Dan Damon – Art & Theology

Roundup: Advent poetry discussion, graffiti at Canterbury Cathedral, “Dios con Nosotros” print series, and more

December 2, 2025December 4, 2025 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

ONLINE DISCUSSION: “Poems of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany” led by Brian Volck, December 13, 2025, 12–1:30 p.m. ET: Poet Brian Volck (whose work I’ve shared here and here) is leading a free online discussion on Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany poetry next Saturday. Sponsored by the Ekklesia Project, it will bring together diverse poetic styles and voices. “Each poem is read by a volunteer and then the group discusses what stood out, what struck them, and what questions the poem raises,” Volck says. “My goal is to encourage a diversity of responses rather than impose mine. No preparation is required.” Register here to receive the Zoom link and the poems in advance.

+++

INSTALLATION: Hear Us, Canterbury Cathedral, October 17, 2025–January 18, 2026: Graffiti-style stickers are affixed to the medieval walls, floors, and pillars of England’s Canterbury Cathedral in the temporary installation Hear Us, voicing questions to God collected from local marginalized individuals, such as:

Why is there so much pain and destruction?
Is this all there is?
Are you there?
Does everything have a soul?
Do you ever regret your creations?
How do I break the cycle?
Does our struggle mean anything?
How is my dog Bear doing?
God, do you know me?

Photo: Krisztian Elek
Photo courtesy of Canterbury Cathedral
Photo: Krisztian Elek

Curator Jacquiline Creswell [previously], collaborating with poet Alex Vellis, organized a series of workshops led by artists Sven Stears, Henry Madd, Jasbir Dhillon, Adam Littlefield, Alice Gretton, and Callum Farley, which invited people who felt the cathedral was not for them to gather together and delve into discussions about their lives, experiences, and aspirations. Among the participants were members of the Black and Brown diasporas, LGBTQIA+ people, neurodivergent people, people in addiction recovery, and people with mental health disorders. They were asked to respond to the prompt “If you could ask God a question, what would it be?”

Many of the responses were then translated into big, colorful word graphics that cannot be overlooked. “All of the questions are prayers. All of the questions are already sacred,” Vellis says. “So by putting the questions into an already existent sacred space, we are saying you are valid, your words are valid, your prayers are in a place in which they can be heard and they can be seen and they can be supported.”

I learned about this installation from the Exhibiting Faith podcast’s interview with Creswell and Vellis—an episode I heartily commend. They explain how the exhibition was developed, how they persuaded the cathedral to agree to it, and how they have dealt with the storm of criticism it has generated. Many have called it an act of vandalism (even though the stickers were authorized by the dean and will leave no trace when they’re removed next month) and irreverence, desecration. US Vice President JD Vance said the exhibition “mak[es] a beautiful historical building really ugly,” and Elon Musk called it a “suiciding” of Western culture.

I have not seen the exhibition in person, and I am neither British nor Anglican, so I don’t possess the same sense of my identity or heritage being threatened that many Church of Englanders have expressed. But I personally like the confrontational clash of aesthetics: traditional juxtaposed with modern; majestic Gothic architecture, staid limestone, garishly “spray-painted” in a street style, bringing contemporary spiritual and theological questions into a nearly millennium-old church building. I also like the concept of amplifying rather than diminishing the voices of those who feel marginalized by the church but who still want to engage, who are curious—bringing their questions into the space where we gather as a community of Christ followers and using them as a portal into further faith conversations, as Creswell put it in a media interview.

+++

BLOCKPRINT SERIES: Dios con Nosotros (God with Us) by Kreg Yingst: Kreg Yingst [previously] is my favorite contemporary printmaker working on religious themes. Last December he shared a series of hand-colored linocut prints that he started in 2019 and that is ongoing, collectively titled Dios con Nosotros (God with Us)—“a modern-day American Christmas story which takes place somewhere south of the U.S. border,” he writes.

