And when Christ, who is your life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory.
—Colossians 3:4
Epiphany, meaning “revelation,” is the capstone of the Christmas season. In this final post of this year’s Christmas series, I leave you with a striking, light-flecked painting from Japan and a slow-tempo Black gospel song from the US. What marvel, that God’s glory fills such places as ours, and that he invites us not only to behold his glory but also to participate in it.
May God’s light continue to guide and enfold you throughout the year, and may you never stop seeking his face.
To view a compilation of this season’s numbered Christmas posts, click here; for Advent, here.
LOOK: Morning Star by Hiroshi Tabata
Hiroshi Tabata (田畑弘) (Japanese, 1929–2014), Morning Star, 1998. Oil on canvas, 90.9 × 72.7 cm. Private collection. Photo courtesy of the Estate of Hiroshi Tabata.
Born in Takaoka City, Hiroshi Tabata (1929–2014) studied art at the University of Toyama, later moving to France for two years for further art education. He exhibited his work throughout Japan and at Parisian salons. From 1966 to 1972 he lived intermittently in Brazil among the Xingu people, which led to his conversion to Christianity. From then on until his death, he painted biblical subjects. “The Bible is the ultimate theme for me,” he said; its world is “infinitely deeper” than we can comprehend.
In Tabata’s expressionistic Morning Star, starlight falls in a luminescent sheen over the face of the Christ child, whom Mary looks upon in tender adoration as Joseph wonders at the angelic activity above. The tight cropping around the Holy Family heightens the sense of intimacy. A sheep, donkey, and Amazon parrot (the latter a callback to his time in Brazil) crowd into the foreground, while on distant hills shepherds behold the glorious light display, hear the announcement that will propel them to their newborn Messiah. The wise men, too, are on their way. Epiphany is at hand. Heaven’s raining down (Isa. 45:8).
This visual reflection (by me) originally appeared in the Christmas/Epiphany 2022–23 edition of the Daily Prayer Project. Tabata’s art appears on the cover, by kind permission of his son-in-law. To view more biblical art by Tabata, see the beautifully produced, full-color book 田畑弘作品集 一つの星 (Hiroshi Tabata Works: One Star); the text is all Japanese.
LISTEN: “A Star Stood Still (Song of the Nativity)” | Words and music by Barbara Ruth Broderick and Johnny Broderick, 1956 | Performed by Mahalia Jackson with the Falls-Jones Ensemble, conducted by Johnny Williams, on Silent Night: Songs for Christmas, 1962
And we shall share In the glorious light
In Bethlehem The wind had ceased The Lamb lay sleeping On the hill
When all the earth Was stilled with peace Then lo, a star stood still
A star stood still On yonder hill Praise God that star still Shining still
And we shall share In the glory of love Because a star stood still That night a star stood still
A star stood still On yonder hill Praise God that star still Shining still
And we shall share In the glory of love Because a star stood still That night a star stood still
Note to readers: Art & Theology is noncommercial, but I do accept donations (monetary, or in-kind books!) to help keep it running.Learn more here.
Maria lactans, late 18th century. Fresco, Church of Narga Selassie, Dek Island, Lake Tana, Ethiopia. Photo: Alan Davey.
Glory to that Voice that became a body,
and to the lofty Word that became flesh.
Ears even heard Him, eyes saw Him,
hands even touched Him, the mouth ate Him.
Limbs and senses gave thanks to
the One Who came and revived all that is corporeal.
Mary bore a mute Babe
though in Him were hidden all our tongues.
Joseph carried Him, yet hidden in Him was
a silent nature older than everything.
The Lofty One became like a little child,
yet hidden in Him was a treasure of Wisdom that suffices for all.
He was lofty but he sucked Mary’s milk,
and from His blessings all creation drinks.
He is the Living Breast of living breath;
by His life the dead were suckled, and they revived.
Without the breath of air no one can live;
without the power of the Son no one can rise.
Upon the living breath of the One Who vivifies all
depend the living beings above and below.
As indeed He sucked Mary’s milk,
He has given suck—life to the universe.
As again He dwelt in His mother’s womb,
in His womb dwells all creation.
Mute He was as a babe, yet He gave
to all creation all His commands.
For without the First-born no one is able
to approach Being, for He alone is capable of it.
Translated from the Syriac by Kathleen E. McVey in Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns (Classics of Western Spirituality) (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1989), 100–101
PHOTO COMPILATION: “Alternative Advent 2022” by Kezia M’Clelland: Kezia M’Clelland [previously] is the children in emergencies specialist and people care director for Viva and a child protection consultant for MERATH, the Lebanese Society for Educational and Social Development’s community development and relief arm. She is a British citizen, but her work brings her around the world, seeking to safeguard the rights and well-being of children globally.
