). Even though the alfombras last only a brief time, locals spare no expense in bringing them to fruition each year—“for Jesus,” Ortiz says. “It is an act of gratitude above all.” An offering of beauty and praise.
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NEW ALBUM: As Foretold, Part 3 by Poor Bishop Hooper: Released today, this is the final album in a trilogy based on the prophetic fulfillment passages in the Gospel of Matthew. It centers on Jesus’s passion and concludes with a resurrection epilogue. As with all their music, the duo graciously offers it for free download from their website.
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SONGS performed by Emorja Roberson: Emorja Roberson [previously] is a singer, gospel choir conductor, and assistant professor of music and African American studies at Oxford College of Emory University in Georgia. I enjoy following his YouTube channel. Here are two songs that are especially fitting for Holy Week.
>> “I Know It Was the Blood”: Roberson sings three verses of this beloved African American spiritual: the title verse, “They whipped him all night long,” and “He never said a mumblin’ word.” The song is more typically sung in a major key, and its full lyrics span Christ’s passion, resurrection, ascension, and second coming. But Roberson slows down the tempo and sings in a minor key, homing in on the sorrow of Good Friday.
>> “He Decided to Die” by Margaret Pleasant Douroux: Roberson, on keys, sings a gospel classic with friends Marcus Morton and Cameron Scott, a song that emphasizes Christ’s resoluteness on the cross, his endurance for love.
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VISUAL COMMENTARIES: “After the Order of Melchizedek” by Victoria Emily Jones: My latest contribution to the Visual Commentary on Scripture, a project based out of King’s College London, was published earlier this month. Tasked with choosing and commenting on three artworks that dialogue with Hebrews 7–8, I landed on a “You Are a Priest Forever” icon from Russia (very strange!), an Antwerp Mannerist triptych that centers the Last Supper, and (my favorite) a wall painting of Christ the Grapevine from a Romanian church. I was interested to explore the idea of how Jesus, in giving his body and blood, is both the offerer and the offered, both priest and sacrifice.
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POEM: “The Death of Christ” by Emperor Kangxi: Emperor Kangxi (1654–1722) ruled in China for sixty-one years during the Qing Dynasty. In 1692 he issued the Edict of Toleration, which barred attacks on churches and legalized the practice of Christianity among Chinese people. Curious about and respectful of other faiths, he penned this short poem on the Crucifixion using the classical qi-yen-she form.
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EXHIBITION: Tara Sellios: Ask Now the Beasts, Fitchburg Art Museum, January 18, 2025–January 18, 2026:Tara Sellios is a multidisciplinary artist from South Boston working mainly in large-format photography. Delighting in detail and complex symbolism, she often uses insects, dried fauna, bone, and other organic matter to create elaborate still lifes that she then photographs under dramatic lighting. She is inspired by art historical representations of the end of the world, especially the bizarre paintings of Hieronymus Bosch and Albrecht Dürer’s Apocalypse woodcuts, and by seventeenth-century Dutch vanitas paintings.
The photographs in her current solo show, Ask Now the Beasts at Fitchburg Art Museum in Massachusetts, are “contemporary allegories of suffering and transcendence.” The exhibition’s title comes from Job 12:7.
Two of the works on display are a pair of crosses: Umbra (Latin for “darkness” or “shadow”) and Dilucesco (“to begin to grow light, to dawn”), which together suggest a movement from death to resurrection. Constructed with a throng of black beetles and other black insects, the Umbra cross evokes the detail from the Synoptic Gospels’ Crucifixion accounts that at noon, “darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun’s light failed” (Luke 23:44–45; cf. Matt. 27:45; Mark 15:33). Dilucesco, on the other hand, shows the cross seemingly exploding into light, as white moths and other winged insects break out of their cruciform shape. View these two photographic artworks, plus a few process photos and sketches the artist sent me, below. See, too, www.tarasellios.com.
Tara Sellios (American, 1987–), Umbra, 2024, from the series Ask Now the Beasts. Inkjet print from 8 × 10 negative, 55 × 35 in. Courtesy of the artist.Tara Sellios (American, 1987–), Dilucesco, 2024, from the series Ask Now the Beasts. Inkjet print from 8 × 10 negative, 55 × 35 in. Courtesy of the artist.
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Pelican in Her Piety, 1880–81. Mosaic, Palatine Chapel, Aachen, Germany.
The pelican was one of the most popular animal symbols for Christ in the Middle Ages, appearing widely in art and literature. The association was first made in the Physiologus, a Late Antique Greek compilation of moralized animal lore written (probably around the year 200) in Alexandria and intended for Christian edification. Its anonymous author says the mother pelican is such “an exceeding lover of its young” that, to revive them from death, she pierces her breast with her beak and spills her blood over them.
The church sometimes refers to this allegorical bird as the vulning pelican (from the Latin vulnerō, “to wound”), or the Pelican in Her Piety.
The Christological parallel is obvious: Jesus submitted to being pierced with nails and spear on the cross, his heart’s blood spilt, in order to give life to his children. But the Physiologus cites a more obscure biblical passage: “ὡμοιώθην πελεκᾶνι ἐρημικῷ” (Ps. 101:7a LXX). In the Latin Vulgate, that’s “Similis factus sum pelicano solitudinis,” and in English, “I am like a pelican of the wilderness” (Ps. 102:6a KJV). The Physiologus author puts these words of the psalmist, which express a sense of isolation, into the mouth of Christ, lonely in his messianic ministry and in his passion.
Detail from the 13th-century Redemption Window at Chartres Cathedral in France, showing a pelican (a figure of Christ) feeding her young with her own blood as King David looks on, holding a scroll with the inscription “Similis factus sum pellicamo,” from Psalm 102:6. Photo: Adrian Barlow. There are similar glass panels at Rouen and Le Mans.
Not all parts of the pelican legend recounted in the Physiologus map easily onto Christ’s love for his church. The chicks are dead because they kept striking their parents in the face, and their parents, striking back, killed them. The parents feel bad, and it’s after three days of mourning that mama bird breaks herself open to bring back her little ones.
In his commentary on Psalm 102, Augustine writes, “Let us not pass over what is said, or even read, of this bird, that is, the pelican.” Standing over her dead chicks, “the mother wounds herself deeply, and pours forth her blood over her young, bathed in which they recover life. This may be true, it may be false: yet if it be true, see how it agrees with him, who gave us life by his blood. It agrees with him in that the mother’s flesh recalls to life her young with her blood; it agrees well. For he calls himself a hen brooding over her young. If, then, it be so truly, this bird does closely resemble the flesh of Christ, by whose blood we have been called to life.”
Augustine then goes on to explain how the mother’s killing her young relates to God metaphorically killing our old self so that he can then raise us up to new life in Christ; he likens conversion to death and rebirth. Medieval theologians loved to stretch allegories to the extreme!
A more streamlined version of the pelican legend that got passed down omits the filicide, focusing simply on the bird’s animating sacrifice—on how her shed blood raises the dead to life. And after the Feast of Corpus Christi was established in 1311, a variant emerged that said the pelican feeds her young with her blood when no other food would satisfy, a picture that resonated with the increased attention on the Eucharist in the Latin West.
The Physiologus, which contains the earliest known appearance of the pelican legend, was translated from Greek into Latin sometime between the fourth and early sixth centuries, and from there into Ethiopic, Armenian, Syriac, and a multitude of European and Middle Eastern vernaculars. By the end of the twelfth century its legends were absorbed into the bestiary, a genre of popular nature-book in keeping with the encyclopedic taste of the High Middle Ages.
In Art
The vulning pelican has appeared in all kinds of visual media from late antiquity through the medieval and premodern eras and on into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including illuminated prayerbooks, missals, bestiaries (as in the tiled gallery below; hover to view captions, or click to enter carousel); panel paintings, frescoes; mosaics; stained glass windows; tapestries; lecterns, roof bosses, bench ends, misericords, corbels; and a range of liturgical objects and vestments.