Several of the linocuts are for sale at Yingst’s Etsy shop, as is a set of twelve identical Christmas cards featuring Madona y Niño as the primary image. You can browse the rest of the series as it currently stands on his PsalmPrayers Facebook page; I’ve linked to the individual images below:

El Encuentro: Zacarías y el Ángel Gabriel (The Encounter: Zechariah and the Angel Gabriel)
La Anunciación (The Annunciation)
La Visitación (The Visitation)
El Dilema de José (Joseph’s Dilemma)
Viaje a la Ciudad Natal (Journey to the Hometown)
La Natividad (The Nativity)
Una Multitud de Ángeles del Cielo (A Multitude of Angels from Heaven)
Unos Sabios Procedentes del Oriente (Some Magi from the East)
Los Refugiados (The Refugees)
Matanza de los Inocentes (Massacre of the Innocents)
Madona y Niño (Madonna and Child)

+++

SONGS:

>> “Un Cuento de Navidad” (A Song of Christmas): This original song by Adrian Roberto and Melissa Romero is about a town that had lost its wonder—until a child discovered a Bible, and his reading aloud its story of a Savior sparked revival.

>> “What Child Is This / Child of the Poor”: The Hound + The Fox are Reilly and McKenzie Zamber, a husband-wife musical duo from Oregon. This song of theirs interleaves the classic Christmas carol “What Child Is This” by William Chatterton Dix with a new song that emphasizes Christ’s solidarity with the poor.

Here are the Zambers’ new lyrics:

Helpless and hungry, lowly, afraid,
Wrapped in the chill of midwinter;
Comes now, among us, born into poverty’s embrace,
New life for the world.

Who is this who lives with the lowly,
Sharing their sorrows,
Knowing their hunger?
This is Christ revealed to the world
In the eyes of a child, a child of the poor.

Who is the stranger here in our midst,
Looking for shelter among us?
Who is the outcast? Who do we see amidst the poor,
The children of God?

So bring all the thirsty, all who seek peace;
Bring those with nothing to offer.
Strengthen the feeble;
Say to the frightened heart,
“Fear not: here is your God!”

>> “Everybody Ought to Treat a Stranger Right”: Arranged and expanded by Dan Damon [previously], this traditional blues song is performed here by the Dan Damon Quartet, featuring guest vocalist Sheilani Alix, at a concert at Community Church of Mill Valley in California on December 10, 2023. “Blind Willie Johnson recorded this song in 1930 with two Christmas verses mixed in. I separated them out, added two verses to tell a fuller Christmas story, and recorded the Christmas version with my band on the album No Obvious Angels,” Damon explains. “According to the writer of Hebrews, some have entertained angels unawares.”

Easter, Day 4: Weeping Mary

April 23, 2025April 23, 2025 Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment

LOOK: Mary Magdalene Stood Crying by Kateryna Kuziv

Kuziv, Kateryna_Mary Magdalene stood crying — Kateryna Kuziv (Ukrainian, 1993–), *Mary Magdalene Stood Crying*, 2021. Egg tempera and gilding on gessoed wood, 40 × 30 cm.

LISTEN: “Weeping Mary” | Traditional American, 19th century | Arranged by Dan Damon and performed by the Dan Damon Quartet, feat. Sheilani Alix, on Beautiful Darkness, 2022

Is there anybody here like Mary a-weeping?
Call to my Jesus and he’ll draw nigh.
Is there anybody here like Mary a-weeping?
Call to my Jesus and he’ll draw nigh.

Refrain:
Glory, glory
Glory, glory
Glory be to my God on high
Glory, glory
Glory, glory
Glory be to my God on high

Is there anybody here like Peter a-sinking? . . .

Is there anybody here like jailers a-trembling? . . .

This early American spiritual was transmitted orally before first being recorded in The Social Harp (Philadelphia, 1855), a shape-note hymnal compiled by John Gordon McCurry (1821–1886). McCurry was a farmer, tailor, and singing teacher who lived most of his life in Hart County in northeastern Georgia. The Social Harp credits the music for “Weeping Mary” to him and gives it the year 1852, but I think that indicates not composition but notation and harmonization; in other words, McCurry is the arranger.

In the description of their 1973 facsimile reprinting of The Social Harp, the University of Georgia Press writes, “In the time between the [American] Revolution and the Civil War, the singing of folk spirituals was as common among rural whites as among blacks. This was the music of the Methodist camp meeting and the Baptist revival, and white spirituals in fact are known chiefly because homebred composers sometimes wrote them down, gave them harmonic settings, and published them in songbooks.”

