Jyoti Sahi (Indian, 1944–), Beulah, 2018. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 5 × 4 ft. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.
In Isaiah 62:2–5, God talks to Zion about her future. He says that on the day of the Lord,
The nations shall see your vindication and all the kings your glory, and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will give. You shall be a beautiful crown in the hand of the LORD and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her and your land Married, for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your builder marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.
The painting Beulah by the Indian Christian artist Jyoti Sahi (pictured below) takes its title from the Hebrew word for “married” that’s used in Isaiah 62:4. He told me the image pictures the coming together of heaven and earth, the sun marrying the land, which can also be read as Christ uniting with his bride. Christ comes as dawn, his head like flame, like the great I AM revealed to Moses in the burning bush. His glory, the yellow halo around his head, encompasses the female figure. He leans in, tenderly resting his head on hers, and their hands touch.
Beulah shows the reunion not only of humanity and the Divine at the end of time, but also of the land and the Divine. As the Isaiah passage states, the earth, too, will be redeemed and made to flourish once again.
The two figures here form a sacred mountain. A river of life flows down between them, watering the new city, which is a wilderness no longer. This is Isaiah’s vision wrapped up into John the Revelator’s.
Jyoti Sahi touches up a detail of his painting Beulah. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.
LISTEN: “The Reign of Mercy” by Kate Bluett and Paul Zach, 2021 | Performed by Paul Zach and Lauren Plank Goans on Advent Songs by the Porter’s Gate, 2021
Oh may our world at last be just And hilltops echo with your peace A harvest come from barren dust The reign of mercy never cease He comes as rain upon the grass High heaven’s sun to earth descends Not as the seasons that will pass But with a light that never ends
Oh come to him and find your rest Who saw the poor and came as one Who hears the cries of the oppressed And rules till all oppression’s done Someday he’ll come to reign as king And we will see his justice done Our souls will magnify and sing The Christ whose kingdom now is come
And all the mighty and the strong Will bow before him on that day The silenced fill the world with song The poor and lowly he will raise And all our bitterness and tears Our violence and our endless wars Will end at last when he draws near Come soon, come soon, oh Christ our Lord
SPOTIFY PLAYLIST: March 2024 (Art & Theology): My new monthly playlist of thirty songs is up a day early and, as usual, includes both recent releases and older favorites. Let me also point you to the longer, thematically distinct playlists I made for Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide.
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CONCERT: Phantasia performs Biber’s Mystery Sonatas, St Hubert’s Church, Corfe Mullen, England,February 17, March 23, and April 13, 2024: The Mysteries of the Rosary are a set of fifteen meditations on episodes in the lives of Jesus and his mother, Mary. They are divided into three groups: the Joyful Mysteries (the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Presentation of the Infant Jesus in the Temple, the Twelve-Year-Old Jesus), the Sorrowful Mysteries (Christ on the Mount of Olives, the Scourging at the Pillar, the Crown of Thorns, Jesus Carries the Cross, and the Crucifixion), and the Glorious Mysteries (the Resurrection, the Ascension, Pentecost, the Assumption of the Virgin, and the Beatification of the Virgin).
Around 1676, the Bohemian Austrian composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (1644–1704) wrote fifteen short sonatas for violin and continuo based on these mysteries. In a free three-part event sponsored by Deus Ex Musica, the newly formed period-instrument ensemble Phantasia will be performing Biber’s Mystery Sonatas at St Hubert’s Church, Corfe Mullen, on the south coast of England, accompanied by commentary by musician and educator Dr. Delvyn Case, who will provide thoughts about the ways each sonata reflects its “mystery,” linking specific elements of the musical structure to themes or ideas in the biblical scene. The performance of the first cycle of the work has already passed, but the remaining two are still upcoming: the Sorrowful Mysteries on March 23 (the Saturday just before the start of Holy Week), and the Glorious Mysteries on April 13.
Case tells me that Deus Ex Musica hopes to eventually provide video excerpts from the performances on their YouTube channel. In the meantime, here’s a little teaser, a snippet from the “Presentation in the Temple” movement, performed by Phantasia musicians Emma-Marie Kabanova on Baroque violin and Chris Hirst on German theorbo (long-necked lute).
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ARTICLES:
>> “Mercy at the Movies: Ten Films That Flip the Script” by Meaghan Ritchey, Mockingbird: “Spanning almost a century of cinema, this list of films maps a world—real and imagined—devoid of the mercy for which we all have need, as well as a world animated by unexpected and unearned mercies, flipping the script and leaving the plot forever changed.” What a great list! Number 7 is one of my all-time favorite films.