From a miscellany containing an illustrated copy of Hugh of Fouilloy’s De avibus, Italy, late 13th or early 14th century. Biblioteca Statale di Cremona, MS 199, fol. 11v. https://bestiary.ca/beasts/beastgallery244.htm
From an illuminated copy of Der Naturen Bloeme (The Flower of Nature) by Jacob van Maerlant, Flanders, ca. 1350. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, KA 16, fol. 96vb. https://manuscripts.kb.nl/show/images/KA+16/page/26
Pelican in Her Piety, 1331–32. Stained glass, Lady Chapel, St Michael and All Angels, Felton, Northumberland, England. Photo: Ann Chapman.Pelicanin Her Piety, 15th century. Stained glass, All Saints Church, Oaksey, England. Photo: Rex Harris.Pelican in Her Piety, All Saints Church, Bishop Burton, East Riding of Yorkshire, EnglandPelican in Her Piety, 1476. Fresco, Bollerup Church, Sweden. Photo: Stig Alenas.Painted choir vault, 15th century, Mariakerk (St. Mary’s Church), ‘t Zandt, Groningen, Netherlands. Photo: Ana Sudani.Oak wood roof boss, ca. 1470–80, St Mary the Virgin, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. Photo: Ana Sudani.Bench end by Henry Ringham, 19th century, St Margaret, Ipswich, Suffolk, England. Photo: Simon Knott.Carved oak misericord from Sheffield Cathedral, England, 1920Sculpture with Pelicans, Switzerland, 16th century. Painted linden and willow wood, 29.5 × 27 × 26 cm. Landesmuseum (Swiss National Museum), Zurich, LM-3972.Triptych with the Virgin and Child (detail), Cologne or Lower Rhine, ca. 1425–30. Tempera and gold leaf on oak wood. LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn, Germany. [view full triptych]Plate with the Pelican in Her Piety, Dinant or Malines, Netherlands, 15th century. Brass, diameter 19 7/8 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. It’s unknown whether this plate was used domestically or liturgically (i.e., for the Eucharist).Tapestry with a Pelican Feeding Her Young (detail), Germany (Lüne Abbey), ca. 1500. Linen and wool, 65 × 233 cm. Kloster Lüne Museum für sakrale Textilkunst, Lüneburg, Germany, Inv. LUEKO Ha 010.05. Source: Book of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World, cat. 41bCushion cover (detail), England, ca. 1640–70. Wool and silk embroidery on linen, 55.9 × 107.5 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The primary scenes are the Hospitality of Abraham and the Sacrifice of Isaac. [view full cushion]Pelican in Her Piety, Russia, early 19th centuryPelican in Her Piety, 1907–9. Relief carving from the exterior of Holy Trinity Church, St Andrews, Scotland. Photo: Joy Marie Clarkson.Pelican of Mercy, 1956. Stone relief carving, exterior of Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, Sioux City, Iowa.
The bird doesn’t always look like an actual pelican, though. It could be that some of the artists had never seen one, although the Dalmatian pelican, which has the long bill and the expandable throat pouch that we most associate with the genus, had been widespread across Europe since ancient times. More likely, the imaginative rendering of the pelican in Christian art derives from the account of the bird in book 12 (“De animalibus”) of the widely influential compendium Etymologies by the Spanish archbishop Isidore of Seville, written around 623, which repeats the popular legend and adds that the pelican lives in Egypt. An exotic bird therefore required exotic treatment.
Neither does the behavior the Physiologus ascribes to pelicans have any basis in natural fact. It’s possible the legend arose from the observation that the pelican sometimes bends its beak into its chest, which may look like it’s piercing it, and that some pelicans have a reddish tinge on their breast plumage and/or a red tip on their beak. However, zoological accuracy was not the point; the point was to convey theological truth.
In The Bestiary of Christ, Louis Charbonneau-Lassay says the pelican first started appearing as a Christian symbol on clay oil lamps in ancient Carthage (present-day Tunisia), citing “L. Delattre, Carthage,Symboles eucharistiques, p. 91”—the French archaeologist Alfred Louis Delattre (1850–1932). But I’ve not been able to track down the cited text or find any such examples. If you can point me to photographs, please do!
In the “Ējmiacin [Etchmiadzin] Codex” entry in The Eerdmans Encyclopedia of Early Christian Art and Archaeology, Paul Corbey Finney identifies the border illustrations in that Armenian Gospel book’s Baptism of Christ miniature from ca. 600 as depicting a pink-bodied pelican spreading its blue wings and pecking its breast while standing in a bejeweled chalice. The figure is repeated ten times.
Pelican detail from The Baptism of Christ in the Codex Etchmiadzin, an Armenian Gospel book. Yerevan, Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts (Matenadaran), Cod. 2374, fol. 229v. The image is dated to ca. 600, but it was added to a 10th-century manuscript.
Finney mentions that a vulning pelican also appears in the Rabbula Gospels from sixth-century Syria. I think he’s referring to the bird at the top of the canon tables on folio 5a, which also shows the prophets Joel and Hosea and the Wedding at Cana. The iconography is far less obvious here.
One illuminated manuscript page I love that makes use of the pelican symbol comes from the late Flemish Boussu Hours, a prayerbook made for Isabelle de Lalaing, probably after the death of her husband Pierre de Hennin, lord of Boussu.
Master of Antoine Rolin (Flemish, active 1490–1520), Le pélican, symbole du Christ (Pelican, symbol of Christ), from the Boussu Hours, Cambrai, France, ca. 1490–95. Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Ms 1185 réserve, fol. 187r.
Appearing opposite a full-page miniature of Christ in Gethsemane, folio 187r opens the Hours of the Passion prayer cycle:
V: Domine labia mea aperies. R: Et os meum annunciabit laudem tuam. V: Deus in adiutorium meum intende. R: Domine ad adiuvandum me festina. Gloria Patri, et Filio: et Spiritui sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper: et in saecula saeculorum.
English translation:
V: O Lord, open my lips, R: And my mouth shall declare thy praise. V: Incline unto my aid, O God. R: O Lord, make haste to help me. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end.
The historiated initial “D” shows Christ before Pilate, and in the margin a pelican exudes her lifeblood into the mouths of her two chicks, a scene set against a gold background likewise dripping with blood—as well as sweat and tears. It’s “almost as if the gold margin were an expanded microcosm of the bird’s broken breast,” writes Katharine Davidson Bekker in her essay “Those Who Weep: Tears, Eyes, and Blood in the Boussu Hours.” Bekker further notes that “the pansy flower in the margin, the name of which references the French penser (‘to think’), . . . encourages the reader to think deeply about the images on the page.”
Another remarkable appearance of the pelican in medieval manuscript illumination is in the Holkham Bible Picture Book from fourteenth-century England—remarkable because it appears not in a passion cycle, as was typical, but in a creation cycle!
The Tree of Knowledge, from the Holkham Bible Picture Book, southeastern England, ca. 1327–35. British Library, Add MS 47682, fol. 3v.
In the garden of Eden, God the Creator, portrayed here as Christ, instructs Adam and Eve that they may freely eat of any tree except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which he points to with one hand and with the other wags his finger in a forbidding manner. Various birds perch atop the adjacent trees, but at the apex of this fateful one at the center is the vulning pelican, foreshadowing the sacrifice of Christ that will be required for humanity to reenter Paradise after the fall.
Compare this image to the diagrammatic one on folio 125v of the De Lisle Psalter, which was inspired by Bonaventure’s meditational treatise the Lignum vitae. It shows a pelican nesting atop the tree of life on which Christ is crucified, wounding herself to feed her offspring with her blood:
Tree of Life, from the De Lisle Psalter, England, 1310–39. London, British Library, Arundel MS 83, fol. 125v.
The Latin inscription above it in red reads, Pellicanus dicor, pro pullis scindo mihi cor (“I am called a pelican, because I tear open my heart for my chicks”). The twelve branches contain texts relating to Christ’s humanity, passion, and glorification, while the surrounding panels contain Old Testament witnesses.
The Crucifixion is the narrative context in which the vulning pelican most often appears in art, reinforcing the notion of Christ’s self-emptying sacrifice. It was especially popular in proto- and early Renaissance panel paintings from Italy—which the gallery below reflects, in addition to featuring a few other examples from France, Greece, and Armenia.
Fra Angelico, Christ on the Cross, the Virgin, Saint John the Evangelist, and Cardinal Torquemada (detail), ca. 1453–54. Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones [view full painting]
In the Simone di Filippo Benvenuti example above (third row, left), notice the little winged dragon fleeing the pelicans’ nest as the mother pelican undoes the harm he has inflicted. A similar detail can be found in the Crucifixion fresco from the altar wall of the Oratory of St. John the Baptist in Urbino, which shows a snake slithering away from the perishing chicks, who are brought back to life by their intervening mother:
Lorenzo Salimbeni (Italian, 1374–ca. 1418) and Jacopo Salimbeni (Italian, ca. 1370/80–after 1426), Crucifixion (detail), ca. 1416. Fresco, Oratorio di San Giovanni Battista (Oratory of St. John the Baptist), Urbino, Italy.
The snake motif references a version of the pelican legend found in De natura rerum (On the Nature of Things) by the Flemish Dominican friar Thomas of Cantimpré (ca. 1200–1272) and the slightly later De animalibus (On Animals) by the German Dominican friar Albertus Magnus (ca. 1200–1280). According to these two works, when the mother pelican leaves her nest to find food for her fledglings, she returns to find them dead from the bite of an ambushing snake. She then tears her own flesh to revive them with her blood, which is full of healing properties.
One of the most unique visual treatments of the vulning pelican that I found is a painting by the Dutch Renaissance artist Hieronymus Bosch. Rendered in grisaille (gray monochrome), his pelican appears in the center of a ring depicting scenes from the passion of Christ. It’s painted on the reverse of a panel that shows John the Evangelist in exile on Patmos, penning the book of Revelation.
Hieronymus Bosch (Netherlandish, ca. 1450–1516), Scenes from the Passion of Christ (reverse of John on Patmos), ca. 1500. Oil on panel in grisaille, 62.8 × 43.2 cm. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie.
