EXHIBITION: Mary Magdalene. Sin. Pray. Love., September 17, 2026–January 17, 2027, Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany: The first comprehensive art exhibition in the German-speaking world dedicated to Mary Magdalene, presented by the Städel Museum in collaboration with the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung, opened this month. It was heavily advertised throughout Frankfurt when I was there in August, and I regret that the timing of my visit didn’t coincide!
The poster image, The Challenge, one of over a hundred works on display, is an oil painting by Nieves González. It portrays Mary with her characteristic long, auburn-blond hair, dressed in an oversize red puffer jacket and holding a red skull.
Mary Magdalene is traditionally shown in red, a color representing her intense spiritual passion but also alluding to the legend of the first Easter egg. One version of the story goes that when Mary went to Rome to proclaim the Resurrection to Emperor Tiberius, a basket of hardboiled eggs in hand (she had brought them with her to Jesus’s tomb for sustenance), Tiberius scoffed and said that Jesus no more rose from the dead than those eggs she carried were red. Well, right then, the eggs changed color from their natural white.
I love the unexpected clothing choice in this painting. I bristle against a historical image type of Mary Magdalene, especially popular among sixteenth-century Italian aristocrats, that shows her only partially clothed, her breasts exposed, ostensibly to emphasize her stripping away of worldly vanity, and even her return to the innocence of Eden—but methinks the Renaissance and Baroque penchant for sensuality had more to do with this representation than did any kind of biblical or theological reasoning. González’s Mary does not bare her body for the titillation of viewers.
Nor is her gaze passive; it’s strong, assured, unashamed. “The challenge” of the title could be Mary’s defying her mischaracterization throughout history as a reformed prostitute—probably the number one thing your average person, whether Christian or non, most associates with her, but which comes from erroneously conflating her with other New Testament women. What the Bible tells us about Mary is that Christ delivered her from seven demons, after which she joined his movement, traveling with him and the other disciples and financially supporting his ministry, which suggests she was a woman of independent means; faithful in her devotion to Christ, she was present at his crucifixion and, two days later, was the first person to whom he appeared in his risen flesh, commissioning her to go and tell the others the news. Although church tradition presents her as the model penitent (which the skull symbolizes), we really don’t know what her former life looked like, nor her life after the events of the Gospels; only that Christ wrought a spiritual transformation in her, and that she boldly followed him. Her pose in The Challenge is one not of arrogance or smugness but of confidence, confidence in who she is, and in the Gardener who called her name.
Another challenge in Mary’s gaze could be for us to consider, if Christ chose her to be the first witness of his resurrection (an event of immense theological import) and ordained her to preach the same, why so many pockets of the church continue to restrict the ministry of women.
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ONLINE COURSE: Stories about the End with Dr. Mary McCampbell, October 13–December 8, 2026: Starting next month, my professor friend Mary McCampbell [previously] is teaching an online course on Tuesday evenings that will examine contemporary works of dystopian literature, film, and television. The reading/watching list includes novels by Don DeLillo, Douglas Coupland, Octavia Butler (in graphic novel adaptation), and Margaret Atwood; Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men; and a to-be-voted-on television series.
“Why is our culture so drawn to fantasies of death and destruction that often provide no ultimate redemption or regeneration? To begin exploring this question, we will analyze how dystopian narratives are (typically) the result of the modern and postmodern secularization of the concept of ‘apocalyptic.’ We will then examine contemporary works of literature, film, and television to investigate how these stories are told and what they reveal about the contemporary cultural landscape. Through close reading of cultural products, we will look at the relationship between dystopian narratives and the centrality of Western consumerism, the practice of religious belief, the experience of grief and loss, the threat of sinister environmental factors, and questions about the presence or absence of a human condition.”
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LIMITED SERIES: The Lord of the Flies (2026), dir. Marc Munden: Speaking of dystopian fiction, the recent BBC adaptation (bought by Netflix) of William Golding’s classic novel is phenomenal. The script, the acting, the cinematography, the score, the costuming—perfect. A dark story about thirty-some British schoolboys aged six to twelve who attempt self-governance when they find themselves stranded on a desert island, it explores democracy versus autocracy, vulnerability and violence, and the dangers of groupthink, probing the savage instincts humans tend to possess.
The book was written during the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation. It deliberately subverts the colonial narrative found in many books of the period that touted the “civilizing” authority of the British.
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KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN: Grief Songs, an album by the Porter’s Gate: Last year, a group of roughly sixty scholars, pastors, and musicians gathered to share personal stories of loss and, out of that, wrote songs “meant to be sung by congregations who are willing to sit, to wait, to watch, and to pray with those who grieve.” The Porter’s Gate [previously] has selected a handful of these to record onto an album, and although most of the work has been done, they need some additional funds to bring the project across the finish line. “May these songs give voice to what has been wordless, and may they help our communities become places where the brokenhearted can bring their whole selves and still find themselves held.”
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FILM: Space and Time (2024), dir. Keone and Mari Madrid: Keone and Mari Madrid [previously] are a Filipino American husband-wife duo of hip-hop choreographers, dancers, and directors. In 2023, they suffered a series of losses, one of which they interrogate and transfigure in this forty-three-minute dance film, which shows the couple traversing the landscape of grief after a miscarriage.
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PODCAST EPISODE: “Seeing God in Japan” with Roger Lowther, The Purpose of Beauty, July 31, 2025: Podcast host Anna Gardner Herren interviews organist Roger Lowther [previously], an American missionary to Japan (for over twenty years) and founder of Community Arts Tokyo, about the role of beauty in missions. They discuss the popularity of Bach in Japan, and how Bach has opened up in many Japanese people a curiosity about and receptivity to Christian truth (he has stories about his language teacher attending one of his concerts and having an emotional connection to how it elucidated hope; and about his conductor for the St Matthew Passion asking him to explain the significance of the text being sung, since he was the only Christian in the room!). They talk especially about the necessity of beauty to combat despair after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.
Lowther then goes on to recount stories from the ethnodoxology (“praise of the nations”) movement, which seeks to discerningly use indigenous art forms (musical, dramatic, visual, etc.) in Christian worship; he tells of the professional koto (traditional Japanese zither) player Chieko Ozawa (see this short film), who, when she became a Christian, initially thought she had to quit her instrument because of its association with Shintoism but soon realized it could be used for God’s glory.
