Marc Chagall (Russian/French, 1887–1985), Peace Window, 1964. Stained glass, 12 × 15 ft. Public lobby, General Assembly Building, United Nations Headquarters, New York. Manufactured by Brigitte Simon and Charles Marq.
This stained glass window by Marc Chagall was commissioned as a memorial for the Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961), who served as the second secretary-general of the United Nations, and for the fifteen other UN staff and peacekeepers who died with him when their plane crashed on the way to a peace negotiation for the Congo Crisis in Northern Rhodesia. The artist’s handwritten dedication reads, “A tous ceux qui ont servi les buts et principes de la Charte des Nations Unies et pour lesquels Dag Hammarskjöld a donné sa vie” (To all who served the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter, for which Dag Hammarskjöld gave his life).
Chagall’s design was executed by master glassmakers Brigitte Simon and Charles Marq of Atelier Simon-Marq.
Chagall was born in 1887 into a Hasidic Jewish family in Vitebsk, Russia (now Belarus). He moved to Paris in 1910 to develop his art, becoming a French citizen in 1937. When Nazis took over the country, threatening Chagall’s safety, he was successfully extricated to the United States with the help of Alfred Barr, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He returned to France for good in 1948. His impressive body of work, marked by a spiritual vivacity, includes—in addition to stained glass—paintings, drawings, book illustrations, stage sets, ceramics, and tapestries.
His 1964 Peace Window in New York City—not to be confused with his similar but much larger Peace Window of 1974 in the Chapel of the Cordeliers in Sarrebourg, France—is full of biblical allusions.
My eyes are drawn first to the red and purple bouquet in the center, under which stands an amorous couple. Who are they? What do they represent? I can think of several possibilities:
1. Adam and Eve. In the sketch Chagall made for the window, the woman is very clearly naked, though she’s less obviously so in the final window. That Eve, pre-fall, is traditionally portrayed unclothed, and that Chagall’s later Peace Window unequivocally portrays Adam and Eve within a red tree, lends credence to the interpretation of these figures as our primordial foreparents, in which case the flowering mass would stand for the tree of life in the garden of Eden (Gen. 2:9).
2. The Annunciation—the angel Gabriel coming to Mary to announce that she had been chosen to birth and mother God’s Son. The male head is bodiless, emerging from the crimson bloom (suggesting, perhaps, a supernatural entity), and there’s a yellow glow at the woman’s breast, perhaps signifying the conception of Christ. What’s more, the woman appears to be cradling something—her pregnant belly?
3. God and the human soul, or Christ and his church. One traditional Jewish interpretation of the poetic book of scripture known as the Song of Solomon is that it celebrates the love between humanity and the Divine. Medieval Christians, similarly, spoke of the book as an allegory of the future marriage of Christ and the church, his bride, drawing too on the New Testament book of Revelation, which culminates in a mystical union, a picture of cosmic harmony, heaven and earth inseparably joined.
4. The kiss of Justice and Peace. Psalm 85:8–11, a common Advent text, speaks of the divine attributes that coalesce to accomplish salvation (in the Christian reading, in the Incarnation):
Let me hear what God the LORD will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts. Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land.
Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other [emphasis mine]. Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky.
5. The kiss of Joy. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was a favorite of Dag Hammarskjöld’s, and its performance, at least the “Ode to Joy” chorus in its final movement, is a United Nations Day concert tradition. Hammarskjöld described the work as “a jubilant assertion of life,” championing universal peace and brotherhood. One of the lines from Friedrich Schiller’s text that Beethoven set exclaims that “Joy . . . kiss[es] . . . the whole world!”
I suspect some or all of these ideas were at play when Chagall designed the window. Or even just romantic love in general (with other types of love portrayed elsewhere in the composition), as he often painted himself and his wife Bella kissing or embracing.
After this tableau, my eyes go to the large male figure cloaked in purple just right of center. I take him to be the prophet Isaiah, beholding a vision of wild animals and children cavorting together in harmony (see Isaiah 11). A boy, for example, reaches his hand out toward a viper and is not harmed.
But it’s also possible that’s meant to be Isaiah at the bottom left of the window, his face illumined by the beauty spread out before him, which an angel gestures to, guiding the prophet’s imagination:
On the top right, another angel delivers the Ten Commandments to the people of God.
Next to this communication of God’s word is the death of God’s Word in the flesh, Jesus Christ, around whom the crowds have gathered. A man ascends a ladder propped against the cross, the ladder being a multivalent symbol harking back to Jacob’s dream at Bethel and evoking notions of descent and ascent.
Vignettes below include a couple embracing with an infant in hand, a woman being fed at a table (the Eucharist?), a family reading a book (probably the Bible), a woman making music, and another bearing flowers.
At the top left is a lamentation scene that evokes those of Christ deposed from the cross. A man in a loincloth lies dead or wounded on the ground, his head cradled by a loved one, while at his feet another mourner throws her arms up in grief. This is the cost of human violence.
By contrast, in the bottom left corner, a mother cradles her child, evoking scenes of the nativity of Christ—of Mary with her newborn son.
All these characters—human, animal, and divine—are sprawled across a warm azure background, playing out love, suffering, death, peace, joy, and reconciliation.
LISTEN: “Oracles” by Steve Bell, on Keening for the Dawn (2012)
O ancient seer, your vision told Of desert highways streaming home To the mountain of the Lord Where nations sound a righteous song forevermore
And on that mountain men will forge From cruel implements of war The tools to till and garden soil The rose will bloom and faces shine with gladdening oil
And it will surely come to pass Justice will reign on earth at last The wolf will lie down with the lamb No beast destroy, no serpent strike the child’s hand
And God himself will choose the sign A frightened woman in her time Will bear a son and name him well God with us! O come, O come, Emmanuel!
Sliman Mansour (Palestinian, 1947–), The Way to Bethlehem, 1990s. Acrylic on canvas.
LISTEN: “Bethlehem” by Jack Henderson | Performed by Over the Rhine, feat. Jack Henderson, on Blood Oranges in the Snow (2014)
Oh little town of Bethlehem Have you been forsaken? In your dark and dreamless sleep Your heart is breaking And in your wounded sky The silent stars go by
Oh little town of Bethlehem Be still tonight, be still
Mary, she was just a kid Jesus was a refugee A virgin and a vagabond Yearning to be free Now in the dark streets shining Is their last chance of a dream
Oh little town of Bethlehem Be still tonight, be still
Cradled by a crescent moon Born under a star Sometimes there’s no difference Between a birthmark and a scar
Oh little town of Bethlehem With your sky so black May God impart to human hearts The wisdom that we lack Should you chance to find A hope for all mankind
Oh little town of Bethlehem Be still tonight, be still
Over the Rhine is Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler, a married, music-making couple from Ohio. In preparation for their album Blood Oranges in the Snow, they put out a call to a few select colleagues for assistance with the songwriting. Glasgow-based singer-songwriter Jack Henderson responded with a demo of “Bethlehem,” which “reinvents the nativity story as a very modern tale set amid the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” he writes. Over the Rhine arranged it, with Henderson singing lead and Bergquist providing backing vocals.
“How ironic that the very birthplace of Jesus should prove to be one of the most conflicted, unpeaceful regions of the world,” Bergquist says. Bethlehem is located in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory that has been under the military occupation of Israel since 1967. Numerous checkpoints have been set up in and around the Bethlehem district to restrict Palestinian movement.
