O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!
—Isaiah 64:1a
LOOK:Winter by Agnes Pelton
Agnes Pelton (American, 1881–1961), Winter, 1933. Oil on canvas, 30 × 28 in. Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California.
Agnes Pelton was part of the Transcendental Painting Group, an artists’ collective founded in the American Southwest in 1938 on the principles of creating a pure abstract painting style imbued with spiritual intent. Clayton Schuster, writing for Hyperallergic, describes one of Pelton’s metaphysical landscapes:
Pelton’s Winter (1933) depicts a pigeon and dove on a cliff in the foreground, with a great blooming cloud in the distance. The arched lavender cloud against the dark sky seems to suggest the narrow path toward a new beginning, as a pale glow at the top of the painting symbolizes hidden truths. Within the cloud are delicate lines hinting at two hills. The cloud seems to glow where the hills nearly meet and delineate the valley. It is as if Pelton has excavated a road from the cloud and revealed the path to paradise.
Pelton shows us a new way opening. The sky has been rent, and light breaks in. To either side of the central bulbous form are tooth-edged wheels in motion. At the bottom left, the snow is melting at the emerging warmth, revealing tiny green shoots on the ground. The two doves perhaps signify a coming peace.
Full of mystical yearning, this painting shouts “Advent!” to me. It evokes in my mind not only the Isaianic exclamation cited above—the basis for today’s featured song (below)—but several other Advent scriptures as well, such as Isaiah 40:3–5 (pave a straight path for God through the desert; every hill, every valley . . .), Psalm 98:8–9 (“let the hills sing together for joy at the presence of the Lord, for he is coming . . .”), and Revelation 1:7 (“Look! He is coming with the clouds”; cf. Matthew 24:30: “they will see ‘the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven’ with power and great glory”).
Pelton was not a Christian—she rejected organized religion—but her artworks are so wonderfully expansive in the associations and interpretations they invite.
For more on the artist, see the wonderful book Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist, a catalog of a recent major retrospective of her work organized by the Phoenix Art Museum.
O Savior, rend the heavens wide; Come down, come down with mighty stride; Unlock the gates, the doors break down; Unbar the way to heaven’s crown.
O Morning Star, O radiant Dawn, When will we sing your morning song? Come, Son of God! Without your light We grope in dread and gloom of night.
Sin’s dreadful doom upon us lies; Grim death looms fierce before our eyes. O come, lead us with mighty hand From exile to our promised land.
There shall we all our praises bring And sing to you, our Savior King; There shall we laud you and adore Forever and forevermore.
The German hymn text “O Heiland, reiß die Himmel auf” (O Savior, Rend the Heavens Wide) is by Friedrich Spee (1591–1635), a German Jesuit priest, professor, and poet best known for opposing the European witch trials and the use of torture. Written during the Thirty Years’ War, it was first published in Würzburg in 1622 in the collection Das Allerschönste Kind in der Welt (The Most Beautiful Child in the World).
Four-plus decades later, in 1666, a Dorian-mode melody was published anonymously with the text in the Rheinfelsisches Deutsches Katholisches Gesangbuch (German Catholic Hymnal). Then in 1863, Johannes Brahms arranged that melody as a motet for unaccompanied mixed choir (op. 74, no. 2):
The hymn entered English-speaking churches in the twentieth century when Martin L. Seltz (1909–1967) translated it.
The original chorale tune is still in use, but I’ve also heard some churches using the 2003 retune by Nathan Partain. Here’s a live recording of that version from Trinity Church Seattle, sung by Partain, back when he was the church’s music director (it was called Green Lake Presbyterian Church at the time):
The hymn also appears, with updated arrangement, on Partain’s 2019 album The Beauty to Come. The chord charts, lead sheets, and string scores for this album and two others can be downloaded for free from Partain’s website.
This post is part of a daily Advent series from December 2 to 24, 2023 (with Christmas to follow through January 6, 2024). View all the posts here, and the accompanying Spotify playlist here.
Frida Hansen (Norwegian, 1844–1931), Melkeveien (Milky Way), 1898. Tapestry, 260 × 345 cm. Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Museum of Arts and Crafts), Hamburg, Germany.
This art nouveau tapestry by Norwegian artist Frida Hansen received a gold medal at the world’s fair in Paris in 1900. It shows angelic figures unfolding a starry veil over the night sky. They glide forward above a band of Hebrew script that references the creation of the stars in Genesis 1.
The God who brought light in darkness in the beginning is bringing light again as we enter a new liturgical year.
Comprising the first five weeks of that new year, Advent-Christmas-Epiphany is a time of starlight, promise, and revelation. The first of the triad, Advent, is particularly concerned with themes of longing, waiting, lament, and future-oriented hope. We make ready our hearts to receive Christ—he who came to us first as a babe in a manger, in a vulnerable body like ours, to teach and suffer and redeem, and who is coming back one day in unveiled power and majesty to bring the fullness of God’s heavenly kingdom to earth.
Two millennia ago, God hung a special star in the sky for the magi to follow, guiding them on their way to the Christ child. May God similarly illumine our way to Christ as we seek him this season, giving us eyes to see and ears to hear the gospel of God-with-us and cultivating in us an eager readiness for Christ’s return.
I think of Hansen’s crowned young ladies as ushering us into the deep, dark blue of Advent to behold the signs that sparkle in scripture, foretelling a wondrous future.
