Tag: rest

Roundup: The body as sacred offering; rest as resistance; “Amazing Grace”

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I’m late in notifying you about my June 2025 playlist (a random compilation of faith-inspired songs I’ve been enjoying lately), but be sure to check it out on Spotify.

See also my Juneteenth Playlist, which I’ve added six new songs to since originally releasing it two years ago, including a cover of Roberta Slavitt’s protest song “Freedom Is a Constant Struggle,” “Black Gold” by Esperanza Spalding, and “The Block” by Carlos Simon, a short orchestral work based on a six-panel collage by Romare Bearden celebrating Harlem street life.

Romare Bearden, The Block
Romare Bearden (American, 1911–1988), The Block, 1971. Cut-and-pasted printed, colored, and metallic papers, photostats, graphite, ink marker, gouache, watercolor, and ink on Masonite, 4 × 18 ft. (121.9 × 548.6 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.

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PODCAST EPISODE: “The Body as Sacred Offering: Ballet and Embodied Faith” with Silas Farley, For the Life of the World, April 30, 2025: An excellent interview! “Silas Farley, former New York City Ballet dancer and current Dean of the Colburn School’s Trudl Zipper Dance Institute, explores the profound connections between classical ballet, Christian worship, and embodied spirituality. From his early exposure to liturgical dance in a charismatic Lutheran church to his career as a professional dancer and choreographer, Farley illuminates how the physicality of ballet can express deep spiritual truths and serve as an act of worship.”

I was especially compelled by Farley’s discussion of turnout, the rotation of the leg at the hips—foundational to ballet technique. It gives the body an “exalted carriage” and allows for “a more complete revelation of the body,” he says, because you see more of the leg’s musculature that way. This physical positioning, he says, reflects the correlative “spiritual turnout” that’s also happening in dance, and that Christians are called to in life—a posture of openness and giving. He cites the theological concept of incurvatus in se, coined by Augustine and further developed by Martin Luther, which refers to how sin curves one in on oneself instead of turning one outward toward God and others.

Farley also discusses how liturgical dance is like and unlike more performative modes of dance (“liturgical dance . . . is a kind of embodied prayer . . . a movement that goes up to God out of the body”); how discipline and freedom go together; the body as instrument, and how dancers cultivate a hyperawareness of their bodies; the two basic design elements of ballet, the plié and the tendu, and their significance; his formation, from ages fourteen to twenty-six, under the teaching of Rev. Dr. Tim Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church; the Four Loves ballet he choreographed on commission for the Houston Ballet, based on a C. S. Lewis book (see promo video below, and his and composer Kyle Werner’s recent in-depth discussion about it for the C. S. Lewis Foundation); Songs from the Spirit, a ballet commissioned from him by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (see next roundup item); Jewels by George Balanchine, a three-act ballet featuring three distinct neoclassical styles; “Hear the Dance” episodes of City Ballet the Podcast, which he hosts; and book recommendations for kids and adults.

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SITE-SPECIFIC BALLET: Songs from the Spirit, choreographed by Silas Farley: Commissioned by MetLiveArts [previously], Songs from the Spirit by Silas Farley is a three-part ballet for seven dancers that interprets old and new Christian spirituals, having grown out of an offertory Farley gave at Redeemer Presbyterian Church based on the song “Guide My Feet, Lord.” Staged in the museum’s Assyrian Sculpture Court, the Astor Chinese Garden Court, and the glass-covered Charles Engelhard Court of the American Wing, the ballet progresses from “Lamentation” to “Contemplation” to “Celebration.” Here’s a full recording of the March 8, 2019, premiere:

For the project, Farley solicited new “songs (and spoken word poetry) from the spirit” from men who were currently or formerly incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison in California, whose creative talent he learned about through the Ear Hustle podcast. Recordings of these contributions form about half the score, while the other half consists of traditional spirituals sung live by soprano Kelly Griffin and tenor Robert May. My favorite section is probably “Deep River” at 26:54, a duet danced by Farley and Taylor Stanley, picturing a soul’s “crossing over” to the other side, supported by an angelic or divine presence, or perhaps one who’s gone before.  