The lyrics to Henderson’s “Bethlehem” pick up lines from the traditional Christmas carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” transposing them to the present day and giving them a dark twist. Phrases like “dreamless sleep” and “silent stars,” which in the original carol connote inexpectant slumber and a hushed nighttime idyll, in their new context allude to the nightmare of occupation (unjust arrests and imprisonments, shootings, house demolitions, impoverishment, impeded access to essential services like water and hospitals) and the seeming silence of God. The second verse highlights the Holy Family’s vulnerable status after Herod deployed troops to exterminate Jesus in an attempt to protect his own power.
The refrain, “Be still tonight, be still,” is a prayer for the cessation of violence in the land of Jesus’s birth.
Every fall a number of new holiday albums hit the market. Here are five from this year that I’ve been enjoying. I’ve included one or two sample tracks from each.
A smorgasbord of choral works by the British composer Joanna Forbes L’Estrange, plus a few written or cowritten by her husband, Alexander, and one by her son Harry, all performed by Ben Parry’s London Voices. I learned about this album from Angier Brock, who wrote the anthem text for the title track. One of my favorite pieces is the “Advent ‘O’ Carol,” which I’ll be featuring in a devotional post on December 17. Below is a retune of “In the Bleak Midwinter” (risky, since Holst’s beautiful tune is so iconic, but I love what L’Estrange does with Rossetti’s poem), followed by an original jazzy carol about “The Three Wise Women” of Christmas—Mary, Elizabeth, and Anna.
Elise Massa is a singer-songwriter and music minister currently living in Durham, England, where she works for United Adoration, a global nonprofit that seeks to empower local artists to create music and art rooted in Christ and meaningful to their particular context, culture, and language. This quiet, understated album consists of seven original songs based on the O Antiphons, refrains sung during evening prayer on the seven last days of Advent preceding Christmas Eve. Here’s the first one, “O Wisdom (O Sapientia)”:
Named after a phrase from a C. S. Lewis poem, The Hedgerow Folk is an Alabama-based acoustic Americana trio: Jon Myles, Amanda Hammett, and Bryant Hains. “Halfway through the night” is a through line that weaves through this their first Christmas album as a declaration of hope. My two favorite tracks: their reharmonized rendition of “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming,” and their bluegrass arrangement of “Oh Come, Divine Messiah” (which I knew previously only from an a cappella choir of nuns). Also available on vinyl.
As Foretold is a trilogy of albums that takes its subject matter from the prophetic fulfillment passages in Matthew’s Gospel. Part 1, released this week, covers the first two chapters of the book—Jesus’s birth, his flight to Egypt, Herod’s slaughter of innocents, and Jesus’s return to Nazareth. Three of the tracks deal with Joseph’s three dreams—a rarity in music! In his first dream, an angel appears to tell him that Mary is telling the truth, that the son inside her was indeed conceived by the Holy Spirit. In the second dream, treated in the “Out of Egypt” song below, the angel tells Joseph to take his family and flee Bethlehem to Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath, and in the third, the angel informs him it’s safe to return to their homeland.
Poor Bishop Hooper is offering the album for free download from their website! Parts 2 and 3 will release in early 2025.
Daniel Charles Damon is a jazz pianist, hymn writer, and retired Methodist pastor from San Francisco, who also works as associate editor of hymnody at Hope Publishing Company. His latest jazz Christmas album features a combination of classics and originals, including two hymns he wrote both the words and music for (“Like a Child” and “Winter’s Child”); “Hunger Carol” by Shirley Erena Murray (words) and Saya Ojiri (tune), which Damon has freshly arranged; and “Peace Child,” another Murray hymn, for which Damon wrote a tune.
It’s difficult to choose a favorite track, as I love this album through and through! I’ll highlight first the nineties hymn “Peace Child,” a pensive reflection on how Christ comes to us “in the silence of stars, in the violence of wars,” “through the hate and the hurt, through the hunger and dirt.” Second, a lively medieval carol whose Latin refrain, “Id-e-o-o-o, id-e-o-o-o, id-e-o, gloria in excelsis Deo!,” translates to “Therefore, glory to God in the highest!”
The vocalist on the album is the award-winning Sheilani Alix. She is accompanied by Damon on piano, Kurt Ribak on acoustic bass, Carrie Jahde on drums, and Lincoln Adler on tenor saxophone and soprano sax.
If you like this album, be sure to also check out Damon’s 2022 Christmas album, No Obvious Angels.
Carola Faller-Barris (German, 1964–), Bethlehem, 2009. Pencil on paper on MDF board, 100 × 180 cm. [HT]
LISTEN: “Peace” | Words by Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1879, and Wilfred Owen, 1917 | Music by Peter Bruun, 2017 | Performed by the Svanholm Singers, dir. Sofia Söderberg, on Exclusive, 2019
When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut, Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs? When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I’ll not play hypocrite To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?
Out there, we’ve walked quite friendly up to Death,— Sat down and eaten with him, cool and bland,— Pardoned his spilling mess-tins in our hand. We’ve sniffed the green thick odour of his breath,— Our eyes wept, but our courage didn’t writhe. He’s spat at us with bullets and he’s coughed Shrapnel. We chorussed when he sang aloft, We whistled while he shaved us with his scythe.
Oh, Death was never enemy of ours! We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum. No soldier’s paid to kick against His powers. We laughed,—knowing that better men would come, And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags.
O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite, That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo, He comes to brood and sit.
The text of this choral work by the Danish composer Peter Brunn combines two British poems: “Peace” by Gerard Manley Hopkins and “The Next War” by Wilfred Owen. Let’s look at each one separately, and then together.
“Peace” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut, Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs? When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I’ll not play hypocrite To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?
O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite, That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo, He comes to brood and sit.
The Jesuit poet-priest Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) wrote this curtal sonnet on October 2, 1879, after finding out he was reassigned from his role as curate at St. Aloysius’s church in Oxford to curate at St. Joseph’s in the industrial town of Bedford Leigh, near Manchester. He was apprehensive about this move to a place he described as “very gloomy” and unclean. The following decade, the last of his life, he would be plagued by melancholic dejection, which his later poems reflect. In addition to the internal disquiet he was experiencing in the fall of 1879, there was also an external lack of peace, as Great Britain was at war on three fronts—in southern Africa (against the Zulu kingdom), Afghanistan, and Ireland.
The speaker of the poem addresses Peace, an elusive dove, begging him to come settle down to nest, to incubate his eggs. “Brooding” here, writes J. Nathan Matias, is not a morose act but a generative, warmly creative one, birthing life.
Though the dove appears in scripture as a symbol of God the Spirit, in the last three lines of this poem he could be God the Son, the Prince of Peace. The people waited for generations upon generations for his arrival. And when he came, he was not all talk. He came with serious work to do; he came to hatch a newborn world.
This poem expresses yearning for peace in our hearts and in our lands—a permanent, holistic peace that only Christ can bring.
“The Next War” by Wilfred Owen
“War’s a joke for me and you, While we know such dreams are true.” —Siegfried Sassoon
Out there, we’ve walked quite friendly up to Death,— Sat down and eaten with him, cool and bland,— Pardoned his spilling mess-tins in our hand. We’ve sniffed the green thick odour of his breath,— Our eyes wept, but our courage didn’t writhe. He’s spat at us with bullets and he’s coughed Shrapnel. We chorussed when he sang aloft, We whistled while he shaved us with his scythe.
