Tag: coronavirus

Roundup: Empty chair, how to read a Last Judgment icon, and more

Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

ARTWAY VISUAL MEDITATIONS:

ArtWay.eu is an online hub of resources related to faith and the visual arts. Every Sunday a new “visual meditation” is released on a selected artwork, written by one of a diverse range of volunteers from across the globe. (I contributed last week’s, on Eduardo Kingman, and another of mine, on a Flight to Egypt painting by Pranas Domsaitis, will be forthcoming.) Sign up here to receive the free weekly meditation in your inbox. Here are two examples from the past year, with Advent vibes, that I’ve found particularly meaningful.

>> “The Empty Chair in a Season of Waiting” by Rachel Hostetter Smith: Last year, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, art history professor Rachel Hostetter Smith wrote about a series of Chinese ink wash paintings by Daozi. They’re a tribute to his friend, the Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiabo (1955–2017), who was unable to accept his 2010 Nobel Peace Prize in person because he was in prison, so he was represented at the ceremony by an empty chair. Smith brings this image of an empty chair into conversation with all the uncertainty and absence in this current time of pandemic; the Jewish Passover Seder liturgy and its setting a place at the table for the prophet Elijah; Franciscan priest Richard Rohr on the liminal space between the old world and the world to come; and John the Revelator’s eschatological vision of a throne descending from heaven (Rev. 21).

Daozi_The Empty Chair on the Sea Ridge
Daozi (aka Wang Min) (Chinese, 1956–), The Empty Chair on the Sea Ridge, 2018. Ink and color on paper, 97 × 54 cm.

This and fifty-four other contemporary artworks are part of the international traveling exhibition Matter + Spirit: A Chinese/American Exhibition, which Smith curated (click the link to explore the art—it’s very compelling!). The exhibition is a product of a gathering of North American and Chinese art professors in June 2018 in Beijing, Nanjing, and Shanghai, sponsored by the Nagel Institute for the Study of World Christianity.

>> “Waiting for the Lord” by Mary McCampbell: Mary McCampbell [previously] writes about a painting by Douglas Coupland, best known for his work as a novelist and for popularizing the term Generation X. “In I wait and I wait and I wait for God to appear (2011), the artist has painted a colorful QR (Quick Response) code, defamiliarizing a familiar symbol of daily life. . . . Like most QR codes, if a viewer holds up her camera to the graphic image, a message is decoded via smart phone. A contrast to the hard geometric edges of the painting, the message that magically appears is soft and human: ‘I wait and I wait and I wait for God to appear.’ . . . The painting reflects a longing for the real God to manifest himself, no longer merely an idea, a doctrine, a rhetorical position. Where is God in the intricate, detailed, yet seemingly random pattern of life? How can we discern WHO He is? . . . This atypical reminder to ‘Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord’ (Psalm 27:14) discloses the curious, humble faith of a non-believer, one hoping and waiting for eyes to see the ‘appearance’ of the Lord.”

Coupland, Douglas_Waiting for the Lord
Douglas Coupland (German, 1961–), I wait and I wait and I wait for God to appear, 2011. Acrylic and latex on canvas, 182.9 × 182.9 cm. Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

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LECTURE: “Understanding the Last Judgment” by Jonathan Pageau: “The traditional icon of the Last Judgment is a very complex image which is both the synthesis of Christian typology as well as an image of the eschatological finality of all things.” In this talk given at St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church in Seattle, Jonathan Pageau breaks down Last Judgment iconography, explaining how to read it scene by scene.

Elements include:

  • The Deësis, a representation of Christ enthroned between Mary and John the Baptist
  • The hetoimasia, or prepared throne, which awaits the return of Christ
  • The psychostasis, or weighing of souls
  • The ladder of divine ascent, representing the struggle to reach illumination
  • Paradise, with the “good thief,” Abraham’s bosom, and the Mother of God
  • The last trump and the resurrection of the dead, with beasts regurgitating their human prey
  • The river of fire, per Daniel 7:10, with the damned being swallowed by the mouth of Hades

Why am I sharing this now? Because Advent is eschatological and future-oriented in nature, and, though it tends to be underemphasized in our era, judgment is a major theme—which Fleming Rutledge does a great job unpacking in her book Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ.