Every December M’Clelland compiles photos from that year’s news, showing people affected by natural disasters, violence, and injustice, and overlays them with Advent promises. There’s sometimes a disjunction between image and text that’s grievous and challenging, a reminder that our long-looked-for deliverance is not yet fully here, even though we receive foretastes. The twenty-eight photos M’Clelland gathered from 2022 include throngs of people making their way to Aichi cemetery in Saqqez, Iran, to attend a memorial for twenty-two-year-old Mahsa Amini, allegedly beaten to death by the country’s religious morality police for not wearing her hijab properly; a police officer helping a child flee artillery on the outskirts of Kyiv, and a baby being born in a bomb shelter; women carrying pans of granite up the side of a mine in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, for meager wages; a woman comforting a neighbor who lost her home to flooding in Tejerias, Venezuela; children playing in a sandstorm at the Sahlah al-Banat camp for displaced people in the countryside of Raqa in northern Syria; children clearing trash from a river in Tonlé Sap, Cambodia; and more.
March 9, 2022: An injured pregnant woman is rescued from a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, that was bombed by Russian forces. The following week it was reported that she and her child, delivered in an emergency C-section, did not survive. Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP. Scripture: Isaiah 7:14.January 26, 2022: A young woman looks on from her house destroyed by tropical storm Ana in the village of Kanjedza in Malawi. Photo: Eldson Chagara/Reuters. Scripture: Isaiah 58:12.June 7, 2022: A man and child, part of a migrant caravan consisting mostly of Central Americans, are blocked by members of the Mexican National Guard on a Huixtla road in Chiapas state, Mexico. They seek transit visas from the National Migration Institute so that they can continue their thousand-plus-mile journey north to the US. Photo: Marco Ugarte/AP. Scripture: Isaiah 35:9 MSG.
The sequence of images is a visual prayer of lament and intercession. I appreciate how M’Clelland—via the work of photojournalists, and her sensitive curation—raises awareness about these places of suffering, putting faces to the headlines, but also spotlights moments of empowerment and joy amid that suffering. We are encouraged to seek God’s coming into these situations of distress and to see the subtle ways he does come—for example, through the consoling embrace of a friend, the nurturance of an elder sibling, the protective aid of an officer, a jug of clean water, a child’s glee, or acts of protest.
For photo credits and descriptions, see the Instagram page @alternative_advent. (Start here and scroll left if you’re on your computer, or up if you’re on your phone.) Follow the page to receive new posts in your feed starting next Advent.
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SONGS by Rev Simpkins, an Anglican priest and singer-songwriter from Essex previously featured here:
>> “Hallelu! (Love the Outcast)”: This song was originally released on The Antigen Christmas Album (2014) with the byline “Ordinand Simpkins & Brother De’Ath”; it was reissued in 2016 on Rev Simpkins’s album Love Unknown, “a cornucopia of non-LP tracks, studio experiments, ingenious live re-workings, radio sessions, off-the-wall demos, obscure b-sides, & pissings about.” The music video was recorded on an iPhone 4 in the Edward King Chapel at Ripon College Cuddesdon in Oxford. [Listen on Bandcamp]
>> “Poor Jesus” (Traditional): Here the Rev. Matt Simpkins performs the African American spiritual “Oh, Po’ Little Jesus” with a soft banjo accompaniment. Harmonizing vocals are supplied by his daughter, Martha Simpkins. It’s the opening track of his EP Poor Child for Thee: 4 Songs for Christmastide(all four songs are wonderful!), released December 11, 2020, to support St Leonard’s Church, Lexden, where he serves as priest-in-charge. [Listen on Bandcamp]
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NEW PAINTING: Tent City Nativity by Kelly Latimore:Kelly Latimore is an Episcopalian iconographer from St. Louis, Missouri, who “rewonders” traditional iconography, especially with an eye to social justice. This Christmas he painted an icon called Tent City Nativity, which shows the Christ child being born in a homeless encampment. A streetlight shines directly over the Holy Family’s tent, like the star of Bethlehem, and neighbors bring gifts for warmth and sustenance: coffees, a blanket, a cup of chili. View close-ups on Instagram, and read the artist’s statement on his website. Proceeds from print and digital sales of the icon will support organizations serving the unhoused in St. Louis.
Kelly Latimore (American, 1986–), Tent City Nativity, 2022. Acrylic, Flashe, and golf leaf on birch board, 27 × 32 in.
SONG MEDLEY: YouTube user African Beats spliced together excerpts from three songs performed at a church in Germany at Christmastime by South African singer Siyabonga Cele and an unnamed woman, including “Akekho ofana Nojesu” (There’s No One like Jesus) and “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” I couldn’t find the name of the last song, and attempts to contact the singer for information were unsuccessful, but it’s in Zulu, as is the first one. Lyrics to the first song, sourced from here, are below.
