John Linnell (British, 1792–1882), Wheat, ca. 1860. Oil on canvas, 94.2 × 140.6 cm. National Gallery of Victoria, Australia.
Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?
I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes, Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour; And, eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet gave you a Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?
And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder Majestic—as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!— These things, these things were here and but the beholder Wanting; which two when they once meet, The heart rears wings bold and bolder And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.
The beauty of Christ suffuses the landscape in “Hurrahing in Harvest” by Gerard Manley Hopkins, written September 1, 1877, while he was studying theology at St Bueno’s College in the Vale of Clwyd, Wales. A hurrah is a jubilant shout, an exclamation of joy, and in this poem the object of that joy is the kingdom of God manifest in a late summer day during the wheat harvest. Hopkins wrote to his friend and fellow poet Robert Bridges—the man who championed his work and is responsible for its being known at all—that “the Hurrahing Sonnet was the outcome of half an hour of extreme enthusiasm as I walked home alone one day from fishing in the Elwy.”
Stooks are bound sheaves of wheat, and Hopkins describes them as savage-looking (“barbarous in beauty”), perhaps suggesting their resemblance to an unkempt head of hair. In their wonderfully wild way, when propped up, they point to the clouds, which glide along moving aerial sidewalks—the wind (“wind-walks”). Through metaphor, Hopkins refers to the clouds as “silk-sack[s]” (they’re bulky yet smooth, substantial yet wispy) and not snowdrift but “meal-drift” (mounds of coarsely ground white grain). The clouds are willful and wavy; they mold together and melt into sky.
Hopkins lifts up his eyes and heart—language reflecting the Sursum corda of the liturgy—to behold the day’s glory. “Down” in line 6 can be read as an adverb or verb: Hopkins looks down across the valley, or he “downs” the scene, takes it all in. And seeing the freshly reaped fields, he “glean[s]” Christ. He likens the rapture he feels to receiving a kiss of greeting from a lover, real and round. Addressing his eyes and heart, he says that no adoring human gaze nor tender human lips have ever imparted such pleasure as Christ imparts through nature.
In the final stanza Hopkins perceives the hills as the majestic shoulders of Christ supporting the sky. He compares Christ to a stallion (wild, strong) and a violet (delicate, humble).
The image of a stallion returns in the second-to-last line, where he says his own heart “rears” (raises upright) wings, which enable him to launch himself upward, his legs pushing off the ground. It’s a leaping of the spirit, an ascent of the soul—an intimate meeting of self and Savior in the goodness of the cloudy-blue afternoon. The Divine is always here, he says, “and but the beholder / Wanting”; that is, lacking awareness.
Throughout the poem there’s a strong sense of propulsion, carried in part by all the alliteration: “barbarous in beauty,” “wind-walks,” “silk-sack,” “wilder, wilful-wavier,” “meal-drift moulded . . . melted . . . ,” “glory . . . glean,” “realer, rounder replies,” “hung hills,” “world-wielding,” “stallion stalwart,” “heart . . . hurls.”
Hopkins’s eyes have been oriented to perceive the spiritual in the material, and the result is ecstasy.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) was a preeminent English poet and a Jesuit priest, whose most famous works include “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” “Pied Beauty,” “God’s Grandeur,” and “The Windhover.” In 1866 he converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism, a decision that estranged him from his family; then he entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1868 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1877. He spent the last five years of his life as a classics professor at University College Dublin, struggling with depression, during which time he wrote the “terrible sonnets,” so-called because of their expression of deep anguish and desolation. Very few of his poems were published during his lifetime, and widespread recognition didn’t come until nearly three decades after his death, in 1918, when his friend Robert Bridges edited the first collection of his poems. Hopkins was the most innovative poet of the Victorian era, his “sprung rhythm” creating new acoustic possibilities and anticipating the modernist movement.
Out of the living word Come flower, serpent and bird.
All things that swim or fly Or go upon the ground, All shapes that breath can cry Into the sinews of sound, That growth can make abound In the river of the eye Till speech is three-ply And the truth triply wound.
Out of the living word Come flower, serpent and bird.
Howard Nemerov (1920–1991) was a major figure in midcentury American poetry, whose Collected Poems won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Bollingen Prize. He served as US poet laureate from 1963 to 1964 and again from 1988 to 1990, and he also wrote fiction and essays. “Romantic, realist, comedian, satirist, relentless and indefatigable brooder upon the most ancient mysteries—Nemerov is not to be classified,” Joyce Carol Oates remarked in the New Republic. From an artistic family, Nemerov was the older brother of the photographer Diane Arbus.
The exuberantly decorated Book of Kells is widely agreed to be the most beautiful book ever made. The crown jewel of Celtic art, it is a manuscript copy of the Four Holy Gospels in Latin, with ten surviving full-page illuminations and many more marginal illuminations and decorated initials throughout the other 670 pages—the work of three artists and four scribes.
Most art historians believe the book was created on the Scottish island of Iona by a group of monks sometime around 800. Viking raids at that time forced the monks to flee to the monastery of Kells in Ireland; they were able to save the book, but it was left unfinished.
The most famous page from the Book of Kells is folio 34r, often referred to as the Christi autem or Chi-Rho page.
The Chi-Rho page from the Book of Kells, ca. 800. Trinity College Dublin MS 58, fol. 34r.
The page illuminates the “second beginning” of the Gospel of Matthew, following the genealogy and opening the narrative of the life of Christ: Christi autem generatio (“Now the birth of Christ . . .”) (Matt. 1:18). The anonymous artist represents the Holy Name of Jesus with a monogram, enlarged and embellished, consisting of the Greek letters chi (Χ) (pronounced “kai”), rho (ρ), and iota (ι), the first three letters in the word Χριστός, Christos. H generatio (where h is shorthand for autem) is written in Latin in Insular majuscule script at the bottom right of the page.
The chi-rho monogram is accorded special dignity in Christian art. Here the chi takes up nearly the whole page, its arms and legs extending to the four corners, exuding a kinetic energy. It reaches, it leaps; it blossoms and enfolds. It is beautified with intricate interlaces, spirals, and lozenges, and it’s teeming with life! Creatures of the land, air, and sea dwell within and around—cats and mice (nibbling on a eucharistic wafer!), birds and moths, an otter and a fish, humans and angels. There are vines and flowers too, and the whirling gears of the cosmos—all of it spilling out of the precious name of Christ.
Peering out from the inner tip of the rho is a red-haired man. Might this represent Jesus? Scholars tend to think so.
This illuminated page combines word (speech) and Word (Logos) with glorious liveliness. “The decoration of the text of Christ’s birth suggests the identification of Christ incarnate with Christ the Creator-Logos,” writes art historian Jennifer O’Reilly. “Christ as the divine Word is here revealed in a word, a single letter, concealed within the design. Similarly, commentators meditating on the name at this point in Matthew’s gospel, described his divinity as lying hidden in his creation, beneath his human flesh at his Incarnation and beneath the literal letter of the scriptural text.”
In his ekphrastic poem “The Book of Kells,” Howard Nemerov subtly draws out this theology—Christ as the Creator of the universe in and by whom all things consist (Col. 1:17). Bearing a rhyme scheme of aa bcbccbbc aa, the poem opens and closes with the same couplet: “Out of the living word / Come flower, serpent and bird.” Again, the word “word” is multivalent, referring to the written word “Christ” that fills the Book of Kells page in the form of a stylized monogram, as well as to Christ the person, the living Word of God, the source of all life. It can also refer to the Bible, which is “living and active” (Heb. 4:12) and which reveals Christ.