Staged around mountain crags, the passion cycle begins on the right with Jesus praying in Gethsemane and continues clockwise with the Arrest of Christ, Christ before Pilate, the Flagellation, the Crowning with Thorns, the Carrying of the Cross, the Crucifixion, and the Entombment.
Outside this ring of scenes is a darkness populated by shadowy demons:
But the inner disc, the focal point of the composition, contains the promise of redemption. Emerging from the still waters of a vast postdiluvian landscape is a hillock with a hollow that houses a burning fire. On the summit, a large mother bird spreads her protective wings over her brood, inclining her head toward her chest—an iconography we recognize as the vulning pelican, symbolic of the deep, saving love God embodied on the cross.
As we view this painting, we progress from the outer darkness with its infernal powers, to the growing light actualized by the events of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, and finally to the brilliant center with its red flame—which, other than two dim, flickering torches in Gethsemane, contains the sole bit of color in the whole painting. Images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which would gain prominence in the seventeenth century, feature a flame, representing Christ’s ardent love burning bright. And that’s what we have here.
Red is also the color of blood. I’m reminded of Robert Southwell’s poem “Christ’s Bloody Sweat,” which combines imagery of the pelican and the self-immolating but ultimately indestructible phoenix, marveling at “how bleedeth burning love.” (I’ll explore a few more poems about the pelican in the next section.)
As John writes in the wonderful prologue to his Gospel, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it” (John 1:5).
In Bosch’s painting, the Christbrand bursts, like the pelican’s split side. The flame of redemption is lit, like a lighthouse, calling us home into the love of God.
Another especially compelling art object that draws on the pelican legend is a silver-plated tabernacle monstrance from Portuguese Goa in southwestern India.
Tabernacle monstrance made in Goa, India, 17th century. Silver on wood, glass, 142 × 72 cm, globe 66 cm. Museum of Christian Art, Convent of Santa Monica, Old Goa, India.
In the Roman Catholic Church, a tabernacle is a container in which the consecrated hosts (small unleavened wafers of bread) of the Eucharist are stored as part of the “reserved sacrament” rite, and a monstrance is a vessel that displays the consecrated host on the altar and in procession. This object combines both into one—the spherical base serving as the tabernacle, with access gained through an opening at the back, and the bird’s breast bearing a transparent aperture surrounded by a golden sunburst halo, through which the host can be viewed. The body of Christ, broken for you.
In researching this essay, I found that the pelican is a subject that recurs (so charmingly!) in the folk art of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Pennsylvania Germans:
A Pelican in Its Piety, Bucks County or Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, ca. 1800. Watercolor and ink on laid paper, 8.9 × 8.3 cm. Promised gift of Joan and Victor Johnson to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.David Kulp (American, 1777–1834), Pelican in Its Piety, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, ca. 1810. Watercolor and ink on wove paper, 18.6 × 12.2 cm. Free Library of Philadelphia.Pelican, Pennsylvania, ca. 1850. Watercolor and ink on wove paper, 31.6 × 25.4 cm. Free Library of Philadelphia.A Pelican in Its Piety, Pennsylvania, ca. 1825. Watercolor and ink on wove paper, 24.1 × 19.1 cm. Promised gift of Joan and Victor Johnson to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
From the Victorian era, I’m especially fond of the stained glass pelican design by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones, fabricated by Morris & Co. to serve as part of the East Window of St Martin’s Church, Brampton, in Cumbria. Burne-Jones drew his design in 1880, and after the window was completed the following year, he returned to the drawing out of personal fondness, embellishing it with colored chalks, and gold for the blood drops, thus developing it into a more substantial work.
Edward Burne-Jones (British, 1833–1898) and Morris & Co., Pelican on Nest (detail), 1880. East Window, St Martin, Brampton, Cumbria, England. Photo: Dave Webster. [view full window]Edward Burne-Jones (British, 1833–1898), Pelican in Her Piety, 1880–81. Pencil, colored chalk, and gold on paper, 172.7 × 57.3 cm. William Morris Gallery, London.
Contemporary artists have also turned to the subject of the vulning pelican, especially the Ukrainian Catholic women iconographers of Lviv:
Natalya Rusetska (Ukrainian, 1984–), Pelican, 2017. Egg tempera on gessoed wood, 19 × 15 cm.Natalya Rusetska (Ukrainian, 1984–), Jesus the Grapevine and the Last Supper, 2021. Egg tempera on gessoed wood, 30 × 24 cm.Kateryna Kuziv (Ukrainian, 1993–), Pelican, 2021. Egg tempera on gessoed wood, 30 × 30 cm.Kateryna Kuziv (Ukrainian, 1993–), Crucifixion, 2022. Egg tempera on gessoed wood, 65 × 49 cm.Ulyana Tomkevych (Ukrainian, 1981–), Pelican, 2021. Egg tempera on gessoed wood, diameter 30 cm.Olya Kravchenko (Ukrainian, 1985–), Sacrifice and Victory, 2022. Tempera and silver leaf on gessoed wood, 40 × 40 cm.
Addendum, 4/8/25: Shortly after publishing this, a reader reminded me of Josh Tiessen’s painting All Creatures Lament from his Vanitas and Viriditas series, which shows an American white pelican protecting her chicks in the face of another oil spill and the accumulation of fishing-related plastic waste. Tiessen, an artist of faith, directs the symbolism of the pelican toward a call for wildlife conservation. (I previously featured Tiessen’s work here.)
Josh Tiessen (Canadian, 1995–), All Creatures Lament, 2023. Oil on braced Baltic birch, diameter 26 inches.
In Poetry and Song
Probably the most universally famous poetic treatment of the pelican as an emblem of Christ is the eucharistic hymn “Adoro te devote” (Hidden God, Devoutly I Adore Thee). Written around 1260 by Thomas Aquinas, it is one of the most beautiful medieval poems in Latin. Aquinas did not originally write it for the liturgy, but it was added to the Roman Missal in 1570 and since then has been used in the Catholic Mass. The penultimate stanza reads:
Pie pelicane, Jesu Domine, Me immundum munda tuo sanguine, Cujus una stilla salvum facere Totum mundum quit ab omni scelere.
Like what tender tales tell of the Pelican, Bathe me, Jesus Lord, in what thy bosom ran— Blood that but one drop of has the pow’r to win All the world forgiveness of its world of sin.
Trans. Gerard Manley Hopkins
Here’s a great video of the hymn put out by the Fundación Canto Católico, set to a Benedictine plainsong melody from the thirteenth century, as has become standard. Our pelican passage appears at the 4:10 mark. The subtitles are in Spanish, but you can turn on CC for English.
(If, like me, you’re wondering what in the world the video’s images are from, an explanatory note in the YouTube comments section explains: they are from the Cuasimodo festival in Chile, celebrated the second Sunday of Easter. The festival has nothing to do with Victor Hugo’s famous hunchback but rather is about bringing Communion to the sick and elderly who were unable to leave their residences to participate in the sacrament during Holy Week. [The Spanish Cuasimodo comes from the Latin Quasimodo, from the incipit of the day’s introit based on 1 Peter 2:2: “Quasi modo géniti infántes . . . ,” or “As newborn babes . . .”] Traditionally for this task, priests were escorted by horsemen, who showed them the route and protected them from assaults.)
The vulning pelican also appears in the liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church, whose members sing at Matins on Good Friday evening, “Like a pelican wounding her breast, Thou, O Word, hast made Thy mortal children to live, for Thou hast shed upon them life-giving streams.”
Dante Alighieri, the great medieval Italian writer, calls Christ “nostro Pelicano” (our Pelican) in canto 25 of his Paradiso, the third book in his Divine Comedy trilogy of extended narrative poems.
The Christ-pelican appears, too, in English poetry from the late Middle Ages onward. One Middle English poem found in a prayerbook from ca. 1460 reads:
The pellicane his bloode dothe blede Therwith his birdis for to fede. It figureth that God with his bloode Us fede hanging on the rode, Whane he us brought oute of hell In joy and blis with him to dwel, And be oure fader and oure fode, And we his childerne meke and good.
[Bodleian Library MS Douce 1, fol. 57r]
The pelican his blood doth bleed, Therewith his birdies for to feed. It figures God, who, with his blood, Fed us hanging on the rood, By which he brought us out of hell, In joy and bliss with him to dwell, To be our father and our food, And we his children meek and good.
Our Pelican, by bleeding thus, Fulfill’d the law, and cured us.
Look here, and mark (her sickly birds to feed) How freely this kind Pelican doth bleed. See how (when other salves could not be found) To cure their sorrows, she herself doth wound; And when this holy emblem thou shalt see, Lift up thy soul to him, who died for thee.
For this our hieroglyphic would express That Pelican which, in the wilderness Of this vast world, was left (as all alone) Our miserable nature to bemoan; And in whose eyes the tears of pity stood, When he beheld his own unthankful brood His favors and his mercies then condemn, When with his wings he would have brooded them, And sought their endless peace to have confirm’d, Though to procure his ruin, they were arm’d.