Akekho ofana Nojesu (There’s no one like Jesus) Akekho ofana naye (There’s no one like him) Akekho ofana Nojesu (There’s no one like Jesus) Akekho ofana naye (There’s no one like him)
Siyahamba siyahamba akekho akekho (I have traveled everywhere, no one) Siyajika siyajika akekho akekho (I have looked everywhere, no one) Siyafuna siyafuna akekho akekho (I have searched everywhere, no one) Akekho afana naye (There is no one like him)
Azaria Mbatha (South African, 1941–2018), Nativity, 1964. Linocut, 33.5 × 57.5 cm. Edition of 10.
One of South Africa’s most important printmakers, Azaria Mbatha was a student and later teacher at the Evangelical Lutheran Art and Craft Centre at Rorke’s Drift. In his Nativity linocut he shows a Nguni bull, two bushpigs, an elephant, and an antelope calf paying homage to the Christ child, whom a bald, long-bearded Joseph gestures toward. Three wise men approach on elephant-back from the left, and further to the left, King Herod lurks with lion and spear, waiting to pounce on this perceived threat to his power. The top two registers fast-forward to the beginnings of Jesus’s public ministry, with John the Baptist preaching repentance and baptizing Jesus.
I’m not sure who the figure at the bottom right is supposed to be. Any guesses? It’s possible he’s just a generic worshipper, or someone of local or national significance.
LISTEN: “Sizalelwe Indodana” (Unto Us a Child Is Born) | Traditional South African Christmas song in Zulu | Arranged and performed by Concord Nkabinde, 2019 [HT: Global Christian Worship]
This time of the year always reminds me of my childhood & my years of growing up in Dube, Soweto. The one song that became a soundtrack for the Christmas season at that time was this simple Traditional song that really takes me back there. This is my interpretation of it.
He has overdubbed six vocal parts and multiple percussion parts.
Jun Ong (Malaysian, 1988–), STAR/KL, 2021. Installation of 111 LED beams, Air Building, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Installed in a former warehouse in Malaysia’s capital city, this site-specific work by Jun Ong consists of 111 LED beams fashioned into a starburst that radiates out from the center of the building. The explosive light coming from an abandoned cave-like structure is evocative of Christ’s Nativity.
LISTEN: “Joining in the Joy” by Coram Deo Music, on Swallowed Up Death (2015) | Words by Megan Pettipoole | Music by Luke and Megan Pettipoole
Founded in 2005, Coram Deo Music is a consortium of worship musicians and songwriters based out of Coram Deo Church in Omaha, Nebraska.
Darkness settled over our weary heads Then pierced by a great and heavy light A child, a Son, has made glorious the way
Rejoice A child is born
Our forests felled by your hand against us But a shoot sprouts from the stump foretold Peace and truth and justice are its fruit
Rejoice A child is born
A day is coming when the earth, it will be full We’ll join together, God with man Peace and truth we’ll pursue
Joining in the joy Joining in the joy of redemption
Paula Rego (Portuguese British, 1935–2022), The Nativity, 2002. Pastel on paper mounted on aluminum, 21 3/8 × 20 1/2 in. (54 × 52 cm). Palácio de Belém, Lisbon, Portugal. Source: Paula Rego: The Art of Story, p. 226.
It is time.
My body’s clock gongs
your salvation’s hour.
The water has left the pasture
and flowed toward the river’s mouth.
Follow or you will wither
in the desert that remains.
I will bleed for you
on this your first dark journey,
but in time, when life pushes you
headlong through black canyons,
the wounds will be your own.
May you learn early:
at the end light always shines.
It is here, child.
The time is come.
Breathe.
This poem was originally published in the Winter 1982/83 issue of Today’s Christian Woman and appears in the book Mary’s Journal: A Mother’s Storyby Evelyn Bence (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992). Used by permission of the author.(Thanks to Maureen E. Doallas, curator of the exhibition Mary, Mary, for introducing me to it!)
Evelyn Bence is a writer and an editor living in Arlington, Virginia. She is the author of Room at My Table; Prayers for Girlfriends and Sisters and Me; Spiritual Moments with the Great Hymns; and the award-winning Mary’s Journal, a novel written in the voice of Jesus’s mother. She has served as religion editor at Doubleday, managing editor for Today’s Christian Woman, and senior editor at Prison Fellowship Ministries. Her personal essays, poems, and devotional reflections have appeared in various publications.
Unidentified artist (in the style of Hieronymus Bosch), Nativity, southern Netherlands, ca. 1550–1600. Oil on panel, 58 × 76 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
This painting in the style of Bosch shows Mary and Joseph adoring their newborn son, Jesus, who’s naked and bedded down in straw. A small angelic ensemble stands at the head of the manger with lute, harp, and songbook, softly serenading the family, while a shepherd sneaks a peek from behind a green curtain. It is as if we, the viewer, are standing opposite the shepherd on the other side of the manger, also looking down at the Christ child. Are we similarly rapt with wonder?
I love how the ox and the ass meet our gaze, acknowledge our presence!
I’m not sure of the significance of Joseph’s hand-in-jacket gesture (its association with stateliness wasn’t established until some two centuries later, from what I can tell), but it’s likely supposed to connote reverence or humility, as do Mary’s prayerful hands.