In his artistic statement, Farley says he wanted to invite viewers “to accompany us [dancers] on this journey: from darkness to light, bondage to freedom, exile to home.”

I am struck by how a contemporary work that is, in Farley’s words, so “unequivocally Christ-focused and Christ-exalting” was welcomed, even made financially possible, by a prestigious secular institution. I find apt Farley’s response when asked by Macie Bridge from the Yale Center for Faith & Culture about his consideration of his audiences (see previous roundup item):

All the people coming to the performance are hungry in different ways. Some are longing for beauty. Some are longing for a prophetic image of a better world. Some are longing to see something reflected back to them from their own lives. And I’m just trusting that as I offer the artwork as an act hospitality, and as I offer the artwork as an act of adoration and worship back to God, that in his own beautiful, winsome, totally personalized way, he’ll meet each of the audience members in the way they need to be met.

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ARTWORK: Dreaming with the Ancestors by Charlie Watts and Tricia Hersey [HT: Visual Commentary on Scripture]: Tricia Hersey is a poet, performance artist, spiritual director, and community organizer living in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the founder of The Nap Ministry, an organization that promotes rest as a form of resistance against capitalism (which fuels contemporary grind culture) and white supremacy, and the author of the New York Times best-selling Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto (2022) and We Will Rest! The Art of Escape (2024). She pursued graduate research in Black liberation theology, womanism, somatics, and cultural trauma, earning a master of divinity degree from Candler School of Theology at Emory University.

Watts, Charlie_Dreaming with the Ancestors
Charlie Watts and Tricia Hersey, Dreaming with the Ancestors, 2017. Archival digital print photograph, 76.2 × 101.6 cm.

The photograph Dreaming with the Ancestors, taken by Charlie Watts, portrays Hersey reclining on a wooden bench inside an open brick enclosure and above rows of cotton plants. Dressed in a soft yellow gown, she closes her eyes in rest, practicing what she calls “the art of escape”—from the incessant demand of productivity and overwork, from oppression of body and spirit, from noise that drowns out voices of wisdom.

In We Will Rest!, Hersey advises:

Every day, morning or night, or whenever you can steal away, find silence. Even if for only a few minutes. Look for quiet time, quiet breathing, quiet wind, quiet air. It is there. Even if it’s cultivated in your body by syncing with your own heart beating. Guilt and shame will be a formidable and likely opponent in your resistance. We expect guilt and shame to surface. Let them come. We rest through it. We commit to our subversive stunts of silence, truth, daydreaming, community care, naps, sleep, play, leisure, boundaries, and space. Be passionate about escape. (107)

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ALBUM: Grace Will Lead Me Home by Invisible Folk (2024) [HT: Jonathan Evens]: An Arts Council England grant awarded to singer-songwriter Jon Bickley in 2022 enabled him to conduct a research and songwriting project that culminated in the album Grace Will Lead Me Home, which engages with the hymn “Amazing Grace,” its author’s biography, and its legacy. Bickley partnered with the Cowper and Newton Museum in Olney and enlisted the collaboration of fellow folk musicians Angeline Morrison (The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience) and Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne (creator of the “Black Singers and Folk Ballads” resource for secondary educators, and concertina player on Reg Meuross’s Stolen from God). Here’s the title track, written and sung by Morrison:

The album also includes a cover of Zoe Mulford’s “The President Sang Amazing Grace,” written in response to the racially motivated mass shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17, 2015 (its ten-year anniversary is next Tuesday). In his eulogy at the funeral of one of the nine victims, Rev. Clementa Pinckney, President Barack Obama chose “the power of God’s grace” as his theme, and he closed by singing the first stanza of “Amazing Grace,” a moving gesture that Mulford’s song remembers.

Other songs on Grace Will Lead Me Home address John Newton’s love for his wife Polly, his impressment into naval service, and his friendship with William Cowper. There are also songs that grapple with the harm and suffering Newton inflicted on others through his involvement in the slave trade, and that wonder at his hymn’s being so mightily embraced not only by the Black church, many of whose members are descendants of enslaved Africans, but also by other traumatized communities, who insist amid all the wrongs and afflictions they’ve suffered that God is amazingly gracious.

