ART VIDEO: “Coventry Cathedral: A Journey Through Art” (HENI Talks), written and presented by James Fox: While my husband was presenting at a science conference at Oxford in 2013, I took a train to Coventry and spent the whole day at the city’s cathedral, wandering through its chapels and grounds, sitting in front of its various artworks as the light changed, praying, and even talking with a few locals, including one man who had lived in Coventry since before its bombing in World War II. That bombing destroyed the original St. Michael’s from the fourteenth century, but when the cathedral was rebuilt after the war, it provided the occasion for new commissions from modern architects and artists. Here’s a wonderful video introduction to the history, art, and design of Coventry Cathedral:
In it the art historian and BAFTA-nominated broadcaster Dr. James Fox explores some of the cathedral’s modernist masterpieces: St. Michael’s Victory over the Devil by Jacob Epstein; the West Screen by John Hutton; the Tablets of the Word by Ralph Beyer; the stained glass windows in the nave by Lawrence Lee, Keith New, and Geoffrey Clarke; the lectern eagle by Elisabeth Frink; the high-altar cross of nails by Geoffrey Clarke; the monumental tapestry Christ in Glory in the Tetramorph by Graham Sutherland (which I wrote about for ArtWay); Angel of Agony by Steven Sykes; the Crown of Thorns by Geoffrey Clarke; the Chapel of Unity floor mosaics by Einar Forseth; and the Baptistery Window by John Piper. The latter Fox calls the pinnacle of the entire complex, and I agree—it’s extraordinary. Explore more at www.coventrycathedral.org.uk.
Coventry Cathedral in the West Midlands, England. Photo: David Iliff (CC BY-SA 3.0).Detail of the large glass “west” screen at Coventry Cathedral, designed and hand-engraved by John Hutton, 1962. This view looks out over the ruins of the Old Cathedral. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.
SONG: “See What a Morning (Resurrection Hymn)” by Stuart Townend and Keith Getty, sung by the Coventry Cathedral choirs and congregation: Although Coventry Cathedral attracts tourists, it’s also an active church, home to a regular worshipping community! Here’s a video of the beginning of the entrance rite on Easter Day 2012, a procession carried out to the 2003 hymn “See What a Morning.” I appreciate the versatility of Stuart Townend and the Gettys’ hymns, which tend to work equally well if led by a contemporary worship band or a traditional choir with piano/organ accompaniment. I’m used to hearing their hymns sung in low-church contexts (“low church” refers to Christian traditions, such as evangelicalism, that place less emphasis on ritual and sacrament, as opposed to “high church”), so it was a delight to see one used as part of the Anglican liturgy and in such a majestic space!
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ARTICLE: “La Scala concert features violins that inmates made from battered migrant boats” by Colleen Barry, AP News, February 13, 2024: “The violins, violas and cellos played by the Orchestra of the Sea in its debut performance at Milan’s famed Teatro alla Scala carry with them tales of desperation and redemption. The wood that was bent, chiseled and gouged to form the instruments was recovered from dilapidated smugglers’ boats that brought migrants to Italy’s shores; the luthiers who created them are inmates in Italy’s largest prison. The project, dubbed Metamorphosis, focuses on transforming what otherwise might be discarded into something of value to society: rotten wood into fine instruments, inmates into craftsmen, all under the principle of rehabilitation . . .” This is a beautiful story of repurposing, of new life—for weathered wood that carried families out of danger zones, and for men who have been convicted of crimes but who seek to engage their hands and hearts in creative projects.
February 9, 2024: A violin made from the wood of wrecked migrants’ boats lies in the instrument workshop at Opera maximum-security prison outside Milan. Photo: Antonio Calanni / Associated Press.Two members of the Orchestra of the Sea play cellos made by inmates from reclaimed wood at the orchestra’s debut performance in Milan on February 12, 2024. Photo: Antonio Calanni / Associated Press.
>> Calvin Symposium on Worship, February 7–9, 2024, Calvin University, Grand Rapids, MI: I’ve promoted this event in years past—see, e.g., here and here—and am excited to be attending again this year! I’ll be coleading a breakout session with Joel Littlepage and Ashley Williams about our work at the Daily Prayer Project, curating textual, visual, and musical resources from across time and place to encourage a life of prayer that reflects the church’s beautiful diversity. There are plenty of other sessions being offered as well; a few that stand out to me are “Blues: The Art of Lament” with Ruth Naomi Floyd (she’s also leading a Jazz Vespers service), “Music, Architecture, and the Arts: Early Christian Worship Practices” with Vince Bantu [previously], and “The First Nations Version New Testament and Its Impact on Worship” with Terry Wildman. This is in addition to what is probably my favorite part: the multiple worship services, led by liturgists, preachers, and musicians from different denominations and cultural backgrounds. I love my local church community, but I also love worshipping with folks from outside it—a reminder that the church is far broader than what I’m used to on a weekly basis.
>> “Poetry and Theology: 1800–Present,” February 22–24, 2024, Duke University, Durham, NC: Supported in part by Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts, next month Duke is hosting a poetry symposium that’s free and open to the public! The speakers are Lisa Russ Spaar, Judith Wolfe, Toby Martinez de las Rivas, Thomas Pfau, Kevin Hart, Anne M. Carpenter, Ian Cooper, Anthony Domestico, Luke Fischer, Dante Micheaux, Łukasz Tischner, and Bernadette Waterman Ward. Papers are on the poetry of Hopkins, Eliot, Rilke, Miłosz, and more.
>> The Breath and the Clay, March 22–24, 2024, Awake Church, Winston-Salem, NC: Organized by Stephen Roach and friends, this annual creative arts gathering aims to foster community and connection around the pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness, providing opportunities for immersive encounters and kindling for the imagination. There will be main-room sessions, workshops, a juried art exhibition (entry deadline: February 16), a poetry slam and songwriters’ round, a panel discussion on reconciling artists and the church, concerts, a dance performance, a short film screening, and more. Musical artists include Victory Boyd, John Mark McMillan, Young Oceans, and Lowland Hum, and among the keynote speakers are Rachel Marie Kang, Mary McCampbell, Junius Johnson, Vesper Stamper, and Justin McRoberts. I appreciate the bringing together of various artistic disciplines and the emphasis on practice. For tickets, there are both virtual ($99) and in-person ($299) options.
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NEW SONG: “MLK Blessing” by the Porter’s Gate: Written by Paul Zach and IAMSON (Orlando Palmer) and just released for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, this song is based on a benediction that MLK prayed, a variant of the ancient Jewish benediction known as the Birkat Kohahim or Aaronic blessing (Num. 6:24–26). It’s sung by Liz Vice and Paul Zach.
