ARTICLES:
>> “Picturing Pregnancy in Early Modern Europe” by Rebecca Whiteley, Public Domain Review: Adapted from the book Birth Figures: Early Modern Prints and the Pregnant Body by Dr. Rebecca Whiteley (University of Chicago Press, 2023), this article explores how the womb and fetuses were depicted in medical book illustrations in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Pregnancy is such a potent image for Advent, as we await the birth of Jesus—who, fully God and fully human, dwelled for nine months in his mother Mary’s uterus before emerging from her birth canal!
>> “Rupy C. Tut’s Landscapes of Belonging” by Bridget Quinn, Hyperallergic: Bridget Quinn reviews Rupy C. Tut’s solo exhibition Out of Place that’s running at the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco through January 7. I love, love, love her art! It’s inspired by traditional Indian miniature painting and “is an effort to belong, to feel in place,” Tut says. Tut is a first-generation immigrant from India’s Punjab region who settled in California with her Sikh family at age twelve. Her Searching for Ancestors reminds me, visually but not thematically, of Jyoti Sahi’s Incarnation within the Anthill, and her Portrait of a Woman gives me some serious Marian vibes—as it did too the reviewer, who refers to this pregnant woman as “a kind of cross-cultural Madonna, reminiscent of the central mother figure, mandorla, and sun rays of Our Lady of Guadalupe so familiar across California via Mexico.”
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INSTAGRAM POST: “Birthing // Love” by Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt: Last Advent, art historian and educator Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt (@elissabrodt) reflected on Janine Antoni’s Hearth ceramics, part of the artist’s Pelvic Vessels series, and on the biological reality that during the act of childbirth, both the mother’s and baby’s bodies are changed by one another. What might this mean for Advent?
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DEVOTIONAL COLUMN: “Jesus’ Bloody Birth” by Lauren F. Winner, Christian Century: “Jesus . . . is bloody in many senses,” writes Rev. Dr. Lauren Winner [previously]. One of those senses is that he came into this world covered in his mother’s blood. Something is lost in the Christmas story when we evade the details of childbirth, Winner says. I was alerted to this short reflection of hers from 2015 by its inclusion in the new book A Radiant Birth: Advent Readings for a Bright Season.
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PODCAST EPISODE: “The Incarnation and Health Care as Ministry” with Denise Hess, Hear Me Now Podcast, December 24, 2020: “There is a long tradition of faith-based healthcare. On this Christmas episode—filled with music, poetry, and conversation—we ask: How has the belief that God became human in the flesh inspire care for people and their bodies? Rev. Denise Hess [MDiv, BCC-PCHAC] of the Supportive Care Coalition (now part of the Catholic Health Association) joins host Seán Collins in a reflection on the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation and the ways it has inspired centuries of healthcare. They talk about the example of Jesus-as-healer, the crucial role women have served in promoting healthcare ministries, and the place suffering plays in our understanding of caring for the whole person.”
The conversation is interspersed with poetry readings and performances of carols by a violin-guitar-bass trio. Hess mentions this wonderfully shocking sentence from Chris Abani’s poem “The New Religion”: “what was Christ if not God’s desire / to smell his own armpit?” She also shares Brian Wren’s beautiful hymn text “Good Is the Flesh.” The podcast is a production of the Providence Institute for Human Caring.
Art & Theology 