Oh, Death was never enemy of ours! We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum. No soldier’s paid to kick against His powers. We laughed,—knowing that better men would come, And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags.
One of the premier poets of World War I, Wilfred Owen (1893–1918) was a British soldier whose poems lament the horrors of trench and gas warfare. His cynicism and transparency about war stood in stark contrast to the confidently patriotic verse written by earlier war poets.
Owen wrote “The Next War” while being treated for “shell shock” (PTSD) at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh; he sent it in a letter to his mother dated September 25, 1917, writing the following week that he wanted her to show it to his youngest brother, Colin—for him “to read, mark, learn.” Owen was discharged from the hospital two months later and returned to the front lines of France, where he was killed in action on November 4, 1918, a week before the armistice, at age twenty-five.
He opens his ironic-toned sonnet with an epigraph from “A Letter Home” by Siegfried Sassoon, a fellow war poet he met at Craiglockhart, who became a friend and a mentor to him. (Bruun omits the epigraph in his choral work so that there’s a seamless transition between poems.) “Dreams will triumph, though the dark / Scowls above me,” Sassoon writes earlier in his poem, a poem that acknowledges the bleakness of war but, imagining the rebirth of a friend slain in battle, clings to the hope that it will soon be over and we can laugh it off.
Owen undercuts the optimism and solace in these lines with what follows in his own poem. The speaker of “The Next War”—which it’s pretty clear is the poet himself—personifies Death as a comrade whose intimate presence is normal among soldiers. He spits bullets, coughs shrapnel, and breathes stinking odors, and yet they ally themselves with him, sing Death’s song, go with him into battle.
Soldiers only delude themselves if they think they fight against Death, Owen asserts; they fight with him. Their nations’ governments will say they’re heroes, taking up arms to save lives and secure peace, but Owen rejects the idea that there’s anything noble, glorious, or effective about war. Soldiers kill men “for flags”—merely serving national interests—and their doing so never puts an end to war but only leads to another.
By bringing together these two texts, sandwiching Owen between Hopkins, Bruun gives a more hopeful framing to Owen’s disillusioned reflections on war, ending with the final image of a brooding dove. I like how the two poems play off one another. For example, Hopkins’s rhetorical question of “What pure peace allows / . . . the death of [peace]?” stands in starker relief when read in conjunction with Owen’s criticism of the ostensible rationale for war.
Bruun still honors Owen’s experience of being made far too familiar with death, his endurance of mortar blasts and mustard gas and all-around carnage, to no apparent end. Owen’s text starts at 2:11 of the video, where a menacing, march-like cadence enters. We feel the anxiety and the darkness of battle. The specificity of the poem resists us metaphorizing war—that is, applying the poem to a situation of inner turmoil (battling inner demons) only. This is physical combat between nations, which, of course, has severe psychological repercussions on the participants.
But at 5:33 the hushed tones of Hopkins return. Bruun had been attracted to Hopkins’s poem “Peace” for some time. In 2010 he wrote a setting of it for solo voice and flute, clarinet, horn, percussion, glockenspiel, violin, violoncello, and contrabass, and in 2016 he published a new setting, with Owens now inserted, as the second in a five-song cycle called Wind Walks for mixed choir and accompaniment, all five texts taken from Hopkins. He then adapted the song for the male-voice chamber choir the Svanholm Singers from Sweden, which is what I feature here.
The pointed and repeated “When” at the opening of Bruun’s piece, a word that Hopkins repeats three times in his poem, is powerful, an echo of the familiar biblical refrain, “How long, O Lord?” If we read Peace as Christ, then the poem is a prayer, asking Christ to come home to us, to our world—to spread his wings over it and nurture it back to life.
In Hebrew thought, shalom, “peace,” is not a passive thing, merely the absence of war. It’s the active presence of God and an all-encompassing state of completeness, soundness, health, safety, and prosperity.
Shalom is what we long for, especially during Advent. It’s what scripture promises will come someday—but now, its lack is keenly felt. It may occasionally flit and hover nearby, but then it flies off again.
As the church, may we embrace “Patience exquisite, / That plumes to Peace thereafter,” as we await Christ’s return, in the meantime preparing his way through acts of righteousness and reconciliation.
LOOK: Isaiah’s Vision of Eternal Peace by Mordecai Ardon
Mordecai Ardon (Israeli, 1896–1992) (designer) and Charles Marq (French, 1923–2006) (fabricator), Isaiah’s Vision of Eternal Peace, 1982–84. Stained glass, 6.5 × 17 m. Old National Library of Israel building, Givat Ram campus, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Photo: Hanan Cohen.
Born in 1896 to a Jewish family in the village of Tuchów in what is today Poland, Mordecai Ardon studied art in Germany under Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, he moved to Jerusalem, becoming a teacher in 1935 at Palestine’s chief art academy, the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, which he directed from 1940 to 1952. Known for their vibrant tones and stirring rhythms, Ardon’s paintings often explore the connections between the visible and the invisible and reflect his interest in mysticism and antiquity.
From 1982 to 1984 Ardon carried out a commission by the National Jewish University and Library (now the National Library of Israel) in Jerusalem to develop a monumental triptych of stained glass. His painted designs were translated into the medium of stained glass by the French master glazier Charles Marq, a frequent collaborator of Marc Chagall’s. The result is titled Isaiah’s Vision of Eternal Peace.
The left panel illustrates Isaiah 2:2–3:
In days to come the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.”
Winding like roads, the white bands contain the boldfaced line in various languages—I can detect English, Russian, Polish, Arabic, Latin, and French—representing the peoples of the world streaming to Jerusalem.
The center panel depicts a merging of the earthly and heavenly Jerusalems. At the bottom stand the city walls, made up of the seventeen sheets of parchment that comprise the Great Isaiah Scroll from Qumran, dating to around 100 BCE. Floating above are Kabbalistic symbols, including the Tree of the Sefirot, signifying the Divine Presence. There are also several Hebrew texts from Jewish history that I can’t identify.
The right panel visualizes the fulfillment of Isaiah 2:4: “. . . they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more.” All the machinery of war—tanks and fighter jets, guns and bullets—lies in a garbage heap at the base, and shovels emerge overhead as the weapons are transformed into farming tools.
This glasswork covers an entire wall of the old National Library of Israel building on the Givat Ram campus of Hebrew University. The library moved into a new building in October 2023, situated between the Knesset and the Israel Museum in the heart of Jerusalem. But Ardon’s window remains in its original building at HUJI, which has become a multipurpose space.
LISTEN: “Lo Yisa Goy (Study War No More)”(ֹא יִשָּׂא גוֹי)|Traditional Jewish folk song, arr. Linda Hirschhorn and Fran Avni | Performed by Vocolot, on Behold! (1998)
(Transliteration: Lo yisa goy el goy cherev Lo yilmadu od milchama)
(Translation: Nation will not take up sword against nation Nor will they train for war anymore)
And into plowshares [they’ll] beat their swords Nations shall learn war no more
The lyrics of this traditional Jewish antiwar song come from the original Hebrew of Isaiah 2:4, a text held sacred by both Jews and Christians. The song looks with prayerful hope toward the day when global peace will be a reality.
If this is the glorious end state to which we all are headed, the future that God has envisioned and charted for us, then why do we participate in violence now? When governments try to control people through violence, and those people respond with violence, that response only provokes violent retaliation, and so the cycle continues on and on—militancy and death. The line between aggressor and defender becomes blurred. We’ll never get closer to the Isaiah 2 ideal by asserting ourselves with weapons.
