Tag: redemption

Advent, Day 17: Come, My Beloved

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What is that coming up from the wilderness like columns of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all the fragrant powders of a merchant?

—Song of Solomon 3:6 (KJV)

Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee.

—Isaiah 60:1 (KJV)

Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city. . . . Shake thyself from the dust; arise, and sit down, O Jerusalem: loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion. For thus saith the LORD, Ye have sold yourselves for nought; and ye shall be redeemed without money.

—Isaiah 52:1–3 (KJV)

LOOK: Eve by Kiki Smith

Smith, Kiki_Eve
Kiki Smith (American, 1954–), Eve, 2001. Manzini (resin and marble dust) and graphite, 20 3/8 × 5 × 6 3/4 in. (51.8 × 12.7 × 17.1 cm). Source: Kiki Smith: A Gathering, 1980–2005, p. 247

Eve, the mother of all living, a representative of humanity. The crown of God’s creation, and yet she distrusted God’s word, transgressed his command, breaking what was intended to be an eternal communion. In this small sculpture, she looks up, raising her hands in front of her face—in a gesture of prayer or praise? Shielding her eyes from brightness? Could it be she sees redemption on the horizon?

LISTEN: “Lecha Dodi” (Come, My Beloved), traditional Jewish hymn | Words by Shlomo ha-Levi Alkabetz, based on verses from the Hebrew Bible, 16th century | Music by Maayan Tzafrir, 2021 | Sung by Maayan Tzafrir, 2021

(Turn on CC on the video to read the Hebrew lyrics alongside the English.)

ENGLISH TRANSLATION (supplied by 12 Tribes Music):

Rouse yourselves! Rouse yourselves! [Isa. 51:17]
Your light is coming; rise up and shine. [Isa. 60:1]
Awake! Awake! Utter a song.
The glory of God is revealed upon you.

Who is this that cometh up out of the wilderness,
Perfumed with myrrh and frankincense,
With all the fragrant powders of a merchant? [Song of Sol. 3:6]

Shake off the ashes! Rise up from the dust!
Put on your garments of splendor, my people. [Isa. 52:1]
Through the son of Yishai [Jesse] of Bethlehem,
Redemption draws near to my soul.

Awake! Awake! Utter a song,
Let me see thy countenance.
Awake! Awake! Utter a song,
Let me hear thy voice.

When I was a student at UNC–Chapel Hill, I was curious to learn more about the Jewish roots of my Christian faith. I reached out to the Jewish campus organization Hillel, and they invited me to attend their Shabbat dinner, hosted every Friday at sundown at a large house on Cameron Ave.

Most markedly, I remember, before eating, the communal singing of the piyyut (Jewish liturgical poem) “Lecha Dodi” as everyone turned to face the door. I had no idea what the words meant—they were in Hebrew—or what the orientation of bodies was communicating. The song was part of the group’s regular liturgy, familiar to the Jewish students who were gathered, so no introduction or explanation was given, no lyric sheet that I recall. Afterward I asked the rabbi what just happened. “We welcomed in the Shabbat bride,” she said. “The Shekinah.” (The Shekinah is a dwelling or settling of the divine presence. The word is a feminine noun in Hebrew.)

I was puzzled by this statement. It sounded so mystical, challenging my very literalistic sensibilities at the time. The words of the song, by the rabbi and Kabbalist Shlomo ha-Levi Alkabetz (1500–1576), are mostly a composite of scripture texts from the Song of Songs, Isaiah, and elsewhere. Rabbi Shlomo personifies Shabbat (the Sabbath) as a bride, and Israel as her mate. The song anticipates the everlasting Shabbat, ultimate redemption, as the people of Israel ask God to bring about messianic deliverance.

(Related posts: https://artandtheology.org/2024/12/10/advent-day-10-bridegroom-of-the-soul/; https://artandtheology.org/2019/11/26/salvation-is-him-artful-devotion/)

I was taken back to this experience from almost twenty years ago when recently, I came across a version of the “Lecha Dodi” distributed by 12 Tribes Music [previously]. There are hundreds of different tunes for Rabbi Shlomo’s text, from medieval Moorish to northern European folk; but 12 Tribes features a newer setting by the Israeli musician Maayan Tzafrir.