I regard “Weeping Mary” as an Easter song, since the primary verse refers to Mary Magdalene standing outside the empty tomb weeping because she doesn’t know what happened to the body of her Lord (John 20). Then a man she supposes to be the gardener engages her in conversation—and turns out to be the one she’s been seeking, only he’s alive!

The jailer in the third verse refers to the Philippian jailer from Acts 16, tasked with guarding the prisoners Paul and Silas, who were falsely charged with disturbing the peace. One night an earthquake strikes, releasing the chains from the walls and breaking open the cell doors. The jailer raises his sword to kill himself to avoid the shame of having let his wards escape. But Paul alerts him that they’re still there, after which the jailer “fell down trembling” and asked the two what he must do to be saved. “Believe in the Lord Jesus,” they reply. After which he and his whole household convert to the new faith.

“Call to my Jesus and he’ll draw nigh,” the song promises.

Another “Weeping Mary” verse not in The Social Harp but that I’ve heard added in some renditions is “Is there anybody here like Thomas a-doubting?”

More subdued than the typical Easter fare, “Weeping Mary” testifies to the nearness of God in our sorrows, fears, doubts, and weaknesses. It embraces those who are anxious, grieving, or struggling, offering a gentle word.

I first learned this song from a recording by the American folk musician Sam Amidon, which I also really like:

In Brattleboro, Vermont, where he grew up in the 1980s and ’90s, he told NPR, shape-note singing was a social tradition, something that happened once a month, with singers moving to different people’s houses, including his own. His parents are the well-known folk musicians Peter and Mary Alice Amidon.

In his rendition he uses the grammatically incorrect but historically faithful verb that appears in original songbook, “Are there anybody . . .”

For a more vigorous jazz arrangement, which includes scat singing and a trumpet solo, see June April’s 2007 album What Am I?. She uses just the first verse.

And here’s a traditional performance in four-part a cappella by the Dordt College Concert Choir, directed by Benjamin Kornelis:

Five new Advent/Christmas albums

December 6, 2024December 6, 2024 Victoria Emily Jones2 Comments

Every fall a number of new holiday albums hit the market. Here are five from this year that I’ve been enjoying. I’ve included one or two sample tracks from each.

Winter Light by Joanna Forbes L’Estrange

A smorgasbord of choral works by the British composer Joanna Forbes L’Estrange, plus a few written or cowritten by her husband, Alexander, and one by her son Harry, all performed by Ben Parry’s London Voices. I learned about this album from Angier Brock, who wrote the anthem text for the title track. One of my favorite pieces is the “Advent ‘O’ Carol,” which I’ll be featuring in a devotional post on December 17. Below is a retune of “In the Bleak Midwinter” (risky, since Holst’s beautiful tune is so iconic, but I love what L’Estrange does with Rossetti’s poem), followed by an original jazzy carol about “The Three Wise Women” of Christmas—Mary, Elizabeth, and Anna.

O Antiphons Series by Elise Massa

Elise Massa is a singer-songwriter and music minister currently living in Durham, England, where she works for United Adoration, a global nonprofit that seeks to empower local artists to create music and art rooted in Christ and meaningful to their particular context, culture, and language. This quiet, understated album consists of seven original songs based on the O Antiphons, refrains sung during evening prayer on the seven last days of Advent preceding Christmas Eve. Here’s the first one, “O Wisdom (O Sapientia)”:

Halfway Through the Night by the Hedgerow Folk

Named after a phrase from a C. S. Lewis poem, The Hedgerow Folk is an Alabama-based acoustic Americana trio: Jon Myles, Amanda Hammett, and Bryant Hains. “Halfway through the night” is a through line that weaves through this their first Christmas album as a declaration of hope. My two favorite tracks: their reharmonized rendition of “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming,” and their bluegrass arrangement of “Oh Come, Divine Messiah” (which I knew previously only from an a cappella choir of nuns). Also available on vinyl.