LISTEN: “Star of Wonder” by Sara Groves, on O Holy Night, 2008; adapted and arranged from the refrain of “We Three Kings” by John Henry Hopkins, 1857
Star of wonder, star of light Star of royal beauty bright Guide us O guide us Won’t you guide us
Want to follow along with the music on Spotify? Most of the songs in this Advent blog series, and many more besides, can be found on the Art & Theology Advent Playlist.
>> Light in the Dark, Sojourn Church Midtown, Louisville, Kentucky, November 17, 2023–January 7, 2024: Organized by Sojourn Arts, this juried exhibition features work by twenty-four artists from throughout the United States. It explores contrasts between light and dark, a powerful artistic as well as biblical theme with strong connections to the Christmas story. A complementary lecture on “Light in the Gospels” by Dr. Jonathan Pennington will take place on January 11, 2024.
Brandon Hochhalter, The Incredible Power of Light, 2023. Reclaimed lath wood from homes in Old Louisville, 18 × 24 × 1 in. [artist’s website]
>> Wilson Abbey Advent Windows, 935 W. Wilson Ave., Chicago, December 1, 2023–January 6, 2024: A business under the umbrella of Jesus People USA, Wilson Abbey in uptown Chicago is a neighborhood gathering place for coffee, art shows, workshops, theater, dance, film screenings, and live music. Every December since 2016, they have installed a three-story-tall Advent calendar in their windows to be enjoyed from the streets, with one new artwork revealed each day from December 1 to 24. Directed by the building manager, Karl Sullivan, the project commissions local artists to contribute a painting, photograph, or other graphic work, and this year there are twenty-three participating artists. It will be a brand-new series of images, all on the theme “The Soul Felt Its Worth”—which, Sullivan told me, will “explore the idea of the Christ child coming to earth as a promise of justice and care for those who are seen by God, showcasing people groups who may not be seen, or whom we may not want to see because their problems are bigger than us.”
Below are two of the paintings from a previous iteration of the project, which together form an Annunciation scene. The drone video that follows was shot in 2020 by Mike Angelo Rivera.
Stop by 935 West Wilson Avenue in Chicago to see the progressively illuminated windows throughout the month of December (the full display will be up from December 24 to January 6), or follow along on Facebook or Instagram @wilsonabbeywindows. What a unique gift to the city! A fun way to engage the community.
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LAND ART: Snow Drawings by Sonja Hinrichsen: German-born, San Francisco–based artist Sonja Hinrichsen creates large-scale, ephemeral “snow drawings” in wintry locations around the world with the help of local volunteers who don snowshoes and track through the snow in patterns. She then photographs the land art from a helicopter or ski lift. These are amazing! Here’s a video by Cedar Beauregard of a drawing in progress at Rabbit Ears Pass, Colorado:
Snow Drawing by Sonja Hinrichsen, Rabbit Ears Pass, Colorado, 2012
Advent is a season of waiting with deep longing and hope for that long-looked-for day when fear and pain will be no more because Christ will reign and set this world free. These songs tap into that.
>> “Redemption Draweth Nigh”by Gordon Jensen (1970), performed by Rumbi Lee (2018): The title and refrain of this contemporary hymn are drawn from Luke 21:28: “And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh” (KJV).
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STREET ART SERIES: Medicinal Flowers of Lebanon by Faith XLVII: In September 2021, South African artist Faith XLVII (Liberty Du) traveled to Beirut to paint curative flowers across the rubble of the Lebanese city in the wake of the August 4, 2020, port explosion that caused at least 218 deaths, 7,000 injuries, and $15 billion in property damage, as well as leaving an estimated 300,000 people homeless. Rosehips, horned poppies, chicory, African carline thistle—all these botanicals are used in remedies for common ailments. “Each flower urges us, in a sense, towards healing as they grow out of the concrete,” the artist said.
Faith XLVII (South African, 1979–), Glaucium flavum, from the Medicinal Flowers of Lebanon series, Beirut, Lebanon, 2021. Photo courtesy of the artist.
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NEW ALBUMS:
>> The Soil and The Seed Project, vol. 8: Advent-Christmas-Epiphany: For the Advent-Christmas-Epiphany triad of the church year comes this new album from The Soil and The Seed Project, a ministry of Virginia Mennonite Missions—and recently Lilly-Endowed! All their music is free—for download, and even as physical CDs while supplies last. Below are two of my favorite tracks, both written by new contributors to the project. The first verse of Philip Fisher Rhodes’s “Bethlehem One” is in the voice of the in utero Christ; the second, the shepherds; the third, the wise men. The song is sung by Ben Luna. And “Peace Prayer” by Susan Gascho-Cooke is a plea that God would hold his arms around “this tilting planet,” the world’s wounds, and all people.
Each TSATP album is part of a larger project that also includes “Little Liturgies” booklets perfect for families with small kids (but that can also be used by individuals and small groups). Each booklet includes litanies, prayers, reflection questions, suggested activities, and visual art—and again, they’re free! Request a digital or physical copy here.
>> Kindness Is Solid Stone, Violence Is a Heavy Loan to Pay by David Benjamin Blower: Released November 3 and available on Bandcamp only, this album features nine original songs by writer, poet, theologian, and podcaster David Benjamin Blower of Birmingham, UK. I appreciate the minimalist sound and the stark lyricism. My favorite track is probably “Meet Me Where I Sing and Stamp My Feet”:
Isn’t this such a charming detail?—the infant Christ sticking his chubby little hand into a footed wicker bowl of flowers (potpourri?). I suppose the angel who holds it out to him wishes him to delight in the fragrance, this wee one whose senses are still so new. But what is its symbolic significance? Northern Renaissance painters often imbued ordinary objects with religious meaning. Perhaps it simply gestures to the aroma of Christ himself, his sweet, invigorating nature? At first I thought of myrrh, one of the gifts of the magi, traditionally interpreted as a foreshadowing of Christ’s death, as it was used to anoint his body in burial (John 19:39)—but myrrh is a yellow sap-like resin, and the bowl’s contents are neither that nor extracted oils. I don’t know; what do you think?