Nemerov alludes to the Chi-Rho page’s knotwork, its geometric shapes, its zoomorphic interlaces, and its triskeles (triple spirals), glorying in the sacred beauty and abundance they signify, which some unnamed early medieval monk laboriously sketched and painted over the course of who knows how long, to honor the story of the birth of Jesus Christ.
The Book of Kells’ Chi-Rho page is a phenomenal work of art. The symbol of Christ is all-encompassing, and all of creation is united in harmony with it.
The 2009 animated fantasy drama The Secret of Kells, made by the Irish studio Cartoon Salon, features a wondrous animation of the Chi-Rho page at the end, bringing to life some of its many details:
Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) of Amherst, Massachusetts, is one of America’s most celebrated poets. There are hundreds of musical settings, from various genres, of her poems. Here are ten I really like.
Created by Beach4Art, a family of four who assemble rocks and shells into images on the beaches of Devon, England
1. “I’m Nobody” by Emma Wallace: This is the first poem I ever read by Dickinson—in sixth grade. I was hooked, and I relished the assignment to memorize it and recite it to the class. The idea of being famous was apparently distasteful to Dickinson, and though she was a prolific writer of almost 1,800 poems, only ten were published during her lifetime, and those anonymously; some she sent in letters to friends, but most she kept private. She wrote this one in 1861, and it has contributed to her mystique. Singer-songwriter Emma Wallace turned it into a lovely, understated, minor-key waltz for The Thing with Feathers (2021), one of her several literary-themed albums.
I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too? Then there’s a pair of us! Don’t tell! they’d advertise* – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody! How public – like a Frog – To tell your name – the livelong June – To an admiring Bog!
* Dickinson often provided alternative words in the margins of her pages, which some editors have favored; “advertise” she marked as a possible substitute for “banish us.”
2.“I Shall Not Live in Vain” by Bard and Ceilidh (Mary Vanhoozer): Mary Vanhoozer’s debut album, Songs of Day and Night(2015), comprises original settings of classic poems by the likes of Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and others. “Music has a unique ability to transform ordinary things into special things—the mundane into the extraordinary,” she writes. “This song cycle is all about exploring that further. Each song roughly represents an hour of the day. The CD begins at dawn and ends at dusk. As we travel through the day, we learn to perceive familiar objects and situations in a new light, infusing joy and a sense of mystery into the everyday experience.” For this track she is joined by her husband, Josh Rodriguez, on guitar. The text is a sort of purpose statement, committing to a life of love, kindness, and compassionate outreach.
If I can stop one Heart from breaking I shall not live in vain If I can ease one Life the Aching Or cool one Pain
Or help one fainting Robin Unto his Nest again I shall not live in vain.
3. “His Feet Are Shod with Gauze” by Emily Lau: The natural world, especially bees, was one of Dickinson’s favorite topics to write about. I think of her as a poet of summer. (Other great bee poems: “Bee! I’m expecting you!” and “Bees are Black, with Gilt Surcingles –.”) “His Feet are shod with Gauze –,” a panegyric, praises bees’ delicacy, might, and beauty. This musical setting is part of the suite Seven Dickinson Songs by composer and vocalist Emily Lau, which appears on her album Isle of Majesty (2019). Be sure to check out the other songs, including “I Can Wade Grief” and “I Never Saw a Moor,” in which Lau is joined by her chamber music ensemble, The Broken Consort.
His Feet are shod with Gauze – His Helmet, is of Gold, His Breast, a single Onyx With Chrysophras, inlaid –
His Labor is a Chant – His Idleness – a Tune – Oh, for a Bee’s experience Of Clovers, and of Noon!
4. “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church” by Michael McGuane: Dickinson was raised as a Congregationalist but never officially joined the church and by 1868 had stopped attending altogether. Her poems vary in tone toward Christianity, with some expressing devout sentiments and others irreverence. One thing that’s clear is that she often encountered God in nature. In this poem the fruit trees create a sanctuary for her and the birds serve as choir—an elevating, worshipful experience. Christians throughout history have spoken of how the “book of nature” complements the book of scripture, both revealing God’s truth. Here Dickinson acknowledges the same, emphasizing the goodness of creation, our enjoyment of which is sacred. On YouTube, the Americana musician Michael McGuane performs a guitar-picked, folk-rock tune he wrote for the poem.
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church – I keep it, staying at Home – With a Bobolink for a Chorister – And an Orchard, for a Dome –
Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice – I, just wear my Wings – And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church, Our little Sexton – sings.
God preaches, a noted Clergyman – And the sermon is never long, So instead of getting to Heaven, at last – I’m going, all along.
5. “Split the Lark” by Drum & Lace (Sofia degli Alessandri-Hultquist) and Ian Hultquist, feat. Ella Hunt: This pop music setting of “Split the Lark” was written by husband-and-wife composing duo Drum & Lace and Ian Hultquist for the Apple TV+ comedy-drama Dickinson (which I have mixed feelings about). It’s featured in season 2, episode 6, where it’s sung by Ella Hunt, the actress who plays Emily’s sister-in-law (and in the show, secret lover), Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson. Emily is attending an opera performance in Boston and imagines—in place of the soprano—Sue, singing her own words to her.
Split the Lark – and you’ll find the Music – Bulb after bulb, in Silver rolled – Scantily dealt to the Summer Morning Saved for your Ear, when Lutes be old –
Loose the Flood – you shall find it patent – Gush after Gush, reserved for you – Scarlet Experiment! Sceptic Thomas! Now, do you doubt that your Bird was true?
Containing echoes of William Wordsworth’s “We murder to dissect,” this poem derides empiricism as the sole method of arriving at truth. The addressee wants to better comprehend the lark’s song, to observe the internal apparatus that enables it to make such beautiful music. Go ahead, the speaker exasperatedly tells him: take up your scalpel and dissect the bird. You’ll unleash a flood of blood and guts (“bulb after bulb” could refer to globular anatomical structures—e.g., the aortic bulb, the jugular bulb—or organs, or to musical notes). But would such prying really bring you closer to knowing the lark? Your experiment will have only caused the song to stop. The poem references the apostle Thomas, who demanded physical proof of Christ’s resurrection (personally, I think he’s unfairly maligned for this; his probing does, in fact, lead him to a deeper level of knowledge).
Dickinson was very much a supporter of science, but she also recognized its limitations when it comes to explaining certain mysteries or trying to produce physical evidence of the invisible. On one level, this poem may describe Dickinson’s stance on poetry, which, once you start to pick it apart, can sometimes lose its magic. I’m all for poetic analysis, but there’s something to be said for simply letting the sounds and musicality of poetic verse wash over you without going at it with a scalpel.
6. “I Had No Time to Hate” by Gerda Blok-Wilson: Look what Dickinson can do with the cliché “Life is too short to be angry”! She had a dark wit, which you get a glimmer of here. The poem is structured in two stanzas, the first about hate, so we might expect the second to wax rhapsodic about the virtues of love. But instead we get a matter-of-fact admission that life is also too short to complete the work of love. However, because we must choose either hate or love, she chooses love—it’s for us to fill in why it’s the superior choice. I like the interplay of littleness and largeness, suggesting that even in small caring acts, there’s a substantiality and a sufficiency, no matter how imperfect our love may be. The following recording, from June 2021, is of the premiere performance of Gerda Blok-Wilson’s choral setting of “I had no time to Hate –” by the Vancouver Chamber Choir, directed by Kari Turunen.