In the left background, two men warm their hands and feet outside by a fire, while at the right, an angel appears to another shepherd on a hillside, announcing the Messiah’s birth.
The lyrics of this song are loosely based on Ephrem the Syrian’s Nativity Hymn #2 from the fourth century. (All nineteen Nativity hymns by this early Christian poet-theologian are a treasure!)
Blessed is he Both hidden and seen Blessed is he Who left the height of majesty
You magnify all, come magnify me That I may tell about The glory of your birth Proclaim your grace to all the earth Holy One, Jesus, come!
Blessed is he Who gave us all Blessed is he Who gave us all that he has gained
O Father of all, your glorious day You gave not seraphim Nor sent the cherubim You gave your only Son instead Holy One, Jesus, come!
All glory to thee, entirely Glory to thee, from every tongue, entirely Your birth is enough For all of us
Great one became a child Pure one became defiled O Living One, laid in the tomb In you we are renewed Your washing washed us through Let us obtain life by your death Holy One, Jesus, come!
The Incarnation, the enfleshment of God in the person of Jesus, encompasses the God-man’s birth and death, as does this song. Salvation was wrought not through Jesus’s birth alone, or life alone, or death alone, or resurrection alone, but through all of it together.
At first I got tripped up on the line “Pure one became defiled,” because Jesus did not become defiled in the sense of succumbing to sin or moral corruption. However, in his ministry, he did touch lepers, bleeding women, and corpses, which, according to the Jewish purity laws at the time, would have made him ritually unclean. Looking back on these healings and raisings, Christians would say that rather than these people’s uncleanness transferring to him, his cleanness transferred to them. But the public perception was that he was defiling himself.
And then, of course, there’s 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake God made the one who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” And Galatians 3:13: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.’” What it means that Jesus “became sin” or “became a curse” has been the subject of much theological discussion! But suffice it to say that Jesus’s death on the cross involved not only physical debasement but also his bearing, in a metaphysical sense, the full weight of humanity’s transgressions.
Andy Bast is a singer-songwriter from Holland, Michigan. He is a musician and writer for the Christian collective Bellwether Arts and a regular contributor to Cardiphonia projects.
Andrew Gadd (British, 1968–), Bus Stop Nativity, 2008. Oil on canvas, 188 × 122 cm.
Painted by Royal Academy gold medal winner Andrew Gadd, Bus Stop Nativity depicts the Holy Family huddled together at night under a bus shelter, trying to stay warm. Some passersby look on with curiosity—two even kneel down on the snowy sidewalk—while others go about their business with total indifference.
This painting was commissioned by the Church Advertising Network in the UK, now ChurchAds.net, and displayed on posters at over one thousand bus stops in December 2008, printed with the text “Be Part of the Action. Church, 25-12.” (A gentle provocation to attend a Christmas service on December 25.)
Francis Goodwin, the chair of the Church Advertising Network, said, “We are very used to the Renaissance image of the Nativity. But what would it look like if it happened today? Where would it take place? We want to challenge people to make them reassess what the birth of Jesus means to them.”
Bus Stop Nativity identifies Jesus with today’s urban poor. He was born not in a comfortable palace with fine clothes and other material wealth and security, but in vulnerability and need, to working-class parents who were inconveniently out of town at the time of delivery, forced to make do with less-than-ideal accommodations. When it came time for Mary to present a purification offering in the temple forty days after giving birth, she couldn’t afford the requisite lamb, so she brought two turtledoves instead (a provision made in Lev. 12:8). Not only was Jesus not monied; he also spent his early years as a refugee in Egypt, a flight prompted by Herod’s direct threat on his life. With limited resources, his parents had to make a home for him away from home, not knowing for some time when it would be safe to return to Galilee.
That this was Jesus’s family background and experience—that he lived on the margins of society, not at its center—has always been a significant facet of the Incarnation, because it means that God knows bodily what it is to feel want and uncertainty and to be overlooked. When in his adulthood Jesus preached “Blessed are the poor,” he was affirming that God is with those of lower socioeconomic means. He is one of them.
LISTEN: “Hush Child (Get You Through This Silent Night)” from the movie Black Nativity(2013) | Written by Taura Latrice Stinson, Kasi Lemmons, and Taylor Gordon | Performed by Jennifer Hudson, Jacob Latimore, Luke James, and Grace Gibson
Silent night Holy night Poverty on the rise Wealthy reverend in designer clothes Homeless children with frostbitten toes Sleeping in the street Sleeping in the street
I ain’t tryna be philosophical But it’s not logical Some folks out here freezing, others chilling like it’s tropical
The indifference is mad crazy Like poverty’s contagious My hands are dirty, but I’m still worthy Step in my shoes and walk in some mercy
They say this is your punishment for such poor judgment But you must’ve lost your mind How you gon’ feed it when you barely eating? Get ready for the welfare line I ain’t tryna hear it You make the bed, lay in it But I’m way too strong for you to break my spirit
Is it me? Am I the cause of all my mother’s misery? This cloud of secrecy on my paternity Did my very birth destroy my whole family?