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PAST LECTURE:“Rupture as Invitation: Generosity and Contemporary Art” by Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt: I’ve mentioned Elissa several times on the blog—I find her work so illuminating—and was grateful to have her in town last fall to deliver a lecture for the Eliot Society. “Contemporary art can often be unexpected or downright unsettling in its form and subject matter. But what if we reframed our discomfort as an invitation to enter rather than an unbridgeable divide? In this lecture from November 11, 2023, Dr. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt demonstrates how approaching contemporary art with humility, love, and courage can be a powerful means of growing in love for our neighbors.”
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UPCOMING EVENT: “Why Should Christians Care About Abstract Art?” with Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt and Jonathan Anderson, February 22, 2024, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary–Charlotte, NC: Hosted by the Leighton Ford Initiative for Art, Theology, and Gospel Witness, this evening will consist of an opening of the exhibition Alfred Manessier: Composer in Colors (on display through April 30) and dessert reception, lectures by Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt and Jonathan Anderson, and a Q&A. “For some people of faith, abstract art is difficult to engage because the meaning remains unclear, and the form can appear chaotic or uncompelling. For others, abstract art is an invitation to engage the whole person, contemplate spiritual realities, and encounter God in transformative ways. If abstract art can facilitate the latter, then Christians have a unique opportunity to learn and care about abstract art for theological, practical, missional, and relational reasons. This event is a unique opportunity to experience abstract art, learn about abstract art, and have formative interaction with one another on this topic.” The cost is just $10, and there is an online option.
Alfred Manessier (French, 1911–1993), La montée au Calvaire (Mount Calvary), from the Suite de Pâques (Easter Series), 1978. Chromolithograph on Arches paper, 22 × 29 9/10 in. (56 × 76 cm). Edition of 99.
The third Sunday of Advent is known as Gaudete Sunday, gaudete (pronounced GOW-deh-tay) (Latin for “rejoice”) being the first word of the introit of the day’s Mass, taken from Philippians 4:4–6 and Psalm 85:1:
Gaudete in Domino semper íterum díco, gaudéte: modéstia véstra nóta sit ómnibus homínibus: Dóminus prope est. Nihil sollíciti sítis: sed in ómni oratióne petitiónes véstrae innotéscant apud Déum. Benedixísti, Dómine, térram túam: avertísti captivitátem Jácob.
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice. Let your forbearance be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious over anything; but in all manner of prayer, let your requests be made known unto God. Lord, you have blessed your land; you have put an end to Jacob’s captivity.
It is customary for priests to swap out their purple vestments for pink today, and for those who use an Advent wreath to light not a purple candle but a pink one. Some churches favor a spare aesthetic in their sanctuaries for the first two weeks of Advent but break out the flowers for this the third. The approximate halfway point of the penitential Advent season, Gaudete Sunday is a special time to rejoice in the nearness of God’s coming as well as God’s presence with us here even now in the waiting, and to receive a foretaste of the bigger celebration to come on Christmas Day.
Here are ten songs for you to enjoy this Gaudete Sunday. If you’d rather listen to them as a YouTube playlist, click here.
The Hour of Lauds: Visitation by Jan Richardson [for sale]
1. “Songs of Joy” by Garrison Doles, written late 1990s, on A Songmaker’s Christmas, 2012: “Songs of joy we hopefully sing, expanding our spirits, the season to know . . .” So opens this song by the late singer-songwriter Garrison Doles (d. 2013) [previously]. In 2009 his wife, the artist Jan Richardson, created a video combining the song with five of the seven collages from her Advent Hours cycle (which can be purchased as reproductions). Read the lyrics and songwriter’s statement here.
2. “My Soul Doth Magnify the Lord” by O’Landa Draper and the Associates, on Live…A Celebration of Praise, 1994: A trailblazing gospel choir director, O’Landa Draper was one of the top gospel artists of the nineties. This song of his is based on the Magnificat, the praise song Mary sings in the company of her cousin Elizabeth following the conception of Christ (see Luke 1).
3. “El burrito de Belén” (The Little Donkey of Bethlehem) by Hugo Cesar Blanco, 1972, performed by the band Matute, 2020: This is a Venezuelan carol about a person riding their donkey, with hurried excitement, from the sabanero (savanna) to Bethlehem to see the newborn Christ. Read the lyrics and translation here.
4. “Ecce mundi gaudium” (Behold the Joy of the World), England, 13th century, arranged and performed by the Mediæval Bæbes on Worldes Blysse, 1998: Written in Latin, this thirteenth-century carol is about the Virgin giving birth to the Son, our joy—announced to the shepherds by an angel and to the magi by a star. Despite the upbeat tempo throughout, the last two verses are about Herod’s raging and the Massacre of the Innocents. The soloist is Katharine Blake, the founder and musical director of Mediæval Bæbes. Read the original lyrics here, clicking on individual lines for the English translation.
6. “Repeat the Sounding Joy,”a fragment from “Joy to the World” arranged by Craig Courtney, performed by the Capital University Chapel Choir, 2019: A super-fun, one-minute choral work.
7. “Now Let Us Sing,” traditional, adapt. John L. Bell, 1994, performed by Katarina Ridderstedt, 2015: Katarina Ridderstedt (née Lundberg) is a rhythm teacher, musician, cantor, and choir director from Gotland, Sweden, who records music under the name Musikat. This video of hers introduced me to a charming little quatrain whose origins I don’t know (it’s credited as “Traditional”), but this version comes from Scotland’s Iona Community [previously]: “Now let us sing with joy and mirth, / praising the one who gave us birth. / Let every voice rise and attend / to God whose love shall never end.”
8. “Brother” by Jorge Ben Jor, on A Tábua de Esmeralda, 1974: Known by the stage name Jorge Ben or (since the 1980s) Jorge Ben Jor, Jorge Duílio Lima Menezes (b. 1939) is a Brazilian singer-songwriter and musician whose characteristic style fuses elements of samba, funk, rock, and bossa nova. In this song he enjoins us to prepare a joyful path for the coming Christ—who is both Lord and friend—with love, flowers, and music.
9. “Alleluia, He Is Coming (I Looked Up)” by Martha E. Butler, 1979: This song is sometimes used in church services for Palm Sunday or Easter, but I think it makes a fitting Advent song as well—especially with the newer last verse that is sometimes used, as in the first video below. “Alleluia, he [Christ] is coming! Alleluia, he is here,” the refrain proclaims. Read about the inspiration behind the song, in the words of the songwriter, here. Allow me to sneak in two different performances. The first is by Donna Rutledge, Becky Buller, and Todd Green of First Baptist Church of Manchester, Tennessee, from 2020; theirs is a lovely rendition with strong vocals and a poignant violin part, but I do prefer a brisker pace (listening to the video at a playback speed of 1.25 is perfect, in my estimation):
The second is by the South African group Worship House, from their 2016 album Project 5 (Live in Johannesburg):
10. “Joy Will Come” by Paul Zach: The refrain of this song by Paul Zach of Virginia is based on Psalm 30:5b: “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” I also hear echoes of Psalms 18 and 121 throughout. The song is a reminder that through the dark nights we experience, we have hope; we have a Savior who will not abandon us.