As Foretold: Part 1 by Poor Bishop Hooper

As Foretold is a trilogy of albums that takes its subject matter from the prophetic fulfillment passages in Matthew’s Gospel. Part 1, released this week, covers the first two chapters of the book—Jesus’s birth, his flight to Egypt, Herod’s slaughter of innocents, and Jesus’s return to Nazareth. Three of the tracks deal with Joseph’s three dreams—a rarity in music! In his first dream, an angel appears to tell him that Mary is telling the truth, that the son inside her was indeed conceived by the Holy Spirit. In the second dream, treated in the “Out of Egypt” song below, the angel tells Joseph to take his family and flee Bethlehem to Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath, and in the third, the angel informs him it’s safe to return to their homeland.

Poor Bishop Hooper is offering the album for free download from their website! Parts 2 and 3 will release in early 2025.

I Saw Three Ships by Dan Damon

Daniel Charles Damon is a jazz pianist, hymn writer, and retired Methodist pastor from San Francisco, who also works as associate editor of hymnody at Hope Publishing Company. His latest jazz Christmas album features a combination of classics and originals, including two hymns he wrote both the words and music for (“Like a Child” and “Winter’s Child”); “Hunger Carol” by Shirley Erena Murray (words) and Saya Ojiri (tune), which Damon has freshly arranged; and “Peace Child,” another Murray hymn, for which Damon wrote a tune.

It’s difficult to choose a favorite track, as I love this album through and through! I’ll highlight first the nineties hymn “Peace Child,” a pensive reflection on how Christ comes to us “in the silence of stars, in the violence of wars,” “through the hate and the hurt, through the hunger and dirt.” Second, a lively medieval carol whose Latin refrain, “Id-e-o-o-o, id-e-o-o-o, id-e-o, gloria in excelsis Deo!,” translates to “Therefore, glory to God in the highest!”

The vocalist on the album is the award-winning Sheilani Alix. She is accompanied by Damon on piano, Kurt Ribak on acoustic bass, Carrie Jahde on drums, and Lincoln Adler on tenor saxophone and soprano sax.

If you like this album, be sure to also check out Damon’s 2022 Christmas album, No Obvious Angels.

What 2024 holiday albums have you been enjoying?

Roundup: Visitation hymn, word games with George Herbert, The Message set to music, and more

May 28, 2024May 28, 2024 Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment

HYMN FOR THE FEAST OF THE VISITATION: “Somewhere I hear the church bells ringing” by Gracia Grindal: There are many church songs on the Magnificat, the canticle Mary sings in Luke 1:46–55 when she greets her cousin Elizabeth at Elizabeth’s home in the hills of Judea, but very few hymns, at least in Protestantism, that narrate the Visitation event that occasions it, including Elizabeth’s glad affirmations. Gracia Grindal’s “Somewhere I hear the church bells ringing” is one example of the latter—a four-stanza hymn she wrote in 2010 for the Feast of the Visitation, celebrated every year on May 31, with Elizabeth as the poetic speaker. The hymn captures the excitement of the Messiah coming into the world, and references an Alfred Lord Tennyson poem along the way.

On her blog Hymn for the Day, Grindal provides the lyrics and a reflection on this hymn, as well as sheet music that uses a melody Daniel Charles Damon wrote specifically for the text, which is also available in Damon’s collection Garden of Joy (Hope Publishing, 2011). For public-domain tune alternatives, Grindal suggests DISTRESS or KEDRON from William Walker’s Southern Harmony (1835), or the Renaissance tune by Thomas Tallis known as TALLIS’ CANON—all three of which are commonly used with Fred Pratt Green’s twentieth-century hymn “O Christ, the Healer, We Have Come.”

A professor emerita at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, Gracia Grindal is a prolific writer and translator with expertise in Scandinavian hymns. She has served on several hymn committees and boards and is the author of A Treasury of Faith, a three-volume series of over seven hundred hymn texts on the lessons of the Revised Common Lectionary (Wayne Leupold Editions, 2006–9); Preaching from Home: The Stories of Seven Lutheran Women Hymn Writers (Eerdmans, 2011); an English translation of Hallgrímur Pétursson’s Icelandic Passíusálmar (Hymns of the Passion) (Hallgrím Church, 2020); and Jesus the Harmony: Gospel Sonnets for 366 Days (Fortress, 2021), among many other books.