To be their food, himself he freely gave; His heart was pierc’d, that he their souls might save, Because they disobey’d the sacred will, He did the law of righteousness fulfill; And to that end (though guiltless he had been) Was offered for our universal sin.
Let me, oh God! forever fix mine eyes Upon the merit of that sacrifice: Let me retain a due commemoration Of those dear mercies, and that bloody passion, Which here is meant; and by true faith, still feed Upon the drops this Pelican did bleed; Yea, let me firm unto thy law abide, And ever love that flock for which he died.
I already mentioned, in relation to Bosch’s pelican painting above, “Christ’s Bloody Sweat” by the English Catholic martyr Robert Southwell.
More recently, the Anglican priest Matt Simpkins, who performs music under the name Rev Simpkins, wrote a song titled “Pelican,” which he released on his album Big Sea (2020). Gritty and impassioned, here’s a live performance at Colchester Arts Centre:
Pelican feeds the hungry and needy I kneel before her My throat like an open grave
Food cannot fill me Water dilutes me Nothing contents me Pelican, pity me
She tears her breast, her children to refresh By her I am blessed, led to life from living death
Though death entreats me Her life flows sweetly Given so freely Given in flesh and blood
She tears her breast, her children to refresh By her I am blessed, led to life from living death
Pelican feeds me Loves me completely Though I’m unworthy She gives so graciously
She tears her breast, her children to refresh By her I am blessed, led to life from living death
She crowns the whole earth, the heavens and seas The Pelican tears her breast for me
She’s queen of what was and what is to be The Pelican tears her breast for me
She gives of herself in infinity The Pelican tears her breast for me
She’s compassion and love, she’s strength and glory The Pelican tears her breast for me
I love it when contemporary artists engage with historical Christological symbols, whether from the animal world or elsewhere, tapping into a creative wisdom the saints of ages past have bequeathed to us but that is too often dismissed in favor of literalism or wordy, intellectual articulations of doctrine.
I wholeheartedly support the endeavor of academic theology, but it must be remembered that for centuries, the church has developed her theology not just through discursive prose but also through liturgy, verse, and visual art. While many modern Christians may discount medieval allegories of Christ as naive, backward, too fanciful, or too obscure, I want to suggest that there’s value in learning (at least some of) them and even incorporating them into new material, to explore how they might come alive in new contexts.
By studying the pelican of ancient lore, for example, as it has been adapted in Christian art and literature, I’ve grown in my appreciation for the mother-love of God, who, to restore me to life and to nourish me—his child, his dependent—allowed his sacred flesh to be torn, so that I might know the power in the blood.
This essay took many hours to research and write and came to fruition only after several years spent collecting enough Pelican images to reach a critical mass. If you have the inclination and means to support more essays like this, I’d really appreciate a donation!
VISUAL COMMENTARY: “Repentance (Transforming Tears)” by Clemena Antonova: One of the three works that art historian Clemena Antonova curated for the Visual Commentary on Scripture exhibition on Peter’s denial of Christ (Matt. 26:69–75; Mark 14:66–72; Luke 22:54–62; John 18:15–18, 25–27) is the installation Lágrimas de São Pedro (Tears of Saint Peter) by contemporary Brazilian artist Vinícius Silva de Almeida. The artist used hundreds of light bulbs, filled with water and suspended on near-invisible nylon threads, to create an environment in which visitors move between “tears” falling like raindrops from above. In the Christian tradition, Peter is regarded as a paradigm of penitence, as scripture says he “wept bitterly” when he realized his sin, and soon after he was restored to Christ. As Antonova interprets, Tears of Saint Peter invites folks to reflect on the interconnection of sorrow and healing in Peter’s story and in their own.
Vinícius Silva de Almeida (Vinícius S.A.) (Brazilian, 1983–), Lágrimas de São Pedro (Tears of Saint Peter), 2005–21. 6,000 light bulbs filled with water (various numbers in different locations). Photo: Erivan Morais.
>> “Peter” by Montell Fish: Montell Fish (the stage name of Montell Frazier) is a singer-songwriter from Pittsburgh whose music combines elements of lo-fi and classic R&B. In his song “Peter” from the album Camp Lukewarm (2020), he compares himself, in confessional mode, to the titular apostle, who denied Christ three times. “Sometimes I feel like Peter / Denied you and I cannot deny that I did / Can I rest my head on your shoulders again?” In the bridge, Christ answers in the affirmative: Yes, come rest.
>> “O How He Loves You and Me / Your Love Divine”: The first song in this medley was written by CCM (contemporary Christian music) pioneer Kurt Kaiser in 1975; the second by the legendary gospel artist Richard Smallwood. Recorded live at Jericho City of Praise in Landover, Maryland, it’s performed here by Smallwood (at piano) and his vocal and instrumental ensemble Vision, featuring soloist Vanessa Williams. The recording appears as two separate tracks on Persuaded: Live in D.C. (2001).
Here are the lyrics to the second song, starting at 3:06:
Refrain: Lord, you know the pain, pain we bear And Lord, you know the toils, toils and cares Send your direction Send your protection Send your compassion And your love divine
Verse: Help us love those who would do us wrong Send your cleansing power from above Unite our hearts as one Make us vessels for the flow-through of your love
[Refrain]
Vamp: Your love divine Your love divine
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BOOK CHAPTER: “Maundy Thursday—The Mission,” chap. 16 from Films for All Seasons by Abby Olcese:Abby Olcese is a writer on film, faith, and popular culture, living in Kansas City. Last year her book Films for All Seasons: Experiencing the Church Year at the Movies was published by InterVarsity Press, spotlighting twenty-six films as lenses through which to reflect on the great themes of the church calendar. I was preparing to write something on The Mission, the 1986 film directed by Roland Joffé, for Lent this year when I encountered this book, and because Olcese covers the movie so well, I secured permission from IVP to provide a free PDF download of the chapter to Art & Theology readers. Olcese situates The Mission as a film that’s especially appropriate for Maundy Thursday, a day when the church reflects on the call to servant-love and commemorates, among other things, Jesus’s arrest in the garden of Gethsemane, during which he and his disciples “face the forces of human empire, a dramatic moment of conflict ending in what, for the moment, feels like defeat.”
The Mission addresses themes of Christian ministry, the kingdom of God, repentance, forgiveness, love, respect, and the nonviolent ethic of Christ. Based on actual events, it follows an eighteenth-century Spanish Jesuit priest, Father Gabriel (Jeremy Irons), as he establishes a mission among the Guaraní people in the borderlands of present-day Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil and seeks to protect the Guaraní from the encroachment of Spanish and Portuguese enslavers. He is later joined by the penitent Rodrigo Mendoza (Robert De Niro), a recent convert and former slave dealer and mercenary soldier. But the two clash over how best and most faithfully to protect the people they live among and serve.
ORATORIO: Water Passion After St. Matthew by Tan Dun: Commissioned for the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death in 2000, this eclectic, Asian-influenced Passion oratorio by the Chinese American composer Tan Dun follows Jesus from his baptism to his resurrection. As the title suggests, water plays an important role in the work. When performed, seventeen large transparent water bowls, dramatically lit from below, form a cross on the stage and are used by percussionists throughout the piece’s ninety-minute duration, creating various timbres. (“The three percussionists make water drip, flow, burble, crash and hiss. They lift handfuls of water, then fling it back down. They stir it, strike it with pairs of plastic cups, float soup bowls upside down in it and play them,” Justin Davidson described in his review of the world premiere.) For Tan, water is “a symbol of baptism, renewal, re-creation, and resurrection.”
Composer Tan Dun plays a “water drum” in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. Photo courtesy of Visual China Group (VCG).
In addition to the water percussion, the work calls for an SATB chorus that doubles on stones and tingsha (Tibetan finger cymbals); soprano and bass soloists who double on the xun (Chinese ocarina, or globular vessel flute) and who are required to do some Mongolian overtone singing; one violin; one cello; and one sampler player (Yamaha A-3000).
Water Passion premiered in Stuttgart, Germany, on September 8, 2000, conducted by Tan—you can listen to the full live recording on Spotify—and it has since been performed a handful of other times across the globe. I recommend the following hour-long video from Symphony Tacoma in Washington, which features excerpts from their March 30, 2016, performance augmented by interviews with some of the key players:
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ARTWORK: The Judas Window by Laurence Whistler: In 1940, St Nicholas Moreton in Dorset was hit by a German bomb, destroying much of the church building, including its nineteenth-century stained glass windows. After rebuilding, the church commissioned the renowned glass engraver Laurence Whistler in 1955 to make twelve new windows, replacing the ruined ones, a project he worked on for the next three decades; they depict butterflies, birds, rabbits, wildflowers, candles, stars and planets, and local scenes. (See a few photos at The Dorset Rambler or Chris Belsten’s Flickr album.) In 1987 he offered to donate a thirteenth window on the theme of forgiveness, featuring the death of Judas, which would be visible, by design, from the outside only (the proposed space was blocked on the inside by a memorial tablet). The idea was entertained but, after consultation between the rector, parish council, and local diocese, was ultimately rejected due to its controversial nature—too many felt that it just wasn’t a fitting subject for a church window. Eager to pursue his vision, Whistler made the window anyway and loaned it to the county museum in Dorchester but insisted that if the church ever changed its mind, it should be given to them.