Compare this to the painting known as The Holy Family of Francis I(after the name of its original owner) by Raphael of Italy, which shows an angel providing a scented cover of flowers over the young mother and child.
Colijn de Coter (Netherlandish, active ca. 1480–1525), Virgin and Child Crowned by Angels, 1490–95. Oil on panel, 151.9 × 88.6 cm (59 13/16 × 34 7/8 in.). Art Institute of Chicago. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]
The larger context of the Netherlandish painting is Christ sitting on his mother’s lap in a contemporary bourgeois interior as she is being crowned Queen of Heaven, royal by association with the newborn king. (The embroidered inscription on the hem of her mantle reads, “ORA PRO NOBIS / AVE REGINA / CELOR[U]M MATER REGIS ANG[E]LORUM,” which translates to, “Pray for us. Hail, queen of heaven, mother of the king of angels.”) He’s reading the scriptures—so devout!—but seems momentarily distracted by something out of frame. His expression is serene. (Sidebar: Is it just me who’s anxious by how sloppily he’s turning that page? Not the creases! I mean, I know he’s just a baby, but . . .)
I believe the text is pseudo-Hebrew—both here, and in the scroll on the floor. European Christian artists sometimes imitated Hebrew script in their paintings to reference Jesus’s Jewishness; they were not learned in the language and had no direct textual models in front of them, so the best they could do was make marks that evoke that linguistic heritage.
It’s possible that the scroll is meant to represent Mary’s Magnificat, but it’s hard to say. It lies unrolled beside a neck-handled pewter vase filled with three blue lilies and bearing bosses of what look to me like a Virgin and Child and the prophets.
And look at the golden embroidery of the two turtledoves perched in one of the folds of Mary’s garment! (It recurs in a few places.) This is a reference to the animal offering she brought to the temple for her postpartum purification, a ritual prescribed by ancient Jewish ceremonial law (Luke 2:22–24; cf. Lev. 12:1–8).
The textures in this painting are fabulous. The realistic, detailed rendering of surface textures—of fur, feathers, hair, paper, foodstuffs, metals, jewels, wood, wool, velvet—is one of the hallmarks of Northern Renaissance art—that is, art from fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Holland and Flanders, regions north of Italy. This greater illusionism was made possible by the use of oil paint, which also enabled richer, denser color than its precursor, egg tempera.
Northern Renaissance art is what made me fall in love with art history as a late teen. I had never encountered this painting before in my studies, so it was such a joy to stumble upon it earlier this year on a visit to the Art Institute of Chicago.
This year I’m continuing my Advent and Christmas tradition of daily art-music pairings on the blog, from December 2 (a prologue before the official start of Advent on December 3) through January 6, Epiphany. If you know of anyone who might be interested to follow along, they can subscribe here.
An ancient catacomb painting, a contemporary light installation, an Urdu anthem, a French West Indian carol, an Ethiopian tapestry, an impearled chasuble, a kinetic sculpture, a jazz rhapsody, a Byzantine-inspired piano quintet, an isicathamiya-style song, a Puerto Rican bulto, a Netherlandish altarpiece, and settings of Herbert, Blake, Wilbur, and Augustine—these are some of the gifts from artists on offer this season, inviting us to deepen our desire for and celebration of Christ Emmanuel, God with us.
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THE DAILY PRAYER PROJECT:Advent 2023: With Advent comes the start of a new liturgical year—which means a new volume of the Daily Prayer Project’s Living Prayer Periodical! Published in six editions a year, this periodical aims to “connect and unify Christians by resourcing them with daily prayers, practices, and music from the global-historical church, and visual art of spiritual and artistic value.” I curate the art. The cover image for Advent 2023—which, providentially, was finalized before the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and the ensuing retaliations—is a calligraphic rendering of the Hebrew word shalom by Michel D’anastasio, a French Catholic artist with Jewish ancestry. The lamed is like a candle held hopefully aloft against a dark-blue midnight.
Rev. Joel Littlepage, who is the pastor of worship and formation at Grace Mosaic in Washington, DC, curates the prayers. Here’s Friday evening’s, from the church in New Guinea: “Lord, oil the hinges of our hearts’ doors, that they may swing gently and easily to welcome your coming.” Wednesday morning’s prayer is a responsive confession by Jorge Lockward, a Dominican song leader from New York, which begins, “Por tantas injusticias, perdón, Señor. Por tanta indiferencia, perdón, Señor.” (For so much injustice, forgive us, Lord. For so much indifference, forgive us, Lord.)
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NEW BOOK: A Radiant Birth: Advent Readings for a Bright Season, ed. Leslie Leyland Fields and Paul J. Willis: New this fall from InterVarsity Press, this Advent devotional book is a multiauthor compilation of forty-two readings for Advent through Epiphany, consisting of literary essays, poems, and short stories. Contributors are affiliated with the Chrysostom Society and include Richard Foster, Lauren Winner, Madeleine L’Engle, Philip Yancey, Walter Wangerin Jr., Eugene Peterson, Luci Shaw, and Marilyn McEntyre. About one-third of the content is previously unpublished, including a wonderful little reader’s theater (pages 81–89) by Leslie Leyland Fields that I can imagine working really well as part of a church service (and I received confirmation from Fields that people may use it freely in such settings). I know the market is really thick with Advent books, and I’ve read a lot of them, but this one has to be one of my favorites—the selections are wonderful.
