Nativity – Art & Theology

The Lüneburg Goldene Tafel (Golden Panel): An International Gothic Masterpiece

March 27, 2026March 30, 2026 Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment

Other than the second one, captioned with a copyright notice, all photos in this article are my own.

When visiting the Landesmuseum (State Museum) in Hanover, Germany, last fall, I was struck by a monumental medieval altarpiece depicting thirty-six scenes from the life of Christ. Scholars refer to it as the Goldene Tafel (Golden Panel) after the now-lost large gold repoussé plaque, originally designed (most likely) as an antependium in the twelfth century, that was once at the center of its inner display, depicting Christ seated in a mandorla flanked by the twelve apostles.

One of the most important northern German works in the International Gothic style, the altarpiece was created in the 1420s for the high altar of the newly built Benedictine monastery of St. Michael in Lüneburg. It was the work of carpenters, sculptors, and two painters, one from the circle of the Westphalian artist Conrad von Soest, and the other probably based in Cologne or even Lüneburg.

The Golden Panel altarpiece, in its original design, had two pairs of hinged wings that could be opened or closed over a fixed central shrine, offering three possible configurations. The shrine, irrecoverably robbed in 1644 and 1698, housed the monastery’s treasury, especially its reliquaries, displayed in a cabinet of twenty-two richly decorated rectangular compartments surrounding the eponymous, aforementioned “golden panel.” This main body of the altarpiece (called the corpus) was dismantled in 1792–94 and its remaining objects melted or sold. The predella (base) has also been lost.

However, the wings, replete with panel paintings and figural sculptures, have survived to the present day and, having been restored in 2016–19, are proudly displayed at the Landesmuseum Hannover for visitors to enjoy. When you enter the gallery, you are greeted with the full cycle of thirty-six painted scenes (nine per panel) from the life of Christ, read from left to right in long rows. Then you can walk behind to see the panels’ other sides, which would not have been simultaneously on view to the monks of St. Michael’s with the altarpiece’s original construction.

The scale model in the following photograph gives you a good sense of the three distinct viewing states that were originally possible.

Golden Panel model — Dr. Bastian Eclercy, curator of Old Master paintings at the Landesmuseum Hannover from 2010 to 2013, presents a historical model of the Golden Panel. Photo © Landesmuseum Hannover.

View 1: The Brazen Serpent and The Crucifixion

View 1, the closed view, juxtaposes a scriptural type and antitype: the brazen serpent in the wilderness, raised on a pole for the life of the people, and the crucifixion of Christ.

Numbers 21:4–9 tells of how, wandering the desert after God delivered them from slavery in Egypt, the Israelites complained about how life was better before. As punishment for their ingratitude, God sent poisonous serpents into their camp, and fatalities ensued. The people realized their sin and repented, asking Moses to intercede with God for relief. God told Moses to craft a bronze serpent and lift it high on a pole, and to instruct the people that if they are bitten, to look on the sculpture and they will be spared.

In John 3:14–15, Jesus interpreted this story as foreshadowing his being raised on a cross to bring healing: “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” he told Nicodemus, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

The anonymous artist shows the gleaming snake on a tau cross that mirrors the one Jesus hangs on in the opposite panel. The lower banderole reads, from the Vulgate, “Peccavimus quia locuti sumus contra Dominum et te ora ut tollat a nobis serpentes” (We have sinned, because we have spoken against the Lord and thee: pray that he may take away these serpents). I can’t make out the text on the upper banderole, other than aspexerit, “shall look,” but presumably it communicates God’s antidote to the snake bites.

Moses has horns, as is typical in Western iconography, because of a literal translation of the Hebrew qaran in Exodus 34:29–30:

And when Moses came down from Mount Sinai, he held the two tables of the testimony, and he knew not that his face was horned from the conversation of the Lord. And Aaron and the children of Israel seeing the face of Moses horned, were afraid to come near. (Douay–Rheims)

Almost all English translations say instead that Moses’s face “shone” or “became radiant,” interpreting qaran as horned with rays of light. This artist splits the difference and shows, growing out from under Moses’s hat, two bony protrusions that are luminous!

The Crucifixion scene shows a Roman spearman piercing Jesus’s side to confirm his death, while Jesus’s mother, two other Marys, and the apostle John mourn under his right hand. A centurion in the crowd exclaims, “Vere Filius Dei erat iste” (Truly this man was the Son of God).

View 2: The Life of Christ

When these two outer panels were opened in their day, they would reveal view 2 of the altarpiece (pictured at top of article), or the first open view, displaying scenes from Jesus’s infancy, passion, and resurrection across four panels.

Golden Panel 1 — The Annunciation; The Visitation; The Nativity; The Raising of Lazarus; Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem; The Last Supper; Christ Carrying His Cross; Christ in Distress; The Crucifixion

Golden Panel 2 — The Annunciation to the Shepherds; The Circumcision of Christ; The Adoration of the Magi; Christ Washing His Disciples’ Feet; The Agony in the Garden (2); The Deposition; The Entombment; The Harrowing of Hell

Golden Panel 3 — The Presentation in the Temple; The Massacre of the Innocents; The Flight to Egypt; The Arrest of Christ; Christ before Pilate; Christ before Herod; The Resurrection; The Holy Women at the Tomb; The Ascension

Golden Panel 4 — Christ among the Doctors in the Temple; The Wedding at Cana; The Baptism of Christ; The Flagellation of Christ; Ecce Homo; The Mocking of Christ; The Descent of the Holy Spirit; The Death of the Virgin; The Coronation of the Virgin

I’ll share a few of my favorite scenes.