Laurence Whistler (British, 1912–2000), The Death of Judas (aka the Forgiveness Window), made 1993, installed 2013. Engraved glass, St Nicholas’ Church, Moreton, Dorset, England. Photo: Phil Yeomans / Bournemouth News and Picture Service.
In 2012, Rev. Jacqueline Birdseye, the new rector, encouraged the parish to revisit the issue, and this time around, there was unanimous approval to install the window, startling though it is. Again, it’s a blind window—behind it is black wooden boarding—which was the artist’s intent, as he wanted Judas to be a “shadowy” figure (so he couldn’t be front-lit and backlit) and on the outside, near the graveyard. But, unlike traditional portrayals of Judas’s suicide, which are bleak and punishing, Whistler’s portrayal is one of subtle hope, redemption, and new life. The uniting theme of the twelve interior windows is “light,” and here a bright shaft falls from the heavens on Judas’s upturned face. Hanging from his noose, he relinquishes the thirty coins for which he sold his Savior, and when they hit the ground they transform into flowers; the “field of blood” (Acts 1:18–19) becomes a spring meadow.
Scripture tells us that after realizing his enormous error, Judas “repented” (Matt. 27:3 KJV), “was filled with remorse” (NLT), and returned the blood money. Though Christians have historically counted Judas as eternally damned, other Christians have suggested the possibility of forgiveness beyond the grave for the traitorous disciple who was desperately grieved by his sin. “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy.” “A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Ps. 51:17).
>> The Divine Dark, vol. 1: This three-song EP was released December 15, 2024, on Re-Echo Records, a new label for music created by artists from Resurrection Philadelphia church. “The Divine Dark is an ongoing series of original arrangements and compositions for devotion, contemplation, and edification. The series takes its name from a phrase that emerged in the fifth century among Christian mystics to describe the ineffable unknowableness of God . . . in all his kindness, grace, and mystery.”
The first volume features new arrangements by Joshua Stamper [previously] of two seventeenth-century German hymns (both translated into English by Catherine Winkworth, and sung here by Sarah Long), plus one new hymn that Stamper wrote with his wife, Kory Stamper, whose refrain is taken from Psalm 127:4. The songs quietly explore the mysteries of salvation, the Eucharist, and God’s sovereignty as well as some of the paradoxes of God’s character, such as his being both storm and shelter (wild and thundering, but also safe and enfolding).
Volume 2 of The Divine Dark is likely to release later this year.
>> It Is Good to Be Here with You by Nick Chambers: Out today, the first full-length album by singer-songwriter Nick Chambers. These songs of spiritual seeking touch on sobriety, divine nearness, ambiguity and wonder, the pursuit of understanding or insight, the longing to be held and loved, and more. Chambers deftly weaves voices from scripture—the blind beggar Bartimaeus, who cried out to Christ for mercy; the sons of Korah, who thirsted for God like a deer thirsts for water; the apostle Paul, who experienced a frustrating tension between desire and action—with his own poetic voice, finding companionship with those ancient seekers who were transformed by their encounters God. There’s reference to the wrestling patriarch Jacob, the blazing bush-vision of Moses, Elijah in a wilderness cave, the mount of Transfiguration, the eighth day of creation. Besides biblical texts, the songs bear influences from writers Rainer Maria Rilke, Madeleine L’Engle, Gregory of Nyssa, and Esther de Waal.
The album features some co-writing contributions by Jon Guerra (“Hold Me”), Paul Zach (“A Sweeter Word,” “Always Already”), and Tyson Matthews (“It Is Good to Be Here with You”).
My favorite tracks: “To an Unknown God,” “Hear,” “Thanks Be to God.”
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NEW ART COMMISSION: Memorial to Enslaved Persons by Harmonia Rosales, King’s Chapel, Boston:Harmonia Rosales, an Afro-Cuban artist born and raised in Chicago and living in Los Angeles, is at work on a three-part commission for the historic King’s Chapel at 58 Tremont Street in Boston, a church originally built in wood in 1686 and then rebuilt in stone in the 1750s. One of the oldest churches in the United States, it (and its adjacent burying ground) is one of the stops along the Freedom Trail, and it still has an active congregation.
Conceptual image of the mural by Harmonia Rosales that’s being installed this year on the ceiling of King’s Chapel in Boston, Massachusetts
Despite being in the North, King’s Chapel has links to the slave trade. Historical documents reveal that at least 219 persons, most of them of African descent but at least two of them Native American, were enslaved by ministers and members of the church throughout its history, and that even after slavery was abolished in Massachusetts in 1783, donations to the church continued to flow in from people whose wealth depended on Southern slave labor, such as textile magnates. You can read more details in Slavery and King’s Chapel, the thirty-two-page report published by King’s Chapel’s Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery in 2018.
Until at least the mid-nineteenth century, people of color, both enslaved and free, who attended King’s Chapel were relegated to the balcony seats. We know the names of 182 enslaved attendees from the church’s baptismal, marriage, and burial registers. “As a community of faith,” the church writes on its website, “we are working to recover, honor, and remember these long-overlooked members of our community. We hope to make their lives and their presence in early Boston visible in new and powerful ways as we tell a more complete version of our history for our congregation, our city, and the 4 million people who walk the Freedom Trail each year.”
In addition to setting up a “living fund” to “provide monetary support for programs and engagement centered around reparative justice and reconciliation in the community,” the church has hired artist Harmonia Rosales, in partnership with the MASS Design Group, to create a physical commemoration of this history, which has three components: a figurative sculpture in the church’s courtyard, a collection of bronze birds perched throughout the church’s exterior and grounds, and a trompe l’oeil ceiling mural in the sanctuary. The memorial will be unveiled later this year. Here are two videos about it:
>> “How a Freedom Trail landmark is reckoning with its ties to slavery,” GBH News, July 19, 2023: This news segment features interview clips of Cassandra Dumay and Jessie Sage O’Leary, Boston University journalism students who are inquiring further into King’s Chapel’s links to the colonial slave trade; Rev. Joy Fallon, senior minister at King’s Chapel; Marissa Cheifetz, director of the King’s Chapel History Program; and memorial committee member David Waters.
>> “VCS Creative Conversations: Ben Quash with Harmonia Rosales,”Visual Commentary on Scripture,February 27, 2025: Theologian and VCS director Ben Quash sits down with artist Harmonia Rosales inside King’s Chapel to discuss her latest commission for that space, plus her paintings Birth of Oshun, The Creation of God, Strangler Fig, and more. Raised in the Santería religious tradition, in her art Rosales draws Yoruba deities (the orishas) into play with Christian ones and centers Black women. Speaking of the VCS’s commitment to showcasing biblical engagement from diverse vantage points, Quash tells Rosales, “We’ve always said that these conversations should not just be about the Bible’s importance to Christians or Jews, but the Bible’s importance to those of other traditions, as something to bounce off, to use, sometimes to object to. And you are a wonderful example of how to do that in a way that’s constantly creative and generous.”
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ARTICLE: “At the Cloisters, Sor Juana’s Words Ring Out in Song” by Elisabeth Vincentelli, The New York Times:Primero Sueño (First Dream) is a new opera by Magos Herrera and Paola Prestini that adapts to music the seventeenth-century mystical poem of the same title by the Mexican Catholic nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, one of the greatest literary works of the Hispanic Baroque. Commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Live Arts (MetLiveArts) and VisionIntoArt, it was conceived as a processional opera that meanders throughout the Met Cloisters, audience in tow—an appropriate choice, as the poem is about the soul’s journey. It premiered January 23, with Herrera playing Sor Juana, the nun in black, “sing[ing] in an earthy mezzo that complements the heavenly harmonies of the six nuns in white, performed by the German vocal ensemble Sjaella.” Accompaniment was provided by harps, hand percussion, theorbo, and Spanish guitar. Here’s a trailer (not filmed on location):
Magos Herrera, center, as Sor Juana in a rehearsal of the opera Primero Sueño at the Met Cloisters. Photo: Earl Wilson / The New York Times.
The Cloisters—a building designed to evoke a medieval European monastery and housing a sizeable portion of the Met’s medieval art collection—is one of my favorite spaces in all of New York. What a delight that Herrara, Prestini, and team utilized its halls and rooms as staging ground for this dramatic, musical reimagining of a historic sacred poem by a pioneering female Christian writer.
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INTERFAITH ART EXHIBITION: Cloud of Witnesses: Images of Faith and Divinity Today, St John’s Waterloo, London, March 4–April 27, 2025: A juried exhibition featuring the work of twenty-six artists from the UK, funded and supported by Art + Christianity; The God Who Speaks; St John’s Church, Waterloo; the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales; Culham St Gabriel Trust; and Bible Society. Click here to view the exhibition catalog.