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ART SERIES: Advent by Riki Yarbrough: For Advent 2018, artist Riki Yarbrough set herself a challenge: each day, create a 24 × 24-inch mixed media work corresponding to that day’s family devotions, structured around Jesus’s lineage. She didn’t have nearly enough canvases to last the duration of the season, so on day two “I woke up, took the very same canvas I had painted the day before, and worked right on top.” The final product was an artwork twenty-seven layers deep—the various people, prophecies, and foreshadowings adding weight and texture to the progressing story that culminated, in Yarbrough’s devotional program, with the infant Christ in a manger. “To cover the previous day’s work under the beauty of a new focus and set of Scriptures became both an offering and a sacrifice,” she said. “I wasn’t worried about meeting someone’s expectation or coming back to rework it later. I was simply conversing with the Lord over the truth of His Word in those wonderful moments on that particular day.”
Riki Yarbrough (American, 1975–), Joseph, Husband of Mary, 2018. Mixed media on canvas, 24 × 24 in.
Here’s a thirty-second time lapse of the Cain and Abel composition transforming into Noah:
In Advent 2022 Yarbrough reprised the daily challenge, this time executing her images on separate canvases. You can find this series on her Instagram @rikiyarbrough, starting with the candle image—but you can also purchase it in book form, as this month, Yarbrough released Advent in Art and Verse, combining full-color photos of all twenty-seven works from her 2022 Advent series with scripture passages and original poetic reflections. I received my copy, and my first impression was: what a beautiful design!
I like the allusiveness of her paintings: a set of footprints, stalks of grain, a red cord, tongs gripping a hot coal, tree rings, harp strings, a split fig, a cairn—simple objects like these guide us through the narrative of the Old Testament and the opening pages of the New.
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SONG MEDLEY: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel / Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus” by the Petersens: In this video shot in Weddings at the Homestead in their hometown of Branson, Missouri, family bluegrass band The Petersens perform the two best-known Advent hymns—the one mournful, meditative, and minor key, the other bright and exuberant. They recorded both songs (released as two separate tracks) for their 2020 album Christmas with the Petersens.
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SUBSTACK POST: “O Come, Thou Rod of Jesse” by Grace Hamman, Medievalish 1.12, December 12, 2022: In last December’s installment of her monthly Medievalish newsletter, Grace Hamman considers Jesus’s family tree, visualized in the Middle Ages as what’s called, after Isaiah 11:1, the Tree of Jesse [previously here and here]. What does it mean that Jesus came from a real human family, a “complex web of generation, adoption, relationship, and dependence”? “The Son did not only take on flesh,” Hamman writes, “he took on David’s sometimes troublesome courage and cowlicks, Anne’s devotion and double-jointed pinky fingers. He comes from a line of real and complex people: faithless and faithful, abusers and abused, holy and broken. Baby Jesus is born into our funny human particularities and our burdensome histories, into created time and place.”
Tree of Jesse from an English Psalter in Latin, ca. 1190–1210. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, BSB Clm 835, fol. 121r.
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PODCAST EPISODE: “The Season of Waiting (and Waiting . . . and Waiting),”Everything Happens with Kate Bowler, November 29, 2022: In this podcast episode from the beginning of last Advent, bestselling author Kate Bowler introduces the season as one of waiting. She explains the history of the Advent wreath, and takes calls from listeners who share Christmas traditions they observe to honor a loved one they’ve lost. Be sure to download Bowler’s 2023 Advent guide, titled Bless the Advent We Actually Have. Here’s an excerpt from Day 1:
Advent is a time marked by waiting. We wait for God to make all things right. For justice to be meted. For democracy to feel stable. For wrongs to be righted. For our communities to be safe spaces for the vulnerable. For our earth to heal. We wait for our lives to get easier—for us to have the financial security we need, for our relationships to be restored, for our bodies to ache less. We wait for our parents to understand us and our families to feel whole. We wait for our kids and grandkids to be healed or come back home. We wait for the grief to end.
But the waiting of Advent is one marked by hope. We wait with expectancy. With anticipation for the inbreaking of God to make all things new. . . .
Advent hope is gritty. It shirks all false optimism. It is hope as protest. Hope in the face of impossibilities. . . .
The excerpt Bowler reads in the podcast is from her 2022 Advent guide, The Season of Waiting (and Waiting . . . and Waiting . . .) (which you can also download for free, along with 2021’s A Good Enough Advent + Christmastide, at https://katebowler.com/advent/).
SPOTIFY PLAYLIST:November 2023 (Art & Theology): In this month’s playlist I nod, in part, to All Saints’ Day (November 1), Christ the King Sunday (November 26), and world events. It includes “Ad Ana” (How Long), a setting of Psalm 13 in its original Hebrew by Miqedem (a Tel Aviv–based band made up of Shai Sol [previously] and three other musical artists from a mix of Jewish and Christian backgrounds), and “Touba” (Blessed), a sung recitation of the Beatitudes in Arabic by the Sakhnini Brothers [previously], Arab Christians from Nazareth, with oud and keyboard accompaniment.
As American Thanksgiving is November 23, you may also want to check out my Thanksgiving Playlist, comprising songs of gratitude. Originally created in 2021, each year I add to and remix the list as I encounter new recordings. One of the newer additions is “He Has Made Me Glad” by Leona Von Brethorst, based on Psalm 100, as arranged and performed on organ by the amazing Cory Henry.