The Nativity features what I call the industrious Joseph motif [previously], as rather than sitting off to the side with his head in his hands, as he’s commonly shown, Jesus’s dad is hard at work trying to make his family comfortable. He pumps a bellows to supply air to the small fire he has going, either to warm his wife and child or, as he does in a handful of other medieval German Nativities, to cook a simple meal. Mary reclines with the infant Christ on a woven straw mattress while angels peek in from over a curtain to adore him.

The Last Supper I found especially charming because of how the apostle John shelters under Jesus’s cloak, relaxed, secure. The image of John resting on Jesus’s breast rose to popularity in fourteenth-century Germany, a commemoration of the two’s bosom friendship and a call to, like John, abide in Christ. It’s based on the description in John 13:23, which says that at Jesus’s last meal, at Passover time, “one of his disciples—the one whom Jesus loved—was reclining close to his heart.” This verse alludes to the typical eating posture assumed at ancient Greco-Roman banquets, at which men reclined with their heads near a low table and their feet pointing away from it. But in Christian interpretation it has come to signify, more than simply a seating arrangement, the proximity of John to the heart of Christ.

In the Golden Panel’s Last Supper, Jesus enfolds John much like a mother hen would her chick (cf. Matt. 23:37; Luke 13:34), his garment like a wing. Even in this moment before his greatest trial, when most would be inclined to turn inward, Jesus shows concern for those he loves—he covers, protects. And nourishes. He stretches his hand across the table, laid with dishes of lamb and fish, to feed Judas a morsel of bread that resembles a eucharistic wafer. He sups with the man he knows will betray him. He does not turn him away.

Further along in the narrative, the scene of Christ carrying his cross with the help of Simon of Cyrene stands out to me because of the man pulling Jesus’s hair as he walks. The cruel mocking and assault continue outside the courtroom and en route to Golgotha.

Called Christus im Elend (Christ in Distress) or Christus in der Rast (Christ at Rest), the subject depicted in the bottom center of the far left panel first started appearing in northern Germany in the second half of the fourteenth century. It shows Jesus sitting pensively, usually on a stone, waiting for his cross to be raised.

In the Golden Panel, Jesus, naked, bleeds all over while the soldiers roll dice and fight over who will get to keep his seamless tunic. The two men in the foreground, one with a flagrum tucked in his belt, tumble and tear at each other, pulling and biting, exemplifying the human penchant for violence that will culminate in the killing of God’s Son. (The basket of hammer and nails that has been procured for the task sits temporarily off to the side.) Combative and puerile, this is the humanity Christ has come to save.

The interior Crucifixion painting is fairly standard, but oh, isn’t it lovely? One notable feature is how Christ’s blood flows from his side, his final wound, down to his groin, where he received, at eight days old, his first wound, the cutting off of his foreskin in a ritual circumcision. Scholars such as Leo Steinberg have remarked how this diversion of the blood’s natural path (which would be to the right thigh) was an intentional device some painters used to connect these two sheddings of blood, and thus the incarnation and the atonement.

Moving two pictures down the line, the Entombment scene caught my eye because of the tender care shown to the dead Christ before he’s laid to rest. Nicodemus anoints Christ’s wounds with myrrh and aloes, applying them with a spatula, while Joseph of Arimathea, who has donated his tomb, prepares to enshroud the body.

In a quintessential Easter scene, three faithful women come to the burial site after the Sabbath to complete the anointing ritual, only to find a finely feathered angel perched atop the skewed lid of Christ’s now-empty sarcophagus. Mary Magdalene, holding a golden jar, points into the vacant space as if to ask, “Where’s my Lord?” To which the angel responds that he is risen!

View 3 (Partial): Sculptures of the Saints

View 3 of the Golden Panel altarpiece—the fully open view, saved for important feast days—cannot be replicated because the shrine that formed the corpus is lost. But flanking the shrine would have been two wings that have survived largely intact, displaying polychrome wood sculptures of twenty (mostly male) saints and, in the intermediate row, smaller statuettes of six female saints (the other six are missing).

The identities of the main figures are listed below. The ones I couldn’t confirm but for which I proffer my best guess are followed by a question mark.

Top left: John the Baptist, Thomas(?), Matthew, Simon(?), George
Top right: Mary Magdalene, Lawrence (deacon), Benedict, Cyriacus (deacon), Michael
Bottom left: Madonna and Child, Peter, Paul, James the Lesser(?), James the Greater
Bottom right: Bartholomew, John the Evangelist, Jude (Thaddeus)(?), Andrew, Philip

In the sculpture of the Madonna and Child, Mary holds an inkwell that Jesus dips his pen into as he writes on a scroll. How delightful! It’s a rare iconography but one that’s shared by the Tintenfassmadonna in Hildesheim Cathedral, sculpted around the same time.

The figure to the right of Mary is Peter. He holds a handle with a dowel hole on the underside; originally, a set of keys was attached to it and hung down.

The diminutive figure above Mary is Catherine of Alexandria, identifiable by the fragmented wheel she holds, a symbol of her martyrdom.

To learn more about the Golden Panel, see the book Die Goldene Tafel aus Lüneburg, edited by Antje-Fee Köllermann and Christine Unsinn (Michael Imhof, 2021), from the Niederdeutschen Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte (Low German Contributions to Art History) series. Only three of its twenty-five chapters are in English; the rest is in German. It’s highly technical, the product of an interdisciplinary research project carried out from 2012 to 2016. There’s not much in it about the actual content of the images. But it provides ample color illustrations, which I always appreciate, as well as stylistic comparisons, historical inventories, and more.