Today, June 4, is Trinity Sunday! Here’s a handful of art and music items on the topic.
VISUAL MEDITATION: “The Wheeling Playfulness of the Trinity” by Victoria Emily Jones: The Rothschild Canticles [previously] from ca. 1300 Flanders contains some of the most inventive and delightful artistic renderings of the Trinity that I’ve ever seen. I key in on four of them in today’s visual meditation for ArtWay.
Beinecke MS 404, fol. 94r
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MUSICAL COMMENTARY: “Theology in Sound and Motion: Perichoresis, for Brass Quintet” by Delvyn Case:Delvyn Case provides musical and theological commentary on his brass quintet composition “Perichoresis” (2006), inspired by the divine dance of the Trinity. “Its overall mood is joyous, an ecstatic whirling-about in which all three members become lost in the ecstasy of divine fellowship,” he writes. “At the exact moment of the dance when one member moves, the other fills in the spot left vacant.” “Perichoresis” premiered by Boston’s Triton Brass and appears on Case’s 2018 album Strange Energy. About this piece, Bible scholar and theologian Walter Brueggemann said, “I . . . have pondered ‘perichoresis’ for a long time. This is the finest exposition of that thick idea that I have encountered.”
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SONGS:
>> “Trinity Song” by Paul Zach: Performed in 2021 by Solomon Dorsey with Liz Vice and Madison Cunningham, this song by Paul Zach evolved into “God of Grace and Mystery” for The Porter’s Gate’s 2022 album Climate Vigil Songs. This earlier iteration has a Trinitarian focus that’s just lovely. “God of all eternity / Father, Spirit, and the Son / Ever-loving Three-in-One / O divine community / . . . / Calling us to join your dance . . .”
>> “One-Two-Three” by the Chosen Gospel Singers: This song was recorded in Los Angeles for Specialty Records and released as a single in 1952, with singers J. B. Randall (bass), E. J. Brumfield (tenor), George Butler (tenor), Fred Sims (tenor), and Oscar Cook (baritone). It opens with a repetition of the lines “One, two, three / One-in-Three and the Trinity.” The refrain is:
One for the Father Two for the Son Three for the Holy Ghost All made of one
The song is largely eschatological. The first verse is about John the Revelator’s vision of the New Jerusalem descending, among other wonders; it ascribes a vision of the Trinity to John, even though that is not explicit as such in either John’s Gospel or the Apocalypse (but see “The Trinity in the Book of Revelation” by Edwin Reynolds). The second verse anticipates our singing and praising the Triune God in heaven, dressed in our brand-new robes. It also mentions David and Goliath, and I’m honestly not sure how that relates. But with gospel songs, floating lyrics are common, taken from one song and spliced into another, some more coherent than others in their new context.
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ESSAY: “The Hospitality of Abraham in the Work of Julia Stankova, Painter of Bulgarian Icons” by François Bœspflug: The first half of this peer-reviewed article introduces readers to the Bulgarian artist Julia Stankova, rehearsing her biography and examining her relationship to the icons tradition. The second half explores twelve of her paintings on the subject of the three angelic visitors to Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 18, whom the narrator suggests are a manifestation of God (“The LORD appeared to Abraham at the oaks of Mamre . . .”); because of the number of visitors, many Christians interpret this passage as revealing something of God’s triune nature, and for this reason traditional icons of the story are often titled The Trinity.
Julia Stankova (Bulgarian, 1954–), The Hospitality of Abraham, 2004. Tempera on primed wooden panel and lacquer technique, 46 × 41 cm.
Since the publication of this article in 2019, Stankova has made at least three more paintings on the subject, all of which foreground Sarah and are titled Sarah’s Smile. She has just heard the angels announce that she will conceive a son in her old age.
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POEM: “After Rublev’s Trinity”by Carrie Purcell Kahler: Published in Image no. 99 (Winter 2018), p. 21, this ekphrastic poem by Carrie Purcell Kahler interprets the famous fifteenth-century Trinity icon by Andrei Rublev. Sometimes referred to as “the hospitality of Abraham,” this biblical episode, as the iconographers interpret it, is really about the hospitality of God, who extends a hand to humanity, ever inviting us to sit at his table.
Andrei Rublev (Russian, 1360–ca. 1430), The Trinity, ca. 1411. Tempera on wood, 141.5 × 114 cm. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
A new choral setting of this poem by Garrett John Law is premiering today at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Covina, California, where Law serves as music director and organist. I believe it can be heard on the 10:30 a.m. PT worship service livestream on the church’s YouTube channel, but I’m not sure whether the performance will be archived online for later viewing. (Update, 6/12/23: Here it is! Sung by Holy Trinity’s seven-person choir.)
Gracie Morbitzer (American, 1997–), Madonna and Child, 2018. Acrylic on repurposed wood, 14 × 12 in. Private collection.
Gracie Morbitzer is a Catholic artist from Columbus, Ohio, who paints biblical and extrabiblical saints as modern, everyday people in a range of skin tones, forgoing the hieratic style of traditional icons in favor of a more relatable, this-worldly look that enables the individuals’ distinctive personalities to shine through. She uses discarded or thrifted pieces of wood as her substrate, welcoming cracks and imperfections as only further reiterating how the extraordinary shines through the ordinary.
In her Madonna and Child, Mary props up her newborn on her knees, basking in her new role as mother. She wears frayed jeans, a loose blouse, gold hoop earrings, and a nose stud. On her wrist is a henna tattoo of her Immaculate Heart—a burning, bloodied heart pierced with a sword and banded with roses, representing the intensity and purity of her love and the suffering that Simeon prophesies.
Jesus, wrapped in a starry blanket and donning a cruciform halo, playfully touches Mom’s nose, crinkling his face as he giggles with delight.
The yellow acrylic background recalls the gold leafing of icons, used to suggest the transfiguring light of God. Morbitzer also uses the traditional Greek abbreviations for the Mother of God (MP OY) and Jesus Christ (IC XC).