I had no time to Hate – Because The Grave would hinder me – And Life was not so Ample I Could finish – Enmity –
Nor had I time to Love – But since Some Industry must be – The little Toil of Love – I thought Be large enough for Me –
7. “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” by Andrew Bird, feat. Phoebe Bridgers: This is another Dickinson poem that made a strong impression on me when I read it in school—what a fabulous first line. Though some have interpreted the poem as Dickinson imagining her own funeral, I see the funeral as a metaphor—for, possibly, the loss of a cherished friendship, long-held belief, or hope or dream, any of which would take a heavy psychological toll, or for the temporary loss of sanity, a mental breakdown, due to some stressor. The mood is oppressive, and the speaker grows increasingly unraveled. The singer-songwriter, violinist, and whistler Andrew Bird set the poem to “a simple two-note melody,” he said, and, in collaboration with the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, made a music video featuring Dickinson’s handwriting and footage of her lifelong home.
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, And Mourners to and fro Kept treading – treading – till it seemed That Sense was breaking through –
And when they all were seated, A Service, like a Drum – Kept beating – beating – till I thought My mind was going numb –
And then I heard them lift a Box And creak across my Soul With those same Boots of Lead, again, Then Space – began to toll,
As all the Heavens were a Bell, And Being, but an Ear, And I, and Silence, some strange Race Wrecked, solitary, here –
And then a Plank in Reason, broke, And I dropped down, and down – And hit a World, at every plunge, And Finished knowing – then –
8. “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Susan McKeown: From the 2002 album Prophecy by Susan McKeown, a Grammy-winning musical artist from Ireland, this song takes as its lyrics one of Dickinson’s most famous poems, one that promotes a gentle, welcoming attitude toward death. It personifies Death as a kindly gentleman driving a carriage, transporting the speaker at a casual pace past the final traces of her mortal life and into eternity. (Note: Emma Wallace, from the first entry, also wrote a compelling setting!)
Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me – The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality.
We slowly drove – He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility –
We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess – in the Ring – We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain – We passed the Setting Sun –
Or rather – He passed Us – The Dews drew quivering and Chill – For only Gossamer, my Gown – My Tippet – only Tulle –
We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground – The Roof was scarcely visible – The Cornice – in the Ground –
Since then – ’tis Centuries – and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses’ Heads Were toward Eternity –
9. “Hope’s the Thing with Feathers” by Julie Lee: Another classic poem, this one about the warmth and persistence of hope. Julie Lee gives it an uplifting banjo tune.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – And sore must be the storm – That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm –
I’ve heard it in the chillest land – And on the strangest Sea – Yet – never – in Extremity, It asked a crumb – of me.
10. “In this short Life” by Scott Joiner: Dickinson wrote this compact poem of just two lines on an upcycled envelope flap, as she was wont to do, around 1873 and saved it. It expresses the paradox that we humans possess free will, a potent trait, and yet so many things are beyond our control. Composer Scott Joiner wrote a piece for voice and piano for this text, performed by Jessica Fishenfeld and Milena Gligić on the album Emily that released just this month (it features settings by Joiner of five poems by Dickinson and five by her near contemporary from across the pond, Emily Brontë). The tone is contemplative and resigned.
In this short Life that only lasts an hour How much – how little – is within our power
Envelope poem by Emily Dickinson, ca. 1873, from the Emily Dickinson Collection, Amherst College (Amherst Manuscript #252, Box 3, Folder 88)
SPOTIFY PLAYLIST: August 2024 (Art & Theology): An assortment of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, old and new.
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OBITUARIES:
>> Jürgen Moltmann (1926–2024): Jürgen Moltmann, one of the leading Christian theologians of the twentieth century, died June 3 at age ninety-eight. His conversion to Christianity began while he was a German soldier in a POW camp in Belgium during World War II, and he afterward spent most of his career as a theology professor at the University of Tübingen, confronting the theological implications of Auschwitz, among other topics. The pastors of the first church I joined as an adult were deeply influenced by Moltmann (and his protégé Miroslav Volf), so I have been shaped by his theology, especially in the areas of theodicy (which he binds inextricably to Christology) and eschatology.
Moltmann challenged the classical doctrine of divine impassibility, which says God does not feel pain or have emotions, in his seminal book The Crucified God (1974), articulating how God the Father, not just God the Son, is a being who feels and is moved and who also suffered on Good Friday; understanding this, he says, is key to understanding how God relates to the suffering of the world. In Theology of Hope (1964), Moltmann tackled eschatology, which he defines not as the theology of last things but as the theology of hope; not of the end of time but of the fullness of time toward which God is moving all creation, even now. The gospel, he says, must be taken as good news not just of a past event (the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ) but also of a promised future, with vast implications for the present.
>> Bernice Johnson Reagon (1942–2024):Bernice Johnson Reagon [previously], a civil rights activist who cofounded The Freedom Singers and later started the African American vocal ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock, died July 16 at age eighty-one. I’m so inspired by her Christian witness through nonviolent resistance and music—her songs are on regular rotation in my house.
Beauty isn’t necessarily pretty, pleasant, soothing, Vander Lugt says. Beauty is whatever makes our being gasp a little—whether in delight, or in terrified awe. Beauty demands attention. It also dislodges us from the center of the story, Vander Lugt continues—it unselfs us, in a way, curving us outward. It can be present in what’s torn. (“God goes belonging to every riven thing,” as the poet Christian Wiman puts it.)
I was struck by a remark that Howell, the host, who is a pastor, made near the beginning of the conversation: he said preachers should be less like an instructor imparting moral lessons and more like a docent at an art museum who points out the beauty of the paintings, drawing people’s eyes to its various aspects. What a compelling way to frame the ministry of preaching!
>> Malcolm Guite on Poetry and the Imagination, The Habit: Conversations with Writers about Writing (Rabbit Room), May 7, 2020: In the eleventh poem of his “Station Island” cycle, Seamus Heaney writes about “the need and chance // To salvage everything, to re-envisage / The zenith and glimpsed jewels of any gift / Mistakenly abased.” In this podcast episode, poet-priest Malcolm Guite [previously] talks with host Jonathan Rogers about the “salvaging of the mistakenly abased gift of imagination.” Imagination, Guite says, is as much a truth-bearing faculty as reason; in order to know things well, wemust engage the imagination. It’s not about a private, subjective world or inward fantasies devised to compensate for the cruelty of the world; it’s about truly seeing.
One of the gifts mistakenly abased by our culture for about the last two or three hundred years is the gift of the imagination. We’ve sidelined it so it’s only about the subjective, [whereas] out there is the objective world of dry, rational facts. And we’ve abased that gift of intuitively knowing the truth and value of things and expressing that in warm and poetic imagery, rather than simply reducing everything to a set of tiny particles or mathematical formulae.
—Malcolm Guite
The Romantic poets, for example, Guite says, “aimed at awakening the mind’s attention, removing the film of familiarity and restoring to us that vision of the freshness and depth of nature for which we have eyes that see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand. So they weren’t trying to make stuff up. They were trying to take away this film which [Samuel Taylor Coleridge] says our selfishness and solicitousness have cast over the world, and unveil a deeper but equally real truth about nature which is more than just the surfaces we see.”
Also in this conversation, Guite reveals the poet who made him want to be a poet, the poem that prompted his reconversion to Christianity, what we lost when poetry changed from oral to written, and why he writes poetry in meter.