Christmas, Day 10: Love

January 3, 2026January 3, 2026 Victoria Emily Jones4 Comments

LOOK: The Life of Christ by Keith Haring

Haring, Keith_The Life of Christ — Keith Haring (American, 1958–1990), *The Life of Christ*, 1990. Bronze altarpiece with white gold leaf patina, 81 × 60 × 2 in. Edition of 9. Chapel of St. Columba, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York. All photos by Victoria Emily Jones.

Keith Haring [previously] was a popular artist and activist on the New York scene during the 1980s. Inspired by graffiti art, he started his career by filling empty poster spaces with chalk drawings in the city’s subway stations. He wanted to make art accessible to everyone and believed that it “should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination, and encourages people to go further.”

His style is characterized by bold black outlines, vibrant colors, a sense of rhythm, and simple iconic figures like the Barking Dog and Radiant Baby, which recur again and again in his oeuvre.

Sadly, Haring’s career was cut short by AIDS, which he died of on February 16, 1990, at age thirty-one. The last work he completed, just weeks before his death, was a Life of Christ altarpiece, a work that conveys eternal love and loss, divine suffering and hope. Without any preliminary sketches, he cut the design into clay using a loop knife. It was posthumously cast in bronze and covered in a white gold patina, an edition of nine.

The first edition is housed in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, the world’s fourth-largest church by area, where Haring’s memorial service was held.

Chapel of St. Columba, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, designed by the architectural firm Heins & LaFarge, dedicated 1911. The stained glass windows are by Wilbur Burnham of Boston and Clayton & Bell of London, and the altarpiece, a later addition, is by Keith Haring.

Pulsating, cosmic, and somehow both mournful and joyous, the altarpiece is a triptych, meaning it has three panels. The central panel shows, at the top, a cross, below which is a multiarmed figure holding a baby. The top figure I interpret as God the Father, his arms all-embracing. Below him, at torso level, I discern a second figure (though the head is not clearly defined), who must be Mary, a shining heart over her face. Nestled in her arms is, irrefutably, her infant son Jesus.

Another possible reading is that this is the Trinity—Father, Spirit, and Son—united in an act of self-giving.

The surplus of arms (I count thirteen, plus the baby’s two) reminds me of the Thousand-Armed Avalokiteśvara in Buddhism; a bodhisattva associated with limitless compassion, his arms represent his extending aid, his reaching out to touch, heal, and uplift. One of the arms here stretches down to bestow a halo on humankind, which in Christianity symbolizes the grace/light of God.

Below this primary grouping is a crowd of people who appear to me to be dancing and celebrating, lifting their arms to receive the blessings that flow forth from the holy child. (Or are they clamoring, turning away, resisting? Without facial features and fingers, it’s hard to tell!) Drops of Jesus’s blood fall over all, bringing redemption.

On the two side panels, angels careen down from the heavens, surfing, leaping, tumbling, one screeching to a halt.

Haring’s Life of Christ combines, as have many artworks before it, Jesus’s birth and death, collapsing his time on earth, his ministry of salvation, into a single image of incarnation and atonement. Mary holds him as a newborn, but she also holds him as a lifeless adult after his crucifixion—a traditional representation known as the Pietà. Many artists have given Mary a sad twinge in her eye at the nativity, suggesting a premonition of loss.

Haring’s figures are faceless, so we can’t look there for emotional clues, but Mary’s body language suggests both a desire to keep and protect her son, and a willingness to give him up for the greater good.

I wonder whether, when Haring incised the sacred blood drops, he was not only thinking of the “power in the blood” that Christians sing about in reference to Jesus’s redemptive sacrifice—and all the weight that bodily fluid as Christian symbol carries—but also lamenting the HIV infecting his own bloodstream, ravaging his body and stigmatizing him, and that had already killed many of his friends and his partner.

Haring’s friend Sam Havadtoy, who was present at the altar’s creation, reports that when Haring finished the piece, he stepped back and, gazing at it, said, “Man, this is really heavy.”

I think the prominence of blood must have been at least partly influenced by the destructiveness of the AIDS epidemic and the artist’s meditation on his mortality, perhaps even hope for transcendence through death. And if so, then the Radiant Baby, who, the artist’s title would lead us to assume, is Jesus, could also double as the soul of an AIDS victim being taken back up to God.

While I hesitate to ascribe prayers or intentions to others that they have not clearly voiced, I can’t help but think that this last artwork of Haring’s, executed in the final throes of his illness, its subject returning him to the Christianity of his youth, to a story that once captivated him, was in one sense a plea for (physical and spiritual?) cleansing, for deliverance.

