SONGS:
>> “Peace on Earth” by U2: “Heaven on earth—we need it now. I’m sick of all this hanging around. Sick of the sorrow, sick of the pain . . .” U2’s “Peace on Earth” was inspired by the Omagh bombing in Northern Ireland on August 15, 1998. It first appeared on their 2000 album All That You Can’t Leave Behind, but I prefer the stripped-down acoustic version they recorded last year on Songs of Surrender.
The song wrestles with the tension between the angels’ proclamation of peace in Luke 2 and the course of history ever since, riddled, as before, with violence. “Hope and history won’t rhyme,” the lyrics lament—they’re just not matching up. “Peace on earth” feels naive; the words sometimes stick in our throats. The refrain addresses Christ: “Jesus, can you take the time / To throw a drowning man a line?” In its emotional honesty and its asks, it resembles a biblical psalm. (Bono has in fact spoken about how the Psalms have influenced his songwriting.)
When U2 performed “Peace on Earth” live at Sphere Las Vegas this February, Bono substituted the names of five Irish casualties of the Troubles listed in one of the verses with the names of four Palestinian and Israeli children who have been killed in the current Israel-Hamas War: Gal, Ayat, Hind, and Mila.
>> “There Will Be a Day (Isaiah 2)” by Caroline Cobb, arr. Joel Littlepage: I cued up my favorite song from last year’s Dawning Light service at Grace Mosaic church in Washington, DC (it’s at 32:50–37:29 of the video): “There Will Be a Day” by Caroline Cobb, based on Isaiah 2. The song is from Cobb’s album A Seed, a Sunrise: Advent to Christmas Songs (2020)—it’s my favorite of all her songs, and because of its emotional and summative power, I’ve set it as the concluding track of my Advent Playlist. Joel Littlepage, Grace Mosaic’s pastor of worship and formation and the director of the Daily Prayer Project, arranged it with gospel inflections for his church’s annual Advent carols service. He’s at the keyboard; his wife, Melissa Littlepage, is the vocal soloist (she’s also the choir director); and the saxophonist is Skip Pruitt.
Cobb, the songwriter, has published a new book this year that may be of interest: Advent for Exiles: 25 Devotions to Awaken Gospel Hope in Every Longing Heart. She discusses it on a recent episode of The Habit Podcast that I commend to you.
+++
ARTWORK: Home (land) Birth (place) by Beth Krensky: Beth Krensky is an artist, activist, and educator of Jewish heritage who describes herself as “a gatherer of things—objects, words, spirit—and a connector of fragments to make us whole.” Her website documents many compelling artistic projects she has undertaken over the past decade. One of them, Home (land) Birth (place), is a performance from 2016 with her academic colleague Amal Kawar, a professor of political science and the author of Daughters of Palestine: Leading Women of the Palestinian National Movement.
For this piece, Krensky sewed together a truce flag from baby clothes and other white linens and attached it to two olivewood poles onto which she burned quotes from Israeli and Palestinian mothers who have lost a child to Israeli-Palestinian violence. She and Kawar held the flag aloft in the desert outside their hometown of Salt Lake City as a call for peace. Read the artist’s statement at the link above, and view additional photos of the flag here.
+++
DEVOTIONAL POST: “Swords Will Be Turned into Plowshares,” Center for Christianity, Culture, and the Arts at Biola University: Every year Biola University’s CCCA publishes free daily Advent and Christmas devotions online that feature an artwork, a song, a poem, and a written reflection—the work of many contributors. You can access their 2024 Advent Project here.
Last year I was particularly taken with the peace-themed compilation offered on January 2, which includes a poem by Denise Levertov, a socially conscious, participatory art project led by Pedro Reyes (more on that in next roundup item), a Sweet Honey in the Rock rendition of an African American spiritual, and a wonderful reflection by Dr. Natasha Aleksiuk Duquette, a literature professor. Check it out.
+++
ARTICLE: “Mexican Artist Pedro Reyes Molds 1,527 Guns into Shovels Used to Plant Trees,” Colossal: Pedro Reyes is a Mexican artist, architect, and cultural agent who seeks to turn social problems into opportunities for tangible change through works that integrate elements of theater, psychology, and activism. (I learned about him through Biola’s Advent Project, above.) In 2008, in cooperation with city authorities, he led a campaign in Culiacán, Mexico, to collect firearms, giving donors vouchers for electronic appliances in exchange. The hundreds of guns he received were publicly crushed by a steamroller, melted, and remolded into shovels, which were then distributed to public schools and other institutions who committed to planting trees with them. This project was an effort to curb local gun violence and to cultivate the collective imagination toward life.
I’m interested in exploring more of Reyes’s work, as I love what he’s doing. In 2016, as a visiting lecturer in MIT’s Art, Culture, and Technology Program, he cotaught the course “The Reverse Engineering of Warfare: Challenging Techno-optimism and Reimagining the Defense Sector (an Opera for the End of Times).” A full-color illustrated survey of his projects, Pedro Reyes: Ad Usum / To Be Used, was published by Harvard University Press in 2017.
+++
INSTAGRAM SERIES: “Alternative Advent 2024” by Kezia M’Clelland: Through December 24, follow the Instagram account @alternative_advent for a progressively revealed photo essay of Advent promises told through journalistic images from 2024, sourced from various news organizations. I call attention to this project every year. The woman behind it, Kezia M’Clelland, has a master’s degree in violence, conflict, and development from SOAS University of London and helps equip churches and communities to support children and families in crisis situations.
Art & Theology 