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COVID MEMORIAL: From September 17 to October 3, 2021, the National Mall in Washington, DC, was blanketed with some 670,000 white flags, each one representing an American life lost to COVID-19. Titled In America: Remember, the installation was conceived by artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg as a way to visualize the magnitude of loss the country has suffered over the past two years in relation to the pandemic, and to invite mourning. Visitors were invited to personalize flags for someone they lost.

Stephen Wilkes’s photos of the memorial undid me. The enormity of suffering represented is difficult to fathom. Every single flag is a devastation. And since the installation was put up this fall, there have been another 100,000-plus COVID deaths in the US, while the global death toll has surpassed 5.2 million.

In America: Remember (detail)
Photo: Stephen Wilkes / National Geographic

In America: Remember (detail)
Photo: Stephen Wilkes / National Geographic

In America: Remember (photo by Stephen Wilkes)
In America: Remember, September 17–October 3, 2021, an installation of 670,000+ white flags on the National Mall, conceived by Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg. Photo: Stephen Wilkes / National Geographic.

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ART COMPETITION: “Macierzyństwo Maryi” (The Motherhood of Mary): The results are in for Poland’s first annual Ogólnopolski Konkurs Sztuki Sakralnej (National Competition of Sacred Art, or OKSSa for short), organized by the Fundacji Maria i Marta (Mary and Martha Foundation). The theme was Mary’s motherhood.

First place, with a prize of 15,000 zł (about USD $3,600), went to Błażej Guza for Macierzyństwo Maryi, which shows Mary drawing a hopscotch board on the pavement, its shape portending her boy’s fate. Jesus is not visible in frame, save for his shadow, which reveals simply an innocent child ready to play.

This piece and thirty-four others from among the many entries were exhibited at Concordia Design Wrocław November 25–30, 2021, and this month a few of them will be shown at the National Museum in Wrocław. You can view the top three winners as well as four honorable mentions at the boldface link above, or on the foundation’s Facebook page. And here’s an exhibition view.

The Fundacji Maria i Marta aims to promote the development of contemporary Christian art in Poland by organizing competitions, exhibitions, and workshops and by providing artistic consultation for churches.

Guza, Blazej_The Motherhood of Mary
Błażej Guza, Macierzyństwo Maryi (The Motherhood of Mary), 2021. Acrylic and chalk, 90 × 60 cm.

Kowalewska-Tylka, Beata_Fullness of Spirit
Beata Kowalewska-Tylka, Pełnia ducha (Fullness of Spirit), 2021. Digital painting, 70 × 50 cm. The OKSSa jury commented on how this piece shows “the interpenetration of the spiritual and human dimensions of Mary’s motherhood,” the shape of the fiery red cloth evoking the Holy Spirit as dove, and the breast that gives milk signifying Mary’s physical nourishment of her son from her own body.

The Music of Dan + Claudia Zanes

Victoria Emily Jones3 Comments

Dan + Claudia Zanes are a husband-wife folk music duo who sing songs of joy, love, and justice for intergenerational and interracial audiences, harnessing the social power of music. Their first album together, Let Love Be Your Guide, was released September 10 by Smithsonian Folkways. Here’s the description from the label:

Let Love Be Your Guide, the first duo album by internationally renowned family musicians Dan + Claudia Zanes, is a collection of songs to spark intergenerational conversations about anti-racism, racial justice, and the joys of community. Conceived during the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprisings and coronavirus pandemic, the songs describe the new terms of togetherness—how we understand it, how we build it, and how we strive for more. Rooted in many different traditions, including gospel, R&B, and Haitian folk song, the eclectic, warm, and accessible music the duo makes reflects the kindness and openness that underpin their message: out of isolation and hardship we can learn how to accept and heal the wounds of the past, and how to change and face the future with grace and compassion, regardless of our age.

The title track, “Let Love Be Your Guide (For John Lewis),” is an homage to the late congressman and civil rights leader whose final New York Times opinion piece admonishes readers to “walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.”