May the people of God be a people who refuse violence even when the state commands it, even when we’ve been hit tremendously hard and the urge for payback is intense. May we not become what we fear, inflicting terror because we have been terrorized. And may God bring peace and healing to people and nations who have been victims of war; so too perpetrators of war. To those just trying to survive and be free in this fallen world as best they know how.
The first chapter of Isaiah, which precedes the famous “swords into plowshares” chapter, contains this word from the Lord to his people:
When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my face from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves clean, make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.
—Isaiah 1:15–17
So let us renounce our vindictiveness and “wash ourselves clean.” And then let us sing this song (1) as a prayer that the Messiah, whom Christians recognize to be Jesus of Nazareth, would come to actualize this beautiful vision of peace, but (2) also as a pledge, committing ourselves to the path of life—to, in the words of the apostle Paul, “overcom[ing] evil with good” (Rom. 12:21).
I like Vocolot’s “Lo Yisa Goy” arrangement best; it has a celebratory mood, as if the coming peace is in sight. But what follows is a handful of others that carry more of a lamentful tone, which is also appropriate as we consider the persistence of war and how short we fall of God’s plan for human flourishing that’s never at the expense of others.
For harp and voice by Estela Ceregatti of Brazil, 2020:
A cappella by the American Midwest female vocal trio Rock Paper Scissors, 2010:
For strings, by La Roche Quartett from Germany, 2018:
A virtual choir under the direction of Andrea Salvemini, 2020:
The last performance employs an increasing number of instruments as the song progresses: guitar, recorder, keyboard, cello, percussion, and accordion. It also includes steps to an Israeli circle dance performed by participants in isolation because this was during the days of COVID quarantines; elsewhere online you can find communal performances where the circle is closed.
Some versions add these two lines as a verse, adapted from Micah 4:4:
And every man ’neath his vine and fig tree Shall live in peace and unafraid
>> “Peace on Earth” by U2: “Heaven on earth—we need it now. I’m sick of all this hanging around. Sick of the sorrow, sick of the pain . . .” U2’s “Peace on Earth” was inspired by the Omagh bombing in Northern Ireland on August 15, 1998. It first appeared on their 2000 album All That You Can’t Leave Behind, but I prefer the stripped-down acoustic version they recorded last year on Songs of Surrender.
The song wrestles with the tension between the angels’ proclamation of peace in Luke 2 and the course of history ever since, riddled, as before, with violence. “Hope and history won’t rhyme,” the lyrics lament—they’re just not matching up. “Peace on earth” feels naive; the words sometimes stick in our throats. The refrain addresses Christ: “Jesus, can you take the time / To throw a drowning man a line?” In its emotional honesty and its asks, it resembles a biblical psalm. (Bono has in fact spoken about how the Psalms have influenced his songwriting.)
When U2 performed “Peace on Earth” live at Sphere Las Vegas this February, Bono substituted the names of five Irish casualties of the Troubles listed in one of the verses with the names of four Palestinian and Israeli children who have been killed in the current Israel-Hamas War: Gal, Ayat, Hind, and Mila.
>> “There Will Be a Day (Isaiah 2)” by Caroline Cobb, arr. Joel Littlepage: I cued up my favorite song from last year’s Dawning Light service at Grace Mosaic church in Washington, DC (it’s at 32:50–37:29 of the video): “There Will Be a Day” by Caroline Cobb, based on Isaiah 2. The song is from Cobb’s album A Seed, a Sunrise: Advent to Christmas Songs (2020)—it’s my favorite of all her songs, and because of its emotional and summative power, I’ve set it as the concluding track of my Advent Playlist. Joel Littlepage, Grace Mosaic’s pastor of worship and formation and the director of the Daily Prayer Project, arranged it with gospel inflections for his church’s annual Advent carols service. He’s at the keyboard; his wife, Melissa Littlepage, is the vocal soloist (she’s also the choir director); and the saxophonist is Skip Pruitt.
ARTWORK: Home (land) Birth (place) by Beth Krensky:Beth Krensky is an artist, activist, and educator of Jewish heritage who describes herself as “a gatherer of things—objects, words, spirit—and a connector of fragments to make us whole.” Her website documents many compelling artistic projects she has undertaken over the past decade. One of them, Home (land) Birth (place), is a performance from 2016 with her academic colleague Amal Kawar, a professor of political science and the author of Daughters of Palestine: Leading Women of the Palestinian National Movement.
Beth Krensky (American, 1965–), Home (land) Birth (place), a performance with Amal Kawar, 2016, Great Salt Lake, Utah. Photo: Josh Blumental.
For this piece, Krensky sewed together a truce flag from baby clothes and other white linens and attached it to two olivewood poles onto which she burned quotes from Israeli and Palestinian mothers who have lost a child to Israeli-Palestinian violence. She and Kawar held the flag aloft in the desert outside their hometown of Salt Lake City as a call for peace. Read the artist’s statement at the link above, and view additional photos of the flag here.
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DEVOTIONAL POST: “Swords Will Be Turned into Plowshares,” Center for Christianity, Culture, and the Arts at Biola University: Every year Biola University’s CCCA publishes free daily Advent and Christmas devotions online that feature an artwork, a song, a poem, and a written reflection—the work of many contributors. You can access their 2024 Advent Project here.
Last year I was particularly taken with the peace-themed compilation offered on January 2, which includes a poem by Denise Levertov, a socially conscious, participatory art project led by Pedro Reyes (more on that in next roundup item), a Sweet Honey in the Rock rendition of an African American spiritual, and a wonderful reflection by Dr. Natasha Aleksiuk Duquette, a literature professor. Check it out.
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ARTICLE: “Mexican Artist Pedro Reyes Molds 1,527 Guns into Shovels Used to Plant Trees,”Colossal: Pedro Reyes is a Mexican artist, architect, and cultural agent who seeks to turn social problems into opportunities for tangible change through works that integrate elements of theater, psychology, and activism. (I learned about him through Biola’s Advent Project, above.) In 2008, in cooperation with city authorities, he led a campaign in Culiacán, Mexico, to collect firearms, giving donors vouchers for electronic appliances in exchange. The hundreds of guns he received were publicly crushed by a steamroller, melted, and remolded into shovels, which were then distributed to public schools and other institutions who committed to planting trees with them. This project was an effort to curb local gun violence and to cultivate the collective imagination toward life.
Pedro Reyes (Mexican, 1972–), Palas por Pistolas (Guns for Shovels), 2008Artist Pedro Reyes steamrolled 1,527 surrendered guns for his Palas por Pistolas project, transforming them into shovels for planting trees.
I’m interested in exploring more of Reyes’s work, as I love what he’s doing. In 2016, as a visiting lecturer in MIT’s Art, Culture, and Technology Program, he cotaught the course “The Reverse Engineering of Warfare: Challenging Techno-optimism and Reimagining the Defense Sector (an Opera for the End of Times).” A full-color illustrated survey of his projects, Pedro Reyes: Ad Usum / To Be Used, was published by Harvard University Press in 2017.
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INSTAGRAM SERIES: “Alternative Advent 2024” by Kezia M’Clelland: Through December 24, follow the Instagram account @alternative_advent for a progressively revealed photo essay of Advent promises told through journalistic images from 2024, sourced from various news organizations. I call attention to this project every year. The woman behind it, Kezia M’Clelland, has a master’s degree in violence, conflict, and development from SOAS University of London and helps equip churches and communities to support children and families in crisis situations.