The image used for the cover of the exhibition catalog is Life 1, a linocut by Svetlana Atlavina consisting of fifty golden concentric circles that she said represent the vibrations of the heart—the sounds constantly being emitted from our cardiac valves, which mean we’re alive.
Svetlana Atlavina, Life 1, 2024. Handmade linocut with gold ink on 300g white Somerset paper, 70 x 50 cm.
The work that I find most compelling is the eight-piece series of COME AND REST photographs by Kirsty Kerr.
Kirsty Kerr, COME AND REST: Bethnal Green Library, 2018. Photograph of a public intervention, from a series, 30.5 × 44 cm. Documentation by Will Alcock.
COME AND REST documents a series of public interventions informed by the demolition and rebuilding of Bethnal Green Mission Church. Taking letters from a scripture text that had hung on the old building (Jesus’ words: ‘Come to me and I will give you rest’), Kirsty spelt the phrase in Bethnal Green locations, recording the process with local filmmaker Will Alcock. The words were a gentle yet radical proclamation: of welcome, refuge, and quiet protest against loneliness and exhaustion often synonymous with city life. The act of spelling them out became a performed prayer, symbolic of the church’s continued presence and God’s enduring invitation.
Against the backdrop of this racially and religiously diverse neighbourhood, the words were both witnessed to and overlooked by passers-by of all faiths and none.
Kerr displayed Christ’s invitation in fields and basketball courts, on street corners and scaffolding and bandstand steps, outside subway stops and housing estates and libraries. View the full series here, using the right scroll arrow. I also enjoyed exploring the artist’s other projects on her website.
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EVENT: Taste of Heaven Intercultural Worship Festival, Coventry Cathedral, May 24, 2025: Organized by Intercultural Churches UK. “The Taste of Heaven Festival will be an exciting opportunity to celebrate the rich cultural diversity and creativity of the UK church through live performances, workshops, food and worship. The festival will take place in the iconic venue of Coventry Cathedral and its beautiful surrounding ruins. The day will trace our history of increasing diversity, by highlighting different cultural worship expressions from Celtic to Choral, South Asian and Caribbean, to more recent immigrant communities including Middle Eastern, African, and Hong Kong. It will culminate in a celebration of Intercultural Worship, demonstrating how churches can draw from different cultural streams in their corporate worship.” Tickets range from £10 to £25. Register here. [HT: Global Christian Worship]
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SPOTIFY PLAYLIST: April 2025 (Art & Theology): The song selections on my short monthly playlists are somewhat random—a smorgasbord of what I’ve been listening to, a mix of brand-new releases and older faves—but for thematic playlists keyed to where we are in the liturgical calendar during April, see my Lent Playlist, Holy Week Playlist (I’m especially proud of this one!), and Eastertide Playlist.
ART PROJECT: Fractured by David Popa: “Fractured is a project located on various ice floes in southern Finland. By use of only earth, charcoal and the source water, a series of portraits were created on fractured ice floes that remained for only a brief time. The pieces were documented via aerial drone video, photography and photogrammetry and hold a tactile form as limited-edition prints as well as in digital form through 1/1 NFTs. The project evolved as a response to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which has only further highlighted the fractured state of the world in which we live. During the project, the ice fractured completely unexpectedly at unpredictable times, leaving the artist at odds as to whether continuing the work was even worthwhile. From the ground, one would never be able to decipher any silver linings within the chaos; however, from above, the fragments hold a harmony and beauty that is imperceptible from any other perspective. The work offers a means to point the viewer not to despair and chaos, but rather questions where we must look to mend the broken fragments of our lived reality and perhaps how the fragments can be used to create an entirely new mosaic from the scattered vestiges.”
David Popa (American, 1997–), from the Fractured series, 2023. Iron oxide black earth pigment and charcoal on floating ice.
Explore more of the artist’s work at www.davidpopaart.com. For a printed interview with Popa (featuring many of his amazing photos of his amazing land art), see www.yatzer.com/david-popa.
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POEMS: Seven Reimagined Psalms from the Darkling Psalter by Andy Patton:The Darkling Psalter is a project by Andy Patton (MA, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) to write new creative renditions of the Bible’s 150 psalms. The Rabbit Room recently featured seven of these: Psalms 5, 10, 12, 14, 25, 27, 30.
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PODCAST INTERVIEW: “Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart, with Russ Ramsey,”Makers & Mystics: I appreciated this recent conversation in which pastor, writer, and arts enthusiast Russ Ramsey discusses his latest book, exploring the struggles and sorrows of a handful of historical artists and how they are reflected in their art.
Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890), Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1889. Oil on canvas, 60 × 49 cm. Courtauld Gallery, London.
EXHIBITION REVIEW: “Selva Aparicio’s Memorials to Loss and Renewal” by Lori Waxman, Hyperallergic: Mounted last year by the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago, the first solo show of the Barcelona-born artist Selva Aparicio featured works that “offer a merciful focal point for grief.” Aparicio, Waxman writes, “treats unwanted things with extreme sensitivity, personally gathering and storing them over many years, eventually renewing them with remarkable vision.” She reproduced the twice-destroyed rose window of the Basilica de Santa Maria del Pi using lettuce leaves discarded by her neighborhood market; she filled the interior of an upright piano with wasp nests; she constructed over two dozen pairs of decorative ears out of moss, shells, seed pods, animal hair, and other materials for her late cat, Momo, whose ears were removed due to illness; using strands of hair from herself, her mother, and her niece, she sewed a mourning veil, the kind traditionally worn by widows, out of 1,365 cicada wings.
Exhibition view: Selva Aparicio: In Memory Of, DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, 2024. Left: Velo de luto (Mourning Veil) (2020), formed from 1,365 Magicicada wings; right: Solace (2023–24), crochet cotton blanket woven through with honey locust thorns.
I didn’t get to see this exhibition in person, but I’m compelled by what I saw and read of it online—how it deals so tenderly with suffering, death, remembrance, and hope.
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SONGS:
>> “Parce mihi Domine” (Spare Me, O Lord): A musical setting of the Latin translation of Job 7:16b–21, this motet by the Spanish Renaissance composer Cristòbal de Morales “captures the sense of desolation and abandonment that is expressed by Job, a dark condition akin to the forsakenness that our Lord experienced on the cross,” writes church music director Ken Myers. In 1994 the Hilliard Ensemble recorded the piece in collaboration with the Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek for their album Officium, a jazz-classical fusion that became one of ECM’s most successful releases, selling over 1.5 million copies.
The video below features a different set of musicians paying tribute to this “unexpected . . . alliance of austere vocal music and wandering saxophone” (Elodie Olson-Coons). Filmed December 18, 2015, at the Chiesa di Sant’Anna (Church of St. Anne) in Cagliari, Italy, the performance is by the vocal ensemble Cantar Lontano (under the direction of Marco Mencoboni) and saxophonist Gavino Murgia. [HT: Global Christian Worship]
After losing his health, wealth, and children, the Old Testament character Job laments openly before God. “I will not restrain my mouth,” he says. “I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul” (Job 7:11). He views God as his tormentor and begs God to leave him alone (“spare me”). Adopting Job’s voice, the four singers of the Morales piece sing the following biblical passage:
Parce mihi Domine, nihil enim sunt dies mei. Quid est homo, quia magnificas eum? Aut quid apponis erga eum cor tuum? Visitas cum diluculo, et subito probas illum. Usquequo non parcis michi, nec dimittas me, ut glutiam salivam meam? Peccavi. Quid faciam tibi, o custos hominum? Quare posuisti me contrarium tibi, et factus sum michimet ipsi gravis? Cur non tollis peccatum meum, et quare non aufers iniquitatem meam? Ecce nunc in pulvere dormio; et si mane me quesieris, non subsistam.
English translation (NRSVUE):
Let me alone, for my days are a breath. What are humans, that you make so much of them, that you set your mind on them, visit them every morning, test them every moment? Will you not look away from me for a while, let me alone until I swallow my spittle? If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of humanity? Why have you made me your target? Why have I become a burden to you? Why do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity? For now I shall lie in the earth; you will seek me, but I shall not be.
>> “Lamb of God” by The Many: From the EP Have Mercy (2021) by The Many [previously], “an uncommon, intentionally diverse collective making music for people to sing together about peace and justice and a world where all belong.” This song is an adaptation of the ancient Christian liturgical prayer known as the Agnus Dei. The music is by Gary Rand, and the lyrics are by Gary Rand and his daughter, Lenora Rand. Click here to purchase an individual MP3 recording or sheet music, or visit the group’s Bandcamp page.
Lamb of God, with love poured out you suffer with the world. Have mercy. Have mercy. Lamb of God who suffers with the world, grant us peace, grant us peace.
POEM: “Lost Sheep” by Margaret DeRitter: DeRitter writes about a lost Merino sheep in Australia who, because left unsheared for so long, was carrying over seventy-five pounds of wool on his back. He was found in 2021 and rescued by Edgar’s Mission Farm Sanctuary in Lancefield.