The YouTube video description provides some biographical background:

Maayan Tzafrir is a singer and musician who weaves Balkan and Middle Eastern musical traditions with her Jewish roots. In her music she combines ancient piyutim (chants) with folk melodies. Maayan’s original compositions are inspired by Greek, Bulgarian, Georgian, and Turkish traditions. Maayan is the founder and vocal leader of the Yearot Ensemble, a singer in the Greek band Tavernikos, founder of The Hebrew Balkan Choir, and conductor of various workshops, meetings, and tours focusing on Balkan traditional singing with a Hebrew and feminine spirit.

The lyrics provided for Tzafrir’s version differ slightly from the traditional lyrics. It appears that she uses verses 5 and 4, with complementary material in between.

As a Christian, I can’t help but hear these words in light of Jesus. Several of the Hebrew scripture texts for Jewish Shabbat overlap with the Hebrew scripture texts for the Christian season of Advent, which is itself a dedicated time of looking forward to the arrival of the Messiah, beseeching his coming to dwell.

The phrase “son of Jesse” is a reference to the royal Davidic line from which the Messiah will come—and, in Christian belief, did come, in Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary, who has since ascended into heaven but has promised to return to bring about the fullness of God’s kingdom.

Awake! Sing! Redemption draweth nigh!

Roundup: Coventry Cathedral HENI Talk, dilapidated migrant boats transformed into musical instruments, and more

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SONGS:

>> “Empty Grave” by Zach Williams: Some southern rock!

>> “Overcome with Light” by Bowerbirds, performed by Daniel Seavey and Liz Vice:

>> “Look Who I Found” by Harry Connick Jr., performed by the Good Shepherd Collective, feat. Charles Jones: This song cover premiered at Good Shepherd New York’s online Easter service last month. The original is from Harry Connick Jr.’s 2021 album Alone with My Faith, a mix of new songs he wrote (like this one) and classic hymns.

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ART VIDEO: “Coventry Cathedral: A Journey Through Art” (HENI Talks), written and presented by James Fox: While my husband was presenting at a science conference at Oxford in 2013, I took a train to Coventry and spent the whole day at the city’s cathedral, wandering through its chapels and grounds, sitting in front of its various artworks as the light changed, praying, and even talking with a few locals, including one man who had lived in Coventry since before its bombing in World War II. That bombing destroyed the original St. Michael’s from the fourteenth century, but when the cathedral was rebuilt after the war, it provided the occasion for new commissions from modern architects and artists. Here’s a wonderful video introduction to the history, art, and design of Coventry Cathedral:

In it the art historian and BAFTA-nominated broadcaster Dr. James Fox explores some of the cathedral’s modernist masterpieces: St. Michael’s Victory over the Devil by Jacob Epstein; the West Screen by John Hutton; the Tablets of the Word by Ralph Beyer; the stained glass windows in the nave by Lawrence Lee, Keith New, and Geoffrey Clarke; the lectern eagle by Elisabeth Frink; the high-altar cross of nails by Geoffrey Clarke; the monumental tapestry Christ in Glory in the Tetramorph by Graham Sutherland (which I wrote about for ArtWay); Angel of Agony by Steven Sykes; the Crown of Thorns by Geoffrey Clarke; the Chapel of Unity floor mosaics by Einar Forseth; and the Baptistery Window by John Piper. The latter Fox calls the pinnacle of the entire complex, and I agree—it’s extraordinary. Explore more at www.coventrycathedral.org.uk.

Coventry Cathedral interior
Coventry Cathedral in the West Midlands, England. Photo: David Iliff (CC BY-SA 3.0).
West Screen by John Hutton
Detail of the large glass “west” screen at Coventry Cathedral, designed and hand-engraved by John Hutton, 1962. This view looks out over the ruins of the Old Cathedral. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.

For more HENI Talks, see heni.com/talks. See also a feature I ran about this video series back in 2021.

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SONG: “See What a Morning (Resurrection Hymn)” by Stuart Townend and Keith Getty, sung by the Coventry Cathedral choirs and congregation: Although Coventry Cathedral attracts tourists, it’s also an active church, home to a regular worshipping community! Here’s a video of the beginning of the entrance rite on Easter Day 2012, a procession carried out to the 2003 hymn “See What a Morning.” I appreciate the versatility of Stuart Townend and the Gettys’ hymns, which tend to work equally well if led by a contemporary worship band or a traditional choir with piano/organ accompaniment. I’m used to hearing their hymns sung in low-church contexts (“low church” refers to Christian traditions, such as evangelicalism, that place less emphasis on ritual and sacrament, as opposed to “high church”), so it was a delight to see one used as part of the Anglican liturgy and in such a majestic space!