The Christian life consists of both praise and lament, both tears and laughter—which is why in any given worship service or Art & Theology playlist or blog post, as in the biblical psalter, you can find songs that express joy and others, heaviness. They don’t negate one another but rather give fuller expression to the breadth of religious experience.
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NEW ALBUM: Some Mississippi Sunday Morning by Parchman Prison Prayer: After a bureaucratic process that took over three years, music producer Ian Brennan was finally granted permission in February to record a Sunday worship service at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, aka Parchman Farm, a notorious prison with a rich musical history. The prison chaplains convened a unique service of inmate singers from various Christian denominations ranging in age from twenties to seventies, who were given turns at the mic and even collaborated on a few tracks. Brennan said he wanted to give the men a platform for their voices to be heard. All profits from the album benefit the Mississippi Department of Corrections Chaplain Services.
“You can hear the way Sunday services are particularly restorative for someone incarcerated – not simply because of the promise of redemption, but the solace of not being alone,” writes Sheldon Pearce for the Guardian. “Some Mississippi Sunday Morning feels like these men reaching out for the things such a barbaric system tries to deny them: compassion, intimacy, and mercy. The songs are not just purges of anxieties accrued on the inside or calls for the Lord’s embrace, but also pleas to be acknowledged as a person and not an ID number.”
(Thanks to Art & Theology reader Ted Olsen for alerting me to this! He compared the album to Angola Prison Spirituals, recorded in the 1950s.)
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PODCAST EPISODE: “Sarah Clarkson: The Gift of Beauty,”Life with God: A Renovaré Podcast, October 20, 2023:Sarah Clarkson, author of This Beautiful Truth: How God’s Goodness Breaks into Our Darkness, speaks with Renovaré community life director Nathan Foster about her struggle with OCD and, amid the great suffering wrought by that illness, how God’s goodness has been mediated to her by beauty—in nature, poetry, music, story, tea, ritual, and so on. Responding to the idea that beauty is a luxury for the affluent, she says, “Well, [it is] if beauty is about having a perfect house. But beauty is healing those who have been hurt in a war zone. It’s creating shelters where children can have refuge. It’s rebuilding what has been destroyed. . . . Beauty is a defiance of the forces of evil and disorder and destruction because it is [their] opposite: where evil tears down, beauty creates; where there is absence, beauty fills.”
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PRESS RELEASE: “Toledo Museum of Art Adds Armenian Gospel Manuscript with 46 Paintings to the Collection”: After centuries passing through private collections, in June the Pozzi Gospels, a sixteenth-century illuminated manuscript from Armenia, entered the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art, which will make it more accessible to the public. (I’m not sure when the book will go on display. And it doesn’t have an object page on the museum’s website yet.) The artist and scribe of this extraordinary, sumptuous manuscript was Hakob Jughayets’i. His forty-six full-page miniatures and marginal decorations combine Christian iconography with Byzantine, Islamic, and Buddhist design elements.
The Sam Fogg gallery, which exhibited the manuscript last year as part of The Medieval Body, created this short video about it, narrated by art historian Jack Hartnell:
Hakob Jughayets’i (Armenian, ca. 1550–1613), The Pozzi Gospels, 1586. Paper with blind-stamped brown leather binding, 403 folios with 46 full-page illuminations and numerous marginal miniatures, 7 3/4 × 5 3/4 in. (19.8 × 14.5 cm). This spread shows the Creation of Eve and the Temptation of Eve.
VIRTUAL MUSIC COLLECTION: Armenian Spiritual Music Special Vol. 1: NTS Radio in London has curated ninety minutes of traditional Armenian Christian music. (They’ve done the same for Byzantine chant, Welsh hymns, Hildegard von Bingen, and numerous other categories.) I wish the lyrics and translations were provided, but regardless of my understanding of the words, what beauty. [HT: ImageUpdate]
UPCOMING EVENT: The Guild Creative Arts Conference, November 4, 2023, Church on Morgan, Raleigh: Organized by singer-songwriter Jess Ray, spoken word poet Sharlene Provilus, and event curator Cary Brege, The Guild Conference endeavors “to care for the craft and character of creative people while encouraging creative community. We want to inspire your creative work, spiritual journey, and daily rhythms.” The special guests this year are singer-songwriters Dwan Hill, Andy Squyres, and Taylor Leonhardt; JourneyMates director Mary Vandel Young; and Makers & Mystics podcaster Stephen Roach. The day-long conference includes sessions, a panel discussion, an artist showcase, and a concert by The Choir Room. The regular ticket price is $75 (group rates and concert-only tickets also available).
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ARTICLE: “A Cloud of Witnesses: Why We Should Celebrate All Saints Day” by Leonard J. Vander Zee: In this June 2008 article from Reformed Worship, the Rev. Leonard J. Vander Zee writes to his fellows in the Reformed Protestant tradition, explaining what All Saints’ Day is and why it’s important to celebrate it, as Methodists, Lutherans, Anglicans, and Roman Catholics do every November 1. (Churches without midweek services typically celebrate the feast corporately on whatever Sunday precedes the first of November: this year, October 29.) Vander Zee also offers a sample order of worship, including specific hymn suggestions.