+++

SUBSTACK POSTS:

>> “The Slow Way: On Being ‘at Peace and in Place’” by Micha Boyett, The Slow Way: When her third child was born with Down syndrome, Micha Boyett, an emerging writer, knew she needed to release herself from the anxiety of producing and focus on parenting; she decided to slow down in order to be faithful to her son. Drawing on themes in her new book, Blessed Are the Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole, Boyett reflects in this post on the slow, remarkable, intricate work God does when we “allow all that we are to nourish the place we find ourselves”; when we let go of plans and rest in the goodness of what God has for us at this moment. “Rest is something that nourishes our long-term lives. And rarely, if ever, does rest improve our influence, our finances, or our platforms,” she writes. “Rest is an invisible gift to ourselves that results in invisible growth, invisible peace, invisible relational wholeness.”

>> “Word Games with George Herbert” by Grace Hamman, Medievalish: This Herbert poem was new to me, and what a delight it is! It consists of five tercets, each with an end word that gradually diminishes through loss of a letter with each subsequent line—e.g., CHARM, HARM, ARM. Playing this word game, Herbert develops the conceit of himself as a tree in God’s enclosed garden-orchard.

Peach (Tradescants’ Orchard) — “The Nuingetonn Peeche” from the *Tradescants’ Orchard*, 1620–29. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1461, fol. 105r.

I always enjoy the literary works, which are mostly medieval or early modern, that Dr. Grace Hamman explores through her newsletter and podcast—and the “Prayer from the Past” she curates for each newsletter sign-off, like the one in this edition, by Richard Brathwait (1588–1673).

+++

SONG: “Te Atua” (Dear Lord): I heard this popular New Zealand hīmene (hymn) in the Taika Waititi–directed movie Boy (2010) (such a great movie!). It’s a traditional Māori Christian text, set to the Appalachian folk tune NEW BRITAIN (best known for its pairing with “Amazing Grace”) and performed in 1997 by the St. Joseph’s Māori Girls’ College Choir, featuring soloist Maisey Rika. The arrangement is by the college’s principal, Georgina Kingi. Bearing echoes of Jesus’s parable of the sower, this song is particularly appropriate for the season of Ordinary Time that we’re now in, during which the seeds that were planted in us in the first half of the Christian year germinate, grow, and bear fruit.

E te Atua kua ruia nei 
Ö purapura pai 
Hömai e koe he ngákau hou 
Kia tupu ake ai 

E lhu kaua e tukua 
Kia whakangaromia 
Me whakatupu ake ia 
Kia kitea ai ngá hua 

A má te Wairua Tapu rá 
Mátou e tiaki 
Kei hoki ki te mahi hé 
Ö mátou ngákau höu

Dear Lord, you have spread
Your seeds of goodness
Give us new hearts
So that these seeds may grow

Dear Lord, do not allow
These seeds to be lost
But rather let them grow
So that the results may be seen

May the Holy Spirit
Guide us
Lest our hearts should
Return to our evil ways

[source]

+++

NEW ALBUMS:

>> Message Songs by the Porter’s Gate: For this album, the Porter’s Gate Worship Project partnered with the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination at Western Theological Seminary to set to music excerpts from Peterson’s best-selling translation of the Bible, The Message. Included are adaptations of Psalms 5, 16, 27, and 121, Matthew 11:28–30, Luke 15, and John 1—by a range of songwriters. The album release this month coincided with the publication of The Message Anniversary Edition, available from NavPress.

>> Volume 10 (Ordinary Time) of The Soil and The Seed Project: This double album—which is completely free!—features twenty-four songs by musicians of faith under the direction of Seth Thomas Crissman, a Mennonite pastor, educator, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist from Harrisonburg, Virginia. Here’s one of the songs, “The Way Your Kingdom Comes” by Lindsey FitzGerald Stine, sung by her and her sister Rachel FitzGerald:

The music is one element of a larger project that also includes liturgies and newly commissioned artworks. Learn about the project’s free summer concert series on their Events page, which will feature contributors to the most recent album and other friends.