I’m just a sinner, I know who I am Just a beginner, I’m not yet a man Send me a signal, I’ll follow your light Just help me through this silent night
Hush child, it’ll be alright I’ll get you through this silent night Hush child, it’ll be alright I’ll get you through this silent night
This ain’t living I got a mouth to feed But I can’t make these ends meet Got an eviction notice But my Lord don’t hear my prayers I never been this scared The silence is too loud for me Life just ain’t fair
Is anyone out there? Does anyone care? Is anyone listening? Is anyone there? Just let me know that I’m a part of your plan That you’re watching over and know who I am
From where we are now How do we find our way? Alone in the darkness, scared With no place to stay
Hush child, it’ll be alright I’ll get you through this silent night Hush child, it’ll be alright I’ll get you through this silent night
Hush child, it’ll be alright We’ll do this together
Sleep in heavenly peace Sleep in heavenly peace
This song is a dream sequence from the 2013 film Black Nativity, directed by Kasi Lemmons (good soundtrack, cheesy movie). The two characters who initiate the song are Maria (Grace Gibson) and Jo-Jo (Luke James), a homeless couple in New York City expecting their first child, who are caroling door-to-door. Fifteen-year-old Langston (Jacob Latimore), who has been sent to live temporarily with his estranged grandfather while his mom, Naima (Jennifer Hudson), figures out how to make ends meet for the two of them back in Baltimore, interjects with a rap expressing his frustration with economic inequality and the struggle he has seen and lived.
The pregnant couple sings the refrain, “Hush child . . . ,” to each other and to their unborn child, and Naima sings it to Langston. But in between, all four address God in lament: God, are you there? God, why don’t you fix these inequities? I’m exhausted. Tired of being a have-not and always having to hustle, to no avail. When are you going to provide like you said you would? The night is “silent” because God is not answering, it seems. Still, the characters continue to pray their pain and grasp after hope.
Though Lemmons’s Black Nativity was marketed as being based on Langston Hughes’s 1961 musical of the same name, its only resemblance is that it is a Christmas-themed drama with Black sacred music (only two songs are held in common; most in the movie are contemporary gospel or original hip-hop/R&B). To listen to the original Broadway cast recording of *Hughes’s* Black Nativity on Spotify, click here.
LECTURE: “Light in Sacred Space: Light from the Cave” by Matthew J. Milliner and Alexei Lidov, December 19, 2019, Bridge Projects, Los Angeles: This double lecture about the role of light in Christian spirituality and theology was organized to coincide with the premiere of 10 Columns, an immersive light installation by Phillip K. Smith III that Bridge Projects commissioned for their inaugural exhibition.
While the Light & Space movement was born in Southern California in the 1960s, in many ways it participates in a much longer history of artists in dialogue with the phenomena of light. This presentation by two art historians, Matthew Milliner and Alexei Lidov, will begin with Milliner exploring the unexpected resonance of Phillip K. Smith III’s work with Byzantine and Gothic traditions. Lidov will then expand on these ideas with his scholarship in the Eastern Orthodox tradition and its long history of engaging light and mysticism. What kinds of insights might come when Light and Space artists, including Phillip K. Smith III, are put in conversation with ancient Orthodox Christian concepts of the nativity and uncreated light? [source]
Milliner speaks for the first forty minutes, discussing Nativity and Transfiguration icons and their correlatives in the West and making, as always, fascinating connections between art of the past and present. For example, he overlays Olafur Eliasson’s Ephemeral Afterimage Star (2008) on Rublev’s Transfiguration icon (19:19), and Ann Veronica Janssens’s Yellow Rose on an Adoration of the Magi illumination from a fifteenth-century book of hours at the Getty (26:32). He also introduced me to a fascinating medieval manuscript illumination from Germany (which he in turn learned about through Solrunn Nes) that combines the light of Bethlehem and Tabor—two Gospel scenes in one. Don’t miss the quote by Gregory of Nazianzus.
Ann Veronica Janssens (Belgian, 1956–), Yellow Rose, 2007. Projectors, dichroic filters, and artificial mist, dimensions variable (min. 360 cm diameter, min. 250 cm depth). Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany. Photo: Philippe De Gobert.The Nativity and the Transfiguration, from an Ottonian Gospel-book made in Cologne, 1025–50. Bamberg State Library, Msc.Bibl.94, fol. 155r.
Combining art history and theology (he has advanced degrees in both), Milliner’s talk is organized as follows:
Thessaloniki | Gregory Palamas (d. 1337)
Constantinople | Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (d. ca. 500)
Paris | Abbot Suger (d. 1151)
Los Angeles | Phillip K. Smith III (b. 1972)
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ART VIDEOS:
>> “A 60-second introduction to ‘The Nativity at Night’”: One of my favorite Nativity paintings! By fifteenth-century Dutch artist Geertgen tot Sint Jans, a lay brother in the religious order of St. John. In this video from the National Gallery in London, a camera scans over the painting as an atmospheric soundscape plays and captions guide us in looking at the details.