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SHORT FILM SERIES: SparkShorts, produced by Pixar, streaming on Disney+: Did you know Pixar Animation Studios launched an experimental shorts initiative in 2017, giving employees the opportunity, through funding and resourcing, to flex their creative muscles with a great measure of freedom? “The SparkShorts program is designed to discover new storytellers, explore new storytelling techniques, and experiment with new production workflows,” says Pixar President Jim Morris. “These films are unlike anything we’ve ever done at Pixar, providing an opportunity to unlock the potential of individual artists and their inventive filmmaking approaches on a smaller scale than our normal fare.”
Eleven SparkShorts have been released since 2019, all streaming on Disney+. Here are my favorites:
>>Self, dir. Searit Kahsay Huluf: Released February 2, 2024, this stop-motion–CGI hybrid is about a woman who self-sabotages to belong. Writer-director Searit Kahsay Huluf says it was inspired by her family story: her mother immigrated to the US from Ethiopia to escape a civil war and had to learn how to assimilate without losing herself, and as a second-generation African immigrant growing up in Los Angeles, she herself wrestled with identity issues. The way in which Huluf tells the story is beautiful, clever, and kind of dark! Notice the differentiation of textures and sound between the wood of the main character (portrayed by a puppet) and the metal of the “Goldies.”
>> Float, dir. Bobby Rubio: A father discovers his infant son has a unique characteristic that differentiates him from others and then tries to hide him to avoid judgment—but when doing so visibly deflates his son’s spirit, he vulnerably releases him out into the world to be who he is. Writer-director Bobby Rubio created Float for his son, Alex, who is on the autism spectrum. As a dad, Rubio initially struggled with the diagnosis, and this is his story of learning to embrace the beauty of it. It’s one of the few portrayals of a Filipino American family on film, and a warmhearted celebration of neurodivergence—or any other type of divergence.
>> Nona, dir. Louis Gonzales: Nona is looking forward to a day to herself to just chill in front of the TV, watching her favorite show, E.W.W. Smashdown Wrestling. But when her five-year-old granddaughter is unexpectedly dropped off, she has to adapt her plans—begrudgingly at first. Writer-director Louis Gonzales says Nona is based on his own grandma, with whom he shared a love of wrestling. I appreciate how the film addresses dealing with disruptions to a cherished routine; it’s honest about the frustration (even if the disrupter is someone you love dearly!) while also showing how a gracious, go-with-the-flow attitude can unlock surprising new joys. What a fitting watch for the current season of Ordinary Time!
Hansa (Hans Versteeg) (Dutch, 1941–), Between Hope and Despair, 2015. Oil on canvas, 125 × 150 cm.
Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold, Death’s great black wing scrapes the air, Misery gnaws to the bone. Why then do we not despair?
By day, from the surrounding woods, cherries blow summer into town; at night the deep transparent skies glitter with new galaxies.
And the miraculous comes so close to the ruined, dirty houses— something not known to anyone at all, but wild in our breast for centuries.
This poem was originally published in Russian (title: “Все разграблено”) in Anno Domini MCMMXI by Anna Akhmatova (Petrograd: Petropolis, 1922). The above translation by Stanley Kunitz, with Max Hayward, appears in Poems of Akhmatova (Boston: Mariner Books, 1997).
Akhmatova wrote “Everything Is Plundered” in June 1921, during a time of great social and political upheaval caused by the Russian Revolution (1917), which established Communism in the country, and the resultant Russian Civil War (1917–1922). Just two months later, her first husband, the father of her nine-year-old son, would be arrested and executed as a counterrevolutionary. Despite the death and destruction she was witnessing, she did not want to abandon hope. She grasps for a miracle, which is elusive but, she senses, near—will it land?
Like the poet, I too marvel at how such ugliness and beauty can coexist in the world. For Akhmatova, it’s in large part gifts from nature, such as the scent of cherry blossoms or the sparkle of a starry night sky, that prevent her from despairing, that rekindle in her that faith-flame. When humans make a terrible and violent mess of things, there’s still the persistence of seasons and the steadiness of sky. I consider such things graces from God, reminders of God’s deep-down, benevolent, outreaching presence.
Anna Akhmatova, the pen name of Anna Andreevna Gorenko (1889–1966), is one of the most significant Russian poets of the twentieth century. She was active as a writer during both the prerevolutionary and Soviet eras, though in the latter, her work was condemned and censored by Stalinist authorities, who viewed it as too pessimistic and rooted in bourgeois culture. Though many of her friends emigrated out of the country to escape oppression, she chose not to, believing that her poetry would die if she left her homeland; she wanted to stay and bear witness to the events around her, and to hold out hope for a better tomorrow. One of Akhmatova’s most famous poem cycles, Requiem, she wrote while her only child, Lev Gumilev, was detained in Kresty prison in 1938 along with hundreds of other victims of the Great Terror; he would spend the next two decades in forced-labor camps. It wasn’t until the late 1980s, after her death, that Akhmatova achieved full recognition for her literary accomplishments in her native Russia, when all her previously unpublishable works finally became accessible to the public.
Henry Ossawa Tanner (American, 1859–1937), The Thankful Poor, 1894. Oil on canvas, 35 1/2 × 44 1/4 in. (90.2 × 112.4 cm). Collection of the Art Bridges Foundation, Bentonville, Arkansas.
Momma used to say That when Jesus turned the Loaves and fish Into a picnic For those hungry folks In the wilderness The God blessed victuals Tasted like mouth watering Mississippi catfish Deep fried in the best store bought meal Served with a healthy side helping Of iron skillet cornbread— Bread so fine that No one asked for butter or honey And nary a crumb hit the ground. She grew up an orphan In the Great Depression, Where low cotton prices And bad weather Killed farms and families— Times, she remembered, so hard That sometimes even dinner Was a miracle And prayers offered At the evening meal Wafted in the air Thick as coal oil smoke In the fragrance of gratefulness.
This poem by Tom Darin Liskey was originally published June 16, 2019, on Kelly Belmonte’s All Nine blog. Used with permission of the author.
Tom Darin Liskey is a photographer and a writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. A graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi, he spent nearly a decade working as a photojournalist in Venezuela, Argentina, and Brazil. He is the author of the short story collection This Side of the River (2022) and, with Kelly Belmonte, the poetry-photography collaboration Transit (2022), as well as a contributor to The Cultivating Project. He lives with his family in South Carolina.
Van Engen answers questions from poet Shane McCrae and from the audience, addressing how to read a volume of poetry, how poetry produces an experience, the role of understanding and not understanding when it comes to poems, why Christians in particular should read poetry, hymns as poetry, how Adam’s naming creation in Genesis 2 relates to the task of the poet, his favorite poets, and the qualities of a good poem.
Two especially great questions from attendees were:
How do you imagine poetry nourishing discipleship and/or corporate worship, if used by a church leader?
What, if anything, would you like to see more of from Christian poets writing today?
Regarding the first, he says,
I often think that ministers in particular—and especially the heavier the preaching tradition, the more true this is—need creative literature—poetry, novels, and other things—to enliven what it is they’re doing from the pulpit. Not just to understand human life in all of its flourishing and misery, but to connect to people in different kinds of ways than pure principle and message can do.
He mentions the recurring summer seminar for pastors co-led by Dr. Cornelius “Neal” Plantinga, “Imaginative Reading for Creative Preaching,” to help participants explore the possibilities and homiletical impact of engaging in an ongoing program of reading novels, poetry, short fiction, children’s lit, and nonfiction outside the category of Christianity—not just to mine for sermon illustrations but also to develop a “middle wisdom” (“insights into life that are more profound than commonplaces, but less so than great proverbs”) and to deepen their perception of people.