CONCERT RECORDING: “Found in Translation: Cross-Cultural Musical Explorations of the Bible” with John Pfumojena and Delvyn Case: “In this unique concert, acclaimed Zimbabwean musician John Pfumojena and award-winning American pianist Delvyn Case reinterpret traditional sacred music by drawing upon traditions from Africa, Western Europe, and the Americas. Featuring one-of-a-kind arrangements for voice, mbira, and piano of gospel songs, African American spirituals, and hymns, the concert celebrates the unique power of sacred music to foster Christian unity—while simultaneously challenging us to consider the ways the church has fallen short of its ideals. Presented in June 2024 in historic Exeter College chapel at the University of Oxford.”
The program includes, among other selections, a medley of the nineteenth-century hymn “Abide with Me” from the UK and the nineties Zimbabwean song “Iwe Nesu” (Lord God, Be with Your Children) by Chiwoniso Maraire and Chirikure Chirikure; a powerful performative reading of Psalm 22 in English and Ndebele; and perhaps my favorite, the closer, the gospel song “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” with a verse in Shona.
To inquire about bringing this concert to your church, school, or organization in the UK, contact Deus Ex Musica.
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CONCERT TOUR:Tafod Arian (Silver Tongue), a.k.a. theLost Welsh Folk Hymns, a project by Lleuwen Steffan: This year the progressive Welsh folk artist Lleuwen Steffan has been traveling to chapels and other venues across the UK to present a trove of little-known Welsh folk hymns that she uncovered from the sound archive of St Fagans National Museum of History. (The field recordings were made by folklore and oral history expert Robin Gwyndaf in 1964.) Mostly dating from the eighteenth century, these hymns were passed down orally and never made it into church hymnals.
“They’re conversational and the lyrics feel so current,” Steffan says. “There were committees who would choose what hymns would go into the hymn books. These were the unchosen ones, the ‘canceled’ ones, if you like. Many of them are about addiction, mental illness, the dark side of the psyche. You have one that talks of drunkenness and alcoholism that is transformed into drinking the wine from God’s cellar.”
In addition to showcasing her own contemporary arrangements of the hymns, Steffan is also performing electronic renditions of nineteenth-century “hwyl” (spirit) sermons. Here’s an April 17, 2024, performance of hers at Drygate Brewing in Glasgow, part of the Celtic Connections festival:
What a strange and interesting soundscape! I’m eager to hear more of these hymns, and I’d love to see at least some of them translated into English.
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DOCUMENTARY: “The Canaan Hymns,” part 4 of The Cross: Jesus in China, dir. Yuan Zhiming (2003): Lu Xiaomin (吕小敏) (b. 1970) is China’s most prolific and beloved Christian hymn-writer, having written over 1,800 hymns since 1990, published in Canaan Hymns (迦南诗选). She didn’t finish junior high school, and she’s had no musical education (at least not at the time the documentary was filmed two decades ago, a full decade into her hymn-writing endeavors), but despite her inability to read music or notate it, she has had a tremendous impact on the development of indigenized Christian worship in her home country. To set down the hymns she composes, she’ll sing them, either in person or into a recorder, and someone else transcribes them.
This documentary tells Lu’s story and features many of her beautiful hymns. It’s the final (fifty-minute) segment of the four-part documentary The Cross: Jesus in China (2003), made by the China Soul for Christ Foundation, and it’s been translated into fifteen languages: English, Arabic, Tamil, French, German, Polish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Russian, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. See https://www.chinasoul.org/en_US/the-cross.
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HYMNS:
I’m always finding new-to-me hymns from YouTube’s recommendations algorithm. Here are two that popped up in that sidebar recently that I particularly enjoyed.
>> “The Rock That Is Higher Than I,”performed by Hannah Fridenmaker: Written in 1871 by Erastus Johnson (words) and William Fischer (music), this hymn is based on Psalm 61:2b–3a: “Lead me to the rock that is higher than I, for you have been my refuge . . .” The video is from the Folks and Hymns YouTube channel of Hannah Fridenmaker, whose tagline is “Creating simple, singable versions of hymns and folk songs for family worship and connection, and for the joy of singing together.”
>> “I’m Not Ashamed to Own My Lord,”performed by Nathan Clark George and family: This 1707 hymn by the great Isaac Watts is set to the early American melody PISGAH from Kentucky Harmony (1817). (I love a good shape-note tune!) The phrase “to own God” in the opening line sounds odd to modern ears, as we typically equate that word with possession or mastery over, but here it’s used in the sense of to profess, to claim, to acknowledge to be true or valid. The hymn is an elaboration of Romans 1:16 (“For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek”) and Matthew 10:32 (“Everyone, therefore, who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven”).
Check out the other songs on George’s YouTube channel, and on Spotify!
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ALBUM: Cross Culture: Songs of Faith from Near and Far (2003): Consisting of Mary Preus, Donna Peña, ValLimar Jansen, Tom Witt, and José Antonio Machado, Cross Culture was an ecumenical group originally formed to lead music and worship for Lutheran Global Mission events around the US. “While at these events and listening to the many stories and testimonies that were coming from the various countries that this music was born in,” they write in the liner notes, “we could not help but bond with the song, the stories, the spirit, and the heart of those who live in these realities, be they joyous or be they of struggle. We found ourselves forming a deep love and commitment to carry on their truths to you, the musicians and the listeners, so you too may develop a love and understanding that goes way beyond our parish doors.”
This album of theirs brings together nineteen songs from South Africa, Mozambique, Cameroon, Tanzania, Pakistan, Palestine, Taiwan, Sweden, Argentina, Nicaragua, Arapaho Nation, Cherokee Nation, and the US. You can listen to full album on YouTube or Spotify, or buy a digital download from GIA Music; or, like me, you can buy a used physical copy from Amazon. I wanted to have the liner notes. Unfortunately they don’t include most of the original lyrics, but they do provide English translations or paraphrases as well as info about the source and performance of each song.
Let me share just three. The medley “Nzamuranza / African Processional” opens with a traditional Xitswa song from Mozambique, arranged by Patrick Matsikenyiri, who roughly translates it to “Be joyful! We are made in the image of God,” or alternatively, “I worship Jesus. There is no one like him!” (Those meanings are quite different, so it’s possible those are two different verses; it’s not clear from the liner notes which words are sung.) At 2:16, “African Processional” enters; this song was adapted from “Praise, Praise, Praise the Lord,” written by a group of women from Cameroon and collected by Elaine Hanson. Mary Preus is the caller:
The CD also includes a beautiful arrangement of “Amazing Grace” with bombo and Native American flute and rain stick, sung in Cherokee by Donna Peña, who is of Mexican and Cherokee descent:
One of the two featured songs from Palestine is “Yarabba Ssalami,” a traditional chant in Arabic that’s well known by Christians there and in Lebanon, and that’s led on the album by Jim Rolland. The liner notes provide the translation “God of peace, rain peace upon us. Fill our hearts with peace. God of peace, rain peace upon us. Give our land peace.” But let me instead share this “virtual choir” rendition of the song made earlier this year for the World Day of Prayer, amid Israel’s still-ongoing war on Gaza, which in addition to an English translation of the Arabic also features sung Spanish, French, German, Taiwanese, and Mandarin translations:
Chagall’s Peace Window is one of the most significant works in the United Nations’ art collection. On my quick visit to New York City last month, where the UN is headquartered, I was hoping to see it, but I emailed ahead of time and found out it’s not currently available for viewing due to construction behind it. (You can “see” it but not really, because it’s not lit, and there’s a tall plastic barrier in front.) I was disappointed, but I decided to visit the UN anyway, to see what other art I might find.