LISTEN: “Mary’s Lullaby (Black Haired Boy)” | Words by Kate Bluett | Music by Paul Zach | Sung by Liz Vice on Advent Songs by The Porter’s Gate (2021)
Oh, black-haired boy, your eyes are dark as midnight lit by shining stars and bright as love that filled my heart when first I looked at you. Your skin is brown as pilgrim roads, laid straight through fragrant olive woods, as brown as mine, and I’m in awe each time I look at you.
You made the ox and lamb, my love, and shaped the wings of turtledoves. You wrote the hidden secrets of the world I’ll show to you. Within my body you took form and wailed aloud when you were born— the moment that my heart was torn with love I’ll show to you.
You wove these wonders through the earth; you made them all and gave them worth, and now you join them in your birth, and I’ll give them to you. I’ll show you skies filled up with stars and teach you words for light and dark, for all the wondrous things there are: I’ll give them all to you.
I’ll hold you closely as I can and watch you grow into a man. As long as I can hold your hand, I’ll walk the world with you. And you’ll lead me to God’s own heart, where all these wonders have their start. But here within the stable dark, I’ll be the world for you.
Since the Middle Ages, Christians have written lullabies in the voice of Mary, imagining her rocking her infant son to sleep, sharing with him her most tender feelings and wishes. This contemporary one by frequent songwriting collaborators Kate Bluett and Paul Zach—so poignantly sung by Liz Vice—is among my favorites.
In the first stanza Mary dotes poetically on Jesus’s features—his eyes dark and bright as star-studded midnight skies, his skin brown as the footpaths to Zion. In the remaining stanzas she marvels at how the Creator of the universe lies as a babe in her arms, and how she will get to experience its many wonders with him at her side, discover its secrets together. Jesus made the world in which she lives and moves and has her being, but now, while he is small, vulnerable, and dependent, she’ll be a whole world to him, as mothers are to their children.
SPOTIFY PLAYLIST: October 2022 by Victoria Emily Jones: This month’s thirty-track assortment includes the jaunty “Now I’m on My Way” by Howard Smith and Frederick D. Fuller, performed by the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir under the direction of Carol Cymbala, and the recently released “Good Tree” by the Hillbilly Thomists, a bluegrass band of Dominican friars.
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GOSPEL PERFORMANCE: “I’ve Got the Joy / It Is Summertime in My Heart / Give Me Oil in My Lamp” and “Do Lord” by The Four Girls: Did you know that Hollywood Golden Age actress Jane Russell was part of a traveling gospel music quartet, The Four Girls? In 1954, a year after starring with Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, she sang this medley on an Easter Sunday broadcast alongside fellow group members Connie Haines, Beryl Davis, and Rhonda Fleming (replacing Della Russell), who were Baptist, Episcopalian, and Mormon, respectively. Quite the interdenominational group! All four were active in the Hollywood Christian Group, founded in 1947 by Henrietta Mears.
That choreo, haha! And boy are they aggressive in their evangelism/catechesis of that little girl in the last number!
The Four Girls grew out of an impromptu performance at a fundraising event for St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Los Angeles in fall 1953. A representative of Coral Records was in the audience, and he signed the women immediately. Their recording of the spiritual “Do Lord” sold over 2 million copies.
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I get a kick out of Jack Black’s hammy character performances, especially the ones that involve singing. In each of the last two movies I saw him in, he plays a strangely likeable Christian criminal based on a real-life person.
In the dark comedy Bernie (2011) by Richard Linklater, Black plays Bernie Tiede, a small-town Texas mortician who befriends a wealthy widow but, when the emotional toll of her possessiveness and persistent nagging becomes too much, ends up killing her. The opening credit sequence (which comes after a scene of Bernie teaching a class, with great tenderness, on how to prepare a deceased body for viewing) shows him driving in his Lincoln Town Car, jamming to the Florida Boys’ “Love Lifted Me” on the radio. Millennium Entertainment has released a singalong version on YouTube, featuring a take from the movie with added lyrics and a bouncing Jack Black head!
Six years after this Golden Globe–nominated performance, Black starred in The Polka King (2017) as Polish American polka legend Jan Lewan, who was imprisoned in 2004 for running a Ponzi scheme. Although he’s a con artist, the movie portrays him as sympathetic—bright-eyed, kind, gentle—and devoutly Catholic. (Yes, he really did meet the pope!) The end credits feature Black as Lewan singing “Thank You So Much, Jesus,” written by Stephen Kaminski, Maya Forbes, and Wallace Wolodarsky for the movie. The repeated “dziekuje” is Polish for “thank you.” Enjoy the accent.
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SONG: “Morning Star Rise” by Josh White: Josh White is a singer-songwriter, the founding pastor of Door of Hope church in Portland, Oregon, and cofounder, with Evan Way, of Deeper Well Records. In the early 2010s he formed the neo-gospel collective The Followers, and encouraged one of his parishioners, Liz Vice, to get involved as a vocalist. She is featured on Deeper Well’s first record, Wounded Healer (2012), including on the song “Morning Star Rise”—performed live in 2012 in the video below, with White on lead. (Vice is on the left; Holly Ann is on the right.)
White recognized Vice’s musical talent and wrote a batch of songs for her to record on her own, which became her debut solo album, There’s a Light (2015)—an immense hit. Yay for pastors who notice and nurture the gifts of their people!
As the church continues in this fifty-day season of Eastertide to celebrate the resurrection of Christ, here are some songs I’ve come across for the occasion and really enjoyed. A few are brand-new, while others are new performances.
Good Shepherd New York, a church in Manhattan, has a phenomenal team of in-house musicians and collaborators from coast to coast. They provide music for weekly digital worship services as well as release recordings under the name Good Shepherd Collective. Check out their Easter service from April 4! The songs are listed below.
MEDLEY: “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” by Charles Wesley / “Celebrate Jesus” by Gary Oliver (1:35)
The GSC has posted “Here Comes the Sun” as a standalone video on Instagram. It features Brennan Smiley on lead vocals and acoustic guitar; Liz Vice on harmonizing vocals; Charles Jones on Hammond organ; John Arndt on piano; Jesse Chandler on flute, clarinet, and saxophone; Joseph M on electric guitar; Tyler Chester on bass guitar; and McKenzie Smith on drums. The art and stop-motion animation are by Boston-based artist Soyoung L Kim.
Last year the Fundación la Caixa in Barcelona launched project #YoCanto Aleluya, soliciting professional and amateur singers alike throughout Spain and Portugal to be part of a “virtual choir,” a phenomenon that has exploded since the pandemic has made live musical concerts a health risk. Participants were asked to submit a video of themselves singing Handel’s famous “Hallelujah” chorus. Igor Cortadellas of Igor Studio then developed a concept for digitally merging all 352 submissions by projecting them on the interior architecture of Barcelona’s Basilica of Santa Maria del Mar (or overlaying them in postproduction?), and he directed a small team to execute this vision. What a feat! The final video was released a few months ago at Christmastime.