(There are also music videos for “Coming Down” and “Reparations Is a Must (4th of July Love Song).”)

“The music made it possible for us to show up in our fullness, singing about matters near and dear to our hearts,” Claudia wrote in a release-day email. “The songs remind us that there are reasons to celebrate and laugh from the gut. There’s joy in unifying and coming together. There are things to ponder, and of course moments to pause and take deep breaths.” The album has a real invitational quality.

In the 1980s Dan Zanes sang lead for the critically acclaimed rock band the Del Fuegos. After his daughter, Anna, was born, he began playing family music with a group of other fathers he had met at the playgrounds in and around Brooklyn. This originally informal collective that distributed self-produced cassette tapes around the neighborhood evolved into the Grammy Award–winning Dan Zanes and Friends.

Claudia, who is Haitian American, is a board-certified music therapist who often works with children on the autism spectrum, both verbal and nonverbal, as well as geriatric clients. She has also toured internationally as a jazz vocalist.

She and Dan met in fall 2016 (at a dining-room singalong!), married in 2018, and moved to Baltimore at the end of 2019, shortly before the city shut down because of the pandemic. On March 15, 2020, they started what they call their Social Isolation Song Series, posting daily videos on YouTube—for two hundred days! The series includes a mix of folk songs, show tunes, and pop songs (Little Richard, the Beach Boys, Whitney Houston, etc.), as well as gospel songs, hymns, and spirituals, some of my favorites of which I’ve posted below. They’re so much fun!

Dan and Claudia Zanes (photo by Anna Zanes)

Both musicians have been heavily shaped by the Black church tradition, which Claudia grew up in and Dan came to faith in after meeting her. “I owe my spiritual focus, growth, and understanding to Claudia’s tremendous inspiration and to these Black churches,” he says, referring to Bethel AME in Boston, Lenox Road Baptist Church in Brooklyn, and Pleasant Hope Baptist Church in Baltimore, their current church home.

(Related post: “Songs of Lament and Justice by The Porter’s Gate”)

The couple integrates their music, activism, and Christian faith in a really beautiful way. “We try to go into it [music making] to do God’s work, whatever that might look like,” Dan said in an interview with podcaster Leo Sidran (I commend the whole interview to you!). Collective liberation is something they’re especially passionate about, so it’s a recurring theme in their music.

What follows are fourteen of their two hundred “social isolation” songs, in reverse chronological order (check out the rest on their YouTube channel). Sheet music for some can be found in Dan Zanes’ House Party!: A Family Roots Music Treasury (2018), a book that conveys “a love of songs as cultural currency—currency that tells us in poetic, emotional, nonsensical, sobering, and illuminating ways who we are and where we came from—and a belief that the joy of music making is something that’s available to one and all.”

“Woke Up This Morning with My Mind Stayed on Jesus”:

“Freedom Is a Constant Struggle” by Roberta Slavitt:

“In Gratitude” (original):

“Peace, Perfect Peace” by Toots Hibbert, a Jamaican singer-songwriter who passed away last year from COVID-19:

“Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” by Anthony Showalter and Elisha Hoffman:

“The Storm Is Passing Over” by Charles Albert Tindley:

“In These Troubled Times” (original, included on their album):

“Near the Cross” by Fanny Crosby (text) and William Doane (music):

“Go Down, Moses”:

“Salaam,” a Tunisian song from the Gnawa tradition, which the Zaneses learned from their Palestinian American friend, the buzuq player Tareq Abboushi:

(“Salaam alaikum,” Arabic for “peace to you,” is a traditional Muslim greeting.)

“This Little Light of Mine,” with a rap by Jendog Lonewolf:

“Come and Go with Me to That Land”:

“Daniel in the Lions’ Den”:

“How Great Thou Art” by Carl Boberg, with “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah”:

To learn more about Dan + Claudia Zanes, visit their website, www.danandclaudia.com. You can also follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram.

