Tag: Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination

Roundup: Upcoming webinars and conferences

Victoria Emily Jones2 Comments

ONLINE LECTURES organized by the Centre for Marian Studies at St Mary’s University in Twickenham:

If you’d like to register for either of these (they’re free), email Catherine O’Brien at info@marianstudies.ac.uk. View additional online lecture offerings at https://www.marianstudies.ac.uk/post/research-seminar-schedule.

>> Annual Candlemas Lecture by Ayla Lepine, February 3, 2025, 7 p.m. GMT (2 p.m. ET): Rev. Dr. Ayla Lepine, who is the associate rector at St James’s Piccadilly in London and an art historian and theologian, “will explore two works of art featured in her forthcoming book, Women, Art, God. In the series entitled The Annunciation (A Study), Julia Margaret Cameron reimagined and reconfigured paintings by Renaissance artists including Perugino and Lippi. In her photography, blurred and hazy aspects of the image are suggestive of the Holy Spirit in this new technology.

“A century later, the American nun Sister Corita Kent produced a groundbreaking silkscreen print, The Juiciest Tomato of All. This artwork compared the Virgin Mary to a ripe fruit, with a title inspired by Del Monte tinned fruit and vegetable slogans from her local supermarket. By considering these two artworks by women from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a pair, new ways of encountering Mary in art history, theology, and prayer can emerge with unexpected resonance for the twenty-first century.”

Cameron, Julia Margaret_Annunciation
Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815–1879), After Perugino / The Annunciation, 1865. Albumen print from wet collodion glass negative, 19 1/2 × 15 in. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Kent, Corita_the juiciest tomato of all
Corita Kent (American, 1918–1986), the juiciest tomato of all, 1964. Serigraph, 29 3/4 × 36 in. © Estate of Corita Kent / Immaculate Heart Community.

>> “The Annunciation in Theology and Art: Shedding New Light on an Old Doctrine” by Tina Beattie, March 26, 2025, 3 p.m. GMT (10 a.m. ET): No details other than the title have been given about this lecture. But the speaker is a leading Marian theologian and writer whom I’ve been familiar with for some time, and an emerita professor of Catholic studies at the University of Roehampton. Her research is in the areas of gender, sexuality, and reproductive ethics; Catholic social teaching and women’s rights; theology and the visual arts, especially images of Mary; and the relationship between medieval mysticism, sacramental theology, and psychoanalytic theory.

+++

WEBINAR with Drew Jackson, Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination, February 4, 2025, 7 p.m. ET: A conversation on the intersection of poetry, ministry, and Christian imagination. Registration is free. “Drew Jackson is a poet, speaker, and public theologian. He is author of God Speaks Through Wombs: Poems on God’s Unexpected Coming and Touch the Earth: Poems on the Way. . . . Drew received his B.A. in Political Science from the University of Chicago and his M.A. in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. He currently works as the Managing Director of Mission Integration for the Center for Action and Contemplation, and lives in Brooklyn, NY, with his wife and daughters.”

Webinar with Drew Jackson

+++

CONFERENCES/SYMPOSIA:

>> Calvin Symposium on Worship, Calvin University, Grand Rapids, Michigan, February 5–7, 2025: “An ecumenical conference dedicated to worship and learning, bringing together people in a variety of roles in worship and leadership from across the country and around the world.”

>> Contemporary Art as/in Pilgrimage, Columbia University, New York, February 11, 2025: Organized by the Association of Scholars of Christianity in the History of Art, this one-day symposium “will explore such questions as: Are galleries, museums, art expos, and art installations the new ‘slow spaces’ for spiritual sustenance and transcendent experiences? How are temples, churches and other ‘religious’ sites transformed by artist installations intended to invoke deep spiritual encounter and healing? And how is the art of contemporary artists working in a diversity of media and practice seen through the lens of pilgrimage?”

The keynote speaker is Kathryn R. Barush, author of Imaging Pilgrimage: Art as Embodied Experience (Bloomsbury, 2021). She will be joined by eleven other presenters. Plus, Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt, author of Redeeming Vision: A Christian Guide to Looking at and Learning from Art, will lead attendees in the practice of intentional looking at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine.