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SONGS:
>> “What Have We Become” by the Sweeplings:The Sweeplings are Cami Bradley and Whitney Dean, a singing-songwriting folk pop duo. From their album Rise and Fall (2015), “What Have We Become” laments how sin encroaches on our lives—we may welcome it in at first, but then it takes over, makes of our house a wasteland. This theme is embodied by a shadowy, thorny-veiled dancer in the music video.
>> “It Knows Me” by Avi Kaplan: Living outside Nashville, Tennessee, Avi Kaplan is best known for being the original vocal bass of the a cappella group Pentatonix, from 2011 to 2017. This song of self-probing is from his second solo EP, I’ll Get By (2020). It’s about the freedom that comes from reckoning with one’s inner darkness and accepting grace. The animation in the video is by Mertcan Mertbilek.
“It Knows Me” is an extremely personal song to me. I believe that everyone has a darker side of them, and that you can choose to play into that, or you can choose to not. This song is about that battle between those two forces, and having a little grace for yourself when you do falter on your path.
>> “Not the Devil Song” by Marcus & Marketo:Marcus & Marketo (Marcus Clingaman and Marketo Michel) are a worship music duo from South Bend, Indiana, fusing the styles of gospel, classical, country, and soul. “Not the Devil Song,” which they wrote in 2019, is about the power Christians are given to tell Satan to back off! When he dangles temptations in front of you, whispers lies in your ear, sows seeds of doubt or fear or hopelessness, you can confidently retort, “Devil, no, you gotta let go; Jesus died to save my soul.”
In his book The Forge of Vision (2015), visual studies scholar David Morgan contrasts this emblematic series with the related Cor Jesu amanti sacrum by Anton Wierix (which I wrote about here). Whereas the Wierix engravings from Antwerp are marked by sweetness, with the Christ child gently cleaning and setting up house in the human heart, the anonymous illustrations Gossner uses portray more of a psychomachia (battle for the soul), with armed angels seeking to oust Satan and his minions.
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VIDEO: “How Bermejo paints good and evil in Saint Michael Triumphs over the Devil”: In this nine-minute video, Daniel Sobrino Ralston, associate curator for Spanish paintings at the National Gallery in London, examines a late Gothic painting in the museum’s collection by the Spanish artist Bartolomé Bermejo, showing the archangel Michael slaying Satan. Based on Revelation 12:7–9, this subject gave artists the chance to flex their imaginations in portraying evil incarnate and its vanquishment. Possessing an impressive capacity for fantastical invention, Bermejo gives the devil snakes for arms, eyes for nipples, bird claws, moth-like wings, a spiky tail, and a cactus growing out of its head!
Bartolomé Bermejo (Spanish, ca. 1440–after 1495), Saint Michael Triumphs over the Devil (detail), 1468. Oil and gold on wood, 179.7 × 81.9 cm. National Gallery, London.
If this visual subject interests you, I recommend the book Angels and Demons in Art by Rosa Giorgi, from the J. Paul Getty Museum’s Guide to Imagery series.
For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: but the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.
—1 Peter 1:24–25 (KJV) (cf. Isaiah 40:7–8)
Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow.
—Psalm 144:4 (ESV)
LOOK: Fraktur attributed to David Kriebel
Fraktur attributed to David Kriebel (1787–1848), Gwynedd Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, 1802. Watercolor and ink on laid paper, 9 1/2 × 7 1/2 in. (24.1 × 19.1 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Referring to exuberantly decorated pages made by Pennsylvania Germans, fraktur is a type of folk art that flourished in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Traditionally handwritten in ink and hand-painted with letter embellishments and design motifs like birds, hearts, and tulips, these works on paper often contain religious texts and/or commemorate important life events like births, deaths, and baptisms. They were made primarily by pastors and schoolmasters, who gifted them to parishioners or students. The recipients did not frame or hang them, but rather kept them in Bibles, drawers, or chests.
The German text of this fraktur translates to “Flowers are not all red. All men hasten toward death. Man cannot remain here, so direct your heart upward.” The piece features a foliate border and a color palette of reds and browns that captures both the bloom of youth and life’s inevitable withering. It was made by David Kriebel, a farmer from Gwynedd Township in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, who would later move to nearby Worcester Township and become a minister in the Schwenkfelder Church, a small Christian denomination rooted in the Protestant Reformation teachings of Caspar Schwenkfeld von Ossig (1489–1561), which emphasize inner spirituality over outward form.
LISTEN: “As the Life of a Flower” by Laura E. Newell (words) and George H. Ramsey (music), 1904 | Performed by the Chuck Wagon Gang, 1953 [HT]
As the life of a flow’r, as a breath or a sigh So the years that we live as a dream hasten by True, today we are here, but tomorrow may see Just a grave in the vale and a mem’ry of me
Refrain: As the life of a flow’r, as a breath or a sigh So the years glide away, and alas, we must die
As the life of a flow’r, be our lives pure and sweet May we brighten the way for the friends that we greet And sweet incense arise from our hearts as we live Close to him who doth teach us to love and forgive [Refrain]
While we tarry below, let us trust and adore Him who leads us each day toward the radiant shore Where the sun never sets and the flow’rs never fade Where no sorrow or death may its borders invade [Refrain]
This early twentieth-century gospel hymn is performed here by D. P. Carter (tenor) and three of his nine children: Rose Carter Karnes (soprano), Anna Carter Gordon (alto), and Ernest (Jim) Carter (bass, guitar). The quartet formed in 1935 and started appearing on WBAP radio in the family’s hometown of Fort Worth, Texas, the following year, billing themselves as the Chuck Wagon Gang.
“As the Life of a Flower” draws on biblical passages that compare human life to a flower for its ephemerality (e.g., Job 14:2; Psalm 103:15–16; Isa. 40:6–8; 1 Pet. 1:24–25). But flowers are also fragrant, and the song makes that comparison too, echoing verses like 2 Corinthians 2:14–15, where Paul writes, “Thanks be to God, who . . . through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.”
Though we are fading, we are glorious creations of God with joyous and sweet-smelling potential. While we live on this earth, may we exude the beauty and aroma of Christ in all we say and do.
BibleProject is a nonprofit in Portland, Oregon, that offers free videos, podcasts, articles, and classes to help people experience the Bible in a way that is approachable and transformative.
The following two songs are from the music ministry of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. The ministry flourished under the leadership of Rev. Dr. Zac Hicks, who served as the church’s canon for worship and liturgy from 2016 to 2021. (He is now pastor of Church of the Cross, also in Birmingham.)
The music videos used to be available on YouTube, but it appears that the church has undergone some restructuring, and they have been removed. For now, though, they are still available through Facebook, and the audio releases are available through streaming services.
>> “Lord, Who Throughout These Forty Days”: This 1873 hymn by Claudia Frances Hernaman recounts the forty days Jesus spent in fasting and prayer in the Judean wilderness at the outset of his ministry and beseeches God to give us strength, like Jesus, to fight temptation, to die to self, and to live by his word and with a keen sense of his abiding presence. It’s set to an American folk tune from the Sacred Harp tradition, known as LAND OF REST, which has roots in the ballads of northern England and Scotland. The hymn is sung by Madison Craig (née Hablas), with Emma Lawton (née Dry) and Annie Lee on background vocals, Joey Seales on pump organ, Charley Rowe on cajon, and Zac Hicks on acoustic guitar.
>> “Spring Up, O Well”: This is an original song by Zac Hicks, sung by Jordan Brown. It draws especially on the narrative in John 4, where Jesus tells a Samaritan woman at a well, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (vv. 13–14). The exclamation “Spring up, O well!” in the song’s refrain comes from Numbers 21:17, where the Israelites praise God for providing them water in the desert, and that musical phrase is adapted from the old children’s church song “I’ve Got a River of Life.”
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SHORT FILM: “Silences,” dir. Nathan Clarke: Shot in 2016 at Box Canyon near Laity Lodge in the Texas Hill Country, this contemplative short film features cellist Steuart Pincombe playing a short improvisation that interacts with the natural space. The impromptu music making was for him an exercise in prayer.
Three years earlier, also while on retreat at Laity Lodge, Pincombe’s wife shot him doing the same inside the newly constructed Threshold, an interactive, site-specific, permanent outdoor installation by Roger Feldman consisting of three curved walls:
The Threshold improvisation, Pincombe writes, “stemmed from a particular note (and its harmonic overtones) that naturally resonated in the space—the cello’s lowest strings were tuned to match this strongest resonation. Playing with the confusion of resonances (or pitches) was an important part of this short musical and spatial exploration—pitches are bent or adjusted in a way that create audible pulses in the sound and play on the conflicts of resonation within the space.”