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PODCAST EPISODE: “Opening Your Bible? Turn on Your Imagination” with Russ Ramsey and Sandra McCracken, The Gospel Coalition Podcast, May 8, 2020: This is a recording of a breakout session—“Reading Scripture with an Engaged Imagination”—from the Gospel Coalition’s 2019 National Conference in Indianapolis. Pastor Russ Ramsey (author of Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith) and singer-songwriter Sandra McCracken (“We Will Feast in the House of Zion,” “Thy Mercy, My God”) discuss the role the imagination plays in reading scripture and understanding and conveying its truth.
Scripture calls for reading with a fully engaged imagination, Ramsey says, because that’s how literature works and that’s how people work. “How are you supposed to understand Scripture if you’re not trying to empathize or get into a situation and walk around inside of it?” he asks. They discuss wonder, mystery, and paradox—the unresolved dissonance and complexity present in many Bible stories—and the need to take a Bible story on its own terms instead of always trying to extract a moral or “life application” from it.
Though they don’t use the term, they’re basically advocating for Ignatian contemplation, aka the Ignatian method of Bible reading and prayer, in which you put yourself into the story and try to experience it with all your senses. Ramsey demonstrates with the story of Mary and the nard. “In those hours as Jesus is being arrested and tried and flogged and crucified, he smells opulent. And I think we’re supposed to get that, you know. We’re supposed to . . . especially a first-century reader is going to say, ‘He left a lingering scent as he went down the Via Dolorosa, and it was the scent of royalty. And it was the scent of extravagance.’”
Some of the names that come up along the way are Robert Alter, Ellen Davis, Eugene Peterson, and Frederick Buechner.
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IMMERSIVE ART EXPERIENCE:Rembrandt’s Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee at Frameless in London: I’ve been seeing these kinds of exhibitions advertised more and more—ones that use animation and projection-mapping technology and dozens of loudspeakers strategically placed around the room to create a wall-to-wall, multisensory experience built around one or more masterpiece paintings. Some people say it’s gimmicky or overstimulating, but though I’ve never been to one, I generally think they look like fun! They’re not meant to be a substitute for seeing the actual artwork in person.
In the case of Rembrandt van Rijn’s Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, though, that’s not possible, as the painting was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990 and has not been recovered. In collaboration with their long-term partner Cinesite, Frameless recently developed an immersive art experience based on the painting—the Dutch master’s only seascape—in which visitors can get a sense of the terror and exasperation Jesus’s disciples must have felt that night they were caught at sea in a torrential wind- and rainstorm while Jesus lay calmly asleep in the boat’s stern (see Matt. 8:23–27; Mark 4:36–41; Luke 8:22–25). Here’s a making-of featurette for that experience, which garnered a nomination for a prestigious Visual Effects Society award earlier this year:
Frameless is permanently housed in the Marble Arch Place in London’s West End cultural district. Christ in the Storm is one of forty-two works of art they riff on across four galleries.
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POEMS:
Here are two poems published this month that each explores a different episode from the story of Jacob’s family in the book of Genesis—one of his wife Rachel stealing her father’s household gods as they flee to Canaan, and one of Jacob’s sons avenging the rape of their sister, Dinah. Both are examples of how poems can stimulate renewed engagement with scripture, as these were stories I had forgotten some of the details of, and the poems did not make sense until I revisited the relevant Bible passages. Poems can help us walk around inside the biblical narratives, both familiar and unfamiliar ones, and see things from the perspectives of different characters, especially ones who are not given a voice in scripture, such as a Shechemite woman taken captive by Jacob’s sons.
>>“Rachel, Cunning”by Patricia L. Hamilton, Reformed Journal: Read the poem first, then Genesis 29–31, then my commentary.
Voiced by Jacob’s second wife, Rachel, in this poem Rachel vents her jealousy over Jacob having first married her sister, Leah, who bore him six sons to her one at this point. This marriage was due to the trickery of her father, Laban, who also tried to cheat Jacob out of fair shepherding wages—so Rachel resents her father. As she prepares to secretly leave Paddan-aram for Canaan with Jacob, Leah, and their children, she steals her father’s teraphim (small images or cult objects used as domestic deities or oracles by ancient Semitic peoples).
In the biblical narrative, Rachel’s motive for stealing the idols is not given. Was she seeking to prevent Laban from consulting them to find out which way she and her family went? Was possession of the gods in some way connected to property inheritance, as some scholars have attested? Was she stealing a blessing from her ancestors? Did she take them for their monetary value? Or leaving her homeland, did she simply wish to take with her a little piece of home, for nostalgia’s sake?
I think the most likely reason is she still believed in these gods’ power—her allegiance to the God of Jacob had not yet been firmly established—and so she stole them for protection. That’s what Hamilton imagines in her poem: that Rachel sees them as “talismans against the spite of brothers,” averting the evil Jacob’s older twin brother, Esau, wished him for his having stolen their father’s blessing that belonged to him. (According to Genesis 27:41–45, before Jacob left for Paddan-aram, Esau had vowed to kill him.)
Marc Chagall (Belarusian French, 1887–1985), Rachel dérobe les idoles de son père (Rachel Hides Her Father’s Household Gods), from The Bible series, 1960. Original color lithograph on Arches wove paper, image size 14 × 10 1/2 in. (35.6 × 26.7 cm).
Caught between two tricksters—her husband and her father—Rachel herself becomes a trickster. When Laban catches up with their traveling party and searches among their possessions for the stolen gods, Rachel, who’s sitting on them, lies and says she cannot get up because she’s menstruating (Gen. 31:34–35). She deceives her deceitful father to keep her deceitful husband and her son Joseph safe from Esau’s rage, as she believes the gods will act in the interests of whoever possesses them. The poem explores the ever-thickening web of deceptions woven in Jacob’s and Rachel’s families and also reminds us that Rachel, remembered now as a great Jewish matriarch, was not raised in the then-still-developing Israelite religion, nor was her turn to Yahweh necessarily immediate upon her marriage to Jacob. I hear in the poem a lament for fraternal and sororal rivalries, and a subtle sad awareness of the vulnerabilities and pressures of women in patriarchal cultures, who are bought and sold in marriage, valued primarily for their childbearing capacities, and typically forced to rely on men for survival, often suffering the consequences of men’s mistakes. (In the poem at least, Rachel’s feeling of insecurity comes from Esau’s threat of vengeance.)
Based on a lithograph by Marc Chagall, this ekphrastic poem is one of twenty-four from the unpublished chapbook Voiced by Patricia Hamilton, all inspired by biblical artworks by Chagall. Hamilton is currently looking for a publisher to take on the collection.
>>“For the Circumcision of a Small City” by Emma De Lisle, Image: The deception continues in Genesis 34; like father, like sons. This poem is based on the episode of the massacre of the men at Shechem by Jacob’s sons Simeon and Levi to avenge the rape of their sister, Dinah. Shechem, meaning “shoulder,” was the name of both the city in Canaan where the rape took place and the Hivite prince’s son who committed the rape. Jacob and his family were sojourning there, having even bought land. After sexually assaulting Dinah, Shechem wanted to make her his wife. Dinah’s brothers were disgusted by this request, but they pretended they would entertain bride-price discussions on the condition that all the males in the city be circumcised. Shechem’s father agreed, and his position as ruler meant the people obeyed. A few days after the mass circumcision, while the men were still sore, Simeon and Levi attacked with swords, killing all the males in the city. Their brothers then joined them in capturing the men’s wives and children and plundering their wealth.