Making Music in Quarantine

Victoria Emily Jones4 Comments

Here’s a quick roundup of some of the music videos and songs I’ve really enjoyed that have come about as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“He Will Carry You”: A song by Scott Wesley Brown performed by Zanbeni Prasad on lead vocals, with her husband Benny Prasad on guitar and her sister-in-law Aruni Prasad on backing vocals. [HT: Global Christian Worship]

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“The Sun Will Rise”: One of The Brilliance’s early songs, from their 2010 self-titled album—sung here by Madison Cunningham [previously], Matt Maher, Liz Vice, Jayne Sugg, Tyler Chester, and David Gungor, with multiple contributing instrumentalists (see full list on YouTube).

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“Maren” (Have Mercy on Us): The First Lady of Ethiopia, Zinash Tayachew, sings a new gospel song whose Amharic title, ማረን, transliterated “Maren,” means “Have mercy on us,” a plea addressed to God. “Do not abandon us during this time when the world is terrorized by bad news,” she sings. [HT: Global Christian Worship]

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Apocalyptic Lockdown Blues, a new EP by David Benjamin Blower: One of my favorite singer-songwriters, from Birmingham, England. “Apocalyptic Lockdown Blues is a small oral history of a global pandemic,” Blower writes. “This is folk, rootsy and ambient, with sacred longings, poetry and politics, sung out of windows and accompanied by birdsong.”

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“A Celtic Prayer”: Produced by Jonathan Estabrooks, this video features the choir of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City singing a traditional Celtic blessing set to music by Barry Peters. It begins, “May the Christ who walks on wounded feet walk with you on the road.”

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Virtual May Morning 2020: May Day, May 1, is a public holiday in England, and for the past five hundred-plus years it has been an Oxford tradition to kick off the celebration at dawn by having the Choir of Magdalen College sing unaccompanied in the Renaissance style from the top of the college’s bell tower. Typically a crowd of thousands gathers for May Morning along High Street and on Magdalen Bridge, but this year the event was canceled due to COVID-19. However, Magdalen College pulled off a virtual choir! The boy choristers and lay clerks recorded their parts from home, under the direction of Mark Williams, which were combined in a video that was released online at 6 a.m. local time. [HT: Joy Clarkson]

The choir sings “Hymnus Eucharisticus,” a seventeenth-century Trinitarian hymn, and “Now Is the Month of Maying,” an English ballett (a light, dancelike part song similar to a madrigal) from 1595, about lads and lasses frolicking in the grass. The prayer in the middle is led by the Rev. Dr. Andrew Bowyer, dean of divinity. The actual church bells did ring out the hour like usual, with a celebratory chime following the performance (the chimes in the video were prerecorded).

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“Doxology”: One of the things I miss most about communal (in-person) worship is singing the Doxology together with my church family each week. As part of his “Covers from an Empty House” series, Ben Rector has posted a contemplative rendition at the piano, which captures the sense of both mourning and hope that so characterizes this global moment. [HT: TGC Arts & Culture Newsletter]

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“I Know Who Holds Tomorrow”: This song was written by Ira Stanphill in 1950 following a painful divorce. It’s covered here by The Petersens, a family gospel group from Missouri.

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Scott Avett [previously] has been posting #emptylivingroomconcert videos on Instagram since the beginning of the year—just him and his guitar (or banjo) and a sixty-second time limit. Here are a few. (He’s the writer of all these songs, I’m assuming.)

Roundup: Multiethnic Jesus, egg dancing, new Easter album, and more

Victoria Emily Jones3 Comments

ARTICLE: “Searching for a Jesus Who Looks More Like Me” by Eric V. Copage: I was interviewed the other week for this New York Times piece on multiethnic images of Christ. I comment on paintings by Wisnu Sasongko (Indonesian), Greg Weatherby (Aboriginal Australian), Emmanuel Garibay (Filipino), and Solomon Raj (Indian), and helped select a few of the other images.

Jesus on a Lotus by Solomon Raj
Solomon Raj (Indian, 1921–2019), Jesus on the Lotus Flower, 1998. Batik. Photo: Gudrun Löwner.

Garibay, Emmanuel_Jesus with coffee
Emmanuel Garibay (Filipino, 1962–), Untitled, 2007. Oil on wood. Photo via the artist.

