LOOK: Shine Forth Upon These Clouded Hills by Nathan Florence
Nathan Florence (American, 1972–), Shine Forth Upon These Clouded Hills. Oil on canvas, 30 × 40 in.
LISTEN: “Pave Every Road” by Caroline Cobb, on A Home and a Hunger: Songs of Kingdom Hope (2017)
Pave every road with repentance Bring the proud heart low Let the humble heart sing Break down all your walls, your defenses Swing wide your gates For the coming of the king
Lo, he has come to rebuild the ruins Lo, he has come, set them captives free I know he has come to bind up the broken It’s the year of his favor The year of Jubilee
People livin’ in the darkness Lift up your heads and see the sun I see a new day dawnin’ It brings good news for everyone
I see the sun risin’ I see the sun risin’ I see the sun risin’
One day we’ll all hear a trumpet He will return with reckoning I’ll follow my king into glory Who here is comin’ with me? Who here is comin’ with me? Who here is comin’ with me? Yeah!
I see the sun risin’ I see the sun risin’ I see the sun risin’
Get up, get ready Get up, get ready Get up, get ready For the king to come
This panting land hawks up roadblocks over ground hell-bent against the premise of a path. Desert of rock, not dunes. Hot wind rattling leaves of a distant, lone acacia tree, scraggly signpost pointing everyway into the craggy, cave- laden wilderness. Boulders big enough to cast a shadow one might shelter in, or try, in the sun-fried afternoon. The grade grows steep as the valleys deepen like the dark of death. Runnels of loosened smaller rocks where rain must once have rushed— rain, in such a place.
What wildness welcomes a road? What valley straightens its spine, what mountain stoops from its jeweled throne? But look: a path flat and straight through the jagged crags and ravines. A route between two backwaters— road enough for a man to walk beside a donkey, on which might ride a woman with child— from Nazareth away to Bethlehem. A way.
Brent Newsom is a poet from central Oklahoma. He is a recipient of the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award in poetry from the organization Poets & Writers and the Foley Poetry Prize from America magazine. He wrote the libretto for A Porcelain Doll, an opera based on the life of deaf-blind pioneer Laura Bridgman, and is the author of Love’s Labors (CavanKerry Press, 2015), which was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award in poetry. His poems have also appeared in the Southern Review, the Hopkins Review, Windhover, Relief, and other journals.
At the 2021 Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA) conference in Austin, Texas, I got to experience local artist John Patrick Cobb’s Ikon Chapel, a traveling, custom-built wooden structure housing twenty of Cobb’s egg tempera paintings depicting his friends, family, and neighbors as saints and prophets in our modern world. The young and the elderly, farmers, water well drillers, artists, teachers, nurses, Holy Cross brothers, custodians, the unhoused, people with disability or mental illness—these are among those he honors in paint and gold leaf.
Ikon Chapel (detail) by John Patrick Cobb, as installed at the “Transcend” CIVA biennial conference, November 4–6, 2021, St. David’s Episcopal Church, Austin, Texas. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.John Patrick Cobb (American, 1954–), Baptism by Water, 1999. Egg tempera and gold leaf on panel, 36 × 77 in. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.
Baptism by Water is, along with its companion piece, Baptism by Fire, the largest painting in the series, at over six feet long. It is a lakeside scene portraying John the Baptist—the long-haired, bleach-blonde guy at the far right—calling folks to repentance. Several men climb down the rocky shoreline to enter the cleansing waters and be raised to new life. The models are all associated in real life with water—surfers, plumbers, fishermen. And this is a local setting: Hippie Hollow on Lake Travis in Central Texas, a famous nude swimming hole.
Jesus, says Cobb, is the young man with the black hair and black trunks. Cobb deliberately made him indistinguishable from the others to emphasize his full humanity. He looks beyond John the Baptist, perhaps mentally preparing for the solitary forty-day fast in the desert he’s about to embark on.
In the wall text in the Ikon Chapel, Cobb describes the seated, shirted man in the foreground as reminiscent of the Gerasene demoniac (Mark 5:1–20):
The figure in the near ground, clothed, was a man who lived in the nook of the sea wall in Galveston and slept in the nearby graveyard at 61st Street. On the worst winter days I would bring him a coffee, and finally asked him one day if I could include him in my painting. He would sometimes drink himself into a frenzy and yell and scream at the cars in horrific anger. His leg had been broken and had healed in a precarious angle. I felt as though if there were anyone who deserved the peace and the Holy Spirit, it would be him.
At the bottom right, one of the figures twists away, rejecting John’s call. The model’s name is Jonah, so Cobb wanted to use him as a Jonah figure, resisting (at least initially) the divine plan.
In the background Adam and Eve are skinny-dipping.
Detail, John the BaptistDetail, Jesus (left)Detail with Eve and Adam in backgroundDetail of a local unhoused man with a leg impairment and alcoholism, for whom the artist wishes God’s peace
I was fortunate enough to get to know Cobb a bit over lunch one day while I was in Austin, and then later at an outdoor gathering he and his wife, Tina, hosted on their property. At the time, he was preparing for an extended trip to Italy to restore some Renaissance frescoes in a village chapel.
To learn more about this remarkable body of work, see the book Chapel Ikons: Biblical Meditations on Living the Spiritual Life in the Modern World (Treaty Oak, 2020), which reproduces all twenty-five paintings in full color with detailed commentaries by William Y. Penn Jr. The postscript says that Cobb and Penn are looking for a permanent institutional home with resources to preserve the chapel ikons for public viewing and study and that if interested, you should contact wpenn@me.com.
Refrain: A voice cries out in the desert Come prepare the way of the Lord God is coming, make straight for him a highway Come prepare the way of the Lord
Every valley shall be exalted Every mountain shall be made low Then shall the Word of God be known All the earth shall proclaim The glory of the Lord [Refrain]
Go upon the highest mountain Zion, herald of good news Lift your voice, cry out with all your soul Jerusalem, proclaim Glad tidings in the Lord [Refrain]
Have no fear, O cities of Judah Here is your God See, the Lord is coming now with power Our God is here The mighty and the strong [Refrain]
Like a shepherd, he feeds his flock He gathers the lambs See, he carries them gently in his arms So tenderly With a mother’s love [Refrain]
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. “A Voice Cries Out” is not on Spotify.
Art & Theology 