Emma De Lisle’s poem is written from the perspective of a woman of Shechem, taken captive in the slaughter. The women of the city scorned the lengths Shechem was willing to go to for the homely Dinah, barely old enough to have her period. “Jacob’s silence for you” alludes to Genesis 34:5, which says that when he found out about his daughter’s rape, “Jacob held his peace” until his sons returned from the fields. If he felt grief or outrage, it’s not apparent in the scripture text. His initial response was to say and do nothing, and then to defer to his sons, who exact an outsize punishment for the crime that Jacob admits after the fact disappointed him because when word spreads, it will negatively impact the hospitality of other Canaanite cities toward them.
Stanzas 4 and 5 refer to two of Jacob’s previous deceptions: donning goatskins on his hands and neck to impersonate his hairy brother, Esau, before their blind father, so as to steal the blessing of the firstborn (Gen. 27), and altering the breeding pattern of Laban’s flocks to increase the number of spotted sheep and goats (how this is accomplished is vague and has posed difficulties for interpreters) and so enrich himself, as the spotted animals were his agreed-upon wage (Gen. 30:25–43). The implication of this mention is, I think, that men will take what they feel is owed to them, whether by guile or force.
Sometimes women participate in this violence. The poetic speaker wonders whether Dinah will force her or the other captive women to bear children for her (future husband’s) family line, just as her mother, Leah, had used her slave, Zilpah, when her own womb had closed.
“The city bled one way // or another, before your brothers took interest,” the speaker says. Sexual violence was not new to them. The last sentence suggests that Dinah was not the only female victim of the lustful Shechem’s assault—the women of the city paid a price too, seeing their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons murdered in retaliation and themselves taken prisoner.
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ORATORIO: The Book of Romans by Emily Hiemstra (2019): Consisting of musical settings of select passages from the apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans, this piece for SATB soloists, choir, and string orchestra was commissioned by Grace Centre for the Arts, a ministry of Grace Toronto Church, where it premiered October 22, 2019. (Hooray for churches that commission new art!) Read a statement from the composer on the Deus Ex Musica blog. The performers are Meghan Jamieson (soprano), Rebecca Cuddy (alto), Asitha Tennekoon (tenor), Graham Robinson (baritone), Lyssa Pelton (violin), Amy Spurr (violin), Emily Hiemstra (viola), and Lydia Munchinsky (cello).
Here is the video time stamp for each of the eight movements:
0:18: i. Who Has Known the Mind of the Lord? (Rom. 11:33–36)
3:56: ii. His Eternal Power and Divine Nature (Rom. 1:20)
SPOTIFY PLAYLIST: July 2024 (Art & Theology): This month’s “mixtape” includes a worship song by Daniel P. Cariño from Baguio, the Philippines; a 1954 recording from the streets of New Orleans of the itinerant preacher, singer, and guitarist Elder David Ross; a piano-violin arrangement of “Amazing Grace” by Carlos Simon; a nineteenth-century American folk hymn; an excerpt from Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah; a Jesus bhajan in Hindi from Toronto; a one-word song by choral-pop composer Michael Engelhardt; a brand-new Porter’s Gate single; and more.
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NEW BOOKS:
>> Diary of an Old Soul: Annotated Edition by George MacDonald, with introduction and notes by Timothy Larsen: At last, a keepsake edition of George MacDonald’s devotional poetry collection Diary of an Old Soul! Last week InterVarsity Press released a cloth-bound hardcover with ribbon bookmark, an introduction and sparing notes by the modern British religious history scholar Timothy Larsen, and, as MacDonald stipulated in the book’s first printing in 1880, a blank page facing each page of verse for readers to continue the conversation. C. S. Lewis gave a copy of Diary of an Old Soul to his future wife, Joy Davidman, as a Christmas gift in 1952, and it would make a wonderful Christmas gift still. For each day of the year MacDonald offers a seven-line poem that voices his spiritual longings, struggles, or joys; the Victorian tastemaker John Ruskin extolled the collection as proof that worthy religious poetry could still be written in the modern age. I highlighted my favorite selections from the book in a blog post last year, but on reading this new edition, new lines are standing out to me.
>> Word Made Fresh: An Invitation to Poetry for the Church by Abram Van Engen: Several Christians have told me they want to read more poetry and learn to better appreciate it but don’t know where to start. I usually recommend starting with an anthology, to get a taste of a wide range of styles and eras, and see if there are particular kinds they gravitate to. But now I’m thrilled I can recommend Abram Van Engen’s Word Made Fresh: An Invitation to Poetry for the Church, with a foreword by Shane McCrae. (Full disclosure: I was the copyeditor!) Endorsed by such luminaries as Christian Wiman and James K. A. Smith, the book is an excellent introduction to how and why to read poetry. Van Engen discusses sixty-two distinct poems, almost all of them reproduced in full, ranging from John Donne, Ben Jonson, and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper to Gwendolyn Brooks, Richard Wilbur, and Li-Young Lee and including, too, church hymns and biblical psalms, two forms of poetry with which Christian readers are likely already familiar. In part 1 he demonstrates six ways to read poetry: personally, for pleasure, inquisitively, like it’s a friend, considering form, and through erasure. In part 2 he answers the question “Why read poetry?”: to name creation, to tell the truth, to rejoice with those who rejoice, and to weep with those who weep. Van Engen insists that poetry is for everyone, and Word Made Fresh substantiates the claim.
PRINT INTERVIEW: “Through the Rent, Eternity Enters: A Conversation with Marilyn Nelson and Christian Wiman,” moderated by Abram Van Engen, Hedgehog Review: In December 2023, The Carver Project at Washington University in St. Louis brought together award-winning poets Marilyn Nelson and Christian Wiman for a discussion of poetry, faith, love, perception, ambition, humility, prayer, and grace, moderated by Abram Van Engen. Poets, I’ve noticed from attending conferences and reading or listening to interviews with them, tend to have an immense storehouse of wise quotes from other poets and thinkers at the ready, as this interview corroborates. There’s so much here to chew on!
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ESSAY: “Christianity and Poetry” by Dana Gioia, First Things: “This brief and inadequate historical survey,” writes poet and literary critic Dana Gioia, “is offered to demonstrate the powerful continuity of Christian poetry in English. Our literary canon is suffused with religious consciousness, which has expressed itself in ways beyond the imagination of theology and apologetics. Milton boasted that his Paradise Lost would ‘justify the ways of God to men,’ but his masterpiece was only one of countless poems that engaged, enlarged, and refined the spirituality of the English-speaking world. Christianity went so deeply into the collective soul of the culture that its impact continues even in our secular age.”
He proposes, “All that is necessary to revive Christian poetry is a change in attitude—a conviction that perfunctory and platitudinous language will not suffice, an awareness that the goal of liturgy, homily, and education is not to condescend but to enliven and elevate. We need to recognize the power of language and use it in ways that engage both the sense and the senses of believers.”