LISTEN: “We Sing Glory” by Fred Hammond, on Fred Hammond Christmas . . . : Just Remember (2001)

Little baby boy, sent as God among us
For your plan to free all humanity
We sing glory to your name
Sing glory to your name

Tiny fragile heart
Pumped your blood to save us
For you’ve come to be a sin offering
Singing glory to the Lamb
Sing glory to the Lamb

Singing glory to the one
Who saved the whole world
Born to die but you live again
And take all our sins away

Little hands and feet
Made for nail and hammer
For the pain and grief you suffered for me
I sing glory to the Lamb
Oh, glory to the Lamb

Tiny arms and legs
Broad, strong, and sturdy
You carry the key to our victory
We sing glory to your name
We sing glory to your name

We sing glory to the Child
Who will save the whole world
Born to die and then live again
To take all our sins away

Glory, glory to the one
Who was born to save the whole world
You died but you’ll rise again
So Jesus, we praise your name

Hark the herald angels sing
Glory to the newborn King
Peace on earth and mercy mild
God and sinner reconciled
Thank you, Jesus

Hark the herald angels sing
Glory to the newborn King
Peace on earth and mercy mild
God has come to save us
Yes, he has

Gloria in excelsis Deo
God has come to save us

Christmas, Day 9: Word Made Flesh

January 2, 2026January 3, 2026 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

LOOK: Chr. Geb. by Jörg Länger

Länger, Jörg_Chr. Geb. — Jörg Länger (German, 1964–), *Chr. Geb.*, 2006. Linocut, wax, oil, and graphite pencil on paper, 33 × 33 cm, cast with resin between two Optiwhite sheets of glass, 38 × 38 cm.

The contemporary German artist Jörg Länger creates extraordinary mixed-media works, many of which are in dialogue with Christian art history. In addition to earning an advanced degree in art, Länger has also done university coursework in theology and philosophy, so it’s no wonder his pieces demonstrate a keen theological awareness and spiritual sensibility.

After some fifteen years of working in photography, installation art, performance art, and conceptual art, in 1998 Länger shifted gears to focus on drawing, painting, and printmaking. He developed a series, still ongoing, that he calls “Protagonisten aus 23.000 Jahren Kulturgeschichte” (Protagonists from 23,000 Years of Cultural History), in which he takes figures from prehistoric petroglyphs and bas-reliefs, ancient Greek vases, medieval manuscripts, European Renaissance paintings, and contemporary art, simplifies them, and puts them into a new pictorial context. He copies the figure’s outline onto a linoleum block, inks and prints it to produce a sort of silhouette, and builds out from there using oil paint, pastels, wax, and/or gold leaf, while still retaining a minimalist aesthetic.

In his 2006 piece Chr. Geb. (short for Geburt Christi, “Birth of Christ”), the silhouetted figures are taken from Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece and Fra Angelico’s Entombment of Christ.

Grünewald, Matthais_The Nativity — Matthais Grünewald (German, ca. 1475/80–1528), *The Nativity*, central panel (first open view) of the Isenheim Altarpiece, 1515. Oil on wood, 269 × 307 cm. Unterlinden Museum, Colmar, France. Photo: Steven Zucker.

Fra Angelico_Entombment of Christ — Fra Angelico (Italian, ca. 1400–1455), *Entombment of Christ*, 1438–40. Tempera on wood, 37.9 × 46.6 cm. Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

With the shadowy blue central pair of Mother and Child, the ghostly impression of Christ’s crucified body (being dragged into a tomb in the scene it’s excised from), the expanding puddle of gold that holds together both birth and death, and the light that presses in from the edges, the work has a mystical feel. It shows the Eternal One entering time, born of a woman, to live and die and rise and so bring humanity back to God and back to their truest selves.

LISTEN: “O Vis Aeternitatis” by Hildegard of Bingen, ca. 1140–60 | Performed by Azam Ali, 2020

V. O vis aeternitatis
que omnia ordinasti in corde tuo,
per Verbum tuum omnia creata sunt
sicut voluisti,
et ipsum Verbum tuum
induit carnem
in formatione illa
que educta est de Adam.

R. Et sic indumenta ipsius
a maximo dolore
abstersa sunt.

V. O quam magna est benignitas Salvatoris,
qui omnia liberavit
per incarnationem suam,
quam divinitas exspiravit
sine vinculo peccati.

R. Et sic indumenta ipsius
a maximo dolore
abstersa sunt.

V. Gloria Patri et Filio
et Spiritui sancto.

R. Et sic indumenta ipsius
a maximo dolore
abstersa sunt.

V. O power within Eternity:
All things you held in order in your heart,
and through your Word were all created
according to your will.
And then your very Word
was clothed within
that form of flesh
from Adam born.

R. And so his garments
were washed and cleansed
from greatest suffering.
 
V. How great the Savior’s goodness is!
For he has freed all things
by his own Incarnation,
which divinity breathed forth
unchained by any sin.
 
R. And so his garments
were washed and cleansed
by greatest suffering.
 
V. Glory be to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit.
 
R. And so his garments
were washed and cleansed
by greatest suffering.

Trans. Nathaniel M. Campbell

Hildegard of Bingen [previously] was a twelfth-century German nun and polymath who wrote works on theology, medicine, and natural history; hymns, antiphons, and a drama for the liturgy (all with original music); and one of the largest bodies of letters to survive from the Middle Ages. In 1136 she was unanimously elected to lead her Benedictine community as abbess, which she did until her death in 1179.

“O vis aeternitatis” is the first entry in Hildegard’s Symphonia armonie celestium revelationum (Symphony of the Harmony of Celestial Revelations), a compilation of her liturgical songs that she made during her lifetime. It is labeled a “Responsory to the Creator.” “The responsory, one of several compositional forms Hildegard used,” explains medievalist Nathaniel M. Campbell, “is a series of solo verses [marked V] alternating with choral responses [marked R] sung at the first office of the day, vigils (matins), in the monastic liturgy.” It’s basically a call-and-response song.

This responsory, Campbell continues, “contemplate[s] the Incarnation . . . as the pivotal moment in which creation reached its perfect and predestined trajectory.” He notes how the refrain meditates on the cleansing of Adam’s flesh both from suffering and by (Christ’s) suffering. God put on our humanity and redeemed it.