Our Lady of Ferguson
Mark Doox (American, 1958–), Our Lady, Mother of Ferguson and All Those Killed by Gun Violence, 2016. Acrylic and gold leaf on wood, 48 × 36 in. Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones, 2022.
Bergmann, Meredith_September 11th
Meredith Bergmann (American, 1955–), September 11th: A Memorial, 2012. Bronze on pedestal of steel and glass, containing reinforced concrete and brick from the rubble of the World Trade Towers, 78 × 22 × 24 in. Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones, 2022.

>> Square Halo Conference, Trust Performing Arts Center, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, March 7–8, 2025: “The Square Halo conferences have offered times not only of fascinating and inspiring ideas in a high caliber of wide and varied presentations, but also of rich, meaningful interactions, dialogue, and (in a deep sense of this word) fellowship. Creativity, collaboration, and community . . . an apt description of what [takes] place” (Matthew Dickerson).

The keynote speaker is Diana Pavlac Glyer, who teaches literature, history, theology, and philosophy in an integrated Great Books curriculum at Azusa Pacific University, and the Saturday-night concert will feature Thomas Austin and Skye Peterson.

>> The Breath and the Clay, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, March 21–23, 2025: “This year we will explore how the light gets in through the fragments of our stories, our lives and our art. We are each built of broken pieces, a mosaic of joys and sorrows, of mundane and miraculous happenings. When we surrender the full spectrum of our human experience, even our pain, doubts and sorrows can heal into art. Through our workshops, keynote talks, immersive gallery and performances, we will explore various facets of the creative life and how everything from inspiration to the everyday, from family to vocation and community coalesce to reveal a hidden wholeness.”

Presenters include Sho Baraka, Vesper Stamper, Justin McRoberts, Cheryl Bridges Johns, Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt, and more.

>> Illuminate: Art and Faith, Southern Adventist University, Collegedale, Tennessee, March 31–April 1, 2025: “Author and theologian Frederick Buechner famously wrote, ‘Pay attention to the things that bring a tear to your eye or a lump in your throat because they are signs that the holy is drawing near.’ Paintings, poetry, music, and other creative mediums hold strong potential to do just that—to indirectly communicate powerful truths, many of which have eternal consequences. Are we open to what they’re telling us? Will we utilize these tools to share important stories (including The Story) with others? Join us for two rich days of education, inspiration, and community! . . .

“This year’s conference will include a variety of hands-on workshops (flash fiction, drawing, songwriting), as well as sessions exploring fascinating figures, including C. S. Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, Eugene Peterson, Kurt Vonnegut, Dorothy Sayers, Vincent van Gogh, Norman Rockwell, Ludwig van Beethoven, Duke Ellington, and many more.”

Among the session leaders and performers are art historian Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt (Redeeming Vision), writer Douglas McKelvey (Every Moment Holy), film and literature scholar Mary McCampbell (Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves), pastor Russ Ramsey (Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart; Rembrandt Is in the Wind), illustrator John Hendrix (The Mythmakers; Go and Do Likewise!), and singer-songwriter Andy Gullahorn.

>> Visible and Invisible: Surprising Encounters in Theology and the Arts (DITA 2025), Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, September 4–7, 2025: I’ll be attending this one! Organized by Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts. “How can the arts help us open up the very heart of the Christian faith, celebrated at the Council of Nicaea in 325, that Jesus Christ is ‘one in being’ with God? Featuring world-class academics, artists, musicians, and clergy from around the globe and a robust range of programming, DITA2025 is a four-day symposium at Duke University celebrating Nicaea and the myriad surprises the Creed holds in store for artists, academics, clergy, and parishioners today. . . .

“By pairing theologians with poets, clergy with novelists, dancers with liturgists, musicians with scholars, the symposium will generate a series of meetings rarely offered in academic and artistic settings. Including interactive keynotes, plenary presentations, seminar lectures, applied workshops, an evening concert, and more, DITA2025 is a unique opportunity to experience the arts and the academy in action.”

Leah Glenn
Dancer and choreographer Leah Glenn performs an original work, The Youngest of Nine, at DITA 2019.

