Tag: Psalms

Roundup: Jazz Vespers with Ruth Naomi Floyd, Psalm 90 set to Celtic tune, and more

Victoria Emily Jones2 Comments

ARTWORK:

Dyer, Cheryl_Rattlesnake Master
Cheryl Dyer, Rattlesnake Master, 2021. Collage / mixed media, 34 × 18 in.

In this piece, lettering artist and calligrapher Cheryl Dyer of Omaha takes Psalm 90 (traditionally read on Ash Wednesday) as her subject, embellishing excerpts with watercolor and other media. Rattlesnake master is a perennial herb of the parsley family native to the tallgrass prairies of central and eastern North America.

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ARTICLE: “The Vindication and Blessing of Lent” by Rev. Dr. Michael Farley, Modern Reformation: I also sometimes receive pushback from others in my Reformed Christian circles for my observance of Lent. I appreciate Farley’s response to such concerns, explaining why he finds Lent—and the liturgical calendar as a whole—biblically, theologically, and practically compelling.

Note: If you’d like a new devotional booklet to work through this Lent that is broadly Reformed and that combines scripture readings, prayers, songs, art, and other elements, I recommend the Daily Prayer Project’s Living Prayer Periodical, which, full disclosure, I had a hand in producing. New for this year’s Lent edition, we’ve added a special page spread for each day of the Triduum: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. The cover image is of a thirteenth-century Armenian khachkar from the Monastery of Gosh and is one of eight featured artworks inside (three accompanied by written reflections, three by visio divina prompts). If you want to receive a copy by the start of Lent on Wednesday, order the digital version; otherwise, expect a few business days for shipping.

Lent LPP

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SERMON: “Seasons of the Heart: Preparing for Lent” by James K. A. Smith: Last February, Jamie Smith preached on Ecclesiastes 3:1–8 and John 16:12–15 at his home church, Sherman Street Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He talks about seasonality—how we creatures experience time in seasons, both personally and collectively—and encourages us to ask, “When am I?” Along the way he references Gustavo Gutiérrez, Rita Felski, and Bruce Springsteen. Below is a transcription of 23:42 onward, which I find so resonant. To receive the full force of this conclusion, listen to the whole sermon.

God has more to say to us in his word that we haven’t yet got. There is something in us, for us, in the word that we hear over and over and over again, and the way that we will get to the place of receiving it is precisely by giving ourselves over to the seasons in our lives and letting God do the work in us so that we get new ears, because we have new hearts. This is one of the reasons why . . . repetition is at the heart of the spiritual life. It’s exactly why we keep repeating the liturgical seasons over and over again. Why? Because every single one of us is a different person every time Advent arrives. Every single one of us has undergone something every single time Lent rolls around again.

And so as we’re preparing for Lent—this season of repentance, this season of encountering our mortality—again, I want to encourage us to ask: When am I? When are we? What am I going through? What season am I in? And then from that place, come to Lent with expectation. What does God want to say to me in the now that I find myself? What are you newly ready for because of what you’ve come through? What can Jesus say to you this year that he couldn’t tell you last year?

So many of you are mourning. And the journey of Lent is really a journey of yearning for resurrection. But it passes through the valley of the shadow of death. Unapologetically. And the psalmists’ cries that you’re going to hear in Lent, maybe this year they’re going to give voice to a cry of your own that you didn’t have before. The experience of being bereft on Holy Saturday is going to hit some of you in a way it never has before this year. But maybe that also means that Easter dawns for you in a way it never has before.

Friends, maybe some of you feel, to go back to Ecclesiastes, that it’s a time to build and plant. Because you’ve come through the season of tearing down and uprooting. Maybe this Lent you feel like you’re finally in a place where you can be vulnerable to a God that you finally learned is compassionate, who loves you all the way down. This is a season to build, to plant.

Friends, maybe some of you feel like it’s the time of giving up and throwing away. There is a time for everything, the Teacher tells us. There’s a time to give up, there’s a time to throw away. But maybe it’s precisely what you need to let go of that has been blocking your ability to experience God’s incessant, steadfast, always love.

Whenever you are, whatever season you find yourself in, God has good news to share with you. That’s what we can rely on. No matter what season you’re in, the God who is eternal—the same yesterday, today, and forever—has always a word of good news, because he is always the God with us. He is always Emmanuel. And so this Lent and Eastertide, maybe this is the year you finally get God’s song. You finally hear the song of new life. And friends, I hope you hear that God is singing to you.

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VESPERS SERVICES AT CALVIN UNIVERSITY:

I’ve just returned from another inspiring Calvin Symposium on Worship, so grateful for all the gifts and wisdom that were shared. There’s much I could say, but one thing I discovered was how much I loved participating in Vespers, a short evening worship service consisting of scripture readings, prayers, and song (vesper in Latin simply means “evening”). It’s not something that’s regularly offered in my (Presbyterian) tradition, at least not near me. Here are three of the Vespers services that took place this week at Calvin, the latter two at which I was present:

>> Celtic Vespers: “Psalms of Healing and Hope for a Troubled World,” led by Kiran Young Wimberly and The McGraths: This service of psalms set to Celtic melodies was led by Kiran Young Wimberly and The McGraths (a Northern Ireland–based group that performs and records together), Mary Beth Mardis-LeCroy (violin), and Brian Hehn (piano). Since Ash Wednesday is this coming week, I’ll draw your attention especially to “From Dust We Came (Psalm 90)” (see timestamp 15:28), which uses the eighteenth-century Irish tune CASADH AN T’SÚGÁIN. Plus, another highlight for me: “Love and Mercy (Psalm 85),” set to the eighteenth-century Scottish tune LOVELY MOLLY (39:55)—I’ve added this to my Advent Playlist! For more info about the musicians and their work, see https://www.celticpsalms.com/.

>> Jazz Vespers: “Lament as Worship,” led by Ruth Naomi Floyd and her jazz quartet: Ruth Naomi Floyd is a phenomenal jazz vocalist, composer, and fine-art photographer. This liturgy that she crafted and presented is so moving. In her thoughtful selection of readings, Floyd brings a James Baldwin poem into conversation with Psalm 42:7–11 and even includes an amusing proverb from Chinua Achebe’s novel Arrow of God. She also adds a visual element: black-and-white photographic portraits she shot, which were displayed on slides during each segment (not all of them are featured in the video recording).

The musical performance, I hardly have words for. All I can say is, it was utterly engrossing. The expressiveness of Floyd’s voice is unmatched, carrying such pathos. I couldn’t pick a favorite song, but the opening spiritual, “Trouble So Hard” (11:37), hit me forcefully. The first verse talks about a mountaintop experience of spiritual ecstasy (“getting happy” refers to being filled with the Spirit), and that’s contrasted in the second verse with a descent into the valley of deep suffering and grief. The refrain asserts to God, seeking divine consolation, “Oh Lord, trouble so hard,” and then testifies that only God truly knows our troubles. Also take note of the concluding song, “Press On” (34:31), an original Floyd composition whose text is taken from the writings of Frederick Douglass, part of a larger body of work that has been recorded and will most likely be released by the end of this year, Floyd told me; see https://frederickdouglassjazzworks.com/.

The amazing instrumentalists are James Weidman (piano), Keith Loftis (saxophone), Matthew Parrish (bass), and Mark Prince (drums).

>> Choral Vespers: “Christ, Holy Vine, Christ, Living Tree,” led by David M. Cherwien and The Choral Scholars: Led by the West Michigan chamber ensemble The Choral Scholars and organist/pianist David Cherwien, this service centers on botanical imagery of Christ and his people—such a generative idea! I enjoyed singing Gerald Cartford’s responsorial setting of Psalm 141:1–4a and 8 (see timestamp 12:48); the refrain is “Let my prayer rise before you as incense; and the lifting of my hands as the evening sacrifice” (the plant connection is that incense is derived from fragrant gum resins, i.e., tree sap). Also, this was my first time hearing Elizabeth Poston’s “Jesus Christ, the Apple Tree” performed live (20:48), and the first time its words truly registered with me.

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PRAYER-POEM: “Marked by Ashes” by Walter Brueggemann: “. . . On this Wednesday, we submit our ashen way to you—you Easter parade of newness. Before the sun sets, take our Wednesday and Easter us, Easter us to joy and energy and courage and freedom . . .” This prayer by the Old Testament scholar and theologian Walter Brueggemann, from his book Prayers for a Privileged People (2008), is ostensibly for any ol’ Wednesday in the church year, but it could be used, with one small elision, for Ash Wednesday itself. I love how it reads Easter backward into Lent, recognizing that the fruits of Christ’s resurrection are borne all year round.