Here’s how the medievalist Barbara Newman translates the responsory on page 99 of the critical edition of the Symphonia published by Cornell University Press:

Strength of the everlasting!
In your heart you invented
order.
Then you spoke the word and
all that you ordered
was,
just as you wished.

And your word put on vestments
woven of flesh
cut from a woman
born of Adam
to bleach the agony out of his clothes.

The Savior is grand and kind!
From the breath of God he took flesh
unfettered
(for sin was not in it)
to set everything free
and bleach the agony out of his clothes.

Glorify the Father,
the Spirit, and the Son.

He bleached the agony out of his clothes.

In the video above, “O vis aeternitatis” is performed by Azam Ali, an internationally acclaimed singer, producer, and composer who was born in Iran and raised in India and is now based in Los Angeles. She writes in the video’s YouTube description that Hildegard is part of the canon of universal spirituality and mysticism and that she is attracted to her cosmology, especially her articulation of the ancient philosophical concept of “the music of the spheres.”

In addition to her solo work, Ali is part of the musical group Niyaz, who blend medieval Sufi poetry and ancient Middle Eastern folk songs with modern electronic and trance music.

Excerpt from Within and Without by George MacDonald (poem)

January 1, 2026January 2, 2026 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

Stella, Joseph_Nativity — Joseph Stella (American, 1877–1946), *Nativity*, 1919–20. Oil pastel and oil on paper, 37 × 19 5/16 in. (94 × 49.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]

Julian’s room. Christmas Day; early morn.

JULIAN. The light comes feebly, slowly, to the world
On this one day that blesses all the year,
Just as it comes on any other day:
A feeble child He came, yet not the less
Brought godlike childhood to the aged earth,
Where nothing now is common anymore.
All things hitherto proclaimed God:
The wide-spread air; the luminous mist that hid
The far horizon of the fading sea;
The low persistent music evermore
Flung down upon the sands, and at the base
Of the great rocks that hold it as a cup . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
But men heard not, they knew not God in these[.]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
But when He came in poverty, and low,
A real man to half-unreal men,
A man whose human thoughts were all divine,
The head and upturned face of humankind—
Then God shone forth from all the lowly earth,
And men began to read their Maker there.
Now the Divine descends, pervading all.
Earth is no more a banishment from heaven,
But a lone field among the distant hills,
Well ploughed and sown, whence corn is gathered home.
Now, now we feel the holy mystery
That permeates all being: all is God’s;
And my poor life is terribly sublime.
Where’er I look, I am alone in God,
As this round world is wrapt in folding space;
Behind, before, begin and end in Him:
So all beginnings and all ends are hid;
And He is hid in me, and I in Him.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
O centre of all forms! O concord’s home!
O world alive in one condensèd world!
O face of Him, in whose heart lay concealed
The fountain thought of all this kingdom of heaven!
Lord, Thou art infinite, and I am Thine!
        I sought my God; I pressed importunate;
I spoke to Him, I cried, and in my heart
It seemed He answered me. I said, “O, take
Me nigh to Thee, Thou mighty life of life!
I faint, I die; I am a child alone
’Mid the wild storm, the brooding desert night.”
        “Go thou, poor child, to Him who once, like thee,
Trod the highways and deserts of the world.”
        “Thou sendest me then, wretched, from Thy sight!
Thou wilt not have me—I am not worth Thy care!”
        “I send thee not away; child, think not so;
From the cloud resting on the mountain peak,
I call to guide thee in the path by which
Thou mayst come soonest home unto my heart.
I, I am leading thee. Think not of Him
As He were one and I were one; in Him
Thou wilt find me, for He and I are one.
Learn thou to worship at his lowly shrine,
And see that God dwelleth in lowliness.”

This passage is excerpted from part 3, scene 10 of Within and Without: A Dramatic Poem by George MacDonald, a verse play that, in 1855, was the author’s first published work.

George MacDonald (1824–1905) was a prolific Scottish writer across the genres of adult and children’s fantasy, realistic fiction, theology, poetry, and literary essay. He was the founding father of modern fantasy literature (Phantastes, The Princess and the Goblin, At the Back of the North Wind, and Lilith and his best-known works), a mentor to fellow writer Lewis Carroll (he was a catalyst to Carroll’s publishing Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland), and a great influence on C. S. Lewis (who cites his writings as instrumental in his conversion to Christianity). MacDonald served for a few years as a Congregational minister, but his preaching about God’s universal love and the ultimate salvation of all (apokatastasis) rubbed against the staunchly Calvinist grain of his time and place; after resigning his pastoral post in Arundel, England, he continued preaching without pay as a layman, as well as weaving his theological views into his fiction.

Christmas, Day 8: Welcome

January 1, 2026 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

In today’s Christmas devotional, there’s a convergence of three Native cultures of Turtle Island (North America): Jemez, Dakelh, and Kwakwaka’wakw.

LOOK: Jemez Nativity by Maxine Toya

Toya, Maxine_Jemez Nativity — Maxine Toya (Jemez Pueblo, 1948–), *Jemez Nativity*, 2014. Polychrome pottery figures, red micaceous slip, tallest figure 8 1/2 inches high. Photo: Blair Clark, courtesy of Susan’s Christmas Shop, Santa Fe.