Of those Christians who even permit images of Jesus, some hold to a strict literalism and object to images that show him as anything other than a first-century Jew from Israel-Palestine—even though these same literalists would rightly insist that no image is literally Jesus. As I hope is clear from my website, I embrace a wide range of Christological imagery, which I feel reflects the universal presence and revelation of God. (“Christ is all, and in all,” as the apostle Paul wrote in Colossians 3:11; he continues to manifest spiritually, and through his ecclesial body, all over the world.) I’m not so proud to assume that my way of picturing Jesus is the most right or authoritative; I need others to help me see Jesus more fully, more truly. Like C. S. Lewis said, “My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others.” And historical realism is not the only, or even necessarily the best (depends on context), art style to show who Jesus is.

Even though the historical Jesus never wore a full-face moko (tattoo) like the Maori, as Sofia Minson paints him, nor did he sit on a lotus flower when he taught his disciples, nor did he appear to Peter, James, and John transfigured between two Yoruba deities, these images and others like them tell us something about Jesus. At a broad level, they proclaim the Incarnation—God in flesh, dwelling among us, as us, that is, fully human. The historical Jesus existed in a specific time and place, and had ethnic particularities, but his coming was not just for the Jews but for the Gentiles too, and not just for his day, for but all time. Through symbol and metaphor and materiality, artists make this truth real.

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UPDATED BLOG POSTS

Occasionally if I’ve covered an art topic in the past and then come across a new image that fits that topic perfectly, I will add it as an addendum to the original post. I’ve done that with two Eastertide posts.

“‘She mistook him for the gardener’”: Humanity was born in a garden and reborn in a garden, as biblical scholars like N. T. Wright are keen to point out, with Easter morning marking the launch of new creation. In art history the resurrected Christ is sometimes amusingly shown carrying gardening tools when he encounters Mary Magdalene outside his tomb—to explain the case of mistaken identity that John records, perhaps, but more likely to establish a metaphor. Two of the paintings I’ve added to this post are by Janpeter Muilwijk, whose New Gardener from 2017 shows the freshly risen Christ in a white T-shirt and overalls, heading with open arms toward Mary, who is dressed like a bride to receive him. (Mary is modeled after the artist’s daughter Mattia, who died.) Butterflies alight on each of Jesus’s five wounds, marking them as sites of transformation, and the flowering branches of a tree crown him with spring glory.

Muilwijk, Janpeter_New Gardener
Janpeter Muilwijk (Dutch, 1960–), New Gardener, 2017. Oil on canvas, 150 × 100 cm. Private collection, Netherlands.

“The Unnamed Emmaus Disciple: Mary, wife of Cleopas?”: Written in 2017, this is one of Art & Theology’s most visited posts. In it I conjecture that the pilgrim who traveled with Cleopas from Jerusalem to Emmaus in the famous Easter story could have been a woman, perhaps Cleopas’s wife. Several artists have conjectured the same, and besides adding to this compilation three Emmaus paintings that the artist Maximino Cerezo Barredo sent me after the initial publication, I’ve also added one by Jyoti Sahi, which shows Jesus sitting with the two disciples—one male, one female—on the floor of a small roadside dwelling, breaking chapati (Indian flatbread) together. He is ablaze with glory, evoking his earlier revelations as I AM in the burning bush before Moses and to Peter, James, and John on Mount Tabor at the Transfiguration.

Sahi, Jyoti_Supper at Emmaus
Jyoti Sahi (Indian, 1944–), The Supper at Emmaus, 1980. Mixed media on canvas. Photo courtesy of the artist.

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NEW SONGS

“A Bedtime Song for Anxious Children” by W. David O. Taylor and Paul Zach: David Taylor has written a new children’s song (set to music by Paul Zach), which he sings here with his daughter, Blythe. The lyrics are in the video description on YouTube.

“I’ve heard from so many parents recently that their children are struggling with anxiety, fear, frustration, sadness, anger, and restlessness,” Taylor writes, “and so I thought a little song reassuring them of God’s care at night, when they’re most vulnerable, might help their hearts. Our hope is that the melody might be simple enough for parents and children to be able to sing it when they go to bed.”