“Hallelujah” concludes part 2 of 3 of the oratorio, which covers Christ’s passion and death, resurrection, ascension, and the first spreading of the gospel. The words of the chorus are taken from Revelation 19:6, 11:15, and 19:16. For another blog post featuring an excerpt from Handel’s Messiah, see the Artful Devotion “Worthy Is the Lamb.”
“Keep the Feast (Pascha Nostrum)” by Ryan Flanigan: For this new song, Ryan Flanigan of Liturgical Folk adapted the words of the Pascha Nostrum (“Our Passover”), a traditional Christian hymn for Eastertide that, after the Reformation, was preserved in English in the Book of Common Prayer. It is based on 1 Corinthians 5:7–8, Romans 6:9–11, and 1 Corinthians 15:20–22. Flanigan wrote a fun new melody for it, which he demos here.
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“Zinda Yeshua (Jesus Is Alive)” by Blesson Varghese and James Bovas: This Hindi-language Easter song is from Grace Ahmedabad, an Assemblies of God church in the Indian state of Gujarat. James Bovas sings lead, with Priscilla Mozhumannil on supporting vocals. See the YouTube description for a full list of credits. [HT: Global Christian Worship]
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“Judah’s Lion” | Words by Fulbert of Chartres, ca. 975–1028, and Rick Barnes, 2016 | Music by Rick Barnes, 2016 | Performed by Covenant Presbyterian Virtual Choir and Orchestra, Birmingham, Alabama, 2021
Though I grew up in the church, for a long time I was ignorant of the vibrant threads of lament and justice that run throughout scripture. I imbibed the message that good Christians never complain or get angry or question God or call him to account, that “rejoicing always” means always putting on a happy face (dwelling in sadness was tantamount to distrust), and that social justice is a “liberal agenda” and a distraction from the gospel. As my faith has matured and my engagement with the scriptures has deepened, my eyes have been opened to the embeddedness of justice in the biblical narrative, and how any lack of justice is cause for lament.
Tim Keller’s book Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just (2012) was instrumental in helping me see how social justice is an expression of God’s own heart and an important part of the church’s mission, not tangential to the gospel but an extension of it. My earlier conception of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, was so impoverished, as I had reduced it down to nothing more than a private transaction between me and God regarding the eternal destination of my soul. As I began to see, through reading scripture, that God cares about this world, and he cares about people’s souls and bodies, I came to realize how expansive the gospel really is, with real implications for the here and now. We may be in right relationship with God, or think we are, but are we in right relationship with our neighbors and, I would add, with the rest of God’s creation? That is, do we live justly, as God commands, which includes supporting policies that promote, as best as possible, the flourishing of all, not just ourselves or others like us?
Keller shows how the Christianese terms “sin” and “righteousness” have to do not only with personal morality but also with systems, and how “justice” is more multifaceted than merely “punishment.” Punishing wrongdoers and reestablishing rights is one type of justice, called rectifying (or retributive) justice, or mishpat in Hebrew. But primary justice (aka distributive justice) is making sure goods and opportunities are more equitably distributed in society. It’s proactive. “Primary justice, or tzadeqah, is behavior that, if it was prevalent in the world, would render rectifying justice unnecessary, because everyone would be living in right relationship to everyone else” (11). Keller says that when these two Hebrew words appear together in the Bible, the best translation of the compound is “social justice.” So, for example, when Psalm 33:5 says, “He loveth righteousness [tzadeqah] and judgment [mishpat],” perhaps a better modern translation would be “The LORD loves social justice.”
The truncated “ticket to heaven,” “me and Jesus” understanding of salvation shows up in countless Christian worship songs, which form, or malform, our imaginations. I’m not at all dismissing the need for personal salvation (that is a critical component of the gospel!), or suggesting that we ought not to be looking toward eternity. What I am saying is that our relationship with Jesus, including our transformative experience of his love and grace, should have a profound impact on how we relate to and advocate for our neighbors, and our conception of heaven should be as huge and as glorious as the Bible alludes to (the entire world renewed and in harmony under the headship of Christ)—and we should start living into that vision NOW, even as we await Christ’s return. I often wonder whether, if there had been more biblical justice–oriented songs circulating and in church use during my upbringing, my deep hurt over the brokenness of the world and thus my sense of social responsibility as a Christian would have developed sooner.
Founded in 2017 by Isaac and Megan Wardell, The Porter’s Gate is a music collective whose mission is to be a “porter” for the Christian church—one who looks beyond church doors for guests to welcome. Their first album, Work Songs (2017), explores the concept of vocation in both the public and private spheres. That was followed up by Neighbor Songs (2019), centered on the communal aspect of Christian living and of God’s future, and the embodied love at the heart of the gospel.
And now, released this month, are two companion albums: Lament Songs and Justice Songs. Recorded by a diverse group of musicians in July 2020 on a farm in Virginia, the albums interweave fragments from the Psalms with biblical prophecies and apocalypses, blessings, Gospel stories, and protest chants, crafting a robust kingdom theology that promotes constructive engagement with contemporary issues and a looking toward the reconciliation of all things in Christ. “We fight for the victories we know You will win” (a lyric from “Justicia”) is a good encapsulation.
Political corruption, police brutality, racism, mass incarceration, sexual violence, economic exploitation, and war are all referenced, either implicitly or explicitly, as forms of oppression that need to be toppled, as they are an affront to God, marring his image.
Full of heartbreak and hope, the songs are shepherding me out of my tendency toward cynicism and helping me recapture the beauty of God’s vision for the world. They’re saturated in biblical language. An antidote to the all-too-common escapism theology present in some Christian music, they catalyze the church to weep with those who are weeping (Rom. 12:15), to bear the burdens of others (Gal. 6:2), and to participate in God’s work of renewal in the world. God has not redeemed us to wait idly by while sin tightens its grip on society. No, he calls us to sow the seeds of his kingdom in anticipation of a bountiful harvest. To walk in the power of the Spirit, into dark corners, bringing light.
The Porter’s Gate seeks to provide songs for corporate worship, and all these would (potentially) be appropriate in that setting; for churches that aren’t used to the practice of lament or to engaging justice issues, some advance education and pastoral guidance will be in order. Some songs will naturally land better in some churches than in others. Some are challenging—and that’s a good thing, as challenge tends to grow us.
As one would expect, God is supplicated throughout the songs. Entreaties include
Come, Jesus, come
Be our light
Drive out the darkness
End all the violence
Do not be silent
Be near!