P.S. This year, Ash Wednesday falls on February 14, Valentine’s Day. It did too in 2018; read the poem by Luci Shaw that I published for that occasion.

Christ as Sun, Bridegroom, and Runner: Psalm 19, Revelation 12, and Advent

Victoria Emily Jones2 Comments

“Glory Glory / Psalm 19” by Daniel Berrigan

The heavens bespeak the glory of God.
The firmament ablaze, a text of his works.
Dawn whispers to sunset.
Dark to dark the word passes: glory glory.

All in a great silence,
no tongue’s clamor—
yet the web of the world trembles
conscious, as of great winds passing.

The bridegroom’s tent is raised,
a cry goes up: He comes! a radiant sun
rejoicing, presiding, his wedding day.
From end to end of the universe his progress.
No creature, no least being but catches fire from him.

This paraphrase of Psalm 19:1–6 by Daniel Berrigan is from Uncommon Prayer: A Book of Psalms (University of Michigan Press, 1978; Orbis, 1998). Used by permission of the Daniel Berrigan Literary Trust. www.danielberrigan.org

The first section of Psalm 19 is about how the natural world declares the glories of its Maker. The night sky, the psalmist describes, is like a tent that spreads its cover over the sun, parting open every morning to release it on the world. The sun is compared to a bright-eyed, handsome, and happy bridegroom emerging from his chamber, and to a vigorous runner who tracks a massive course.

I like to read Psalm 19:1–6 for Advent, especially the poet-priest Fr. Daniel Berrigan’s paraphrase of it, as his use of he/him/his pronouns instead of it/its draws out a Christological connection I hadn’t seen before in this text, made even more pronounced by the apocalyptic tone Berrigan adopts and the sense of excitement he conveys. The poem can, of course, be read as simply the glorious waking of a day, as the psalmist intended. But there’s another layer I want to explore: signs in the heavens, and the coming of Christ.

In the Christian tradition, Jesus is compared to both a sun and a bridegroom, and he, too, like the skies, “bespeak[s] the glory of God.” “Oriens”—Dawn or Dayspring—is one of the traditional titles of Christ, typically invoked in liturgies on December 21 as part of the O Antiphons cycle. From the Church of England’s Common Worship: “O Morning Star, splendor of light eternal and sun of righteousness: come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death” (cf. Luke 1:78–79; John 8:12; Mal. 4:2). The coming of Jesus—in Bethlehem, in human hearts, and on the last day—illuminates and sets ablaze, revealing who God is and who we ourselves most truly are and exciting the world, flinging abroad the divine light.

As for the bridegroom, Jesus uses this metaphor for himself in his parable of the ten bridesmaids (Matt. 25), as God does in Isaiah 62:5, and indeed one of the major motifs in the book of Revelation is a wedding between Christ and his people. Christ will return to us, scripture suggests, like a husband coming to bring home his new bride.

One of the antiphons for First Vespers of Christmas, I’ve just learned, sung the evening of December 24, connects the bridegroom of Psalm 19 with Jesus. Cum ortus fuerit sol de caelo, the church chants, videbitis Regem regum procedentem a Patre, tanquam sponsum de thalamo suo. (“When the sun shall have risen in the heavens, ye shall see the King of kings coming from the Father, as a Bridegroom from his bride-chamber.”)

Butler, Tanja_Woman Clothed with the Sun
Tanja Butler (American, 1955–), Woman Clothed with the Sun, 2008. Acrylic paint, collaged painted paper, and cotton fabric on gessoed acid-free paper, 14 × 5 in. Collection of Victoria Emily Jones.

Artist Tanja Butler further extends Psalm 19’s fittingness for Advent by drawing the passage into conversation with Revelation 12:1–6. This section of John’s Apocalypse introduces us to “a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars”; she gives birth to a baby boy “who is to rule all the nations” but whom a great dragon seeks to devour. In most Christian interpretations, this Woman of the Apocalypse is associated with the Virgin Mary, and there’s a robust iconographic tradition in this vein.

Butler innovates on that tradition with her mixed-media work Woman Clothed with the Sun by showing the infant Jesus busting out of his mother’s womb like the strong athlete of Psalm 19:5. (Ready. Set. Go!) He has a race to run, a mission to fulfill. He is also shown as the sun that clothes his mother and that emerges from a dark (uterine) tent. He is the source and center point of the explosive rays of colorful light in the painting.

In an ArtWay profile, Butler describes her piece as follows:

Mary is represented with the unborn Christ, Light of the World, ready to “come forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course” (Psalm 19:5). She holds a ladder, referencing both Jacob’s vision and the cross, the ladder of ascent between earth and heaven.

This is a cosmic birth necessitated by a cosmic struggle that will resolve in a cosmic victory: the reunion of God and humanity.

Daniel Joseph Berrigan, SJ, (1921–2016) was an American Jesuit priest, peace activist, award-winning poet, and professor of theology and biblical studies. Through his writings and public witness, he endorsed a consistent life ethic, opposing war, nuclear armament, abortion, capital punishment, and the causes of poverty in the name of Jesus Christ and his holy gospel. Fr. Berrigan, along with his brother Philip, was one of the Catonsville Nine, imprisoned in 1968 for destroying draft files in a protest against the Vietnam War. Later, he spent much of the eighties ministering to AIDS patients in New York City. He is the author of some fifty books.

Tanja Butler (born 1955) is a painter and liturgical artist based in the Albany, New York, area. Her subjects are devotional in character, and her sources of inspiration include Byzantine icons, medieval art, and folk art. Her work is included in the collections of the Vatican Museums, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, and the Boston Public Library. “My aim is to develop imagery that has the simplicity and clarity of a child-like vision,” she says, “required, we’re told, if we are to see the kingdom of God.”

Roundup: Worship album by Parchman inmates, major new acquisition at Toledo Museum of Art, and more

Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST: November 2023 (Art & Theology): In this month’s playlist I nod, in part, to All Saints’ Day (November 1), Christ the King Sunday (November 26), and world events. It includes “Ad Ana” (How Long), a setting of Psalm 13 in its original Hebrew by Miqedem (a Tel Aviv–based band made up of Shai Sol [previously] and three other musical artists from a mix of Jewish and Christian backgrounds), and “Touba” (Blessed), a sung recitation of the Beatitudes in Arabic by the Sakhnini Brothers [previously], Arab Christians from Nazareth, with oud and keyboard accompaniment.

As American Thanksgiving is November 23, you may also want to check out my Thanksgiving Playlist, comprising songs of gratitude. Originally created in 2021, each year I add to and remix the list as I encounter new recordings. One of the newer additions is “He Has Made Me Glad” by Leona Von Brethorst, based on Psalm 100, as arranged and performed on organ by the amazing Cory Henry.

The Christian life consists of both praise and lament, both tears and laughter—which is why in any given worship service or Art & Theology playlist or blog post, as in the biblical psalter, you can find songs that express joy and others, heaviness. They don’t negate one another but rather give fuller expression to the breadth of religious experience.

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NEW ALBUM: Some Mississippi Sunday Morning by Parchman Prison Prayer: After a bureaucratic process that took over three years, music producer Ian Brennan was finally granted permission in February to record a Sunday worship service at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, aka Parchman Farm, a notorious prison with a rich musical history. The prison chaplains convened a unique service of inmate singers from various Christian denominations ranging in age from twenties to seventies, who were given turns at the mic and even collaborated on a few tracks. Brennan said he wanted to give the men a platform for their voices to be heard. All profits from the album benefit the Mississippi Department of Corrections Chaplain Services.

Here’s “You Did Not Leave Me, You Bless Me Still,” a cover of a Melvin Williams gospel song sung by J. Sherman, age sixty-three.

“You can hear the way Sunday services are particularly restorative for someone incarcerated – not simply because of the promise of redemption, but the solace of not being alone,” writes Sheldon Pearce for the Guardian. “Some Mississippi Sunday Morning feels like these men reaching out for the things such a barbaric system tries to deny them: compassion, intimacy, and mercy. The songs are not just purges of anxieties accrued on the inside or calls for the Lord’s embrace, but also pleas to be acknowledged as a person and not an ID number.”

(Thanks to Art & Theology reader Ted Olsen for alerting me to this! He compared the album to Angola Prison Spirituals, recorded in the 1950s.)