“See the Day” by Liz Vice: One of my favorite singers, Liz Vice, released a new single on April 10, called “See the Day.” Cowritten by her, Leslie Jordan, and Jonathan Day, it expresses hope for the coming day of the Lord, when justice will roll down like a mighty river, walls of division will crumble into dust, oppression will cease, and the whole world will be startled awake by love. “Precious Lord, come lead us on” to that reality.

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NEW ALBUM: Easter 1 by Mac Meador: Mac Meador, a singer-songwriter from Austin, Texas, released a new EP of six songs for Eastertide this April, a sort of flip side to the Lent 1 EP he released in February. I really enjoyed them both (and the same goes for his Summer of Psalms from 2018). The Easter album strikes just the right note for me right now—of a quiet hope and joy that’s not absent of pain. The songs celebrate Christ the risen king while also expressing longing for the age to come, when the kingdom will be established in full. Lean into that promise!

 

You can stream and purchase Meador’s music on Bandcamp. (Note: To help musicians affected by COVID-19, Bandcamp is waiving its cut of all sales made on its site on May 1.) You might also want to check out his YouTube channel, where he posts additional songs. For the past four weeks he has been releasing “Quarantine Hymn Sing” lyric videos for his church, Grace + Peace Austin, where he serves as minister of music. (He also sets Bible memory verses to music for kids!)

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EGG DANCING: “The Egg Dance: From Peasant Village to Political Caricature”: The Public Domain Review has compiled an amusing gallery of historical paintings, drawings, and prints that show the egg dance, a traditional Easter game with several variations, most associated with western European peasantry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Brueghel the Younger, Pieter_The Egg Dance
Pieter Brueghel the Younger (Flemish, 1564/65–1637/38), The Egg Dance, ca. 1620. Oil on panel, 26 1/4 × 41 1/4 in. (66.7 × 104.8 cm).

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ART VIDEO: “500 Years of the Herrenberg Altarpiece”: I love seeing all the fun, creative resources being produced by art museums to help educate and engage the public in viewing art. Though I speak not a lick of German, this video from the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart about Jörg (Jerg) Ratgeb’s Herrenberg Altarpiece made me laugh and had me hooked for its full five minutes. (I came across it when I was prepping a Holy Week blog post that features a different painting attributed to the same artist.) Released last October for the five hundredth anniversary of the altarpiece, the video, directed by Valentin Hennig and Oleg Kauz, animates some of the birds from the painted panels and has them narrate as the camera zooms in on details (one of them quite jarring and unseemly!). They then fly through the museum hall and over the town some twenty miles southwest to the church where the piece originally stood.

To add autogenerated subtitles, click the “CC” (closed captioning) button on the bottom of the video player, then select your language using the gear icon.

Painted in 1519, this double-winged altarpiece was commissioned by the Brethren of the Common Life, a Catholic pietist community, for the high altar of the collegiate church of Herrenberg in Swabia. Closed, it shows the apostles about to set out on their mission to spread the word of God. The first open view (interior panels closed, exterior wings folded out) reveals scenes from the passion of Christ, each panel with a primary scene in the foreground and a secondary scene in the background: the Last Supper with the Agony in the Garden, the Flagellation and Crowning with Thorns with the Ecce Homo (presentation to the crowd), the Crucifixion with the Carrying of the Cross and the Entombment, and the Resurrection with the Noli me tangere (appearance to Mary Magdalene). Completely opened (its feast-day configuration), the altarpiece shows scenes from the infancy of Christ, with reference also to the life of the Virgin Mary. It used to have a central Marian statue and predella figures, but these were likely destroyed when the Protestant Reformation came to Württemberg in 1534.

The artist had already died by this time—he was executed (drawn and quartered) for treason in 1526 for his role as one of the leaders of the German Peasants’ Rebellion.

Short Prayers in a Time of Virus

Victoria Emily Jones5 Comments

From March 28 onward, Melbourne-based creative nonfiction writer, oral storyteller, and arts educator Julie Perrin has been writing and publishing collects (short prayers, pronounced KÄ-lekts) for anyone to freely use and republish (with credit) in this time of pandemic. I’m so grateful for her giving us this language to voice our anxieties, sadness, and pleas to God, and for reminding us of who God is. (And thanks to Art/s and Theology Australia for alerting me to this collect series.)