Illuminate the shadows
Take pity!
Keep the enemy back
Comfort
Be our refuge
Break oppression
Make me an instrument
Help me restore
And God is abundantly praised, and his promises laid claim to.
The songwriters on the two albums are Isaac Wardell, Latifah Alattas, Kate Bluett, Jessica Fox, Jon Guerra, Casey J, Wendell Kimbrough, Leslie Jordan, Dan Marotta, Orlando Palmer, John Swinton, Gregory Thompson, Liz Vice, Keith Watts, Tina Colón Williams, and Paul Zach.
As the writers would acknowledge, the general content and ethos of the songs are not “new” or alien to Christianity. If you cringe at the thought of bringing current events into worship or singing a confession of corporate sin or expressing sadness or outrage to God, just know that faithful Christians have been doing it since the beginning, and your discomfort may be because you haven’t been exposed to church traditions outside your own. Ecumenicism is an important aspect of The Porter’s Gate’s identity, says Isaac Wardell—an ecumenicism that says, “I come with gifts of the Spirit of my tradition, but I come also with the poverty of my tradition, looking for the charisms and the gifts of your tradition.” And I love that about the project.
Because I’m eager for others to see the biblical groundedness of the songs (which will be obvious to many upon first listening, but maybe not to those who are more selectivist in their Bible reading), and because I’m a musical worship leader who approaches worship music with great discernment of the theology it espouses, I’m going to point out just some of the scriptural connections in the songs.
Acknowledging that the world is not right, and mourning specific instances of that unrighteousness, is the first step in justice work. It’s called lament. Lament cries out, “Why, God?” and “How long?” Honest expressions of woe are not irreverent. The Bible is full of such language. The fact that lament is addressed to God means that faith has not been abandoned; on the contrary, lament leads to a renewed confidence in God.
The first song on Lament Songs, “Wake Up, Jesus” (feat. Liz Vice), takes as its conceit the story of Jesus’s calming the storm after being woken up by his scared disciples, but it is sung in medias res, from the vantage point of one who is caught in a storm that is still raging. “Jesus, when you gonna wake up? . . . Won’t you rise up?” Again, maybe you’ve always assumed this kind of forthrightness is forbidden in prayer, but it’s in perfect sync with the way the biblical psalmists, for example, relate to God; take Psalm 44: “Awake, Lord! Why do you sleep? / Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever. / Why do you hide your face / and forget our misery and oppression?” (vv. 23–24). (See more biblical examples of this demand at https://artandtheology.org/2019/07/09/rise-up-artful-devotion/.)
When the instrumental intro to the second song begins, we recognize the famous passion chorale tune by Hassler, and we ready ourselves to sing “O Sacred Head . . .”—but instead we get “O Sacred Neck.” The word change is jarring. Why are we talking about Jesus’s neck? Then with the next phrase, “pressed down by blows and knees,” it becomes clear that the reference is to black victims of police violence, like George Floyd, who died in May after an officer, arresting him for trying to make a purchase with a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill, knelt on his neck for nearly eight minutes while he pled for his life and then died. (Two other officers assisted in restraining him, and another prevented onlookers from intervening.)
VIDEO TALK: “The Breath of Life: Why Art Matters in a Pandemic” by James K.A. Smith: In this half-hour Zoom talk released June 2, Image journal editor in chief Jamie Smith [previously] discusses the ability of the arts to stimulate our cultural imagination in much-needed ways. “The arts matter in a pandemic,” he says, “because they shape us for the work of reshaping and rebuilding society. In other words, we all need artists to continue creating for us so the rest of us can cultivate the imagination we need to re-create our common life, our social bonds.” And again: “The arts train our imagination so that we relearn to see what we need to see. . . . It’s art as imagination therapy, it’s art as an ophthalmology of the soul that we need in order to build and sustain and restore the institutions of a healthy, flourishing society. . . . If we’re going to imagine the world otherwise, we need imaginations that are trained in subtlety, that have been humbled by mystery, and that are infused with infinity.”
At 14:44 Smith introduces three ways in which art matters during and after a pandemic: art helps us (1) attend, (2) transcend, and (3) mend. That is, art helps us attend more carefully to the world and our neighbors, calling sometimes for gratitude, sometimes for grief, often both; art helps us transcend despair, attesting to the “something more” we long for (“the arts enable us to transcend the tragic when they invite us into a joy that forgets nothing”); and art helps us mend our tattered social fabric by helping us to better understand one another and to imagine possibilities. For each of these functions he provides a few concrete examples, including the current Home Alone Together exhibition.
Photo by Yola Monakhov Stockton, May 17, 2020, for the “Home Alone Together” exhibition
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Along these same lines . . . at the end of the Makers & Mystics podcast episode “Art as Healing,” recorded live last year at The Farm House in Charlottesville, Virginia, and released June 5, 2020, host Stephen Roach reads an excerpt from a book he’s writing:
In our present day, it can be easy to conclude from the various crises taking place around the world, all the injustice and political unrest, the rampant poverty and environmental threats, persecution and killings, diseases and displacements, that art and beauty are mere luxury. It could even make some feel that to focus on art and beauty is insensitive or shortsighted. However, I want to suggest that it’s precisely because of these desperate situations that the artist is called upon to beautify the world with art and engage these issues from a vantage point of hope.
The desperate situation in our world calls for the artist to emerge as a prophetic voice for change and to offer heaven’s alternatives. I’m reminded of the example of Iraqi cellist Karim Wasfi, who countered the tragedy of war by playing music at the sites of car-bomb explosions, with smoldering buildings in the background of his concertos. Wasfi said, “The other side chose to turn every element, every aspect of life in Iraq into a battle and into a war zone. I chose to turn every corner of Iraq into a spot for civility, beauty, and compassion.”
This is the call of the artist in collaboration with God: we are called to be the architects of hope and to counter the destruction of life with the opposite spirit in beauty and creativity.
Here’s a video of Wasfi playing an original cello composition in the destroyed buildings of Al Shifa Hospital in Mosul, Iraq, in September 2018, where some two thousand explosive hazards were removed by UNMAS (United Nations Mine Action Service):
It reminds me of a photograph by Julie Adnan that I saw in National Geographic a decade ago and that, of all the extraordinary photos published in that magazine, has stuck with me the most. Its caption reads, “Some 160 miles northeast of Baghdad, in a Sulaymaniyah music hall ravaged by war, looting, and neglect, a violin-playing boy sounds a note of hope. His teacher, Azad Maaruf, lives there, instructing scores of students.”