Geertgen tot Sint Jans (Dutch, ca. 1455/65–ca. 1485/95), The Nativity at Night, ca. 1490. Oil on oak, 34 × 25.3 cm. National Gallery, London.
>> “Mother and Child Commission”: In this twelve-minute “making of” video, filmmaker Nick Clarke talks to artist Nicholas Mynheer over the first half of 2020, tracing his progress on the life-size Mother and Child sculpture that was commissioned by the Community of St Mary the Virgin, Wantage, an Anglican convent in Oxfordshire. I was struck by, from the looks of it, the physical demands of the sculpting process—the strength and endurance required to chip away daily at blocks of stone outside in winter, until they yield the shape you desire, then the logistics of attaching the blocks with steel, which weigh nearly a ton collectively, and disassembling, transporting, and reassembling them for installation. I was also interested to hear Mynheer discuss the expressive capabilities of English limestone—how you can convey emotional and sartorial subtleties, for example, through the precise angling of the chisel.
Nicholas Mynheer (British, 1958–), Mother and Child, 2020–21. English limestone, height 230 cm.
Mother and Child was installed in the outdoor reception area of St Mary’s on April 12, 2021; you can watch a video of the installation here. “In very, apparently, simplified form, there is so much tenderness, energy, and something new,” says Sister Stella, the sister in charge, about the sculpture. “Jesus isn’t going to be held back. Her son’s going to go places.”
>> “Corazón Pesebre” (Heart Manger) by Rescate: A follower of the blog introduced me to this Christmas song from Argentina, and I dig it! Released as a single in 2017, it’s about turning our hearts into a manger to receive Christ. Read the Spanish lyrics in the YouTube video description.
The song is by the highly popular Argentinian Christian rock band Rescate, active from 1987 to 2020. Their lead singer and main songwriter, Ulises Eyherabide, died of cancer in July.
>> “Hallelujah, What a Savior!” (Christmas Version), performed by Providence Church, Austin, Texas: In 2012 Austin Stone Worship songwriters Aaron Ivey, Halim Suh, and Matt Carter rewrote the lyrics to Philip P. Bliss’s classic “Hallelujah, What a Savior!” to make them more Christmas-centered and added a new refrain; their version was released that year on A Day of Glory (Songs for Christmas). Here the song is performed by another Austin worship team—Jordan Hurst, Jaleesa McCreary, and Brian Douglas Phillips from Providence Church—for a virtual worship service on November 29, 2020. Instead of using the Austin Stone refrain, they quote Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” between verses.
William L. Hawkins (American, 1895–1990), Nativity Scene, 1987. Oil on canvas, 48 × 48 in. Newark Museum of Art, Newark, New Jersey.
1.“Remembering that it happened once”by Wendell Berry: For the last forty-plus years, Kentucky farmer Wendell Berry has been writing what he calls “Sabbath poems,” which emerge from his spiritual practice of walking outdoors on Sundays without any to-do’s. “I go free from the tasks and intentions of my workdays,” he says, “and so my mind becomes hospitable to unintended thoughts: to what I am very willing to call inspiration.” This Sabbath poem from 1986 explores how the sacred permeates the mundane and how Christ is, in a sense, always being born. For an SATB choral setting by Doug Brandt, see here.
Source: A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979–1997 (Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1998); compiled in This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems (Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 2014)
2.“BC:AD” by U. A. Fanthorpe: Ursula Askham Fanthorpe (1929–2009), CBE, FRSL, was an English poet who is well loved by both critics and the general public. She was also a practicing Quaker. Each year she wrote a new Christmas poem to send to friends, of which “BC:AD” is the best known. It considers Jesus’s birth as the pivotal point in history, dividing time into epochs, into “before” and “after.” At this nativity, kairos invaded chronos—and we’re still singing about it millennia later.
3.“Making the House Ready for the Lord”by Mary Oliver: For many of us who succumb to cultural pressures, December is a time of rushing around, making sure the house is decorated like a magazine, the Christmas cards sent out, the cookies baked to perfection, the gifts individually selected and bought and wrapped. But in all this flurry of activity, are we missing “the better part” (Luke 10:42)? The speaker of this poem, Martha-like, is busy making preparations for Jesus, who’s coming to visit, but as she’s cleaning, outdoor critters keep popping in. At first she bemoans their presence—they’re not on the guest list!—but eventually she comes to accept, even welcome, them, surrendering her fussy desire for orderliness to a charitable embrace of whatever is. And on another level, this poem is about how all of creation longs for Christ (Rom. 8:19–22); the animals, too, want to see him, want to join the party.