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PODCAST EPISODE: “Sarah Clarkson: The Gift of Beauty,” Life with God: A Renovaré Podcast, October 20, 2023: Sarah Clarkson, author of This Beautiful Truth: How God’s Goodness Breaks into Our Darkness, speaks with Renovaré community life director Nathan Foster about her struggle with OCD and, amid the great suffering wrought by that illness, how God’s goodness has been mediated to her by beauty—in nature, poetry, music, story, tea, ritual, and so on. Responding to the idea that beauty is a luxury for the affluent, she says, “Well, [it is] if beauty is about having a perfect house. But beauty is healing those who have been hurt in a war zone. It’s creating shelters where children can have refuge. It’s rebuilding what has been destroyed. . . . Beauty is a defiance of the forces of evil and disorder and destruction because it is [their] opposite: where evil tears down, beauty creates; where there is absence, beauty fills.”

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PRESS RELEASE: “Toledo Museum of Art Adds Armenian Gospel Manuscript with 46 Paintings to the Collection”: After centuries passing through private collections, in June the Pozzi Gospels, a sixteenth-century illuminated manuscript from Armenia, entered the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art, which will make it more accessible to the public. (I’m not sure when the book will go on display. And it doesn’t have an object page on the museum’s website yet.) The artist and scribe of this extraordinary, sumptuous manuscript was Hakob Jughayets’i. His forty-six full-page miniatures and marginal decorations combine Christian iconography with Byzantine, Islamic, and Buddhist design elements. 

The Sam Fogg gallery, which exhibited the manuscript last year as part of The Medieval Body, created this short video about it, narrated by art historian Jack Hartnell:

Creation of Eve and Temptation (Pozzi Gospels)
Hakob Jughayets’i (Armenian, ca. 1550–1613), The Pozzi Gospels, 1586. Paper with blind-stamped brown leather binding, 403 folios with 46 full-page illuminations and numerous marginal miniatures, 7 3/4 × 5 3/4 in. (19.8 × 14.5 cm). This spread shows the Creation of Eve and the Temptation of Eve.

The Pozzi Gospels is one of nine extant illuminated manuscripts by Hakob. For more information, see Hakob’s Gospels: The Life and Work of an Armenian Artist of the Sixteenth Century by Timothy Greenwood and Edda Vardanyan (2006).

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VIRTUAL MUSIC COLLECTION: Armenian Spiritual Music Special Vol. 1: NTS Radio in London has curated ninety minutes of traditional Armenian Christian music. (They’ve done the same for Byzantine chant, Welsh hymns, Hildegard von Bingen, and numerous other categories.) I wish the lyrics and translations were provided, but regardless of my understanding of the words, what beauty. [HT: ImageUpdate]

Roundup: New essay collection, Notes of Rest, Saint Francis, and more

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NEW BOOK: In Thought, Word, and Seed: Reckonings from a Midwest Farm by Tiffany Eberle Kriner: As a freelance copyeditor, I’ve worked on many projects for Eerdmans, and this has been one of my favorites: an essay collection by Tiffany Kriner, a Wheaton English professor and farmer from Illinois. It’s a unique blend of literary criticism, nature writing, and memoir. Virgil, George Eliot, James Baldwin, and Walt Whitman are among the authors she engages, respectfully weaving their stories into and around her own experiences of cultivating sixty acres of land and raising livestock with her husband, Josh. Today is the book’s official release date, and I can’t recommend it enough!

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(FIVE-WEEK) ONLINE COURSE: “Notes of Rest: Receiving Rest from Scripture and Black Music in Our Restless World,” taught by Julian Davis Reid: On Monday evenings from October 9 to November 6, pianist, speaker, and writer Julian Davis Reid, MDiv, of Chicago will be leading five, seventy-five-minute virtual discussions and meditations on the theme of rest, explored through the lenses of scripture and Black music. “Salvation,” “Sabbath,” “Sleep,” “Stillness,” and “Sanctuary” are the organizing principles. “The purpose of the class is to help the Body of Christ hear God’s invitation to rest,” Reid told me. “The means of getting there is through a mixture of artistic reflection and practical theology grounded in biblical analysis, reflection questions, and musical performance.” No prior musical knowledge is required.

The spiritual “Give Me Jesus” is an example of one of the songs Reid will be playing and guiding participants through (this recording is from his 2021 album Rest Assured, with album art by Shin Maeng):

This course is presented by the Candler Foundry, an initiative of Emory University’s Candler School of Theology that aims to make theological education accessible to everyone. It’s only $29! Reid has been leading Notes of Rest sessions since 2021, and he is currently accepting bookings from churches, universities, and parachurch ministries; you can contact him through his website.

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SONGS:

>> “Garden Will Bloom” by the Good Shepherd Collective, feat. Diana Gameros: Released this July as a single, “Garden Will Bloom” was written by Diana Gameros, Jon Guerra, and Kate Gungor at Laity Lodge, an ecumenical retreat center in Texas, and produced by David Gungor. It’s a song that speaks hope to one’s own soul, encouraging persistence through seasons of no yield. The music video was filmed and directed by Jeremy Stanley.

>> “Sing, Sing, Sing (Psalm 96)” by Wendell Kimbrough: This is my favorite track from Wendell Kimbrough’s latest album, You Belong.

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POEM: “Saint Francis and the Birds” by Seamus Heaney: Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone (ca. 1181–1226), better known as Francis of Assisi, was an Italian mystic and friar who founded the religious order named after him, the Franciscans. Because of his love for all God’s creatures, he is considered the patron saint of animals, and his feast day is October 4. One story about him says he preached to the birds, as he believed the gospel is for them too, and that they, too, have a duty to praise God. This poem by the Nobel Prize–winning Seamus Heaney evokes Saint Francis’s sermon to his feathered friends.

St. Francis Preaching to the Birds
“Sermon to the Birds,” from the Legends of Saint Francis cycle, attributed to Giotto, 1297–1300. Fresco, 270 × 200 cm. Upper Church, Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, Assisi, Italy.

From the blog archives: For another poem about this legend, see “Saint Francis Endeth His Sermon” by Louise Imogen Guiney. For a brilliant literary essay by Kimberly Johnson on Francis’s “Canticle of the Creatures” (which evolved into the hymn “All Creatures of Our God and King”), see here.

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INTERVIEW: “The Artist’s Gift of Reckless Courage” with Betty Spackman: Comfort, confront, teach, heal—those are just a few of the actions the arts can perform, says Canadian installation artist Betty Spackman in this insightful interview for Radix Magazine (available in audio format wherever you get your podcasts, and in print). Spackman discusses misconceptions about artists and the arts, the expansive definition of “creativity,” the gifts artists offer the church, and the charge of elitism. She also gives advice to pastors and to artists.

Here are just two snippets:

  • “The artist can reveal the heart of God in unique ways, and that gives us a responsibility. We can be vessels of wonder and light, through sound and image and movement and story. . . . By their very nature, [artists] are more open to thinking outside the box, to going past the status quo, to dreaming and to imagining. . . . Scripture tells us a child will lead us and it is childlike faith that will lead us forward. Perhaps what we can learn from artists is to be more childlike.”
  • “When someone paints their pain, or sings it, or dances it, our response should not be to ignore or condemn it because it’s not pretty or is outside of our worldview. We should find out what it is, and then respond in a meaningful way to the person who made it. The arts are really a place of opportunity to both express and to listen to the grief of the world, and Christians need to be there to do both.”

Advent, Day 7: Lift Up Your Heads

Victoria Emily Jones3 Comments

LOOK: Ps:24//7 by Marco Cazzulini

Cazzulini, Marco_Choral Cathedral
Marco Cazzulini (British, 1962–), Ps:24//7 (working title: Choral Cathedral), 2017. Digital artwork, 40 × 40 cm.

Based on a text that’s traditionally read during Advent and on Palm Sunday, this digital artwork by Marco Cazzulini is part of a larger series on the Psalms, which he has compiled in a limited-edition book. Cazzulini writes,

‘Lift up your heads, O you gates; and be lifted up, you age-abiding doors, that the King of glory may come in’ (AMPC). The language of the Psalms is deeply rooted in time and place, experience and tradition. It is likely to be so here. Nevertheless, these words are not hidebound to their history. This verse gives wings to the imagination and can be transposed onto other things.

This triumphal and celebratory cry ‘Lift up your heads, O you gates’ seems to herald the entry of Christ into the vaunted place of His dominion. That which is closed, opens, and that which is worn, patinated by age, is commanded to lift up its head and acknowledge the arrival of the King of Glory. He who stands, and waits, at the doors of our own closed hearts, worn out by bad experience, shut through unbelief, locked by fear, ruined by sin, is the same King of Glory. He comes, knocks, but never forces entry, and on His ‘coming in’ we are lifted up by His own virtuous majesty. His entry transforms and illumines. Jesus comes in divine eminence and meek humanity. He wears His crown with humility and His presence welcomed is like opening a door to a fresh scented breeze.