Photo by Julie Adnan, taken in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, published in the February 2010 issue of National Geographic
The expression “fiddling while Rome burns,” which legend says the emperor Nero did in 64 CE, is used deprecatingly to refer to the doing of something trivial and irresponsible during a crisis. But beauty is not trivial, and its pursuit during times of crisis does not indicate apathy. I love that this little boy wants to play music while bombs sound out around him. Making art can be a daring act of resistance, an assertion of and call to common humanity, a better way. It’s life-affirming. As artist Laura Bon says: “Artists need to create on the same scale that society has the capacity to destroy.”
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NEW SONG: “The Medicine” by Dee Wilson: Dee Wilson of Common Hymnal premiered this song on his YouTube channel on May 27, and then Good Shepherd New York and friends put together a beautiful arrangement for the church’s June 7 virtual worship service. It’s a prayer that God would save us from the virus of racism, which harms and divides. The chorus goes: “We don’t know what to do, so we turn our eyes to you. We’ve run out of words to say. But if you come and have your way, you can save us from ourselves before our wounds hurt someone else. We need you now.” The video features Wilson on lead vocals, Liz Vice on background vocals, Orlando Palmer and Charles Jones on keyboard, Franklin Rankin on guitar, Michael Decena on bass, and Terence F. Clark on drums.
Every Sunday since March 15, Good Shepherd New York (“an interdenominational church helping New Yorkers embody the love of Christ for the good of our neighbors”) has been releasing a worship service video with liturgy, prayer, sermon, open communion—and phenomenal music led by associate pastor David Gungor, which engages current events. The whole services are worth watching/participating in, but here are a few musical highlights I’ve queued up. I especially like the medleys, which blend together excerpts from a range of songs:
May 10: MEDLEY: “My Brother, My Sister” by the Brilliance / “Higher Love” by Steve Winwood
March 22: MEDLEY: “All Who Are Thirsty” by Brenton Brown and Glenn Roberts / “Take Me to the River” by Leon Bridges / “Amazing Grace” (with traditional English folk tune RISING SUN)
“Way Maker”– Written by Sinach (Osinachi Kalu) – Performed by Zanbeni and Benny Prasad – This husband-wife duo [previously] brings a fusion of R&B, jazz, and Indian classical music to this 2015 gospel song.
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EXHIBITION / VIRTUAL ART TOUR: Celebrating 800 Years of Spirit and Endeavour: To celebrate the eight hundredth anniversary of the laying of its first foundation stone, Salisbury Cathedral organized a major exhibition this year, which was three years in the making. After the art was sited and installed both inside the building and outside on the lawns, COVID-19 hit, and the cathedral was forced to close. But the planning team adapted to the setback, developing a virtual tour that uses panorama technology to enable the viewer to enter the cathedral virtually, watch a video introduction, and navigate around the exhibition space by clicking on thumbnail images of the works and links to the corresponding catalog pages.
Curated by Jacquiline Creswell, who has led the cathedral’s visual arts program for the past eleven years, the exhibition features twenty-nine works of art by significant artists of the modern and contemporary eras, including Henry Moore, Elisabeth Frink, Antony Gormley, Mark Wallinger, Shirazeh Houshiary, and Subodh Gupta. Nine of the works are from the cathedral’s permanent collection, while the other twenty were specially brought in, of which two were newly commissioned: the abstract, solar-powered mobile in the nave by Daniel Chadwick, and the light installation in the north porch by Bruce Munro.
The beautifully photographed, ninety-page exhibition catalog is available for free download from the Spirit and Endeavour page of the cathedral website. Besides providing commentary on all the artworks, it also includes an essay by Sandy Nairne that discusses significant art commissions by British churches in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and the difference between viewing art in a cathedral versus a museum gallery. Another available resource is a guide for kids with questions and activities. While I do hope the interior portion of the exhibition is able to open to visitors soon, I’m grateful that the online resources enable me to “visit” from my living room in the US.
Daniel Chadwick (British, 1965–), Somewhere in The Universe, 2019–20. Acrylic sheet, stainless steel, solar-powered motor, 1,000 × 1,000 cm. Temporary installation at Salisbury Cathedral. Photo: Ash Mills.
Bill Woodrow (British, 1948–), Clockswarm, 2001. Bronze, 25 × 35 × 11 cm. Photo: Ash Mills.
Emily Young (British, 1951–), Angel Gabriel, 2008. Purbeck stone, 90 cm. Collection of Salisbury Cathedral. Photo: Ash Mills.
PSALM 13 SETTINGS FROM INDIA: In November 2015 a group of musicians from Poona Faith Community Church in Pune, India, composed and recorded worship songs in several of the country’s languages. Because Psalm 13 is assigned in today’s lectionary, here are three settings of that lament, in Marathi, Hindi, and Nepali. [HT: Global Christian Worship]
How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I take counsel in my soul
and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
Consider and answer me, O LORD my God;
light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”
lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.
But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the LORD,
because he has dealt bountifully with me.
(This psalm has also been impactfully adapted by Isaac Wardell, as “How Long,” on Bifrost Arts’ 2016 Lamentations album.)
ARTICLE: “Searching for a Jesus Who Looks More Like Me” by Eric V. Copage: I was interviewed the other week for this New York Times piece on multiethnic images of Christ. I comment on paintings by Wisnu Sasongko (Indonesian), Greg Weatherby (Aboriginal Australian), Emmanuel Garibay (Filipino), and Solomon Raj (Indian), and helped select a few of the other images.
Solomon Raj (Indian, 1921–2019), Jesus on the Lotus Flower, 1998. Batik. Photo: Gudrun Löwner.
Emmanuel Garibay (Filipino, 1962–), Untitled, 2007. Oil on wood. Photo via the artist.
Of those Christians who even permit images of Jesus, some hold to a strict literalism and object to images that show him as anything other than a first-century Jew from Israel-Palestine—even though these same literalists would rightly insist that no image is literally Jesus. As I hope is clear from my website, I embrace a wide range of Christological imagery, which I feel reflects the universal presence and revelation of God. (“Christ is all, and in all,” as the apostle Paul wrote in Colossians 3:11; he continues to manifest spiritually, and through his ecclesial body, all over the world.) I’m not so proud to assume that my way of picturing Jesus is the most right or authoritative; I need others to help me see Jesus more fully, more truly. Like C. S. Lewis said, “My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others.” And historical realism is not the only, or even necessarily the best (depends on context), art style to show who Jesus is.
Even though the historical Jesus never wore a full-face moko (tattoo) like the Maori, as Sofia Minson paints him, nor did he sit on a lotus flower when he taught his disciples, nor did he appear to Peter, James, and John transfigured between two Yoruba deities, these images and others like them tell us something about Jesus. At a broad level, they proclaim the Incarnation—God in flesh, dwelling among us, as us, that is, fully human. The historical Jesus existed in a specific time and place, and had ethnic particularities, but his coming was not just for the Jews but for the Gentiles too, and not just for his day, for but all time. Through symbol and metaphor and materiality, artists make this truth real.