5.“Second Advent”by Anya Krugovoy Silver: Memorializing a friend (Ishiuan Hargrove) who died of metastatic brain tumors, “Second Advent” unsettlingly combines stark hospital-room and anatomical language with language that is soft, gentle, lyrical. Recounting one of Ishiuan’s several neurosurgeries, the poet remarks how her head was nimbed by surgical lights and then swaddled in gauze. The title refers to Ishiuan’s waking up on the second Sunday of Advent, but also to the hope of Christ’s second coming, when pain, disease, and sorrow will be done away with. Anya Silver was herself a cancer patient, an experience she wrote much about in her four volumes of poetry, before dying of breast cancer in 2018.
Source: Second Bloom (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2017)
6.“The Nativity”by Henry Vaughan: “Peace!” rang the angels’ song the night of Christ’s birth—and yet what irony, that he who came to bring peace was himself no beneficiary of it in this life, being born among animals in a borrowed stable, then made a refugee, then later disbelieved, betrayed, mocked, tortured, and crucified. The darkness that bred such unwelcome of the Son of God still persists—violence, ignorance. Referencing the Genesis 1 creation narrative as well as the journey of the magi, the poem ends with an invocation for God’s light to manifest once again, leading us to Christ.
Source: Thalia Redivina: The Pass-Times and Diversions of a Countrey-Muse (London: Robert Pawlet, 1678). Public Domain.
7. [little tree] by E. E. Cummings: One of E. E. Cummings’s earliest published poems (it came out in the January 1920 issue of The Dial), “little tree” was intended to appear as one of five “chansons innocentes” in Cummings’s first book of verse, Tulips and Chimneys, but his editor, Thomas Seltzer, cut it (along with sixty-five others!). In it a young child consoles a recently felled evergreen tree—enlisted for the holiday festivities—with promises of glory and love. Though it runs the danger of being read as twee, Cummings remained fond of the poem and even had it printed and sent it as his family Christmas card in 1960, two years before he died.
8. “Messiah (Christmas Portions)”by Mark Doty: The speaker of this poem is unexpectedly transported by a local community choir performance of Handel’s Messiah. He marvels at how these ordinary, flawed neighbors of his can produce such beauty with their collective voices. The last line is probably a reference to the accompagnato and air sung by the bass toward the end of the oratorio, taken from 1 Corinthians 15:51–54—about how we will all be changed in a moment at the last trump, and the corruptible will put on incorruption.
9. “What the Body Knows” by Jean Janzen: The anonymous scribes and illuminators of the Book of Kells spent countless hours copying and beautifying God’s word amid Viking raids. In this ekphrastic poem, Jean Janzen reflects on the Gospel-book’s five whimsically painted folios of Luke’s genealogy of Christ, commenting on the continual inbreaking of God into our world and the “wild safety” of God’s love.
10.“Confession”by Leila Chatti: The Tunisian American poet Leila Chatti was raised by a Muslim father and a Roman Catholic mother, and both religious traditions have shaped her faith and her writing. Islam and Christianity hold many sacred figures in common, including Mary (Maryam), whose conception and delivery of Jesus (Isa) are narrated in the Quran 19:16–34. Chatti confesses to being more compelled by the Islamic characterization of Mary as grunting and sweating in the pangs of labor (in contrast to Catholic teaching, which says her birthing experience was effortless, her contractions painless, though the Bible itself doesn’t specify). Chatti finds comfort in picturing Mary not as someone exempt from the effects of the fall and set apart on a pedestal of supreme virtue, but as one who suffered the same physical and emotional toll as other childbearing women—and who probably did have the occasional selfish thought, which, in moments of intensity and vulnerability, she deigned to vocalize!
11. “Two Carols”by Evelyn Underhill: An English Anglo-Catholic writer and mystic, Evelyn Underhill meditates in this double poem on how Christ set foot on the long, hard road we travel to be a balm for our wounds and those of the earth. The epigraph to part 1 is from the Latin Vulgate of Song of Solomon 2:12: “The flowers appear on the earth.” What follows are several Catholic titles for Mary: rose without thorn, queen, generatrix. The epigraph to part 2 is a quotation of Romans 8:22: “The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.” The refrain, Dominus tecum!, translates to “The Lord is with you!,” words spoken by the angel Gabriel to Mary and, by virtue of the Incarnation, to all humanity. The other Latin phrases translate to “He who is in the heavens,” “A King is born,” and “Let the kingdom come!” Adveniat regnum!
Source: Immanence: A Book of Verses (London: J. M. Dent, 1912). Public Domain.
12. “The Christmas Babe”by Fr. John Banister Tabb: Written by a Catholic priest from Virginia, this simple quatrain marvels at the paradox of God’s simultaneous largeness and smallness.
Source: Poems (London: John Lane, 1894). Public Domain.
13.“Snowflakes” by Jennifer Grotz: When the world is viewed through a sacramental lens, we recognize God in commonplace wonders like falling snow, and such things can be a sort of wordless prayer that we offer back to God through our enjoyment of them.