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CANTATA: Rejoice in the Lamb by Benjamin Britten, performed by VOCES8 and the VOCES8 Foundation Choir & Orchestra, dir. Barnaby Smith: “Rejoice in the Lamb (Op. 30) is a cantata for four soloists, SATB choir and organ composed by Benjamin Britten in 1943 and uses text from the poem Jubilate Agno by Christopher Smart (1722–1771). The poem, written while Smart was in an asylum, depicts idiosyncratic praise and worship of God by different things including animals, letters of the alphabet and musical instruments. Britten was introduced to the poem by W. H. Auden whilst visiting the United States, selecting 48 lines of the poem to set to music with the assistance of Edward Sackville-West. The cantata was commissioned by the Reverend Walter Hussey for the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the consecration of St Matthew’s Church, Northampton. Critics praised the work for its uniqueness and creative handling of the text.” (Wikipedia)
I know this poem from its famous passage about Jeoffry the cat, in which Smart celebrates his cat’s relationship with God: “For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry. / For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him. / For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his Way. / For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness. / For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer. . . .” See 3:52 of the video.
SONG: “Wild Strawberries” by Nick Chambers: This song from 2020 expresses yearning to know the God whose beauty is revealed in nature and who is mysterious, “divinely robed in dark and radiant haze.” It’s based on a 1819 Swedish hymn by Johan Olaf Wallin that was quoted by the aging professor Isak Borg in Ingmar Bergman’s multi-award-winning film Wild Strawberries.
“In the gospel narratives,” Chambers writes, “the risen Jesus is always one step ahead, beckoning us further. We follow after tangible touches and traces he leaves behind—folded grave clothes and broken bread. He travels with us but isn’t always recognizable, still teaching his friends how to fish, readying breakfast on the beach. Wherever he appears and withdraws, the background becomes the foreground, inviting us to see and seek him everywhere. Resurrection cannot be confined; all creation is drawn into its trajectory.” Read more from Chambers in the YouTube video description.
NEW SONG + CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Sing the Prayer from BibleProject: To cap off their five-part podcast series on the Lord’s Prayer this month, BibleProject commissioned singer-songwriters Brian Hall (of the family band TENTS) and Liz Vice to write and record a new setting of the Lord’s Prayer, using the translation by Tim Mackie and the BibleProject Scholar Team:
Our Father who is in the skies, may your name be recognized as holy. May your kingdom come and may your will be done as it is in the skies, so also on the land. Our daily provision of bread, give to us today. And forgive us our debts, just as we also have forgiven those indebted to us. And don’t lead us to be tested, but deliver us from the evil one. Amen. (Matt. 6:9–13; cf. Luke 11:2–4)
(You may be wondering, as I did, where’s the final line, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.” As Mackie explains, that line is not in the earliest manuscripts of Matthew or Luke; the addition first appeared in the Didache, an early Christian teaching manual.)
You can listen to and download Hall and Vice’s new setting of the Lord’s Prayer, which Vice sings to Hall’s guitar accompaniment, at the “Sing the Prayer” link above. In addition, the Good Shepherd Collective video-recorded a more fully instrumented arrangement for a digital worship service; see here. And here are links to the recent Lord’s Prayer episodes of the BibleProject podcast:
All you composers out there can get involved too! Through September 15, 2024, BibleProject is accepting submissions of musical settings of the Lord’s Prayer. You can sing the text verbatim using a translation of your choice, or you can rephrase it or write a song based on the prayer’s themes. Purely instrumental responses are also welcome. Send in a song file using their online form, and they will select some of their favorites to host on their website (for streaming, not download). View the early selections at https://bibleproject.com/singtheprayer/all.
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TV SHOW EXCERPT: Opening montage from season 3, episode 4 of The Chosen, “Clean, Part 1”: Several people have asked for my opinion of The Chosen, a television adaptation of the Gospels created by Dallas Jenkins. I think it’s great! Creatively (not woodenly, as is too often the case) written, culturally and historically immersive, high production values, and humanizing—it portrays the disciples (the Twelve and others, including the women) as complex, rounded characters with backstories, families, and distinct personalities. Jonathan Roumie is fantastic as Jesus; so is Liz Tabish as Mary Magdalene. If I were to identify a weakness in the series, it would be the portrayal of the Roman soldiers and rulers, especially Quintus, as cartoonish, one-dimensional—although that begins to shift with at least one Roman in season 3—and the occasional awkward dialogue that’s used to explain to the audience ancient Jewish practices and law codes with which we’re likely to be unfamiliar.
I’m in the middle of season 3 right now and was particularly struck by the opening montage of episode 4, a narrative embellishment of Luke 10:1, which says that Jesus “sent them [his appointed followers] on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.” In the series, this is the first time the disciples perform healings. They’re surprised and confused by, and even a little fearful of, the power working through them; they don’t understand it and aren’t always sure how to wield it. This eight-minute segment shows them growing into their roles as they bring the gospel in word and deed throughout the region, preparing the way for Jesus.
This coming Sunday’s Gospel reading in the Revised Common Lectionary is Mark 5:21–43, which recounts the Healing of the Woman with an Issue of Blood and the Raising of Jairus’s Daughter. Here are two poems based on that passage. (As a side note related to the previous item: The Chosen, season 3, episodes 4–5 center on these two healing narratives; “Veronica’s” arc is especially cathartic!)
>>“Haemorrhoissa”by Leila Chatti: In her early twenties, the poet Leila Chatti [previously] had uterine tumors and suffered from severe bleeding and pain for two and a half years. She explores the shame, discomfort, isolation, and trauma of that condition as well as cultural taboos surrounding women’s bodies in her debut collection, Deluge (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), influenced by her dual Islamic-Christian heritage. In this poem she finds kinship with the unnamed hemorrhaging woman in the Synoptic Gospels and admires her boldness in touching Jesus’s hem. The title of the poem, a transliteration of “ἡ αἱμοῤῥοοῦσα,” is the Greek term used in the New Testament to refer to this woman, often translated as the “woman with an issue of blood” or “bleeding woman.”
>>“Jairus” by Michael Symmons Roberts: The poetry collection Corpus by Michael Symmons Roberts (Jonathan Cape, 2004) also centers on the body, especially on the relationship between corporeality, death, and resurrection. This poem from it, in which the speaker (a disciple of Jesus’s, perhaps?) addresses Jairus, celebrates physical appetite, an instinctive desire that helps keep us alive and that here also represents the hunger for living.
NEW DOCUMENTARY: God and Country, dir. Dan Partland: Released earlier this year, this documentary produced by Rob Reiner “looks at the implications of Christian Nationalism and how it distorts not only the constitutional republic, but Christianity itself. Featuring prominent Christian thought leaders, God & Country asks this question: What happens when a faith built on love, sacrifice, and forgiveness grows political tentacles, conflating power, money, and belief into hyper-nationalism?”
If you are an American Christian, you need to see this film. White Christian nationalism is becoming an increasingly larger threat in the US as it becomes more mainstream, and we need to be aware of it and denounce it. God and Country features interviews with several folks whom I’ve followed for years and deeply respect, including historians and best-selling authors Jemar Tisby and Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Holy Post podcaster and VeggieTales creator Phil Vischer, political commentator David French, and ethicist Russell Moore. Some of the footage from worship services is disturbing, to say nothing of the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
God and Country is currently available on Kanopy, an on-demand streaming service that many public and academic library patrons have free access to.
Juneteenth is a federal holiday that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. It is celebrated annually on June 19, the date on which, in 1865, the Union army finally arrived in the nation’s farthest reaches—Texas—to enforce the proclamation Lincoln had signed more than two and a half years earlier. While the holiday is marked predominantly by joy, it also calls on celebrants to reflect on the complicated meaning of freedom—“freedom that came at the end of the bloodiest war on the American soil where more than 700,000 lives were lost, freedom that came at the death of many enslaved people who never lived to see it, and freedom that people still fight for today,” historian Daina Ramey Berry told Life & Letters. In the words of another historian, Mitch Kachun, Juneteenth is a time “to celebrate, to educate, and to agitate.”