The United Nations was founded in 1945 for the purpose of preventing a third world war. Comprising 193 member states, the organization is committed to maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations, and promoting social progress, better living standards, and human rights. Their motto is “Peace, dignity, and equality on a healthy planet.”
After presenting my ID, getting my photo taken, being stickered, and going through security, I was inside the campus and directed to the General Assembly Building. Outside the entrance to this building is the famous Non-Violence bronze, aka TheKnotted Gun, by Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd of Sweden. The artist made the sculpture in 1980 after his friend John Lennon was murdered. He wanted to honor the singer-songwriter’s vision of a peaceful world.
Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd (Swedish, 1934–2016), Non-Violence, 1984. Bronze, 79 × 44 × 50 in. United Nations Headquarters (outside the General Assembly building), New York. Gift from Luxembourg. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]
The original cast was first placed at the Strawberry Fields memorial in New York City’s Central Park, across the street from the Dakota apartment building where Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono, lived, and where he was shot. But Reuterswärd worried it would be stolen there. In 1988, the Government of Luxembourg bought the sculpture and donated it to the United Nations, who installed it inside the gate of their New York headquarters.
Non-Violence is an oversize replica of a Colt Python .357 Magnum revolver with the barrel tied in a knot and the muzzle pointing upward, rendering the weapon useless. In his statement from 1988, Reuterswärd said, “Humor is the finest instrument we have to bring people together. While making my peace-symbol, I thought of the importance of introducing a touch of humor, just to make my ‘weapon’ symbolically ridiculous and completely out of order.”
Reuterswärd ultimately made over thirty additional casts of Non-Violence, which are publicly installed in cities such as Beijing, Beirut, Cape Town, Lausanne, and Mexico City.
After spending some time with this iconic work, I entered the General Assembly lobby. What first caught my eye, on the right wall, was a monumental Mola Tapestry from Panama, made by unidentified Kuna women. (To learn about the art form, see my previous blog post from Lent 2022.)
Mola Tapestry by the Kuna people, 1993. Reverse appliqué tapestry, 190 × 284 in. General Assembly Building, United Nations Headquarters, New York. Gift from Panama. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]
Molas are made using a reverse appliqué technique, in which several layers of multicolored cloth are sewn together and then parts of each layer are cut out to form the design. These textile panels are traditionally made on a smaller scale and sewn onto women’s blouses, but as outside interest in them grew, local artisans started making some to be displayed as wall hangings.
This one shows a colorful array of indigenous flora and fauna, including a toucan, owl, hummingbird, monkey, turtle, frog, squirrel, rabbit, deer, and wildcat.
On the opposite wall is a nearly thirty-foot-long painting titled La Fraternidad (Brotherhood) by Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo [previously], which shows a group of people gathered around a fire with interlaced arms. The fire may represent enlightenment, knowledge and power, or the Divine Presence.
Rufino Tamayo (Mexican, 1899–1991), La Fraternidad (Brotherhood), 1968. Oil on canvas, 160 × 358 in. General Assembly Building, United Nations Headquarters, New York. Gift from Mexico, 1971. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]
At the left is an ancient Aztec or Mayan pyramid, whereas the structure at the right is modern. Tamayo said this shows the span of time, from the ancient era into the present and future.
From 2009 to 2014 the painting was on display at the Mexican state legislature, after which it was restored and returned to the UN.
Situated in front is a replica of an ancient Greek sculpture depicting Poseidon of Artemision, god of the sea, in an active stance. His right hand would have originally wielded a trident, representing his power. At first I thought it an odd choice for the UN to display an apparently militant figure, as Poseidon used his trident as a weapon to fight Trojans, Titans, and others, and indeed here he seems poised to deliver a death blow. But after some rudimentary research, I found that Poseidon also created life-giving springs with the strike of his trident (think Moses striking the rock with his staff), and used it to calm turbulent waters. These ameliorating acts align with the UN’s mission and make the Poseidon sculpture a fitting addition to their collection.
Also in the lobby is a wool tapestry from Latvia. Titled Hope, it’s by the well-known Latvian textile artist Edīte Pauls-Vīgnere.
Edīte Pauls-Vīgnere (Latvian, 1939–), Hope, 1994. Tapestry, 126 × 114 in. General Assembly Building, United Nations Headquarters, New York. Gift from Latvia. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]
The female figure in the foreground is, I’m assuming, a personification of hope, dressed in a white gown and golden headband and holding the sun. She stands in front of the Freedom Monument in Riga, which shows Lady Liberty holding three gilded stars, symbolizing the three constitutional districts of Latvia.
Deeper inside the lobby was a temporary exhibition, Interwoven: Refugee Murals Across Borders, organized jointly by UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) and Artolution. It opened on June 20, World Refugee Day, and will continue through July 19. The exhibition presents paintings by refugees and host communities in refugee camps, conflict zones, and crisis-affected communities across the world. These were created through a collaborative process in which the work circulated to different locations, with artists contributing additions at each stop. The end results show interwoven narratives of the diverse peoples forced to flee their homes. Themes include joy, lament, labor, empowerment, identity, and home.
Made by about a dozen refugee girls and women from four countries, Fabric of Women’s Resilience began in Uganda with a small group of South Sudanese, who prepared the traditional bark cloth from the bark of a mutuba tree. This substrate then traveled to Bangladesh, where Rohingya women painted a pregnant woman lying on a bed while a female doctor presses a stethoscope to her belly, and on the left, a mother bathing her child. The artists said they wanted to encourage mothers to seek access to prenatal healthcare and to practice good hygiene with their babies.
Fabric of Women’s Resilience, a collaborative painting by approx. twelve Rohingya, Syrian, Afghan, and South Sudanese refugee women, 2018. Acrylic on bark cloth, 24 × 60 in. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.
In Greece, the bark cloth traveled to Samos refugee camp, where one young Afghan woman, with the help of others, painted one of her traumatic childhood experiences: being married off at age twelve to an older man. This scene at the top is a bit crumpled in the frame, so it’s difficult to see, but the child bride is crying, and the man has a white beard.
The painting also went to Azraq refugee camp in Jordan, where Syrian women added a woman carrying a baby on her back while reading a book to show that women can be mothers and pursue an education. (This scene was at the extreme right but must have come off; view the full original painting on the exhibition webpage, fourth image down.) It ended its journey with a return to Uganda, where the South Sudanese women filled in the remaining spaces with plants, fish, and fruits.
Other artworks include The Creature of Home and Play in the Midst of Chaos, painted on food distribution bags and as a collaboration between South Sudanese and Rohingya refugees, both children and adults.
The Creature of Home, which traveled to BidiBidi Refugee Settlement in Uganda and Balukhali Refugee Camp in Bangladesh, depicts chickens, a soccer field, memories of home, and tools needed to take care of the land.
The Creature of Home, a collaborative painting by South Sudanese refugees at BidiBidi Refugee Settlement, Uganda, and Rohingya refugees at Balukhali Refugee Camp, Bangladesh. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.