Great lofty cathedral interiors soaring into the void inform this artwork. Caught in the half light, their ceilings dissolve into a penumbral space as if no roof or limit existed. Their naves running into infinity, their transepts stretching into the unknown.

Bearing equal creative weight is the image of a path running through a grove of tall trees with light filtering through the canopy, camouflaging shapes and creating deep shadows. 

Follow the artist on Instagram @marcocazzuliniart.

For more on Psalm 24 as a whole, used in ancient times as an entrance liturgy for processions into the Jerusalem temple, see this commentary by Old Testament scholar Rolf Jacobson. “The poem,” Jacobson writes, “describes the contrasting natures of the God who enters into human space and those humans who are able to meet the advent of this God. Psalm 24 is about the advent of human beings into the presence of God, and the mutual advent of the King of glory into the presence of ‘those who seek the face of God.’”

Think of this world as a temple or your heart as a temple—that dark doorway of Cazzulini’s image the entrance—and meditate on Christ’s coming into it. Do you need to fling open the gates to let him in?

LISTEN: “Lift Up Your Heads” (original title: “Machet die Tore Weit”) | Text: Psalm 24:7–9 | Music by Andreas Hammerschmidt, 17th century, arr. Robert Field | Performed by Oasis Chorale, dir. Wendell Nisly, on Favorites, 2017

Lift up your heads, ye gates!
O eternal doors,
Lift up high!
And the king of great glory shall come in.
Who is this king of great glory?
He is the Lord, strong and mighty in battle.
Sing Hosanna in the highest!

The German Baroque composer Andreas Hammerschmidt (1612–1675) served as organist and choir director at the Protestant Johanniskirche (Church of St. John) in Zittau from 1639 until his death. He wrote the Advent motet “Machet die Tore Weit” for his community there, setting Martin Luther’s German translation of Psalm 24:7–9. Oasis Chorale sings the piece in English. To hear the original German, click here.

Psalm 91: Fifteen musical versions

Victoria Emily Jones6 Comments

Psalm 91 (Psalm 90 in the Vulgate) is a psalm of protection, commonly invoked in times of hardship or before embarking on a journey. It conveys the sheltering presence of God, using the metaphor, tender and intimate, of a mother bird who cares for her fledglings, shading them under her wings and lifting them up out of danger. This image recurs throughout the Psalter and the Bible at large (see Pss. 17:8; 36:7; 57:1; 63:7; Exod. 19:4; Deut. 32:11).

Pelton, Agnes_The Primal Wing
Agnes Pelton (American, 1881–1961), The Primal Wing, 1933. Oil on canvas, 25 × 24 in. San Diego Museum of Art, California. Source: Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist, p. 113.

Let me quote the psalm in full, using the King James Version, whose poetic quality cannot be beat:

1 He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

2 I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.

3 Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.

4 He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

5 Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;

6 Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.

7 A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.

8 Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.

9 Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation;

10 There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.

11 For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.

12 They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.

13 Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.

14 Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.

15 He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him.

16 With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.

The righteous will be protected, sings the psalmist, from sickness and attack, whether by arrow or by wild animal. Because of the psalm’s specific mention of plagues, or “deadly disease,” it became especially popular during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, we know from experience that some of these statements cannot be taken at face value. Physical harm does befall those who love God. Believers were among the “ten thousand” (and more) felled by the most recent raging pestilence. It’s wrong to conclude that this was a result of their lack of faith.

Biblical scholar J. Alec Motyer clarifies that “the promise [in Psalm 91] is not security from but security in.” That God looks after us is an absolute principle, but the Bible makes clear that no one is immune from suffering. Still, we can trust in God’s grace and strength and ultimate deliverance, and entreat him for specific protections. Bodily salvation won’t come in full until the new heavens and the new earth are ushered in, but we are kept spiritually in the shelter of our loving God.

That doesn’t mean Psalm 91 is a lie; it is poetry, and poetic language is often not meant to be literal. The assurances are still worth praying. God does often intervene on our behalf.

The ancient Jewish community at Qumran near the Dead Sea, through whom the oldest manuscript fragments of the Hebrew Bible come to us, referred to Psalm 91 as a “psalm against demons,” and it is thought to have been used by that community in exorcisms. Jewish midrash interprets many of the listed threats as veiled language for demons, and there is Christian precedent for that interpretation as well. In Luke 10:17, Jesus’s followers marvel that “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!,” to which Jesus affirms that yes, “I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will hurt you”—language very similar to that in Psalm 91.

In the Late Antique era, both Jews and Christians wore the words of Psalm 91 on amulets, to attain or simply feel God’s guarding power. In the church it is traditionally sung or recited during Compline services and on the first Sunday of Lent (in Matthew 4:6 the devil manipulatively quotes verse 11 in his temptation of Christ in the desert).

This psalm has also influenced popular culture, as from it comes the concept of guardian angels (vv. 11–12).

Below I have selected fifteen musical settings or adaptations of Psalm 91 from diverse sources, including homophonic and polyphonic choral works, songs in indie folk and soul styles, a Puerto Rican hymn, a Nepali bhajan, and more.

For each I have embedded either a YouTube video or Bandcamp track, and if a Spotify link exists, I’ve included it at the end of the description. If you cannot see these music players in your email client or RSS feed reader, open the post in your browser.

This is a curation, not a collation, meaning that I’ve intentionally picked these songs from among hundreds of options, for both excellence and variety. I tried to limit the list to ten and just couldn’t, but I thought twenty would be too overwhelming, so I compromised by choosing fifteen with five honorable mentions. I’ve added almost all twenty to a YouTube playlist (the Sister Sinjin song isn’t available on that platform), if you prefer to listen that way.

1. Gregorian chant performed by Harpa Dei: Born in Germany and raised in Ecuador, siblings Nikolai, Lucía, Marie-Elisée, and Mirjana Gerstner form the sacred vocal quartet Harpa Dei. Here they sing Psalm 91 in Latin in the medieval plainchant tradition. Subtitles are provided in Spanish and English.

For a plainchant in English, albeit of verses 4–5 only, see here.

2. “Psalm 91” by Victory Boyd: This is probably my favorite of all the selections. Victory Boyd is one of seven musical siblings, and before she started her solo career, she was a member of the vocal-harmony sibling act Infinity Song. Her voice is gorgeous, as is this simple musical setting she wrote, conveying both the vulnerability and confidence present in the psalm.

3. “Psalm 91” by Poor Bishop Hooper: Every Wednesday since January 1, 2020, married couple Jesse and Leah Roberts, who record music under the alias Poor Bishop Hooper, have been releasing a new psalm-based song for free download as part of their EveryPsalm project. Handling them consecutively, they have just eight left to go! They made a live video for “Psalm 91,” which shows them playing their own piano four hands accompaniment. [Spotify]

4. “Qui habitat in adjutorio altissimi” (He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High) by Josquin des Prez, adapted by Laurel MacDonald: Josquin des Prez (pronounced “joss-can day pray”) was a highly influential Franco-Flemish composer of the High Renaissance. In 1542 he wrote a setting of Psalm 91[90]:1–8 in Latin for twenty-four voices (SATB ×6)—that is, six distinct soprano parts, six distinct alto parts, etc.

Inspired by this choral motet, in 2007 composer and video artist Laurel MacDonald worked with longtime associate John Oswald to create qui, a sound installation of twenty-nine voices singing an adaptation of des Prez’s “Qui habitat” in twenty-nine languages over twenty-nine speakers, for the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. MacDonald revisited the project in 2010, creating the short video “XXIX” (below) with twenty-one of the original qui singers, each singing in the language of his or her personal heritage. They weave a complex tapestry with interlocking threads of Krio, Spanish, Korean, Hungarian, Hindi, Greek, Finnish, English, French, Italian, Latin, Zulu, Xhosa, Sesotho, Georgian, Russian, English, Tamil, Hebrew, Swahili, Japanese, and Arabic—a multilingual declaration of God’s protective power.

To hear Josquin des Prez’s motet as originally conceived, click here.

5. “Your Wings” by Lauren Daigle: Lauren Daigle is one of the most popular CCM (contemporary Christian music) artists of the past decade. Two-time-Grammy-winning and with two platinum records, she is often compared to Adele in terms of her vocal style—soulful, rich, in a husky register. In April 2020 she released on YouTube a stripped-down, “social distancing” version of her Psalm 91–based song (written with Jason Ingram and Paul Mabury) from Look Up Child, with just her and a piano. You can get a sense of her strong stage presence from the video; here she hits the melody with both her voice and her body—bouncy on the verses, smooth on the refrain! [Spotify (studio version)]

6. “Whomsoever Dwells” by Sinéad O’Connor: “Whomsoever Dwells,” written with Ron Tomlinson, is one of nine Hebrew Bible–based songs that appears on Sinéad O’Connor’s stellar 2007 double album, Theology. (Thanks to Art & Theology reader Koen Desmecht for introducing me to this!) The acoustic performance below—from November 8, 2006, at The Sugar Club in Dublin—was released on disc one, subtitled “The Dublin Sessions,” and features guitars, fiddle, harp, and low whistle; the same song, arranged for a pop-rock band and recorded in a London studio, is on disc two. (I much prefer the acoustic version.)