A granddaughter of Persingula Gachupin and a daughter of Marie Romero (both eminent Jemez Pueblo potters), Maxine Toya grew up assisting her family with pottery chores and painting. She began making her own pottery in 1974 and is one of the most renowned living potters from Jemez Pueblo, a census-designated place in Sandoval County, New Mexico. She has won numerous awards at the prestigious Santa Fe Indian Market, which every August brings together a thousand-plus Indigenous artists from more than two hundred tribal nations to exhibit and sell their work.

I learned about this artist from the wonderful book Nativities of the Southwest by Susan Topp Weber, the owner and operator of Susan’s Christmas Shop in Santa Fe. The book compiles dozens of nativities made with local clays and other materials by Pueblo Indians, Navajo Indians, and Spanish and Anglo artists of New Mexico and Arizona. Maxine Toya’s nativity appears on page 47. Weber writes,

Maxine’s donkey in this nativity has a blanket painted with a fringe similar to the one made by her mother, Marie [see page 46]. . . . She sometimes combines her figures into groups. Her standing figures all have closed eyes. The carefully painted detail distinguishes this nativity, as well as the sweet little Pueblo drummer boy with his drumstick raised in the air. The angel’s wings have a lovely feather design.

You can watch Maxine Toya give a pottery demonstration with her daughter Domnique Toya, also a potter, in this 2022 video from the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. (I cued it up to Maxine’s first section.)

LISTEN: “Welcome Our Creator” by Cheryl Bear, from The Good Road (2007)

Gilakas’la Gikumi!

Welcome our Creator!

Cheryl Bear (DMin, The King’s University) is an award-winning singer-songwriter, speaker, and workshop leader from Nadleh Whut’en First Nation in central British Columbia, whose work explores the intersection of Christian faith and First Nations cultures. She is a founding board member of NAIITS: An Indigenous Learning Community (formerly the North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies), an organization that addresses biblical, theological, and ethical issues from Indigenous perspectives. She travels throughout North America telling the Great Story of Jesus both within and outside Indigenous communities, bringing to bear her Indigenous worldview and values.

Bear’s song “Welcome Our Creator” is from her sophomore album, The Good Road. It opens with a drumbeat and then her singing a series of vocables (small nonlexical “words” without semantic meaning). “The song is played to the drum beat of my people,” the Dakelh (Carrier), she writes in the liner notes. “I use the words ‘Gilakas’la Gikumi’ from the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation,” which translate to “Welcome our Creator.”

The song’s title on the CD sleeve and in online metadata does not have a comma, suggesting that the phrase, if interpreted in relation to Christmas, is an exhortation to give Jesus welcome, to gladly and hospitably receive him. But it could also be sung as a greeting to the incarnate God himself: “Welcome, our Creator!”

Outside the Christmas context, the song might be sung during an assembly as an acknowledgment of Creator’s presence.

Christmas, Day 5: Thorn and Thistle

December 29, 2025December 29, 2025 Victoria Emily Jones2 Comments

LOOK: Illustration by Stephen Procopio

LISTEN: “Thorn and Thistle” by We Are Messengers, feat. Keith and Kristyn Getty, on Rejoice! (A Celtic Christmas) (2024)

To a world of thorn and thistle
Shadowed still by Eden’s fall
On a night so unexpected
Enters the Lord of all

In a cold and stony manger
Swaddled in a linen cloth
Into darkness, into danger
Born now is heaven’s Love

Holy hands with fragile fingers
Our redemption in his veins
To a world of thorn and thistle
Jesus came

Child of heaven, Man of Sorrows
Bitter is the earth’s betrayal
Soon our pride will be the hammer
My sin will be the nail

Holy hands with fragile fingers
Our redemption in his veins
To a world of thorn and thistle
Jesus came

See how a rose is blooming
Breaks through the hardened ground
Sweet fragrance fills the winter air
Its thorn a Savior’s crown

Oh rejoice, he comes to rescue
Our redemption in his veins
To a world of thorn and thistle
Jesus came

Christmas, Day 3: Stupendous Stranger

December 27, 2025 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

LOOK: The Nativity by Gerard David

David, Gerard_Nativity — Gerard David (Netherlandish, ca. 1455–1523), *The Nativity*, early 1480s. Oil on wood, 18 3/4 × 13 1/2 in. (47.6 × 34.3 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

LISTEN: “Where Is This Stupendous Stranger” | Words by Christopher Smart, 1765 | Music by Linda L. Hanson, 2012 | Performed by Fire (women’s a cappella chamber ensemble), 2020

Where is this stupendous Stranger?
Prophets, shepherds, kings, advise!
Lead me to my Master’s manger,
Show me where my Savior lies.

O most mighty, O most holy,
Far beyond the seraph’s thought,
Are you then so mean and lowly
As unheeded prophets taught?

O the magnitude of meekness,
Worth from worth immortal sprung!
O the strength of infant weakness,
If eternal is so young!

God all-bounteous, all-creative,
Whom no ills from good dissuade,
You have come to be a native
Of the very world you made.

The four verses of this Christmas hymn are excerpted from a nine-stanza poem by Christopher Smart [previously] published in Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the Fasts and Festivals of the Church of England (London, 1765). The poem was recovered in the twentieth century and since then has received multiple new musical settings—by composers such as I-to Loh, Charles Heaton, Conrad Susa, Joan A. Fyock, Leo Nestor, Alec Wyton, Thomas Gibbs Jr., Scott M. Hyslop, and Jacques Cohen—as well as pairings with older tunes.