For all the saints who’ve shown your love In how they live and where they move For mindful women, caring men Accept our gratitude again
For all the saints who loved your name Whose faith increased the Savior’s fame Who sang your songs and shared your word Accept our gratitude, good Lord
For all the saints who named your will And showed the kingdom coming still Through selfless protest, prayer, and praise Accept the gratitude we raise
Bless all whose will or name or love Reflects the grace of heav’n above Though unacclaimed by earthly pow’rs Your life through theirs has hallowed ours
>> “Lux Aeterna (Nimrod)”by Edward Elgar, arr. John Cameron, performed by Voces8: The orchestral work “Nimrod” is movement 9 from the Enigma Variations by British composer Edward Elgar (1857–1934). In 2004 John Cameron wrote an SSAATTBB choral arrangement of the tune using the words of “Lux aeterna” from the Requiem Mass—which is what Voces8 performs in this video.
Lux aeterna luceat eis, Domine, cum sanctis tuis in aeternum, quia pius es.
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua leceat eis.
English translation:
May light eternal shine upon them, O Lord, with thy saints forever, for thou art kind.
Eternal rest give to them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.
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ARTICLE: “Soul on Deck” by Jake Lever: In Image no. 117 (Summer 2023), artist Jake Lever writes about a handful of his artworks having to do with the archetype of the boat as a vessel of passage: Ark, Bardsey Boats, Hailes Boats, Soul Boats, and Do the Little Things. He describes the fragile vessels he creates out of branches or wire, tissue paper, and gold leaf as “both cradle and coffin . . . something akin to a giant belly, cocoon, or womb . . . empty seed pods suggestive of cycles of birth, death, and resurrection.” Editions of some of these were given as gifts to family and friends during COVID, or to members of his collaborator-priest friend’s parish journeying through the final stages of a terminal illness.
Jake Lever (British, 1963–), Hailes Boats, 2013. Wire, tissue paper, and gold leaf, dimensions variable.Jake Lever (British, 1963–), Soul Boats, installed at Birmingham Cathedral, 2015–16. Photo by the artist.
For Soul Boats, installed at Birmingham Cathedral for its tercentenary, Lever invited city residents to fill the two thousand boats that would hang from the ceiling of the nave with personal memories, prayers, and reflections. “Created in hospices, youth clubs, schools, sacred spaces, and scores of community settings across the city, boats were made in memory of loved ones who had died, as cries for help in finding employment, as prayers of thanksgiving and gratitude, for peace and justice.” Heading east toward the high altar in the sanctuary, these boats formed a “constellation of souls.”
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LITANY: “Litany for All Saints Day” by Fran Pratt: I always appreciate the litanies (responsive prayers for congregational use) that Fran Pratt writes. This one is from 2016.
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And for some lighthearted fun: a GIF by James Kerr (artist name: Scorpion Dagger), of Jesus and the twelve apostles riding a tandem bicycle! Kerr makes humorous animated digital collages mostly from Northern and Early Renaissance art.
SYMPOSIUM: “Kunst en religie nu” (Art and Religion Now), October 20, 2023, 1:30–4:30 p.m., Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, Netherlands: A week from Friday, attend a free afternoon of talks (in Dutch) on the topic of religion in modern and contemporary art. The speakers are Lieke Wijnia, who will present the results of her past two years of research on religious themes that crop up in modern and contemporary artworks in the Collectie Nederland (Netherlands Collection); Rozanne de Bruijne, on religion in art of the interwar period (1918–1940), the topic of a spring 2025 exhibition she’s curating; Wouter Prins from the Museum Krona, on the state of religious art in the post-Nietzsche era; and Joost de Wal on contemporary art in church spaces. Here’s the autotranslated description:
“The more modern the art, the smaller the presence of religion.” This frequently heard approach appears to be anything but justified. In fact, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, spirituality seems to be on the rise in the visual arts, resulting in a multitude of artistic interpretations. What does this say about the relationship between religion and art?
This symposium focuses on the multifaceted and sometimes unexpected presence of religion in visual art. For example, how does contemporary (religious) art relate to ongoing secularization on the one hand and to flourishing international religious communities on the other? What does the growing interest in spirituality mean for the arts? And what about the use of religious symbolism in visual art, both inside and outside the church? The speakers also shed light on how the wealth of (religious) stories and images can provide guidance in times of social uncertainty and uprooting.
ONLINE WORKSHOP: “Deep Dive into Poetry Comics,” led byMadeleine Jubilee Saito, November 2, 9, 16, 30, 5–7 p.m. Pacific (8–10 p.m. Eastern):Madeleine Jubilee Saito [previously] is a cartoonist from Seattle who makes “poetry comics” about the environment and the sacred—and in four virtual sessions offered through Push/Pull, she’ll teach you how to make your own on topics of your choice!
Madeleine Jubilee Saito, Love Poem, 2019
“In this online course, you’ll practice exercises to explore your own voice and interests in drawing and text, creating poetry comics in a variety of styles. You’ll learn about minicomics, how to do basic layout for printing, and how to print a quarter-page minicomic. We’ll end the course with a celebratory comics reading for friends and family on Zoom. Students need to either be comfortable drawing digitally (Procreate, Photoshop, etc.) or have access to a scanner. Students will be also need access to a printer or local print shop for the last phase of the course.”
NEW ALBUM: You Don’t Carry It Alone by Leila Way:Leila Way is a singer-songwriter from Austin, Texas, writing songs for the church. Her first full-length album, “You Don’t Carry It Alone is a collection of songs for hard times. Some of these are old hymns; some were written during a period of intense grief and loneliness, while others grew out of prayers for friends. The album was created to comfort those who mourn; to remind God’s people that He is always faithful, always present and at work, even when we can’t see what He’s up to.”