>> “As If Through a Child’s Inner Eye: The Contemporary Icons of Maxim Sheshukov” by Fr. Silouan Justiniano, Orthodox Arts Journal: In this article from 2016, Fr. Silouan Justiniano, a monk at the Monastery of Saint Dionysios the Areopagite on Long Island, explores the work of contemporary iconographer Maxim Sheshukov (Максим Шешуков) of Pskov, Russia, finding it “exemplary of the diversity and flexibility possible within our ever-renewing and living Tradition.”
Maxim Sheshukov, Zacchaeus, 2015. Egg tempera on gessoed wood.Maxim Sheshukov, Judas, 2020. Egg tempera on gessoed wood.
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NEW ALBUMS:
>> Volume 9 (Lent-Easter-Pentecost) of The Soil and The Seed Project: This is the latest release in an ongoing series of music for the church year by musicians of faith from the Shenandoah Valley. Some of my favorite tracks are “I Will Sing to the LORD” (a setting of Psalm 104:33) and “Hosanna, Loud Hosanna” (a newly retuned but old-timey-sounding hymn for Palm Sunday). I also really like “Gentle Shepherd,” a lullaby written for the children of Salford Mennonite Church to sing in worship in 2018 and performed in this music video by the sister folk duo Spectator Bird:
>> Life and Death and Life: Songs for Lent, Holy Week, and Easter by Steve Thorngate: Chicago-based church musician and songwriter Steve Thorngate has followed up his excellent album After the Longest Night: Songs for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany with an album for the next two seasons of the church year, including the Day of Pentecost! In addition to twelve original songs, it includes two African American spirituals, a Charles Tindley hymn, and, perhaps my favorite, a cover of (new-to-me) Brett Larson’s poetic country song “Rolling Away,” about barriers to sight and wholeness being removed and a fresh new clarity, a freedom, a path opening up:
>> JOY JOY JOY JOY JOY by Paul Zach: The ever prolific Paul Zach of Virginia’s latest release is an effusively joyous ten-track album celebrating God’s love, salvation, and sustenance. He collaborated with other musicians on the project, including Jon Guerra, Tristen Stuart-Davenport, and IAMSON. Here’s a snippet of the opening song, “Nothing,” based on Romans 8 (listen to the full track here):
This year’s The Breath and the Clay creative arts gathering, on the theme of “Reenchantment,” is taking place March 17–21, with both in-person (in Winston-Salem, North Carolina) and virtual options. Registration for virtual attendees is pay-what-you-wish. Presenters include theologian Jeremy Begbie, poet Pádraig Ó Tuama, singer-songwriter Joy Ike, contemplative author Christine Valters Paintner, dancer Camille D.C. Sutton, and many more . . . including me! On the evening of March 18 I’ll be giving a twenty-minute talk titled “Saying Yes: The Annunciation in Contemporary Art,” which will be archived online afterward. (The global church celebrates the feast of the Annunciation the following week, on March 25.) (Update: Watch here.) Here’s the description:
The story of Jesus’s miraculous conception in the womb of Mary, a first-century Galilean peasant girl, told in Luke 1 has activated the imaginations of artists since the early Christian era. When an angelic messenger came and told Mary she had been chosen to bear God’s Son, she cycled through a range of emotions before ultimately accepting the call, stepping onto a path that, though scary, would be life-giving not only for her but also for her religious and ethnic community and for the whole world.
God invites us to participate in his work in the world and gives us the grace to do it. When his voice breaks through our safe, predictable routines, calling us to something big, do we respond with brave obedience? In this talk Victoria Emily Jones will share a handful of contemporary artworks that visualize that pivotal moment in salvation history when Mary said yes and set in motion the incarnation. These works show us the wild beauty of God’s plans and can help us tune our ears to the annunciations in our own lives.
(The title slide image is a detail of an Annunciation painting by Jyoti Sahi.)
I’m always impressed by the variety of artists, arts professionals, and art lovers that director Stephen Roach manages to bring together for The Breath and the Clay. Click here to learn more and to register.
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ONLINE LENT SERIES:
>> VCS Lent 2021: The Visual Commentary on Scripture is highlighting a different exhibition from its archives for each week of Lent, with new content including a video introduction to the week by Ben Quash and an audio reading of each of the three constituent commentaries.
The first week was on the theme of Covenant and covers Genesis 8:20–9:17. Stefania Gerevini curated three artworks from Italy that convey some aspect of the rainbow as divine promise: a thirteenth-century mosaic from the Basilica di San Marco in Venice, a colorful dome fresco (fifteenth century) from the Cappella Portinari in Milan, and a contemporary light installation by Dan Flavin at Santa Maria Annunciata in Chiesa Rossa, also in Milan.