14. [The Savior must have been a docile Gentleman]by Emily Dickinson: In these two compact stanzas, Dickinson reflects on how kind Jesus was (an understatement!) to have made the far journey to Bethlehem, “a rugged billion Miles” from heaven, especially in the cold month of December, all “for little Fellowmen.” She refers to him as “docile”—obedient, submissive—harking to Philippians 2, to his bowing to the eternal will of the Father, submitting to human limitations, suffering, and death for the life of the world.
15.[Wilt thou love God, as he thee? Then digest](Holy Sonnet No. 15) by John Donne: A self-address to the soul, this poem by the English poet-priest John Donne, first published in 1633, two years after this death, celebrates the Triune God’s salvific workings: we’re adopted by the Father, redeemed by the Son, indwelt and regenerated by the Spirit. The closing couplet, referencing the imago Dei, packs a wallop: “’Twas much, that man was made like God before, / But, that God should be made like man, much more.”
Source: Poems (London: M.F. [Miles Fletcher], 1633). Public Domain.
16. “The Little Towns of Bethlehem”by John Terpstra: All over Canada, Christ is being reborn this Christmas, in the sense that the Story has taken root, is retold, and continues to have impact. The speaker imagines the Christ child “wrapped in cast-off flannel” in a boxcar stopped on the tracks in Esther, Alberta, or feeding at his mother’s breast in a broken-down car on the shoulder of a road in Englehart, Ontario—actual sights that one might encounter today. Localizing the Story can help us to see it afresh, and to see the sacred humanity of families experiencing homelessness or other hardships.
17. “Song of the Shepherds” by Richard Bauckham: Richard Bauckham, FRSE, FBA, is best known as a biblical scholar—he’s one of today’s tops, in fact—but he also writes poetry! (I featured one of his poems last year.) In this poem, the shepherds on Bethlehem’s hillsides recall an ancient tale about the stars singing at the creation of the universe, which they thought merely a poetic embellishment, until they experienced something of the like for themselves: “a song of solar glory” eclipsing the lesser lights and exorcising the dark, creating the world anew. Unforgettable.
18. “Those Magi”by Kathleen O’Toole: What exactly were the magi seeking? What compelled them to leave their treasure behind in that cattle shed? Whence their strength to defy Herod? Besides musing on these questions, the poem also contains a passing metaphor that I found striking and new: cow breath as incense.
19. “Carol of the Brown King”by Langston Hughes: Tradition names one of the wise men who visited the Christ child “Balthazar” and says he’s from Africa. Langston Hughes, a preeminent poet of the Harlem Renaissance, exults that there was “one dark like me—part of His Nativity.” This poem is included in Hughes’s musical play Black Nativity and is one of six Nativity poems by Hughes that make up a children’s book illustrated by Ashley Bryan.
20. “Mosaic of the Nativity: Serbia, Winter, 1993”by Jane Kenyon: I couldn’t find the particular church mosaic program that Kenyon is writing about, but here’s my interpretation. Set inside a Serbian Orthodox church during the Bosnian War, this poem imagines a mosaic of Christ Pantocrator hovering in the dome, lamenting the violence that goes on beneath. Under the gaze of the I AM is another mosaic, portraying Jesus’s birth, but also, in a way, Mary’s, as she herself is being reborn in Christ, her mind increasingly shaped in accordance to his. Nativity icons often show Mary framed by a red blanket that she’s reclining on at the mouth of a cave, which Kenyon reads as embryonic.
21. “Breath” by Luci Shaw: This poem reflects on the contraction of the infinite God who breathed the universe into existence into a finite human being needing oxygen, who, as is foreshadowed at his birth, will finally ex-pire (“breathe out” his last) on a cross before entering his “next dark cave,” a prelude to resurrection.
22.“Mary’s Vision”from medieval Ireland: Mary foresees the future suffering of her infant son and dialogues with him about it in this poem translated from Middle Irish by Eleanor Hull (the same woman who, through her translation and versification, gave us the hymn “Be Thou My Vision”!).
Source: The Poem-Book of the Gael (London: Chatto & Windus, 1912). Public Domain.
23.“Joseph at the Nativity”by Tania Runyan: Staring at the “shriveled pod” that Mary just birthed, Joseph grapples with his complicated feelings—doubt, embarrassment, jealousy, helplessness, confusion, pride—and with figuring out what role he should play in the life of this child going forward.
24.“Waiting in Line After Christmas”by Sharron Singleton: (Scroll down to fourth poem) Rather than exchanges of refunded money for unwanted items, Singleton ponders what a mutually life-giving exchange of intangibles might look like.
25. “Burning the Old Year”by Naomi Shihab Nye: Through the act of forgetting, we must destroy the worthless trivialities of the year, and we must let that which is solid, that which matters—the “stones”—be revealed and remain.
Art & Theology 