The album consists of four original songs, two original instrumentals, a cover of “Be Still, My Soul,” and new retunes of George Matheson’s “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go” (one of my favorite hymns) and James Montgomery’s “I cannot call affliction sweet.”
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CERAMIC BOWLS:Nurture Collection by Jane Boutwell: I met artist Jane Boutwell at a Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA) conference in 2021 after she presented this body of work that really moved me—a collection of ceramic bowls that take as their three design elements anatomical features of the female breast: lymph nodes (gold, river-like), mammary glands (pink and blooming), and musculature. She started the Nurture Collection after having one of her milk ducts surgically removed in 2019 for a biopsy (it turned out not to be cancer), as a meditation on the strength and inner beauty of this part of the body that is so often objectified or shamed. She recommends the bowls as a gift for a woman in your life who has had a tender year with regard to her breasts—cancer, nursing, etc.—to honor her journey.
Bowl from the Nurture Collection by Jane Boutwell, 2020
I share these now because October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Below is an eight-minute video explanation by the artist, followed by a short “making of” montage:
There are five Nurture bowls currently for sale in Boutwell’s online shop: Joan, Tracy, Colleen, Rita, and Wendy. Each is named after a woman she knows with breast cancer.
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PODCAST EPISODES:
>> “Landscape of the Body with David Taylor,”Makers & Mystics, September 13, 2023: Constructing a cogent theology of the body, theologian W. David O. Taylor discusses why it’s important that we honor and understand our bodies, and why having a right relationship to our bodies is imperative to the quest of art. Christians have often feared, distrusted, or despised the body; sin has meant that we’ve become alienated from our own bodies and the bodies of others, that we harm our bodies and others’, and that we often flee from our bodies, dissimulate. But Jesus wants us to be at home in our bodies, Taylor says—in worship, and in day-to-day life. He talks about Jesus as an icon of care-filled touch and the implications of that.
>> “On Being in a Body,”On Being with Krista Tippett, September 21, 2023: At the 2023 Aspen Ideas Festival, Krista Tippett interviewed Kate Bowler, author of Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved), a reflection on how she moved through learning at age thirty-five that she had Stage IV colon cancer. “From the new reality in our time of living with cancer as a chronic illness, to the telling of truths to our young as we face precarity in our collective body, this conversation is full of the vividly-whole humanity that Kate Bowler singularly embodies.” I heard Kate in person at Duke University a few years ago talking on a panel about suffering. She’s full of wisdom, wit, and raw tenderness and so, so endearing, and even though I’ve heard her story many times, every conversation with her brings up something new.
Fernando Peña Defilló (Dominican, 1928–2016), La ofrenda (The Offering), 1993. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 126 × 166 cm. Private collection. Source: Latin American Art in the Twentieth Century, ed. Edward J. Sullivan (Phaidon, 1996), p. 110.
May those whose hell it is To hate and hurt Be turned into lovers Bringing flowers.
—Shantideva, eighth century
These lines are from chapter 10, stanza 9, of the Bodhicharyavatara (Way of the Bodhisattva), a Mahayana Buddhist text by the eighth-century Indian monk Shantideva. I first encountered this religious classic, originally written in Sanskrit, while working at Shambhala Publications. The excerpt above was adapted by author David Richo from a translation by the Padmakara Translation Group. Here’s 10.9 in full, as translated by PTG:
May the hail of lava, fiery stones, and weapons Henceforth become a rain of blossom. May those whose hell it is to fight and wound Be turned to lovers offering their flowers. [source]
Other translations include those by Stephen Batchelor—
May the rains of lava, blazing stones, and weapons From now on become a rain of flowers, And may all battling with weapons From now on be a playful exchange of flowers. [source]
—and Fedor Stracke:
May the rain of leafs, embers, and weapons Become forthwith a rain of flowers. May those cutting each other with knives Forthwith throw flowers for fun. [source]
I am so struck by this short benediction that prays our hate be transformed into love, our hardness into softness, our cold, sterile weaponry into delicately petaled, fragrant blooms. Shantideva recognized that when we lash out in physical or verbal violence, we create a hell that’s all our own. We may intend to inflict suffering on another, but in doing so, we often wound ourselves—psychologically, spiritually. When we dehumanize others, we become less human.
Instead of hurling rocks, punches, bullets, or insults, what if we were to completely confound our enemies by offering them words or tokens of love? Love is the way of the bodhisattva, the “enlightened being.” It’s the way of Jesus—he who said, “Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:27–28).
Loving people doesn’t mean we can’t be angry at them—but we cannot allow our anger to fester into bitterness and ill will or to explode in harmful outbursts. It should be a productive anger.
How might we use an ethic of love to direct our anger or somebody else’s toward a good end, to defuse a contentious situation? Not taking the easy way out by simply ignoring or retreating from a problem, but confronting our opponent in peaceful, creative, and potentially transformative ways?
I’m reminded of the historic Pulitzer Prize–nominated photograph Flower Power, taken by Washington Star photojournalist Bernie Boston on October 21, 1967, when he was covering an antiwar march on the Pentagon. As the 503rd Military Police Battalion formed a semicircle around demonstrators to prevent them from climbing the Pentagon steps, Boston captured eighteen-year-old George Edgerly Harris III, aka Hibiscus, placing a carnation into the barrel of an M14 rifle held by one of the soldiers. What a powerful image!
Bernie Boston (American, 1933–2008), Flower Power, Arlington, Virginia, 1967
Two years earlier in his essay “How to Make a March/Spectacle,” Allen Ginsberg was the first to expound on the potency of flowers as a spectacle to simultaneously disarm opponents and influence thought. He said “masses of flowers” should be handed out on the front lines of protests to police, the press, and onlookers as a symbol of nonviolent advocacy. He also suggested candy bars and toys.