Donate to the MAAFA Redemption Project to support the promise and genius of Chicago’s Black and Brown youth. Or choose another Black cause, publication, individual, or business to invest in.
Watch the documentary All These Sons to learn about how two Chicago organizations are loving and transforming their neighborhoods, seeking to free residents from cycles of violence and help them reclaim their self-worth.
Spend ten minutes looking at and meditating on each of the three rose windows at New Mount Pilgrim. Think of them as visual prayers that you can enter into.
“Read” (that is, view, as it’s almost entirely a picture book) The Middle Passage by Tom Feelings, pausing at each illustration to really feel the weight of the atrocities perpetrated during the transatlantic slave trade. Practice lament.
Watch the groundbreaking miniseries Roots, based on Alex Haley’s novel, which traces the saga of a Mandinka family for three generations, before, during, and after slavery. It originally aired on ABC over eight consecutive nights in 1977, and later that year on BBC One; it’s streaming for free on Tubi (no account needed) in the form of six ninety-minute episodes.
For a firsthand account of slavery written by someone who was himself enslaved, read Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography, or passages from it.
Read the poet Lucille Clifton, who writes about Black womanhood, history, family, and religion. A good place to start would be her National Book Award–winning Blessing the Boats.
Peruse the Adinkra Symbol Index, put together by web designer Jean MacDonald, to learn more about this West African writing system and some of the concepts and proverbs represented in it.
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YOUTUBE PLAYLIST: Juneteenth 2024, compiled by Victoria Emily Jones: As a follow-up to the Juneteenth Playlist I published on YouTube in 2022, I’ve put together a brand-new one of nineteen songs, including a ring shout from South Carolina, a Sam Cooke cover, a virtuosic performance by the Trinidadian pianist Hazel Scott, a song-turned-children’s-book by Rhiannon Giddens, some seventies funk, and more. Here are two selections from the list:
>> “Feelin’ Good”: Written in 1964 by English composers Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse for the musical The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd, this song became a classic when Nina Simone recorded it the following year for her album I Put a Spell on You. In 2021, Dove, Verve Records, UMe, and the Nina Simone Charitable Trust teamed up to create the first-ever music video for Simone’s version of the song. Directed by Sarah Lacombe and featuring dancer Raianna Brown, the new music video “aims to continue Simone’s important legacy by telling a story of Black female empowerment . . . follow[ing] four generations of Black women living their truths, loving each other, celebrating their hair, and feeling good,” according to the press release.
>> Soul Force by Jessie Montgomery: “Soul Force is a one-movement symphonic work which attempts to portray the notion of a voice that struggles to be heard beyond the shackles of oppression,” writes composer Jessie Montgomery. “The music takes on the form of a march which begins with a single voice and gains mass as it rises to a triumphant goal. Drawing on elements of popular African-American musical styles such as big-band jazz, funk, hip-hop and R+B, the piece pays homage to the cultural contributions, the many voices, which have risen against aggressive forces to create an indispensable cultural place.” It’s performed here by the national youth ensembles NYO-USA, NYO2, and NYO Jazz, established by Carnegie Hall.
The title of the work comes from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, in which he states, “We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.”
I live about an hour north of DC in Central Maryland, so I try to take advantage of some of the many cultural offerings of that city. If you, too, live nearby and don’t already have plans for Juneteenth, here are two ideas of things to do outside the house.
>> STEPPING PERFORMANCE: “Step Afrika! The Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence,” Arena Stage, running through July 14: I’ll be going tomorrow, thanks to an invite from a friend! “Using its hallmark style of percussive dance-theater, Step Afrika!’s The Migration: Reflections on Jacob Lawrence tells the story of one of the largest movements of people in United States history, when millions of African American migrants moved from the rural South to the industrial North in the 1900s to escape Jim Crow, racial oppression, and lynchings. Inspired by Jacob Lawrence’s iconic 60-panel The Migration Series (1940-41), this signature work from the award-winning dance company uses the images, color palette, and motifs in the painting series to tell this astonishing story through pulsating rhythms and visually stunning movement.” The performance fuses body percussion, tap, and contemporary dance with live gospel, jazz, and blues.
Here’s a video promo made by New Victory Theater when the show toured there a few years ago:
Jacob Lawrence (American, 1914–2000), “From every southern town migrants left by the hundreds to travel north,” panel 3 from The Migration Series, 1940–41. Casein tempera on hardboard, 12 × 18 in. Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]
Browse all sixty panels from The Migration Series at https://lawrencemigration.phillipscollection.org/. Lawrence pictures different aspects of the northern migration story, such as crowded train stations, rotting crops, lynchings, urban housing, educational opportunity, and church life.
>> ART EXHIBITION: Fighters for Freedom: William H. Johnson Picturing Justice, Smithsonian American Art Museum, March 8–September 10, 2024: Another African American artist who was working around the same time as Jacob Lawrence is William H. Johnson (1901–1970). Last weekend I saw his Fighters for Freedom series of paintings at the SAAM—the first time the works have been shown together since 1946. He painted the series in the mid-1940s as a tribute to African American activists, scientists, teachers, and performers as well as international leaders working to bring peace to the world. Interactive kiosks identify the many historical figures. I learned so much! I can picture this exhibition being a good teaching tool for children as well. Spending time with every painting would be overwhelming for them, but choosing a few select artworks as entry points into talking about the freedom fighters depicted and the larger freedom story they’re a part of should work well.
William H. Johnson (American, 1901–1970), Harriet Tubman, ca. 1945. Oil on paperboard, 28 7/8 × 23 3/8 in. (73.5 × 59.3 cm). Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.
At the exhibition there are also signs and photos that inform viewers of related artifacts at other Smithsonian museums in the city, including:
(Click on the links for short video features about these objects, made specially for this exhibition.)
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POEMS:
>> “Paul Robeson”by Gwendolyn Brooks: Though in popular culture he is best remembered as an international star of stage and screen, the bass-baritone singer and actor Paul Robeson was also a prominent activist who graduated from law school and fought for civil rights. In this poem, Gwendolyn Brooks celebrates that latter legacy of his, his commitment to seeing the Black community in America, as well as other oppressed people groups around the world, flourish. The powerful final lines—“we are each other’s / harvest: / we are each other’s / business: / we are each other’s / magnitude and bond”—communicate the wisdom that we reap the good fruit that grows from seeds sown by others. She references Robeson’s most famous song, “Ol’ Man River,” sung by the character Joe in the musical Show Boat; the song laments the hardships faced by African Americans and expresses envy of the carefree Mississippi River, which just keeps rolling along, free from toil. But Brooks was happy to see Robeson move beyond the despondency embodied by Joe the deck hand, to take a much more empowered stance in public life.
>>“Juneteenth”by Marilyn Nelson: Here Nelson reflects on the childhood of her mother, Johnnie, who grew up in the all-Black pioneer town of Boley, Oklahoma. In Boley, then as now, June 19 is a “second Easter,” a time of food, family, games, and celebration. After several stanzas spent recounting the lighthearted festivities, the last line lands with a thud, a brutal reminder of the terror these community members fled to establish a place of their own. The poem is ultimately about overcoming, but even as the Black residents of Boley have built a new life for themselves and their families, racism is still a wound they bear. “Juneteenth” can be found in the excellent collection The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poemsby Marilyn Nelson (Louisiana State University Press, 1997).
Art & Theology 