My favorite setting of the text is by Linda L. Hanson, the founding director of Fire, a women’s a cappella chamber ensemble in Charlottesville, Virginia. The group performs the hymn in the video above, which Fire member Mary Welby von Thelen spliced together from thirteen solitary recordings during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hanson is in the top row, the third from the left.

The alliterative opening line of the hymn asks where the “stupendous Stranger” can be found—the divine one sent from heaven. Stupendous isn’t an adjective we use often. It means “causing astonishment or wonder: awesome, marvelous.” The poetic speaker begs the prophets, shepherds, and magi to divulge the location of the Christ child so that he can go and worship him.

The next two stanzas marvel at the paradoxes of the Incarnation—how Christ is “mighty” and “holy,” beyond the comprehension of even the angels, and yet “mean” (humble) and “lowly,” lying here in the dirt before us, visible, tangible, vulnerable, no longer far above us but in our very midst. What “magnitude of meekness,” what “strength of infant weakness.” The eternal one is born in time.

The omnibenevolent Creator has deigned to become part of his creation. No potential ill that he will suffer as a result—and he will suffer many and grievous ills, culminating in death by crucifixion—can deter him from making his beloved earth his home.

Hanson has generously allowed me to share the sheet music of “Where Is This Stupendous Stranger,” and says the hymn can be freely used by local church congregations. Anything outside that context will require her permission.

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Christmas, Day 1: He Came Down

December 25, 2025December 25, 2025 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

LOOK: The Birth of Jesus by Engelbert Mveng

Mveng, Engelbert_The Birth of Jesus — Fr. Engelbert Mveng, SJ (Cameroonian, 1930–1995), *The Birth of Jesus*, 1990. Central scene of mural at Our Lady of Africa Catholic Church, Chicago. All photos courtesy of the church.

When Holy Angels Catholic Church on the south side of Chicago was rebuilt following a 1986 fire, the historic church commissioned the Cameroonian Jesuit priest, artist, and historian Engelbert Mveng (1930–1995) to paint a mural for behind the altar. He chose to represent moments of angelic intervention in biblical history. (See a close-up of the full mural here.)

The mural’s focal point is a Nativity scene, set in a hilly African landscape that’s pulsing with joy. The infant Jesus lies asleep on a grassy bed, adored by his parents and flanked by candles, pipers, and some curious animal onlookers. Caught up in the sky’s vibrant swirls are forty-nine disembodied angel heads, singing their Gloria.

In July 2021, Holy Angels merged with the faith communities of Corpus Christi, St. Ambrose, St. Anselm of Canterbury, and St. Elizabeth of Hungary in the Bronzeville/Kenwood area of Chicago to become Our Lady of Africa Parish, housed at the former Holy Angels church. The altar mural remains installed on the east end, a key visual feature of the worship space.

LISTEN: “He Came Down,” traditional Cameroonian carol | Transcribed and arranged by John L. Bell of the Iona Community, 1986 | Arranged and performed by Marty Haugen on Welcome the Child, 1992 [sheet music]

He came down that we may have life
He came down that we may have life
He came down that we may have life
Hallelujah, forevermore!

He came down that we may have peace . . .

He came down that we may have hope . . .

He came down that we may have joy . . .

“Oh My Goodness! Noël Live” by MMK: French pop versions of 10 Christmas classics

December 21, 2025December 21, 2025 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

MMK is an alternative folk band from France consisting of Noémie Kessler (lead vocals), Sophie Chaussier, Antoine Garnier, Jérémy Haessig, Cédric Kessler, and Jonathan Lubrez. On November 23, 2016, they released the album Oh My Goodness! Noël Live, comprising pop versions of ten classic Christmas songs, all but one of them in French. All ten performances are available on YouTube; I’ve listed them below in the order they appear on the LP, and have also compiled them into a YouTube playlist, but for audio only, you can listen on Spotify. My favorites are #2, #3, and #7.

Nativity (French MS) — *The Nativity*, from the Très Belles Heures de Notre-Dame du Duc de Berry, ca. 1380. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Ms. nouv. acq. lat. 3093, fol. 41v.

1. “Ô Peuple Fidèle” (O Come, All Ye Faithful): The origin of this carol is unknown, but it first appeared in England, with Latin lyrics, in the eighteenth century. Some scholars attribute it to Cistercian monks of either Germany, Portugal, or Spain.

2. “Vive le vent” (Long Live the Wind): This secular Christmas carol is sung to the same tune as “Jingle Bells,” but the words—written by Francis Blanche in 1948—are completely different. The song delights in wintry weather and hearth fires, evergreens and feasting.

Sur le long chemin
Tout blanc de neige blanche
Un vieux monsieur s’avance
Avec sa canne dans la main.
Et tout là-haut le vent
Qui siffle dans les branches
Lui souffle la romance
Qu’il chantait petit enfant, oh!

Refrain:
Vive le vent, vive le vent,
Vive le vent d’hiver,
Qui s’en va sifflant, soufflant
Dans les grands sapins verts, oh!
Vive le temps, vive le temps,
Vive le temps d’hiver,
Boules de neige et Jour de l’An
Et Bonne Année grand-mère!

Et le vieux monsieur
Descend vers le village,
C’est l’heure où tout est sage
Et l’ombre danse au coin du feu.
Mais dans chaque maison
Il flotte un air de fête
Partout la table est prête
Et l’on entend la même chanson, oh! 

Chevalet:
Vive le vent, vive le vent
Vive le vent d’hiver
Qui rapporte aux vieux enfants
Leurs souvenirs d’hier, oh!