Artist Scott Erickson seems to have drawn on Boston’s Flower Power photograph in his visual interpretation of Isaiah 2:4, Swords into Plowshares, which shows a sprig of foliage growing out of the barrel of a pistol, oriented upward like a vase. Its deadly power mocked and reversed, the gun releases a benign projectile that attracts and nourishes rather than strikes fear.
The evocative Bible verse on which this painting is based prophesies a day when all the nations “shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks”—a poetic way of describing the cessation of violence, as tools of destruction are transformed into gardening tools.
Christian activist Shane Claiborne has been instrumental in helping me see the immense beauty of Isaiah’s visions of the eschaton—he has worked with RAWtools to decommission firearms and literally forge them into shovels, spades, and other life-giving implements!—along with the holy foolishness of the gospel and all that implies. Before becoming a leader of the new monasticism movement, Claiborne went to circus school, and he has often put that training to use on the streets of Philadelphia where he lives. In his first book, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical (2006), he writes,
Whenever there is a fight on our block, my first instinct is to run inside and grab our torches and begin juggling them, to upstage the drama of violent conflicts in our neighborhood. Perhaps the kids will lose interest in the noise of a good fight and move toward the other end of the block to watch the circus. I truly believe we can overwhelm the darkness of this world by shining something brighter and more beautiful. (285)
He has also written about Jesus’s “triumphal” entry into Jerusalem as a theatrical parody of power: he rode in on a dinky donkey instead of a warhorse, showing a much different alternative to the military might of empires. (“Imagine the president riding a unicycle in the Fourth of July parade”! Jesus for President, p. 122) And then on the cross, Jesus made a spectacle of human violence. In exchange for taunts and blows, he gave forgiveness, a metaphorical bouquet.
The UK-based street artist Banksy draws on the association of flowers with love and peace and their playful ability to disrupt violence in his mural Rage, Flower Thrower, which debuted on the West Bank wall in Israel-Palestine. Nathan Mladin, a researcher for Theos think tank, wrote about this artwork for the Visual Commentary on Scripture’s Logics of Reversals exhibition:
With a balaclava drawn over his face, the young protester is shown leaning back, as though braced to hurl a Molotov cocktail. But instead of a weapon, he wields a flower bouquet, the only coloured element in this otherwise monochrome work. We expect an act of aggression—all other elements of the mural suggest imminent violence—but instead we are offered a call to peace. . . . Theologically construed, the mural hints at the eschatological terminus of violence.
The absurd juxtaposition of flowers and violence is employed too by Lithuanian artist Severija Inčirauskaitė-Kriaunevičienė, who embroiders floral patterns onto antique soldiers’ helmets sourced from various countries, and Natalie Baxter of Lexington, Kentucky, whose Warm Gun series comprises over one hundred quilted stuffed guns, “droopy caricatures of assault weapons,” she says, “bringing ‘macho’ objects into a traditionally feminine sphere and questioning their potency.”
Severija Inčirauskaitė-Kriaunevičienė (Lituanian, 1977–), from the series Kill(ed) for Peace, 2016. Antique soldier’s helmet, cotton, cross-stitch embroidery, drilling, and industrial needle punching, 30 × 22 × 21 cm. Private collection, Latvia.Natalie Baxter (American, 1985–), Rose to the Occasion, from the Warm Gun series, 2016. Fabric and polyfill, 15 × 42 × 3 in.
Another artistic example of overcoming brutality with gentleness can be found in the climactic battle sequence from Disney’s animated classic Sleeping Beauty (1959). As Prince Phillip escapes from Maleficent’s dungeon with the aid of the three good fairies, Maleficent’s goons shoot arrows at him—but Flora transforms them by magic into flowers, which fall innocuously about his booted feet. (The animation is by Dan McManus.)
Flora’s other enchantments include turning launched boulders into soap bubbles and a curtain of boiling water, tipped from a cauldron over a doorway, into a rainbow. Each of these deflective maneuvers involves the transformation of something threatening into something whimsical. While they do not ultimately deter the villain from her murderous rampage, and alas, Phillip conquers evil with a sword (albeit the Sword of Truth—there’s metaphor at play here), Flora’s few creative interventions at the outset of the battle assert an attractive counterethic that we would do well to embrace.
I need the dreams of Isaiah and the prayers of Shantideva, I need the ridiculous street theater of Hibiscus and Shane Claiborne and the activist blacksmithing of RAWtools, I need Banksy’s murals in zones of conflict and other subversive art, I need fairy tales from writers and animation studios, to help me relinquish my hate and imagine wholesome new ways of engaging my enemies. Most of all, I need Christ’s vibrant, upending gospel embedded more deeply in my heart, and the Holy Spirit—renewer, transformer—to melt the disdain and loathing I feel for certain figures in the current US political landscape and reshape it into loving regard.
While I do not have an urge to enact physical violence on anyone, I often seethe and think unkindly thoughts toward those I deem morally odious. Sometimes I pray they get what’s coming to them. But then I am convicted by that un-Christlike posture. I crave the eyes and mind of Christ, who sees everyone as redeemable and worthy of love, bearers of the divine image, and who moves toward them with open arms instead of clenched fists.
“May those whose hell it is to hate and hurt be turned into lovers bringing flowers.”
I pray this, sincerely, for others (I have a few particular names in mind), and also for myself.
Art & Theology 