Week 2, on Prophecy, explores the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. Jonathan Koestlé-Cate comments on three modern artworks: Crucified Tree Form by Theyre Lee-Elliott, a crucifix by Germaine Richier (which sparked outrage when it was unveiled at Notre-Dame de Toute Grâce, Assy, in 1950), and an installation by postminimalist artist Anish Kapoor at the church of Saint Peter, Cologne.
>> “The Many Faces of Jesus”: I’ve been enjoying this Lenten series (on blog andpodcast) by medievalist Dr. Grace Hamman, who makes medieval lit super accessible.“For Lent, Old Books With Grace will share and explore some medieval representations of Jesus in art and literature—the versions of Jesus that dominate the medieval church’s imagination. These medieval portrayals of Jesus may strike us as odd, threatening, charming, creative, stupid, or inspiring. In attending to these versions of Jesus, I hope for a few end goals: the first is that we may expand our Christian imagination. Perhaps a side of Jesus that has never occurred to you, or been sideswept by our contemporary culture, will suddenly illuminate an aspect of the Jesus of scripture. The second is that we may better identify the ways that we ourselves have culturally contained and portrayed Jesus, in positive and negative ways. Often the strangeness of the past helps us recognize the weird or damaging things we believe in order to make Jesus more palatable, understandable, or like us.”
Jean Bondol, “The bride (Ecclesia) and bridegroom (Christ),” from a Bible Historiale made in Paris, 1371–72. The Hague, MMW, 10 B 23, fol. 330v.
>> “Up from My Youth (Psalm 129)” by Advent Birmingham, feat. CashBack and Terence June Gray: This is such a strange and compelling fusion! “An 1806 hymn by Isaac Watts meets hip-hop meets Johnny Cash meets folk meets New Orleans jazz meets industrial steel factory.”
Led by Zac Hicks, Advent Birmingham [previously] is a group of worship musicians from the Cathedral Church of the Advent in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. Hicks wrote this new tune for Isaac Watts’s metrical paraphrase of Psalm 129 and integrated a rap by guest artist Terence June Gray from Memphis. Singing lead (and playing drums) is Leif Bondarenko, the front man of the Johnny Cash tribute band CashBack. The video was filmed at Birmingham’s historic Sloss Furnaces. Available on iTunes, Amazon, and Spotify.
You can read the lyrics here, which include a slight revision of Watts’s verse 6.
POETRY READING:“Phase One” by Dilruba Ahmed, read, with commentary, by Pádraig Ó Tuama, Poetry Unbound: “What do you find hard to forgive in yourself? What might help? In this poem, the poet makes a list of all the things she holds against herself: opening fridge doors, fantasies, wilted seedlings, unkempt plants, lost bags, feeling awkward, treating someone poorly. Dilruba Ahmed repeats the line ‘I forgive you’ over and over, like a litany, in a hope to deepen what it means to be in the world, and be a person of love.”
Entire Bifrost Arts catalog available for free download: For a limited time, the Christian music collective Bifrost Arts is offering all forty-eight of their songs for free download from NoiseTrade. Donations are welcome—100 percent of them will go to the Salt and Light Artist fund, which funds residencies for Christian artists in Arab countries, providing a platform for interaction with the local arts community.
Interview with Bono and Eugene Peterson on the Psalms: This short film, released in April, documents the friendship between Bono (of the band U2) and Eugene Peterson (author of contemporary-language Bible translation The Message) revolving around their common interest in the Psalms. Inspired by their conversation, interviewer David Taylor compiled a list of resources for exploring the Psalms.
Transforming a Protestant worship space into a Catholic one: The largest glass building in the world, the Crystal Cathedral in Orange County, California, has been undergoing renovations since having been sold in 2013 by the Reformed Church in America to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange. “Our charge is to convert an open, all-glass Evangelical church into a great Catholic cathedral to serve its centuries-old sacraments and ritual processions, and to reinforce the centrality of the Eucharist,” write architects Scott Johnson and Frank Clementi. This article published in Faith and Form describes some of the symbolic, aesthetic, environmental, and technical challenges of this project and includes renderings of the new space, which is scheduled to reopen next year.
Top 25 films on mercy: I’ve been enjoying these top 25 film lists put together by the Arts & Faith online community—especially how they reach beyond the obvious choices, dipping into the silent era as well as non-American cinema. Here’s their latest, a list of films that “show us visions of a world so often lacking in mercy, as well as worlds in which one merciful act alters the landscape of human experience forever.” Click here to view their other lists: road films, horror films, divine comedies, films on marriage, and films on memory.
Art & Theology 