“Theology is an attempt to create a place of peace in a time of war and to provoke thought,” O’Connor said. It is very “personal” and “emotional.”

7. “El que habita al abrigo de Dios” (Those Who Dwell in the Shelter of God) by Luz Ester Ríos de Cuna and Rafael Cuna: This 1943 hymn from Puerto Rico is a versification of Psalm 91 in Spanish by Luz Ester Ríos de Cuna, with music by her husband, Rafael Cuna (1907–1995). I learned of it from the bilingual hymnal Santo Santo Santo: Cantos para el pueblo de Dios (Holy, Holy, Holy: Songs for the People of God). Here it’s performed by musicians from Iglesia Central del Movimiento Misionero Mundial en el Perú (Central Church of the World Missionary Movement in Peru) in Lima. Their names are not given.

8. “Denn er hat seinen Engeln befohlen” (For he shall give his angels charge), MWV B 53 by Felix Mendelssohn: Early Romantic composer Felix Mendelssohn, a Reformed Christian with Jewish ancestry, wrote this setting of Psalm 91:11–12 in German in 1844 for Berlin Cathedral, where he was serving as Generalmusikdirektor (royal composer of church music). It is for an unaccompanied eight-part choir, but he later reused it with orchestral accompaniment as movement 7 of his oratorio Elijah.

9. “No Harm Befall You (Psalm 91)” by Sister Sinjin: Released on the 2022 compilation album Joy to the World (Psalms 90–​106) from Cardiphonia Music, “No Harm Befall You” was written by Elizabeth Duffy and is sung by her and Kaitlyn Ferry, who make up the Indianapolis folk duo Sister Sinjin. Their harmonies are a hallmark of their music.

10. “Psalm 91” by Sharyn: Sharyn (pronounced “sha-REEN”) is a Ugandan-born, London-based gospel/R&B singer-songwriter “whose mission is to spread the gospel through adventurous, original, and engaging music,” she says. She wrote “Psalm 91” during the height of the coronavirus, as that scripture passage is one she would read again and again as a source of comfort amid the uncertainty. “This song is an affirmation and a reminder of who God is, what He can do, will do and has done,” she says. “Never forget that God is faithful and his promises are the greatest form of protection we can ever have. His promises are your armor and shield.” The recording features Calibleubird on backing vocals. [Spotify]

11. “Shelter Me” by Buddy Miller: In a 2010 episode of PBS’s Soundstage, country-rock artist Buddy Miller performed a set with other Americana greats Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin, and Patty Griffin, including this original song (written with Julie Miller) from his 2004 album Universal United House of Prayer. “Shelter Me” is about not being scared in the face of disaster or war, for God is our hiding place. The song could apply to Psalm 57 just as well, which addresses the same themes as Psalm 91 and even uses the same language of sheltering under the wings of the Almighty. [Spotify (studio version)]

12. “Underneath the Shadow” by Tom Wuest: This is one of twelve quiet, sparsely instrumented songs that Tom Wuest recorded with his wife, Karen, which were written as their two young sons fell asleep. They all “draw their lyrics from the psalms and from our family’s joy in and meditation upon the good creation of God,” he says. Fitting indeed for meditation, “Underneath the Shadow” comprises just three simple lines: “Underneath the shadow of Your wings / We dwell underneath the shadow of Your wings / Hidden close to Thee, we find rest.” [Spotify]

13. “Mero Saransthaan (My Shelter)” by Suraj Khadka: A Nepali adaptation of Psalm 91, this bhajan (devotional song) from 2021 features traditional instruments from the Indian subcontinent: sarangi (vertical fiddle), bansuri (bamboo flute), and dholak, madal, and tabla (drums). Thanks to Dr. Paul Neeley at Global Christian Worship for alerting me to this one.

14. “Lang en gelukkig (Psalm 91)” (Long and Happy) by Psalmen voor Nu: Founded in 2002, Psalmen voor Nu (Psalms for Now) was a project in the Netherlands to set all 149 psalms (they combined Psalms 42 and 43) in Dutch to music, a task they completed in 2014 with the release of their eleventh album. Seeking “to introduce as many people as possible to the beauty and power of the psalms,” the team comprised some twenty theologians, poets, and composers, plus a band. They wanted the texts to be understandable and the melodies modern and singable. This particular song from the project was written by Liesbeth Goedbloed (words) and Roeland Smith (music) and released in 2013. It has a smoky nightclub vibe. I’ve copied the lyrics below. [Spotify]

[1] Als je bij de Allerhoogste woont, mag je in zijn schaduw slapen.
Als je zegt: ‘De Hoogste is mijn huis. mijn God, ik kan op u vertrouwen’,
dan mag je in zijn schaduw slapen.

[2] Het is God die jou bevrijdt van de dood, de zwarte dood.
Hij dekt je met zijn vleugels toe. Ga maar slapen. Je bent moe.
Zijn trouw zal jou beschermen. Dan kun je slapen, dan kun je slapen.
God waakt over jou. Dan kun je slapen.

[3] Voor de angst die elke avond komt, hoef je niet meer bang te wezen,
ook al spookt de zwarte dood weer rond, al sloopt een ziekte alle mensen,
jij hoeft niet meer bang te wezen.

[4] Ook al komt de dood dichtbij, vallen duizend mensen om,
toch zul jij altijd veilig zijn wat de rest ook overkomt
en slechte mensen krijgen, durf je te kijken, durf je te kijken?
hun verdiende loon. Durf je te kijken?

[5] Jij zei ooit: ‘Mijn God, u bent mijn huis. Geen ziekte komt de drempel over.’
Die ellende gaat je deur voorbij, sinds je dicht bij God ging wonen.
Geen ziekte komt je drempel over.

[6] Zijn engelen staan klaar. Ze dragen je op handen.
God stuurt ze met je mee.
Je stoot je nergens aan. De leeuw, de draak, de adder
jij loopt over ze heen.

[7] Want je houdt van mij, zegt God, en die liefde maakt je vrij.
Ik dek je met mijn vleugels toe, omdat jij weet wie ik ben.
Je kent mijn naam en roept me. Ik kom je redden, ik kom je redden.
En ik antwoord jou: ik kom je redden.

[8] In de zwartste nacht blijft ik bij jou. Ik red je en ik geef je leven.
Deze keer is alle eer voor jou. Ik zeg: Ik ben voor jou een zegen!
Voor jou een lang gelukkig leven!

[Outro] Lang en gelukkig, lang zul je leven, lang zul je leven,
lang en gelukkig, lang zul je le ven! [source]

15. “In Him I Will Trust” by Sherri Youngward: Covering Psalm 91:1–5, this is one of sixteen psalm-passage settings by Bay Area singer-songwriter Sherri Youngward. For more, see her two Scripture Songs albums.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: “Your Wings” by Kate Bluett and Keiko Ying; “Scapulis suis” by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina; “Psalm 91” by John Michael Talbot; “Under Your Wings” by Freddie Fardon (feat. Darla Baltazar); “Psalm 91” by Jonathan Ogden

If you appreciated this post and would like to see more like it in the future, please consider donating to my work. If you do, leave a note telling me which psalm you’d like me to do next!

Roundup: Upcoming Texas events (music of the Psalms, art seeking understanding) and more

Victoria Emily JonesLeave a comment

UPCOMING EVENTS:

>> “The Music of the Psalms in Church History” by W. David O. Taylor, Christ Church, Austin, Texas, October 1, 2022: “For two thousand years, Christians have found the Psalter to be an invaluable resource for worship and prayer. And, like the original psalmists, Christians have felt compelled and inspired to set the text of the psalms to music, of all sorts: from a cappella to choral, from folk to rock, from reggae to gospel, and more. In collaboration with local musicians, David Taylor, Associate Professor of Theology and Culture at Fuller Theological Seminary and author of Open and Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life, will explore how Christians in different periods of church history have sung the psalms within corporate worship,” spanning the apostolic, medieval, Renaissance, Reformation, modern, and contemporary eras.