Along the long road
All white from the white snow
Walks an old man
With his cane in his hand.
And the wind way up there
Which whistles in the branches
Blows the romantic tune on him 
That he sang as a young child, oh!

Refrain:
Long live the wind, long live the wind,
Long live the winter wind,
Which goes whistling, blowing
Through the tall green Christmas trees, oh!
Long live the season, long live the season,
Long live the holiday season—
Snowballs and New Year’s Day
And happy New Year, Grandma!

And the old man
Goes down toward the village;
It’s the time when everyone is good
And the shadow dances near the fire.
But in each house
There floats a festive air;
Everywhere the table is set,
And you hear the same song, oh!

Bridge:
Long live the wind, long live the wind,
Long live the winter wind,
Which brings to old kids
Their memories of yesterday, oh!

Trans. David Issokson

3. “Les anges dans nos campagnes” (Angels We Have Heard on High): The English carol “Angels We Have Heard on High” is a paraphrase by the Anglo-Irish Catholic bishop James Chadwick of a carol that originally appeared in French in 1842.

4. “Douce nuit” (Silent Night): “Silent Night” was originally written in German in 1816 by the Austrian Catholic priest Joseph Mohr and was set to music by the schoolteacher and organist Franz Xaver Gruber in 1818.

5. “Aujourd’hui le roi des cieux” (Today the King of Heaven—i.e., The First Noel): This is the French version of “The First Noel,” an early modern carol of Cornish origin. The word “Noel,” used as a refrain, comes from the Old French “Nouel,” meaning Christmas.

6. “Minuit, Chrétiens,” aka “Cantique de Noël” (O Holy Night): The song that English speakers know as “O Holy Night” was originally written in French by the poet and wine merchant Placide Cappeau in 1847, with music by the opera composer Adolphe Adam. It’s surprising to me that such powerful Christian worship lyrics could be written by an avowed atheist, as Cappeau was! (A parish priest in Roquemaure had hired him because he was a great writer—the priest wanted a new poem for Midnight Mass—and Cappeau took the commission presumably because he needed the money.)

7. “D’où viens tu, bergère?” (Where Are You Coming From, Shepherdess?): This French Canadian ballad is from the sixteenth century. It’s a dialogue between a shepherd girl who has just seen the Christ child and a curious interlocutor, who prompts her to describe everything she witnessed. MMK sings three of the seven traditional verses.

D’où viens-tu bergère, d’ou viens-tu?
—Je viens de l’étable de m’y promener,
J’ai vu un miracle ce soir arriver.

Qu’as-tu vu bergère, Qu’as-tu vu?
—J’ai vu dans la crèche un petit enfant
Sur la paille fraîche mis bien tendrement.

Rien de plus bergère, Rien de plus?
—Des anges de gloire descendus du ciel
Chantaient les louanges du Père éternel.

ENGLISH TRANSLATION:

Where are you coming from, shepherdess? Where are you coming from?
—I’m coming from the stable, where I was walking.
I saw a miracle occur this evening.

What did you see, shepherdess? What did you see?
—I saw in the manger a little child
Tenderly laid on the cool straw.

Nothing more, shepherdess, nothing more?
—The angels of glory came down from the sky,
Singing the praises of the eternal Father.

8. “Entre le bœuf et l’âne gris” (Between the Ox and the Gray Donkey): With its text originating in the thirteenth century, this is the oldest French carol that’s still sung today. It describes how Jesus sleeps amid domestic animals and shepherds, in his mother’s arms. The refrain translates to “A thousand divine angels, a thousand seraphim, fly around this great God of love.” I recognize the striking minor-key tune, written in the nineteenth century by François-Auguste Gevaert, from Bifrost Arts’ “Joy, Joy!”

9. “Oh viens bientôt Emmanuel” (O Come, O Come, Emmanuel): Translated from the Latin, this hymn of longing has graced the lips of Christians since the eighth or ninth century.

10. “Go Tell It on the Mountain”: Coming from the Black church tradition in the United States, this is the only song on the live album that MMK sings in a language other than French. Such exuberance!

“The Purpose of the Incarnation” by LeighAnna Schesser (poem)

December 7, 2025December 7, 2025 Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

Rusetska, Natalya_Nativity — Natalya Rusetska (Ukrainian, 1984–), *Nativity*, 2016. Tempera on gessoed wood, 17.5 × 15.5 cm.

Gravity’s maker, spinner of spheres and spiraling matter,
made into weight, to sweat. His own feet vulnerable,
drawn flat and close against the punishing ground.

Star-strayed infant, wrapped in weight, heavy heaven.
In the hollow of the years, long and narrow as a well,
he waits suspended, bucket-drawn, clapper in a bell.

Ringing and ringing in the heatfolds of gravity, lines and lines
of weight leaning us into each other, caught up, tumbled
open-face roses in a blue bolt of thorn-pricked cloth.

God made known, fleshly God, Godlight bodied, bleeding
out into wood, over stone. God from God, telluric God,
shadowcast God, lightstricken God, bloodwritten. The pull

electric of low, deep center. God flesh, corpus God, Verbum
corpse, light-riven. Inscribed, blooded, God-heft falling death-
bitten into weighted rising, made and given; the miracle of leaven.

From Struck Dumb with Singing (Lambing Press, 2020). Used by permission of the author.

LeighAnna Schesser is a Catholic writer from south-central Kansas whose poetry collections include Struck Dumb with Singing (2020) and Heartland (2016).