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ARTICLE: “La Scala concert features violins that inmates made from battered migrant boats” by Colleen Barry, AP News, February 13, 2024: “The violins, violas and cellos played by the Orchestra of the Sea in its debut performance at Milan’s famed Teatro alla Scala carry with them tales of desperation and redemption. The wood that was bent, chiseled and gouged to form the instruments was recovered from dilapidated smugglers’ boats that brought migrants to Italy’s shores; the luthiers who created them are inmates in Italy’s largest prison. The project, dubbed Metamorphosis, focuses on transforming what otherwise might be discarded into something of value to society: rotten wood into fine instruments, inmates into craftsmen, all under the principle of rehabilitation . . .” This is a beautiful story of repurposing, of new life—for weathered wood that carried families out of danger zones, and for men who have been convicted of crimes but who seek to engage their hands and hearts in creative projects.

Reclaimed violin
February 9, 2024: A violin made from the wood of wrecked migrants’ boats lies in the instrument workshop at Opera maximum-security prison outside Milan. Photo: Antonio Calanni / Associated Press.
Reclaimed cellos
Two members of the Orchestra of the Sea play cellos made by inmates from reclaimed wood at the orchestra’s debut performance in Milan on February 12, 2024. Photo: Antonio Calanni / Associated Press.

“Agnus Dei” by Cecil Day-Lewis (poem)

Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment
Gauguin, Paul_Be Be (The Nativity)
Paul Gauguin (French, 1848–1903), Be Be (The Nativity), 1896. Oil on canvas, 67 × 76.5 cm. State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia. A midwife holds the newborn Christ as his mother rests in the upper left corner.
O child of man,
Wombed in dark waters you retell
Millenniums, image the terrestrial span
From an unwitting cell
To the new soul within her intricate shell,
O child of man.

O child of man,
Whose infant eyes and groping mind
Meet chaos and create the world again,
You for yourself must find
The toils we know, the truths we have divined –
Yes, child of man.

O child of man,
You come to justify and bless
The animal throes wherein your life began,
And gently draw from us
The milk of love, the most of tenderness,
Dear child of man.

So, child of man,
Remind us what we have blindly willed –
A slaughter of all innocents! You can 
Yet make this madness yield
And lift the load of our stock-piling guilt,
O child of man.

“Agnus Dei” is the seventh of nine titled sections of the poem “Requiem for the Living” by Cecil Day-Lewis, originally published in The Gate, and Other Poems (J. Cape, 1962) and compiled in The Complete Poems of C. Day Lewis (Stanford University Press, 1992).

Cecil Day-Lewis CBE (1904–1972) was one of the leading British poets of the 1930s, closely associated with W. H. Auden. He was born in Ireland of Anglo-Irish parents, his father a Church of Ireland clergyman, and was educated at Oxford, where he taught poetry from 1951 to 1956. In the 1940s he “turned from poetry of left-wing political statement to an individual lyricism expressed in more traditional forms” (Britannica) and served as poet laureate of England from 1968 until his death in 1972. In addition to writing poetry, he also wrote crime novels under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake, sixteen of which feature detective Nigel Strangeways. One of Day-Lewis’s four children is the actor Daniel Day-Lewis.

“Those Who Carry” by Anna Kamieńska

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van Gogh, Vincent_Women Carrying Sacks of Coal in the Snow
Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890), Women Carrying Sacks of Coal in the Snow, 1882. Chalk, brush in ink, and opaque and transparent watercolor on wove paper, 32.1 × 50.1 cm. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands.
Those who carry grand pianos
to the tenth floor   wardrobes and coffins
the old man with a bundle of wood hobbling toward the horizon
the lady with a hump of nettles
the madwoman pushing her baby carriage
full of empty vodka bottles
they all will be raised up
like a seagull’s feather   like a dry leaf
like an eggshell   a scrap of newspaper on the street

Blessed are those who carry
for they will be raised

This poem was originally published in Polish in Anna Kamieńska’s 1984 collection Dwie ciemności (Two Darknesses), © Paweł Śpiewak. It is translated into English by Grażyna Drabik and David Curzon in Astonishments: Selected Poems of Anna Kamieńska (Paraclete Press, 2007). Used by permission of the publisher.