The photographs, posted here with permission, are by Ian Ferguson, a minister at Brunswick Uniting Church in Melbourne. They were taken in East Gippsland in February and March, following the Australian bushfires.

Burnt Tree, (c) Ian Ferguson

God of those who are numbed,
stunned by loss,
enfold us in a gentle darkness,
a hidden sleep, a long stillness.
Re-member us to ourselves,
awaken the courage we’d forgotten we had. [source]

God who knows chaos,
Who creates in darkness,
makes life from mud.
Give us back to ourselves
dissolved and helpless
may we feel ourselves forming
know our own shape. [source]

Fierce Lover of life,
give strength to our arms and our resolve.
Critical is this time for cleaning, swabbing, scrubbing
and washing our hands again.
And again, and again.
Let us join ourselves to the task
with readiness, steadiness, clarity.
Because we too love life,
our own and our neighbour’s. [source]

Bird over lake, (c) Ian Ferguson

Brooding God,
Who hovers over the waters,
Remain with us, for we are stranded on tiny islands of fear.
Draw a circle around our solitude,
hold us back from bringing danger to ourselves and others.
And where touch can no longer reach,
let love spin light across dark waters,
a thread of sweetness for small songs we might sing. [source]

God who speaks the word ‘Beloved,’
Keep watch on those who give voice to care,
Who speak trenchant truths,
explaining, instructing and chiding without blame.
Let us hear the warmth and strength in voices that stir response
and nourish hope in thoughtful action.
Give us ears to listen without fear. [source]

Spiderweb, (c) Ian Ferguson

God of the frail in body and mind,
be a companion in loneliness,
a consolation in absence,
a balm in mystified sorrow.
When doors, through dire necessity, must stay shut,
Let love arise in memory of gesture and embrace. [source]

God of Shadows,
give shelter to hollow, shaken humans
bewildered by sudden closure.
Sturdy structures shattered, hopeful trade ended,
meaningful work gone.
In the shocking silence where nothing can be said,
let birdsong be heard. [source]

Rainbow, (c) Ian Ferguson

Holy One who fears no fracture,
Lend your clarity to us for we are full of fear.
Already the abyss appears
Cracks in the earth, shifts in the ground we took for granted,
Now there is rupture
We do not trust our capacity to live.
That which is holy, divine, beyond us
frightens and allures us.
Call us to the mystery of the holy. [source]

God of the despondent,
Who sees our tiredness at futile effort,
Who knows that fear breeds phantoms,
help us we pray.
We are weary, and everywhere we turn
another impediment rises.
Our shoulders sag, the breath goes out of us.
In this stripped-back bareness, give us breath,
May we delight in human kindness, meet holiness anew. [source]

God of the harried,
Help us in the tension of these days,
for we are crushed by too many tasks,
nervous of new skills and tools in the too-much of this moment.
May we give heed without collapse,
restore our trust in longer spans of time – beyond the urgency of now. [source]

Ducks, (c) Ian Ferguson

Lover of all, Who watches through the night,
draw close to those who are dying,
and to those who mourn.
Calm our terror of abandonment.
Let us hold faith with one another
that love reaches beyond death. [source]

God who weeps,
comfort those who are dying,
may they die without fear.
And while they are yet living
give us courage to tell our love and trust in yours. [source]

Green fern in forest, (c) Ian Ferguson

This final prayer is not strictly a collect but rather a litany of things to love:

Great God who calls us to belonging,
Who delights in curiosity, invention, ingenuity:
Praise be for minds that bend and flex despite restriction,
for bodies that signal love by staying apart.
Praise be for neighbours talking across fences,
calling from balconies, waving through windows,
for greetings that cross the space between us.
Praise be for strangers, careful on footpaths,
for children asking their questions,
for truth tellers who earn our trust and speak to our fear.
Praise be for friends who warn and chide and encourage,
for human warmth in time of distance.
Praise be. [source]

You can follow Julie Perrin through her blog, Telling Words.