Play in the Midst of Chaos, which traveled to BidiBidi Refugee Settlement in Uganda and Bhasan Char Island in Bangladesh, captures a sense of joy with its vivid colors and depiction of sports. It also highlights the importance of planting trees and taking climate action.
Play in the Midst of Chaos, a collaborative painting by South Sudanese refugees at BidiBidi Refugee Settlement, Uganda, and Rohingya refugees at Bhasan Char Island, Bangladesh. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.
Seeing the Interwoven exhibition sent me down an internet rabbit trail of learning more about the co-organizer, Artolution, and the work they’re doing, which then impelled me to learn more about the refugee communities in which they’re active. Follow them on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. I also commend to you the Founder Spirit podcast interview with Artolution cofounder and public artist, educator, and humanitarian Max Frieder.
All the above artworks can be seen for free without an appointment. (However, note that the temporary exhibitions change throughout the year.) But to access the sculptures in the garden, which is kept locked, your only option is to pay $26 for the guided, forty-five-minute Garden Tour.
I had seen photos of the biblically inspired Let Us Beat Swords into Ploughshares and wanted to see it in person, so I paid up. It’s vaguely visible from the vantage of the free-access plaza outside the main entrance of the General Assembly Building.
But let’s move in closer.
Yevgeny Vuchetich (Russian, 1908–1974), Let Us Beat Swords into Ploughshares, 1959. Cast bronze and granite pedestal, figure 111 × 76 × 35 in., pedestal 44 × 75 × 34 in. North Lawn, United Nations Headquarters, New York. Gift from the USSR. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]
Gifted to the United Nations by the USSR in 1959, the bronze sculpture is by the Soviet artist Yevgeny (sometimes spelled “Evgeniy”) Vuchetich, who was of Russian, French, and Serbian heritage and lived most of his life in Russia. It shows a muscular man (modeled by Olympic wrestler Boris Gurevich) hammering a sword into a plow blade, used to cut furrows for planting crops. Representing the transformation of tools of death into tools of life, the imagery is taken from Isaiah 2:4 in the Hebrew Bible, in which the prophet proclaims that “in days to come,” people of all nations “shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more.” The vision is that in the kingdom of God, instead of the land being littered with human blood and corpses, it will be cultivated and bring forth good food.
This scripture text is the basis of the African American spiritual “Down by the Riverside” [previously], whose refrain declares, “I ain’t gonna study war no more!” One of the commonly used verses is “I’m gonna beat my sword into a plow.” Here’s Michael Wright’s version:
And, from 1959, the Golden Gate Quartet’s, arranged by Orlandus Wilson:
Reflecting the song lyrics, Vuchetich’s sculpture is itself planted “down by the riverside”—the East River.
Vuchetich was one of the major figures of Soviet government–backed monumental sculpture, making his name from depictions of military heroes. So I find it a little odd that he was commissioned to make this peace sculpture that subverts the very militarism his other sculptures celebrate. One of his most famous pieces is The Motherland Calls; located at the top of Mamayev Kurgan hill overlooking the city formerly known as Stalingrad, it shows a female personification of Russia lifting high a sword in one hand and calling the Soviet people to battle with the other.
Look, many artists will take what work they can get, regardless of whether a commission matches their own ideology. I don’t claim to know what Vuchetich’s personal views were about war, violence, and empire.
Regardless of its disjunction with the artist’s larger oeuvre—and the uncomfortable fact that the donor’s successor state and caretaker of the sculpture, the Russian Federation, is persisting in an illegal and immoral war against its neighbor Ukraine—I really appreciate the theological imagination that Let Us Beat Swords into Ploughshares embodies, entreating us to apply our strength to constructive, not destructive, acts.
Nearby in the garden, not pictured in this article, is a literalization of the “swords into plowshares” principle. A recent gift from the Government of Colombia, Kusikawsay (Quechua for “peaceful and happy life”) is made of steel armaments melted and cast into the shape of a canoe, sailing upward. A donor representative said the sculpture for them symbolizes the end of an over-fifty-year armed conflict in their country. The idea is that the grotesque paraphernalia of war is metamorphosed into a benign watercraft that, in how it’s positioned, symbolizes humanity’s traveling into a lofty future.
Another boat on the UNHQ’s North Lawn is Arrival by the Irish sculptor John Behan, which shows Irish immigrants disembarking into a new world. The sculpture was intended as a thank-you to the many nations that have received the Irish over the years, including Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, New Zealand, and Brazil.
John Behan (Irish, 1938–), Arrival, 2000. Bronze, stainless steel on granite pavers, 26 × 23 ft. North Lawn, United Nations Headquarters, New York. Gift from Ireland. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]
This piece wasn’t covered by the Garden Tour, nor was the colossal Mother and Child by the Italian artist Giacomo Manzù, which I spotted across the lawn and hurriedly snapped a distant photo of while scurrying to keep up with the group.
Giacomo Manzù (Italian, 1908–1991), Mother and Child, 1989. Bronze, 254 × 66 × 52 in. North Lawn, United Nations Headquarters, New York. Gift from Italy. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]
One of the pieces our guide did stop for and spend a good amount of time on was a fragment of the Berlin Wall gifted by Germany in 2002, after the wall came down in 1989. The ninety-six-mile-long barrier was erected in 1961 to divide the country into East (Communist) and West (Federal Republic), but a peaceful revolution in East Germany resulted in its fall and the country’s reunification as a federal republic, marking the end of the Cold War in Europe.
Kani Alavi (Iranian German, 1955–), Trophy of Civil Rights (Berlin Wall Fragment), ca. 1998. Precast reinforced concrete wall sections with paint, overall 84 × 114 in. North Lawn, United Nations Headquarters, New York. Gift from Germany. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]
The front of this three-slab wall fragment (that is, the side visible from the paved path) bears a mural by Kani Alavi, an Iranian artist who moved to West Berlin in 1980, living in an apartment overlooking the formidable “Checkpoint Charlie.” Throughout the 1980s, artists painted images on the west side of the wall as a form of political commentary and resistance. The east side, however, was unpainted during the Cold War because it was so heavily guarded; attempted art interventionists probably would have been shot.
After the border opened on November 9, 1989, and demolition of the wall began, Alavi was a key organizer of what’s known as the East Side Gallery, inviting artists from Germany and around the world to paint murals on the east side of the wall, across a segment that would be deliberately left standing as a memorial. “Alavi helped transform the most visible symbol of the Iron Curtain into an enduring monument to the power of freedom,” Ryan Prior wrote for CNN. This open-air gallery is one of Berlin’s most visited attractions, featuring the work of at least 118 artists from twenty-one countries.
Alavi painted Trophy of Civil Rights (I’m not sure whether that inscription was his or just a remnant from another artist, but it’s become the mural’s de facto title) on a section of remaining wall sometime around 1998. “It is a representation of two people hugging over the wall, a dramatic situation of people trying to get close to each other,” he told NPR through a translator. “It shows how the people were separated. It shows how a culture was divided by a wall. That’s what happened, and that’s what I showed.”
The other side of the wall is painted with miscellaneous graffiti by anonymous artists.
The largest sculpture on the North Lawn, standing at thirty-one feet tall and weighing forty tons, is Good Defeats Evil by the Georgian Russian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli. It depicts the Early Christian martyr-saint George, who was tortured and executed in 303 under the Diocletian persecution. Legends about him started developing in the sixth century and by the thirteenth century were widely circulated and embellished to include a tale of him slaying a dragon to save a Libyan princess whom the terrorized villagers had planned to sacrifice to it for appeasement.