Psalms (David Taylor)
Left: Icon of the Holy Prophet-King David. Right: Celtic Cross with Bible Page, encaustic by Phaedra Jean Taylor.

A choir will perform several chants (Hebrew, Byzantine, Gregorian) and a motet, and then attendees will be led in a handful of Psalm-based songs, from a hymn of German origin to an African American spiritual to CCM classics. Along the way Taylor will provide historical context and trace a narrative.

Sponsored by the Brehm Center at Fuller Theological Seminary, the event is free, but registration is required and filling up; reserve your spot here. It will be recorded and eventually posted on the Fuller Studio YouTube channel (whether there will be a livestream is still TBD).

>> Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture: Art Seeking Understanding, Baylor University, Waco, Texas, October 26–28, 2022: Every fall the Institute for Faith and Learning at Baylor University organizes a symposium around a given topic, and this year’s topic is the arts. Registration is still open! The standard cost is $250, or $125 for students. “The notion of art seeking understanding (ars quaerens intellectum) invites association with the notion of faith seeking understanding (fides quaerens intellectum). Just as faith is a gift of grace that grows toward deeper knowledge, so it seems that art is a gift whose practice leads to a deeper order of understanding. This seems true not only for the person who experiences art, but also the artist—whether musician, painter, sculptor, or poet. The 2022 Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture invites contributions from across the disciplines (including scholars, artists, and other practitioners) as we explore together how art seeks understanding and thus contributes to human flourishing.”

Their line-up of presenters includes several from within Baylor’s own distinguished ranks, such as composer and liturgist Carlos Colón, theologian Natalie Carnes, art historian Heidi J. Hornik, and literature scholar David Lyle Jeffrey, in addition to famous outside guests like theologian-pianist Jeremy Begbie, contemporary nihonga painter Makoto Fujimura, and Early Christian art historian Robin M. Jensen. See a full list by clicking on the boldface link above.

Books
Just a fraction of the books authored by the eminent speakers at the upcoming Baylor symposium

The website does not provide a list of presentation titles, but among the topic suggestions on its call for proposals page are how art contributes to moral and spiritual perception, sensitivity, and/or character formation; the power of imagination; the relation of poetic art to the communication of moral truth; art therapy in pastoral counseling; how musical settings of biblical texts add value to those texts; and how to reconcile the making of religious art with the commandment in Exodus 20:4.

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SONG: “The Lord Is My Light” by Lillian Bouknight | Performed by the Notre Dame Folk Choir, dir. Emorja Roberson: “Very little is known about Lillian Bouknight (d. 1990), except that she was an African American from North Carolina, and a soloist and composer in the Pentecostal Holiness movement in the Aliquippam, PA, Community, also serving as a prayer warrior and on the Mother’s Board.” This setting of Psalm 27 that she composed appears in the African American Heritage Hymnal #160.

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VIDEO: “Theology through the Arts” by Jeremy Begbie: A pioneer of the field of theology and the arts, UK-born and US-based scholar Jeremy Begbie is the headliner for the Baylor symposium mentioned above. I met him briefly at a Duke conference a few years ago, and he’s such a delightful person, not to mention a phenomenal teacher who often dispenses wisdom from a piano bench. If you’re not familiar with his work, this fourteen-minute video is a great introduction to it. He’s all about demonstrating how instrumental music (his specialization is Western classical) can help unlock the truths of the Christian gospel. Here he talks about the given, the improvised, and the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

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BLOG: Pray with Jill Geoffrion: The Rev. Dr. Jill Kimberly Hartwell Geoffrion is a spiritual director, pilgrim guide, workshop leader, and retreat facilitator who spends at least three months a year at Chartres Cathedral in France, known for its architecture, sculpture, prayer labyrinth, and the world’s most extensive collection of twelfth- and thirteenth-century stained glass. An ordained American Baptist minister with an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary and a PhD in women’s studies and Christian spiritualities, she is the author of Visions of Mary: Art, Devotion, and Beauty at Chartres Cathedral (2017) (beautifully produced, from Paraclete Press), Pondering the Labyrinth: Questions to Pray on the Path (2003), and more. Contact her if you are interested in a spiritually based visit to Chartres or in having her present to a group.

Geoffrion is also a professional photographer, and she shares many of her beautiful art photographs from Chartres on her blog, providing specific prompts for prayer and meditation based on the images. For example, in a post on the stained glass panel of Saint Martin bringing a man back to life, she writes, “Think of what is dead and needs resurrection in you, in those you love, in those who live within twenty-five miles of you, and in whatever country you call home. Then, take a very deep exhale and plead with God, ‘Bring resurrection!’” Or, reflecting on the sixteenth-century Nativity sculpture group attributed to Jehan Soulas, she invites us to “imitate one or more of the sets of eyes in the image . . . as you pray, ‘May I see with Your eyes, God. Teach me to see anew.’”

Saint Martin bringing a man back to life (with two onlookers), 1217–20, stained glass window panel in the south ambulatory at Chartres Cathedral, France. Photo: Jill Geoffrion.
Soulas, Jehan_Nativity
Jehan Soulas, Nativity, 1529, from the choir screen in Chartres Cathedral, France. Photo: Jill Geoffrion.

Geoffrion’s blog is a wonderful free resource for those looking to engage prayerfully with the art treasures of Chartres Cathedral. New content is typically posted in batches a few times a year, and the archive goes back to 2015. Sometimes Geoffrion digitally isolates certain details of the stained glass to aid in a more concentrated focus.

As I said when I featured the Tree of Jesse window several years ago, Chartres is high on my list of places to visit, for aesthetic, historical, and spiritual reasons. I hope to make it there sometime in the next five years.

Roundup: Feast of Mary Magdalene; holiness of people and place; black squares

Victoria Emily Jones3 Comments
Richardson, Jan_The Hours of Mary Magdalene
The Hours of Mary Magdalene by Jan L. Richardson

ART CYCLE: The Hours of Mary Magdalene by Jan L. Richardson: July 22 is the feast day of Mary Magdalene, one of Jesus’s closest disciples and the first witness and preacher of the Resurrection. American artist, writer, and minister Jan L. Richardson created a sequence of collages picturing events from her life, drawing on both the biblical narratives and medieval legends. The structure and presentation (decorative borders, Latin script) were inspired by medieval books of hours, used for the praying of the Divine Office. The text below each image reads, Deus, in adiutorium meum intende; Domine, ad adiuvandum me festina (“O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me”), the first verse of Psalm 70, which is prayed at the start of each of the canonical hours.

According to legend, after Jesus’s ascension Mary Magdalene moved to southern France, where she preached the gospel and performed miracles. The last thirty years of her life she lived as a hermit in a cave. Each time she prayed the hours, she was lifted up to heaven by angels, then brought back down at the end of her devotions.

Richardson put together a delightful little video showcasing the art cycle as well as the song “Mary Magdalena” by her late husband, Garrison Doles.

You can purchase these images as digital downloads from Richardson’s website:

  1. Matins: The Blessing Cups: Mary Magdalene and Jesus at Tea
  2. Lauds: After the Cross: The Magdalene’s Farewell
  3. Prime: Shopping for Spices: The Three Marys on Holy Saturday
  4. Terce: Touch Me Not: Resurrection Morning
  5. Sext: Release: Mary Magdalene Freeing Prisoners
  6. None: L’Evangeliste: Mary Magdalene Preaching in France
  7. Vespers: At Her Prayers: Mary Magdalene with a Book of Hours
  8. Compline: Magdalene Ascending: The Divine Hours

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DANCE: “Holy, Holy, Holy”: Choreographed by Betsey Beckman to a song by Karen Drucker, this dance number affirms the sacredness of every human being. It was filmed inside St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, a church that “invites people to see God’s image in all humankind, to sing and dance to Jesus’ lead, and to become God’s friends.” Beckman dances with Dawon Davis and Corey Action throughout the worship space, which comprises a rectangular room where the Liturgy of the Word is celebrated and an octagonal rotunda for the Liturgy of the Table. The Dancing Saints icon that covers the walls is by Mark Doox. [HT: Global Christian Worship]

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MUSIC:

>> “Locus iste” by Anton Bruckner, performed by VOCES8: The British vocal ensemble VOCES8 performs Anton Bruckner’s sacred motet “Locus iste” (This Place) at Les Dominicains de Haute-Alsace in Guebwiller, France. Bruckner composed it in 1869 for the dedication of the Votivkapelle (votive chapel) at the New Cathedral in Linz, Austria, where he had been a cathedral organist. The text—a Latin gradual for church dedications and their anniversaries—is informed by Jacob’s saying, after his dream of the ladder uniting heaven and earth, that “surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not” (Gen. 28:16), and by the story of the burning bush where Moses is told to “put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground” (Exod. 3:5).