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UPDATED BLOG POSTS
Occasionally if I’ve covered an art topic in the past and then come across a new image that fits that topic perfectly, I will add it as an addendum to the original post. I’ve done that with two Eastertide posts.
“‘She mistook him for the gardener’”: Humanity was born in a garden and reborn in a garden, as biblical scholars like N. T. Wright are keen to point out, with Easter morning marking the launch of new creation. In art history the resurrected Christ is sometimes amusingly shown carrying gardening tools when he encounters Mary Magdalene outside his tomb—to explain the case of mistaken identity that John records, perhaps, but more likely to establish a metaphor. Two of the paintings I’ve added to this post are by Janpeter Muilwijk, whose New Gardener from 2017 shows the freshly risen Christ in a white T-shirt and overalls, heading with open arms toward Mary, who is dressed like a bride to receive him. (Mary is modeled after the artist’s daughter Mattia, who died.) Butterflies alight on each of Jesus’s five wounds, marking them as sites of transformation, and the flowering branches of a tree crown him with spring glory.
Janpeter Muilwijk (Dutch, 1960–), New Gardener, 2017. Oil on canvas, 150 × 100 cm. Private collection, Netherlands.
“The Unnamed Emmaus Disciple: Mary, wife of Cleopas?”: Written in 2017, this is one of Art & Theology’s most visited posts. In it I conjecture that the pilgrim who traveled with Cleopas from Jerusalem to Emmaus in the famous Easter story could have been a woman, perhaps Cleopas’s wife. Several artists have conjectured the same, and besides adding to this compilation three Emmaus paintings that the artist Maximino Cerezo Barredo sent me after the initial publication, I’ve also added one by Jyoti Sahi, which shows Jesus sitting with the two disciples—one male, one female—on the floor of a small roadside dwelling, breaking chapati (Indian flatbread) together. He is ablaze with glory, evoking his earlier revelations as I AM in the burning bush before Moses and to Peter, James, and John on Mount Tabor at the Transfiguration.
Jyoti Sahi (Indian, 1944–), The Supper at Emmaus, 1980. Mixed media on canvas. Photo courtesy of the artist.
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NEW SONGS
“A Bedtime Song for Anxious Children” by W. David O. Taylor and Paul Zach:David Taylor has written a new children’s song (set to music by Paul Zach), which he sings here with his daughter, Blythe. The lyrics are in the video description on YouTube.
“I’ve heard from so many parents recently that their children are struggling with anxiety, fear, frustration, sadness, anger, and restlessness,” Taylor writes, “and so I thought a little song reassuring them of God’s care at night, when they’re most vulnerable, might help their hearts. Our hope is that the melody might be simple enough for parents and children to be able to sing it when they go to bed.”
“See the Day” by Liz Vice: One of my favorite singers, Liz Vice, released a new single on April 10, called “See the Day.” Cowritten by her, Leslie Jordan, and Jonathan Day, it expresses hope for the coming day of the Lord, when justice will roll down like a mighty river, walls of division will crumble into dust, oppression will cease, and the whole world will be startled awake by love. “Precious Lord, come lead us on” to that reality.
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NEW ALBUM: Easter 1 by Mac Meador: Mac Meador, a singer-songwriter from Austin, Texas, released a new EP of six songs for Eastertide this April, a sort of flip side to the Lent 1 EP he released in February. I really enjoyed them both (and the same goes for his Summer of Psalms from 2018). The Easter album strikes just the right note for me right now—of a quiet hope and joy that’s not absent of pain. The songs celebrate Christ the risen king while also expressing longing for the age to come, when the kingdom will be established in full. Lean into that promise!
You can stream and purchase Meador’s music on Bandcamp. (Note: To help musicians affected by COVID-19, Bandcamp is waiving its cut of all sales made on its site on May 1.) You might also want to check out his YouTube channel, where he posts additional songs. For the past four weeks he has been releasing “Quarantine Hymn Sing” lyric videos for his church, Grace + Peace Austin, where he serves as minister of music. (He also sets Bible memory verses to music for kids!)
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EGG DANCING: “The Egg Dance: From Peasant Village to Political Caricature”: The Public Domain Review has compiled an amusing gallery of historical paintings, drawings, and prints that show the egg dance, a traditional Easter game with several variations, most associated with western European peasantry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Pieter Brueghel the Younger (Flemish, 1564/65–1637/38), The Egg Dance, ca. 1620. Oil on panel, 26 1/4 × 41 1/4 in. (66.7 × 104.8 cm).
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ART VIDEO:“500 Years of the Herrenberg Altarpiece”: I love seeing all the fun, creative resources being produced by art museums to help educate and engage the public in viewing art. Though I speak not a lick of German, this video from the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart about Jörg (Jerg) Ratgeb’s Herrenberg Altarpiece made me laugh and had me hooked for its full five minutes. (I came across it when I was prepping a Holy Week blog post that features a different painting attributed to the same artist.) Released last October for the five hundredth anniversary of the altarpiece, the video, directed by Valentin Hennig and Oleg Kauz, animates some of the birds from the painted panels and has them narrate as the camera zooms in on details (one of them quite jarring and unseemly!). They then fly through the museum hall and over the town some twenty miles southwest to the church where the piece originally stood.
To add autogenerated subtitles, click the “CC” (closed captioning) button on the bottom of the video player, then select your language using the gear icon.
Painted in 1519, this double-winged altarpiece was commissioned by the Brethren of the Common Life, a Catholic pietist community, for the high altar of the collegiate church of Herrenberg in Swabia. Closed, it shows the apostles about to set out on their mission to spread the word of God. The first open view (interior panels closed, exterior wings folded out) reveals scenes from the passion of Christ, each panel with a primary scene in the foreground and a secondary scene in the background: the Last Supper with the Agony in the Garden, the Flagellation and Crowning with Thorns with the Ecce Homo (presentation to the crowd), the Crucifixion with the Carrying of the Cross and the Entombment, and the Resurrection with the Noli me tangere (appearance to Mary Magdalene). Completely opened (its feast-day configuration), the altarpiece shows scenes from the infancy of Christ, with reference also to the life of the Virgin Mary. It used to have a central Marian statue and predella figures, but these were likely destroyed when the Protestant Reformation came to Württemberg in 1534.
The artist had already died by this time—he was executed (drawn and quartered) for treason in 1526 for his role as one of the leaders of the German Peasants’ Rebellion.
Art & Theology 