Zurab Tsereteli (Georgian Russian, 1934–), Good Defeats Evil, 1990. Cast bronze figure with dragon formed from sections of two destroyed nuclear missiles, 31 × 18 × 10 ft. North Lawn, United Nations Headquarters, New York. Gift from the USSR. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]
(Side note: Saint George is not to be confused with Saint Michael the Archangel from the book of Revelation, who in Christian iconography is usually shown on foot [but occasionally on horseback], also slaying a dragon. The easiest way to tell the two saints apart is that Michael has wings, whereas George does not.)
The most intriguing aspect of this sculpture is that the two-headed dragon is made up of sections of two destroyed nuclear missiles, making the piece a symbol of disarmament. According to the UN website, here
the dragon is not the mythological beast of early Christian tradition, but rather represents the vanquishing of nuclear war through the historic treaty between the Soviet Union and the United States [the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Short-Range Nuclear Missiles, signed in 1987]. Created as a monument to peace, the sculpture is composed of parts of actual United States and Soviet missiles. Accordingly, the dragon is shown lying amid actual fragments of these weapons, the broken pieces of Soviet SS-20 and U.S. Pershing missiles.
The dragon’s two heads thus represent the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals during the Cold War: those of the Soviet Union and the United States.
The last sculpture I’ll mention is Consciousnessby the Mongolian artist Ochirbold Ayurzana. It consists of a rounded, high-luster steel alloy floor plate on which stands a human figure, made of twisted metal strings, examining the footprints they’ve left on the planet. What mark will we make, for good or ill? The sculpture is dedicated to the historic adoption of two global developmental milestone documents: the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
Ochirbold Ayurzana (Mongolian, 1976–), Consciousness, 2017. Steel, metal on pedestal, 110 × 196 × 125 in. North Lawn, United Nations Headquarters, New York. Gift from Mongolia. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]
This is just a selection of the many artworks on view at the United Nations Headquarters in Manhattan. To view a full catalog, click here.
Garden Tours are offered every Wednesday at 2 p.m. from May through August, and Art Tours are offered every other Thursday at 1:15 p.m. year-round—or either one upon request. I’m grateful for their having accommodated me and my husband while we were in town!
I really wish the UN would allow visitors to move through the garden at their own speed, though, as the tour was so fast-paced that I hardly had time to take in a sculpture before we were made to move on to the next one. Approximately one to three minutes was apportioned for each work, which is hardly enough time to sit with the weight and history of some of these pieces. And I didn’t have time to change camera lenses for different types of shots. Because you have to be accompanied by a staff person, you are not allowed to linger behind when the group advances. Some leeway was given to me, but overall I felt rushed. Perhaps the pacing was anomalous because it was such a hot day—in the nineties—and the few shaded areas were prioritized.
Despite the swiftness, I really enjoyed the tour and experiencing and learning about the variety of sculptures and other art pieces from a variety of UN member countries, which celebrate peace, joy, and global unity and project a hopeful future.
O Lord, in whose countenance is the morning of all things made new, shine upon us that we may illumine with peace the world-home thou hast given us. Remove from us pride of might and arrogance of possession. Stretch our thoughts, O Divine Mind, that we may see the whole earth as our country, and the inhabitants thereof as our neighbors. Fill our hearts with love that changes discord to trust.
Temper to our good the weariness and the broken hopes we cannot escape. Pour into us the strength of all valiant spirits. Put into our hands constructive tasks of peace. Let not our striving end with condemnation of folly and stupidity in high places.
Quicken in us the will to resist the hysteria that they who take the sword raise to turn us aside from thy commandments. Give us power to the depth, breadth, and height of our souls to prevent the destructions we have lived to weep. Out of the embers of fires that have scorched and blackened thy kingdom on earth, help us create a new order in which we will no more become savages through fear. Unite us, millions strong, against the darkness of hate, as unnumbered sunbeams streaming one way sweeten the sod unto green ecstasy and fruitfulness.
—Helen Keller, “Prayer for Peace,” delivered April 5, 1936, at the “East of Suez” bazaar at the New History Society’s Caravan Hall, New York City [HT]
Frank Wesley (Indian, 1923–2002), The Promise of Peace, 1994. Watercolor, 50 × 30 cm.
Frank Wesley (1923–2002) [previously] is one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated Indian Christian artists. His watercolor The Promise of Peace appears on the cover of the March 1996 issue of Image: Christ and Art in Asia, the monthly magazine of the Asian Christian Art Association, which is where I sourced it from. Painted in warm brown earth tones and based on Isaiah 11:1–9, it shows an Indianized Jesus ushering in the peaceable kingdom of God. The ACAA provides the following commentary:
Christ is the shoot rising from the stump, and the Spirit of the Lord’s presence is shown in the white egg/flame/pearl in the upraised right hand and in the white heart shape centred on Jesus’ brow. A faint halo encircles his head, while a second halo sweeps from the right hand down to the left hand, under which the needy of the land shelter. The little child living at peace with many different animals is visible in the bottom right-hand corner, and the child playing unharmed with the viper is seated at the foot of Jesus. On the left-hand side of the painting a wide variety of creatures are playing happily together. The bracelet on Jesus’s left upper arm carries the symbol for Peter while that on the right upper arm signifies Paul. The symbols of the four gospel writers can be seen in the necklet.
LISTEN: “O Lord, May Your Kingdom Come” | Words by Greg Scheer, based on Isaiah 11:6–9, 2014 | Music by Eric Sarwar, based on the Raga Mishra Shivranjani, 2014 | Led by Eric Sarwar at the Calvin Symposium on Worship, 2019
Refrain: اے خدا تیری بادشاہی آئ (Transliteration: Aey Khuda, teri badshahi, aey) O Lord, may your kingdom come
Where the wolf and lamb Shall lie down as kin And a child shall lead them [Refrain]
Where the cow shall graze And its calves will play With the cubs of the lion [Refrain]
Where the babe in arms Shall fear no harm From the snake or the adder [Refrain]
May your kingdom come May your will be done On earth as in heaven [Refrain]
Born and raised in Pakistan, Rev. Dr. Eric Sarwar is a musician, global missiologist, and the pastor of Artesia City Church in Southern California, made up of Indian and Pakistani immigrants. He is also the founding president of the Tehillim School of Church Music and Worship in Karachi, which fosters the academic study of the ethnomusicology, missiology, and tradition of Christian worship in communities across Pakistan and the overseas diaspora. He plays the harmonium and is fluent in English, Hindi, Punjabi, and Urdu. He is the author of Psalms, Islam, and Shalom: A Common Heritage of Divine Songs for Muslim-Christian Friendship (Fortress Press, 2023) and is a frequent organizer of zabur (psalm) festivals.
In the video above, extracted from a Vespers service, Sarwar leads attendees of the 2019 Calvin Symposium on Worship in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in an anthem he wrote with Greg Scheer, joined on stage by other musicians from the symposium. The refrain is in Urdu and English.
This post is part of a daily Advent series from December 2 to 24, 2023 (with Christmas to follow through January 6, 2024). View all the posts here, and the accompanying Spotify playlist here. “O Lord, May Your Kingdom Come” is not on Spotify.
Art & Theology 