Locus iste a Deo factus est,
inaestimabile sacramentum;
irreprehensibilis est.

This place is made by God,
a priceless sacrament;
it is without reproach.

(Or, alternatively:)
This dwelling is God’s handiwork;
a mystery beyond all price,
that cannot be spoken against.

>> “Tabernacle” by Josh Rodriguez, performed by Mary Vanhoozer: A modernist piano composition inspired by Psalm 19, dedicated to the composer’s father-in-law, the theologian Kevin Vanhoozer.

Tabernacle is a musical triptych shaped by the drama of Psalm 19. While this word, tabernacle, is loaded with religious affection within both Jewish and Christian traditions, some modern readers may not be familiar with its implications. Merriam-Webster offers three related definitions: “a house of worship, a receptacle for the consecrated elements of the Eucharist, or a tent sanctuary used by the Israelites during the Exodus.” By extension, it has come to represent a “dwelling place” or a “temporary shelter.” In short, this is no ordinary space, rather it is a place that is set apart, made holy for a terrifying transformative encounter with the Divine.

Fragments of a prayerful hymn-like melody appear underneath this canopy of sounds. Shifting metric changes, polyrhythms, and percussive primal-sounding harmonies climax in a loud, noisy quote from the 16th-century Genevan Psalter.

More extensive program notes can be found in the YouTube video description.

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ESSAY: “Precedents of the Unprecedented: Black Squares Before Malevich” by Andrew Spira, Public Domain Review: Considered one of the seminal works of modern art, Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square (1915) has been cast as a total break from all that came before it. Yet searching across more than five hundred years of images related to cosmology, religious devotion, mourning, humor, politics, and philosophy, art historian Andrew Spira uncovers a slew of unlikely foreshadows to Malevich’s radical abstraction.

Et sic in infinitum
Robert Fludd’s black square representing the nothingness that was prior to the universe, from his Utriusque Cosmi (1617). On each side of the square is written “Et sic in infinitum…” (“And so on to infinity…”).
Blood of Christ
Black pages with red drops of blood, signifying the wounds of Christ, from a psalter and rosary of the Virgin, ca. 1500. The recto is worn from devotional engagement, damaged through kissing and rubbing, perhaps.

For a much more extensive treatment of the topic, see Spira’s Foreshadowed: Malevich’s “Black Square” and Its Precursors, published this month. And for a faith-positive (non-nihilistic) reading of Malevich’s Black Square that honors the artist’s own views, see pages 209–25 of Jonathan A. Anderson and William A. Dyrness’s Modern Art and the Life of a Culture, where they discuss the work in relation to the Russian icons tradition and “apophatic or ‘negative’ theology—a mode of theology that meditates on the absolute Fullness and Otherness of God by way of negating the verbal, visual and conceptual forms used to signify (and to ‘grasp’) God” (220).

Roundup: Spirituality of food docuseries; a psalm and a jazz band walk into a bar; and more

Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment

DOCUMENTARY SERIES: Taste and See, dir. Andrew Brumme: “Taste and See is a documentary series exploring the spirituality of food with farmers, chefs, bakers, and winemakers engaging with food as a profound gift from God. Their stories serve as a meditation on the beauty, mystery, and wonder to be found in every meal shared at the table.” The Rabbit Room, who is partnering with them for a virtual cinema event (see below), says, “If, in some blessed alternate universe, Robert Farrar Capon had decided to make a documentary with Terrence Malick, guided by the foundational wisdom of Wendell Berry, then they would have made something like the pilot of Taste and See.”

Some of the people you see in the series trailer are Shamu Sadeh, cofounder of Adamah Farm and Fellowship in Connecticut, which integrates organic farming, Jewish learning, sustainable living, and contemplative spiritual practice (Adamah is the focus of the pilot film); The Soul of Wine: Savoring the Goodness of God author Gisela Kreglinger, who grew up on a winery that has been in her family for generations and who leads wine pilgrimages in Burgundy and Franconia (“a spiritual, cultural, and sensory exploration of wine”); Norman Wirzba, a professor at Duke who teaches and publishes at the intersections of theology, philosophy, ecology, and agrarian and environmental studies (see, e.g., his Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating); Kendall Vanderslice, a North Carolina baker, author, and founder of Edible Theology, which offers “curriculum, community, and communications that connect the Communion table to the kitchen table”; and Joel Salatin, who raises livestock on his Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley.

You can buy tickets to a virtual screening of the hour-long pilot, which is happening twice daily from June 3 to June 19 and includes exclusive access to a panel discussion with singer-songwriter Andrew Peterson, theologian Norman Wirzba, and director Andrew Brumme. Revenue from ticket sales will fund the production of future films, some of which are already in the works. “The funding raised will determine how far we can go and which stories we can pursue,” Brumme tells me. “We’re hopeful the virtual event will bring together enough of a supportive base of people who want to see this series made.” There’s also an option on the website to donate.

To hear more from the director, especially about the inspiration behind the series, check out the interview Drew Miller conducted with him.

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DISCUSSION PANEL: “Art Between the Sacred and the Secular,” June 6, 2022, Akademie der Künste, Berlin: Moderated by the Rev. Professor Ben Quash, this free public event (reserve tickets here) puts in conversation artist Alicja Kwade; Dr. María López-Fanjul y Díez del Corral, senior curator of the Bode Museum and the Gemäldegalerie; and Dr. Neil MacGregor, former director of the British Museum and the National Gallery, London. The questions they’ll address (see below) sound really intriguing!

Kwade, Alicja_Causal Emergence
Alicja Kwade (Polish, 1979–), Causal Emergence (December 2020), 2019. Watch hands on cardboard, framed, 175 × 175 cm.

“The abiding power of Christian motifs, ideas and styles in a host of modern and contemporary works that superficially look un- or anti-Christian indicates that visual art and Christian tradition have not become complete strangers. This invites analysis and understanding.

“How have Christian artworks and artistic traditions found new articulations, caused new departures, or provoked new subversions in the last 100 to 150 years? What forms of engagement between theology and modern and contemporary art do such developments in the relationship between art and Christianity invite and reward?

“How do viewers (Christian and non-Christian) interact with historical Christian art today, and how do modern sensibilities affect our viewing of earlier Christian artworks and artistic traditions?

“Is contemporary art an alternative to religion or can it sometimes be an ally? How do contemporary art and religion each respond to human experiences of the absurd or the tragic? What do contemporary art and the spaces in which we encounter it, tell us about the histories of both Western Christianity and Western secularisation?”

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FUNDRAISER: New Ordinary Time Album: The indie folk trio Ordinary Time is one of my favorite musical groups—I heard them in concert at a church here in Baltimore a few years ago!—so I’m really excited to see that they’re working on their sixth full-length album, their first since 2016. It will be produced by the esteemed Isaac Wardell, founder of Bifrost Arts and the Porter’s Gate. Per usual, it will comprise a mix of original and classic sacred songs, including the new “I Will Trust,” demoed in the second video below. Help fund their production costs through this Indiegogo campaign, which ends June 15. A donation of just $25 will get you an early download of the album.

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SONG: “Oh Give Thanks (Psalm 107)” by Wendell Kimbrough: Wendell Kimbrough is among today’s foremost singer-songwriters engaging with the Psalms. His adaptation of Psalm 107 [previously] is one of his most popular songs, ever since the original studio recording released in 2016. Now he’s recorded a live version with a New Orleans jazz band! It is available on most streaming and purchase platforms.

The music video was shot in February at a bar in Daphne, Alabama, with some eighty of Kimbrough’s friends and supporters, and it premiered May 13. It was his way of saying farewell to his Church of the Apostles community in Fairhope, Alabama, where he served as worship leader and artist-in-residence for eight years. He left this spring to take a new job as uptown artist-in-residence at Church of the Incarnation in Dallas.

“From the time I wrote ‘Oh Give Thanks,’ I always pictured it as a bar tune, specifically set in New Orleans,” Kimbrough says. “The image Psalm 107 conjures for me is a group of friends sitting together swapping stories of God’s deliverance and raising their glasses to celebrate his goodness.” He has noted that some people are uneasy about singing the line “We cried like drunken sailors” in church, but he points out that it’s there in the Old Testament psalm! (Recounting how God rescued a group of men from a storm at sea, the psalmist says that as the waves rose, “they reeled and staggered like drunkards / and were at their wits’ end. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, / and he brought them out from their distress,” vv. 27–28).

To learn how to play the song on guitar, see Kimbrough’s video tutorial. You may also want to check out the songs of thanksgiving I compiled on Spotify.