Speakers include Rowan Williams, Chigozie Obioma, Natalie Carnes, Sandra McCracken, James K.A. Smith, Malcolm Guite, Amy Peeler, and Josh Rodriguez. Early-bird registration ends February 15.

Roundup: Pentecost-inspired harp duet, the Sacred Art of Reading, and more

Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

AVANT-GARDE CLASSICAL: Klang—Die 24 Stunden des Tages (Sound—The 24 Hours of the Day) is a cycle of chamber-music compositions by the avant-garde German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, which he worked on from 2004 until his death in 2007. (The intention was for there to be twenty-four pieces, but the cycle was unfinished at twenty-one.) The first two pieces in the cycle, on the themes of Ascension and Pentecost, were commissioned for the interdisciplinary Pause festival at Milan Cathedral by artache, a Milan-based nonprofit committed to showcasing contemporary artworks in public places of worship. The artistic director of artache at the time was Don Luigi Garbini, a priest at the church of San Marco in Milan and cofounding director of the artache initiative the Laboratorio di Musica Contemporanea al Servizio della Liturgia (Laboratory for Contemporary Music in the Service of the Liturgy).

>> No. 81: “KLANG, 1st Hour: Himmelfahrt (Ascension)” by Karlheinz Stockhausen, for organ or synthesizer, soprano, and tenor, 2004–5: This thirty-seven-minute piece premiered at Milan Cathedral on Ascension Day, May 5, 2005. The two hands of the organist almost always play in different, independent tempos of a chromatic time scale, while the soloists sing words or phrases associated with “ascension,” particularly the Ascension of Christ. According to the composer, “Asking a performer to break the barrier of time by playing simultaneously in different tempi is like submitting a man to physical disruption, allowing him to go in spirit form towards another world” (source). For musical analysis by Ed Chang, see here. The performance below is from the North American premiere at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts at Emory University in Atlanta on October 11, 2005, featuring organist Randall Harlow, soprano Teresa Hopkin, and tenor John Bigham.

>> No. 82: “KLANG, 2nd Hour: Freude (Joy)” by Karlheinz Stockhausen, for two harps and voice, 2005: This forty-minute piece premiered at Milan Cathedral on July 6, 2006. The text is taken from the medieval Pentecost hymn “Veni Creator Spiritus” [previously], which the harpists sing in spurts, “in alternation or sometimes together . . . , while plucking, picking, caressing, stroking, pinching, rubbing, striping, striking, pinking, jubilating,” as Stockhausen put it. In program notes dated February 15, 2006, he writes, “There is something unique about the adventure to combine two harps which are normally tuned in diatonic scales and to synthesise them into one large chromatic harp. . . . Pentecost unites what has been separated. My work FREUDE too.” For musical analysis by Ed Chang, see here. The performance below is from the Stockhausen Memorial Concert in Kürten, Germany, on December 16, 2017, featuring Marianne Smit and Miriam Overlach.

(As an interesting side note: The Beatles included Stockhausen’s face on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Their “A Day in the Life” and “Revolution 9” were influenced by his electronic music.)

+++

NEW DOCTORAL COHORT: The Sacred Art of Reading: The Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan, is offering a new, mostly remote, three-year DMin track called “The Sacred Art of Reading,” which begins this October, taught by Professor Chris E.W. Green. The program is centered on the reading of scripture—the Old Testament narrative books (Year 1), Old Testament poetry and wisdom literature (Year 2), and the Gospels and Apocalypse (Year 3)—alongside a number of additional primary texts, whose titles you can view on the website; authors include, among others, Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, Amy-Jill Levine, Daniel Berrigan, Robert Alter, Shusaku Endo, and of course Eugene Peterson! Participants get together in person for one week each semester (times six semesters) and are responsible for, in addition to the $17,280 tuition, travel and lodging costs. The application deadline is June 30, 2023. Applicants must hold an MDiv degree or its educational equivalent and have at least three years of ministry experience since completing the MDiv. Here’s a condensed program description:

The Sacred Art of Reading cohort will be dedicated to collaboration in “the forbidding discipline of spiritual reading,” confident that such an undertaking cultivates the loving attentiveness, prophetic discernment, and childlike openness to surprise that characterize what St. Paul calls the faith that works by love. . . . The cohort is designed to cultivate an alternative awareness, one shaped by the slow, painstaking work of collaborative interpretation. And to that end, the heart of the program is the reading of the Christian Scriptures. The aim will be both philosophical and devotional, critical and celebratory, mystical and pastoral. No one reading method will be stipulated, but students will be encouraged to find ways to honor the traditions of the communities in which they learned to argue, to muse, and to pray.