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ESSAY: “Silence in an Age of Mass Media: John Cage and the Art of Living” by Dr. Jonathan A. Anderson, ARTS (Spring 2017): Many twentieth- and twenty-first-century artists have explored the necessities and possibilities for aesthetic stillness and silence, Anderson writes. In this essay he considers the composer John Cage (1912–1992), best known—and most excoriated—for his modernist piano composition 4′33″ (1952), in which the pianist sits at the bench for four minutes and thirty-three seconds, playing no notes. The point was to attune the audience to the ambient sounds of the concert hall (coughing, rustling, creaking, mechanical humming, outside traffic, etc.), testing the distinction between “music” and “noise.” Cage found the fundamental difference between the two to be not in the qualities of sound but in the attentiveness of the listener.
I was pleasantly surprised to learn from Anderson’s article that even after Cage left Christianity (in which he was raised) and turned to Zen Buddhism, he continued to link his love for the givenness of environmental sounds to Jesus’s admonition to “consider the lilies” (Luke 12:27). “Cage sought to quiet his own aesthetic ‘worry’ for musical meaning,” Anderson writes, “and to instead receive the given sounds of the world as richly meaningful in themselves.”
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VIDEO: Lenten Jazz Vespers, Duke University Chapel, March 23, 2023: This Jazz Vespers service combines the liturgical traditions of Vespers with the musical improvisation of jazz. Exploring the theme of hope, the service is presided over by Rev. Racquel C. N. Gill, minister for intercultural engagement at Duke University Chapel. Musical leadership is provided by the John Brown Little Big Band.
Here are the time stamps:
0:01: Song: “I Came to Tell You” by Trinity Inspirational Choir
5:40: Welcome and Prayer
8:33: Song: “Miracle (It’s Time for Your Miracle)” by Marvin Sapp
14:38: Poetry reading: “Dark Testament (8)” by Pauli Murray
LENT SERIES: “Let go of unlove this Lent: Let’s practice love together—a new and improved Lenten reflection series starting March 5th” by Tamara Hill Murphy: I’ve been nurtured for years by Murphy’s gentle spiritual writing and curated beauty and wisdom, and I especially appreciate her annual Advent and Lent Daybook series. This Lent, she’ll be exploring four postures of cruciform love given to us in 1 Corinthians 13, providing daily scripture readings, prayers, and art, along with weekly practices. You can gain access for just $16. (She uses the Substack platform.)
Forgive Thy Other by Scott Erickson
I like how Murphy frames the season: “Lent is a significant time for us to seek a deeper understanding of God’s heart and recognize the gaps in our experiences of His love. Through its beautiful stories, prayers, and practices, Lent also invites us to reflect on our own expressions of love and unlove. The Book of Common Prayer encourages us to let go of our unloving ways so we can love what (and who) God loves. Let’s joyfully embrace this transformative season together, reflecting God’s love with compassion and understanding.”
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NEW PLAYLIST: God’s Love (Art & Theology): Related to Tamara Hill Murphy’s 2025 Lent Daybook theme: here’s a new playlist I put together of songs about the abounding, ever-present love of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a love that seeks, heals, and transforms.
The cover photo is of an early twentieth-century relief sculpture from the exterior of Holy Trinity Church in the town of St Andrews, Scotland, taken by Joy Marie Clarkson; it shows a pelican pecking her breast to feed her young with her own blood, a medieval symbol of Christ’s self-giving love.
There’s some overlap between this playlist and my dedicated Lent Playlist. I hope it uplifts you in the knowledge of the depths and riches of God’s love for you.
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SONGS:
>> “And Am I Born to Die?”: Lent opens with a call to “remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” A reflection on human mortality, this somber hymn was written by the great English Methodist hymnist Charles Wesley (1707–1788) and set to music—a shape-note tune—by Ananias Davisson (1780–1857), a Presbyterian elder from Virginia. In this video from January 2023, it’s performed by the Appalachian folk musician Nora Brown, with Stephanie Coleman on fiddle and James Shipp on harmonium.
And am I born to die? To lay this body down? And must my trembling spirit fly Into a world unknown?
Awaked by trumpet sounds, I from my grave shall rise, And see the Judge, with glory crowned, And see the flaming skies.
Soon as from earth I go, What will become of me? Eternal happiness or woe Must then my portion be.
>> “Nunc tempus acceptabile” (Now Is the Accepted Time): Second Corinthians 5:20b–6:10 is traditionally read on Ash Wednesday, a passage that includes the adjuration, “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation!” (2 Cor. 6:2). There’s a beautiful tenth-century Latin chant hymn for Lent, from the Liber Hymnarius, that opens with this line. In 2013, the Chicago-based composer and conductor Paul M. French set it to music for SSA a cappella choir, its unison opening unfolding into an increasingly expressive three-part harmony. It’s performed here by the Notre Dame Magnificat Choir under the direction of Daniel Bayless.
Nunc tempus acceptabile Fulget datum divinitus, Ut sanet orbem languidum Medela parsimoniae.
Christi decoro lumine Dies salutis emicat, Dum corda culpis saucia Reformat abstinentia.
Hanc mente nos et corpore, Deus, tenere perfice, Ut appetamus prospero Perenne pascha transitu.
Te rerum universitas, Clemens, adoret, Trinitas, Et nos novi per veniam Novum canamus canticum.
Amen.
Today is the accepted time. Christ’s healing light, the gift divine, shines forth to save the penitent, to wake the world by means of Lent.
The light of Christ will show the way that leads to God’s salvation day. The rigor of this fasting mends the hearts that hateful sinning rends.
Keep all our minds and bodies true in sacrifice, O God, to you, that we may join, when Lents have ceased, the everlasting Paschal feast.
Let all creation join to raise, most gracious Trinity, your praise. And when your love has made us new, may we sing new songs, Lord, to you.
LECTURE: “Embracing the Ephemeral: How Art Honors Creaturehood” by James K. A. Smith, Duke Divinity School, February 17, 2022: Mortality means something more than being a creature who will someday die, says philosopher James K. A. Smith; it is a way of being, not defined solely by its terminus. “To be created is to be ephemeral, fugitive, contingent. To be a creature is to be a mortal, subject to the vicissitudes of time.” Part of the Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts Distinguished Lecture Series, this talk about developing a Christian temporal awareness is based on chapter 4 of Smith’s then-forthcoming, award-winning book How to Inhabit Time (Brazos, 2022), titled “Embrace the Ephemeral: How to Love What You’ll Lose.”
Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917), The Star: Dancer on Pointe, ca. 1878–80. Gouache and pastel on paper, mounted on board, 22 1/4 × 29 3/4 in. (56.5 × 75.6 cm). Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California.Herbert Randall (American, 1936–), Untitled (Lower East Side, New York), 1960s. Gelatin silver print, 13 7/16 × 8 7/8 in. (34.2 × 22.5 cm). J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
Some notes I took:
“We need not only memento mori, but also memento tempore—reminders of our temporality, not just our mortality.”
“Imagine embracing the ephemeral as a discipline of not only conceding our mortality as a condition but also receiving our mortality as a gift.”
“Our finitude is not a fruit of the fall, even if it is affected by the fall. Contingency is not a curse. . . . Aging is not a curse. Autumn is not a punishment. Not all that is fleeting should be counted as loss. The coming to be and passing away that characterize our mortal life are simply the rhythms of creaturehood.”
Resting in our mortality instead of resenting it
Theologian Peter Leithart says hebel means not “emptiness,” “vanity,” or “meaninglessness” but, literally, “mist” or “vapor.” The Teacher in Ecclesiastes uses that word repeatedly to describe human life: it’s vaporous, elusive, escapes our efforts to hold on to it, to manage it.
How to sift tragedy from good creaturely rhythms in which good things fade?
“To dwell faithfully mortally is to achieve a way of being in the world for which not all change is loss and not all loss is tragic, while at the same time naming and lamenting those losses that ought not to be. . . . To be faithfully mortal is a feat of receiving and letting go, celebrating and lamenting. Being mortal is the art of living with loss, knowing when to say thank you and knowing when to curse the darkness.”
“One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop: “The art of losing isn’t hard to master . . .”
A Q&A takes place from 39:00 onward. The first question, asked by theologian Jeremy Begbie, is the one I had, and it recurs with different phrasing at 58:17.
Mortality is one of the main themes in Silver’s poetry, including the physicalities of being human, as reflected in “Ash Wednesday,” in which she, the speaker, muses on the shared Christian ritual of the imposition of ashes at the beginning of Lent. Silver, who died of breast cancer eight years after writing this poem, was used to practicing memento mori (“remember you must die”): her mastectomy scar and silicone breast prosthesis are constant reminders of the fact, she writes. She wants to touch the body of God, wants to wrap her fingers around some tangible promise of healing, but both remain elusive. Instead she resolves to embrace the finiteness of her present form, taking the burnt remains of those Hosanna palms from last year and wearing them with repentance and praise, knowing that what is sown in perishability will be raised in imperishability (1 Cor. 15:42).
I’m compelled by how Silver both laments her fragility and owns it. There’s a defiant quality to the tone, the ash-and-oil mixture that’s thumbed into her forehead in the shape of a cross evoking a football player applying eye black in front of a locker room mirror before the big game. Wearing the mark of Christ, she’s ready for the face-off between herself and death.
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Art & Theology 