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CHURCH ARCHITECTURE: Santa Maria Goretti Church, Mormanno, Italy: In 2013 architect Mario Cucinella won a competition held by Italy’s assembly of Catholic bishops to create the new parish church of Santa Maria Goretti in the hilltop town of Mormanno in Calabria. Because a third of the funds had to be raised locally, the project wasn’t completed until last year. Cucinella says that gave him time to win over its most important constituency: the elderly women who go to Mass every day, and who at first “were suspicious of its modernism.” [HT: My Modern Met]

Cucinella designed an elegantly minimalist concrete building with sinuous surfaces that form the shape of a four-leaf clover, a reinterpretation, Cucinella says, of the shape of Baroque churches. The enclosure has only a few openings. “On its north side, two walls part to create an entrance—while also contributing edges to a cross cut into the curves and lit by LEDs at night. On its south side, a small window is positioned to focus afternoon sunlight on a crucifix on July 6,” Maria Goretti’s birthday.

Santa Maria Goretti Church
Santa Maria Goretti Church, Mormanno, Italy, designed by Mario Cucinella Architects, completed 2021. Photo: Duccio Malagamba.
Photo: Duccio Malagamba
Maraniello, Giuseppe_Baptismal font
Baptismal font by Giuseppe Maraniello. Photo: Duccio Malagamba.

Inside, the walls are hand-finished in plaster mixed with hemp fibers and lime, which give them a mottled, earth-toned look. The most dominant feature of the interior is the twelve-foot-deep scrim that falls from the ceiling in swirls, filtering in sunlight. Artist Giuseppe Maraniello (b. 1945) was commissioned to create the lectern, tabernacle, baptismal font, and figure of the Virgin Mary, while the simple steel and wood seating is by Mario Cucinella Design. Click on any of the three photos above to view more.

The church’s namesake, one of the youngest saints to be canonized, was stabbed to death in 1902 at age eleven while resisting a rape. She is the patron saint of purity, young women, and victims of sexual assault.

Roundup: Psalms and the arts, Ukrainian Easter Choir, and more

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BLOG POST: “An open letter to pastors (A non-mom speaks about Mother’s Day)” by Amy Young: There’s disagreement among church leaders on whether Hallmark holidays, such as Mother’s Day, should be recognized during a worship service, and if so, how. Having mothers stand (while women who are not mothers in the conventional sense remain seated) can be very othering and bring up feelings of sadness or shame. It’s also a day when people are thinking about their own mothers, which can evoke a complex range of emotions.

Amy Young believes there is a way to honor mothers in church without alienating others, as well as to acknowledge the breadth of experiences associated with mothering. She has drafted a pastoral address that I find so wise and compassionate. Some women are estranged from their children. Some have experienced miscarriage or abortion. Some have had failed adoptions, or failed IVF treatments. Some placed a child for adoption. Some have been surrogate mothers. Some are foster mothers, or are the primary guardian of a relative’s child. Some are spiritual moms. Some women want to be mothers but have no partner or have had trouble conceiving. Some were abused by their mothers. Some have lost mothers. Some never met their mother. Young puts her arms around all these people who are potentially in the pews on Mother’s Day, making room for the complexity of the day—which does include celebration!

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VIDEO: “United with Beauty: The Psalms, the Arts, and the Human Experience” by Mallory Johnson: Mallory Johnson graduated last weekend with a bachelor’s in music and worship (concentration: voice) from Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. (In the fall she will be starting an MDiv program at Beeson Divinity School.) All the seniors in the Samford School of the Arts are required to complete a capstone project tailored to their individual interests and career goals. As Johnson’s interests center on theology, history, and the arts, she created a twenty-minute video rooted in the Psalms that integrates music, poetry, short excerpts of fiction, visual art, and quotes from van Gogh, Tchaikovsky, Goethe, Luther, and others, resulting in a contemplative multimedia experience.

I resonate so much with Johnson’s approach of bringing together works from different artistic disciplines to interpret one another and to invite the viewer into worship. Her curation is stellar! To cite just one example, the contemporary choral work Stars by Ēriks Ešenvalds plays as we see, among other images, an Aboriginal dot painting of the constellations Orion and Canis and a nighttime landscape by realist painter Józef Chełmoński. Another: John Adams’s double piano composition “Hallelujah Junction” is brought into conversation with Psalm 150 and a painting by Jewish artist Richard Bee of David dancing before the ark.

Józef Chełmoński (Polish, 1849–1914), Starry Night, 1888. Oil on canvas, 22 13/16 × 28 3/4 in. (58 × 73 cm). National Museum in Kraków, Poland.

The video opens with the theme of awe and wonder—expanses of sky and sea and field; the beauty and vastness of God mirrored in the natural world—and then moves to lament—of the prospering of the wicked; of exhaustion, anxiety, and other forms of mental or spiritual anguish and their causes; of personal sin—and finally ends with an assurance of grace and with exultation. Johnson shows how the longings of modern people overlap with those of the biblical psalmists. Here’s her description:

In his famous work titled Confessions, St. Augustine writes this: “Yet to praise you, God, is the desire of every human.” Is this true? What does this look like?

During my time at Samford, I have felt my heart and mind overflow with love for the arts. As a Christian, they have played a devotional role in my life. I find such joy in seeing connections between music, art, and literature that may seem unrelated on the surface. I believe that all humans have a longing for the goodness of God and we find “echoes” of Him everywhere, and most beautifully in artistic expression.

I wanted to show others how I understand the world as a Christian artist. This project is a journey through the Psalms, using art to reinforce the idea that the Psalms capture the full universal human experience. Across time and space, we have all felt the same things and we have all had the same deep longing for “something higher.”

I hope you can allow this project to wash over you. Make time to watch it alone or with someone you love, distraction-free. Turn the lights out, light a candle, watch it on a big screen with the volume up loud. Be cozy under a blanket with a cup of coffee, or grab a journal and write down anything that sticks out to you! It is my earnest desire that you will be moved by the artistic expression of humanity, and that you may realize that God has always been the goodness you most deeply desire.

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SONGS:

>> “Broken Healers” by Elise Massa: Singer-songwriter Elise Massa is the assistant director of music and worship arts at Church of the Ascension in Pittsburgh. A meditation on Christ as Wounded Healer, this song from her 2014 album of demos, We Are All Rough Drafts, was inspired by an Eastertide sermon.

Here’s the final stanza (the full lyrics are at the Bandcamp link):

Broken healers are we all
In a living world, decayed
With broken speech we stutter, “Glory”
As broken fingers mend what’s frayed
Holy Spirit, come, anoint us
As you anointed Christ the King
Who wore the crown of the oppressed
Who bears the scars of suffering

>> “Agnus Dei” by Michael W. Smith, performed by the Ukrainian Easter Choir: This is one of the few CCM songs I listened to as a young teen (Third Day’s version from a WOW CD!) that I’m still really fond of. In this video that premiered April 17, an eighty-person choir conducted by Sergiy Yakobchuk was assembled from multiple churches in Ukraine to perform for an Easter service in Lviv organized by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Michael W. Smith’s “Agnus Dei” is one of three songs they sang, in both English and Ukrainian. The name of the soloist is not given. Many of the vocalists in the choir have been displaced from their homes by the current war with Russia. One of them says, “With the war, celebrating the Resurrection means for us now life above death, good above evil.”

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PRAYER EXERCISE: “Visio Divina: A 20-Minute Guided Prayer Reflection for the Crisis in Ukraine”: Visio divina, Latin for “divine seeing,” is a spiritual practice of engaging prayerfully with an image, usually an artwork—allowing the visual to invite you into communion with God. On March 17 Vivianne David led a virtual visio divina exercise with Natalya Rusetska’s Crucifixion, hosted by Renovaré. I caught up with the video afterward and found it a very meaningful experience. As the painting is by a Ukrainian artist and represents Christ’s passion, the war in Ukraine is a natural connection point.

I appreciate David’s wise guidance, which includes these reminders:

  • Stay with the image, regardless of whether or not you ​“feel” something happening right away. There is something beautiful about faithfully waiting with that space, having dedicated it to God as a time of prayer.
  • Notice what draws your attention, what invites you into the image—let that become a space for conversation with Christ.
  • Notice what sort of emotions arise as you stay with the image. How does it awaken desire? Let these emotions lead you back to continued dialogue with God.

This kind of quiet, focused looking with an openness to encounter is something I encourage on the blog. Any of David’s three tips above I would also suggest for any art image I post—a corrective to hasty scrolling habits. Stick around for the last four minutes of the video to see dozens and dozens of impressions from participants, which may reveal new aspects of the painting to you.