Besides Scripture, the cohort will engage a wide range of texts including poems, memoirs, essays, treatises, sermons, and stories old and new, familiar and strange, sacred and “worldly,” in part and in whole, not so much in order to “plunder the Egyptians” as to bear glad witness to the wonder that God is never left without a witness because all truth, truly received, trues.

This approach really wets my whistle! I don’t have a master’s degree, so I’m out, but I feel so energized by the reading list and wanted to share the opportunity with you all, as the program seems doable for those with full-time jobs. A virtual interest meeting is being held on June 1. Click here to view other doctor of ministry cohorts at Western.

+++

FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN: The Soil and The Seed Project: I’ve mentioned this project several times on the blog before, as I’m a big fan. A ministry of VMMissions (Virginia Mennonite Missions), The Soil and The Seed Project releases original music, art, and liturgies throughout the Christian year, especially suitable for families with littles. They launched in December 2021 and since then have put out seven collections, with their latest and largest yet—Vol. 7 // Ordinary Time—dropping this week. (Request a free download through their website, or stream the music through your favorite service.) Coinciding with this release, they have also launched a campaign to raise $27,000 by June 18 to cover the costs of recording, mixing, pressing, printing, shipping, etc., for future collections. Learn more in the five-minute video below, which features the new songs “In the Little Moments,” “Teach Me, O LORD,” and “Because of Jesus.”

The Soil and The Seed Project offers all their content for free, including physical CDs (as stock permits), and are committed to keeping it that way—which is why they need the support of donors. Donate to their campaign, and you can opt to receive stickers, notecards, and/or a T-shirt as a thank-you. Also note: they’ll be giving a concert at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 3, at the Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

+++

SONG: “Holy Spirit” by Victoria Williams: “Part front-porch soothsayer, part quirky bayou princess, and part eternal child, Victoria Williams writes songs of indescribable originality that embrace the earthly and the divine with wit, charm, and understated vision,” writes Josh Kun for Bomb magazine. The song “Holy Spirit” [read lyrics] is from her 1990 album Swing the Statue!. It opens with the familiar invocation from a Gullah spiritual: “Kum ba yah, my Lord” (which translates to “Come by here”). She seeks God’s presence and then, given a renewed sensitivity to it, identifies and celebrates its flow throughout her daily goings. She feels the Holy Spirit while building a raft with friends on the shores of Louisiana’s Lake Bistineau and riding a New York City subway beside a whistling stranger, as well as in graveyards and at bars and out under open night skies. The Spirit flows through all of life. I can’t find the song online anywhere other than in this YouTube fan video, which sets it to photos. [HT: Jonathan Evens]

+++

ARTWORK: Fire by Teresita Fernández: In the collection of SFMOMA, this ring of warm-colored silk yarn conveys something of the flickering quality of fire. At the link is a short video interview with the artist about the piece. Fernández says she is interested in the sensorial aspects of viewer engagement with art.

Fernandez, Teresita_Fire
Teresita Fernández (American, 1968–), Fire, 2005. Silk yarn, steel armature, and epoxy, 243.8 × 365.8 cm. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California.

Fire was a highlight of the 2013 exhibition Beyond Belief: 100 Years of the Spiritual in Modern Art, jointly organized by SFMOMA and the Contemporary Jewish Museum. Here’s a video of the Lick Wilmerding High School Vocal Ensemble singing “Famine Song” by VIDA around the installation that year, a song inspired by the basket weavers of Sudan, who persist in their craft during times of hardship, their hands working natural fibers into beautiful, colorful vessels. “Weave, my mother; weave, my child; weave your baskets of rushes wild . . .”