It’s a myth that John Newton (1725–1807), who converted to Christianity in 1748 after surviving a turbulent sea voyage, immediately gave up his employment as a slave trader upon embracing Christ. In fact, he was soon after promoted from slave ship crew member to captain and sailed three more voyages to Africa as such, trafficking human beings for profit until 1754, when his ill health forced him to retire. But he continued to invest in slaving operations for another decade, until becoming a priest in the Church of England. It wasn’t until 1788, in the pamphlet Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade, that he publicly denounced slavery and confessed his sin of having participated in that evil institution, and this was the start of his abolitionism.

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SONG: “Amazing Grace,” performed by the Good Shepherd Collective: This adaptation of “Amazing Grace” premiered at Good Shepherd New York’s digital worship service on June 1. Listen via the Instagram video below, or cued up on YouTube. The vocalists are, from right to left, Charles Jones on lead, Solomon Dorsey (also on bass), Jon Seale, Dee Wilson, and Aaron Wesley. James McAlister is on drums, Michael Gungor is on electric guitar, and Tyler Chester is on keys.

Roundup: New albums, historic Boston church to get new mural, new opera sets words of Mexican nun, and more

Victoria Emily Jones1 Comment

NEW ALBUMS:

>> The Divine Dark, vol. 1: This three-song EP was released December 15, 2024, on Re-Echo Records, a new label for music created by artists from Resurrection Philadelphia church. “The Divine Dark is an ongoing series of original arrangements and compositions for devotion, contemplation, and edification. The series takes its name from a phrase that emerged in the fifth century among Christian mystics to describe the ineffable unknowableness of God . . . in all his kindness, grace, and mystery.”

The first volume features new arrangements by Joshua Stamper [previously] of two seventeenth-century German hymns (both translated into English by Catherine Winkworth, and sung here by Sarah Long), plus one new hymn that Stamper wrote with his wife, Kory Stamper, whose refrain is taken from Psalm 127:4. The songs quietly explore the mysteries of salvation, the Eucharist, and God’s sovereignty as well as some of the paradoxes of God’s character, such as his being both storm and shelter (wild and thundering, but also safe and enfolding).

Volume 2 of The Divine Dark is likely to release later this year.

>> It Is Good to Be Here with You by Nick Chambers: Out today, the first full-length album by singer-songwriter Nick Chambers. These songs of spiritual seeking touch on sobriety, divine nearness, ambiguity and wonder, the pursuit of understanding or insight, the longing to be held and loved, and more. Chambers deftly weaves voices from scripture—the blind beggar Bartimaeus, who cried out to Christ for mercy; the sons of Korah, who thirsted for God like a deer thirsts for water; the apostle Paul, who experienced a frustrating tension between desire and action—with his own poetic voice, finding companionship with those ancient seekers who were transformed by their encounters God. There’s reference to the wrestling patriarch Jacob, the blazing bush-vision of Moses, Elijah in a wilderness cave, the mount of Transfiguration, the eighth day of creation. Besides biblical texts, the songs bear influences from writers Rainer Maria Rilke, Madeleine L’Engle, Gregory of Nyssa, and Esther de Waal.

The album features some co-writing contributions by Jon Guerra (“Hold Me”), Paul Zach (“A Sweeter Word,” “Always Already”), and Tyson Matthews (“It Is Good to Be Here with You”).

My favorite tracks: “To an Unknown God,” “Hear,” “Thanks Be to God.”

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NEW ART COMMISSION: Memorial to Enslaved Persons by Harmonia Rosales, King’s Chapel, Boston: Harmonia Rosales, an Afro-Cuban artist born and raised in Chicago and living in Los Angeles, is at work on a three-part commission for the historic King’s Chapel at 58 Tremont Street in Boston, a church originally built in wood in 1686 and then rebuilt in stone in the 1750s. One of the oldest churches in the United States, it (and its adjacent burying ground) is one of the stops along the Freedom Trail, and it still has an active congregation.

Rosales, Harmonia_King's Chapel ceiling mural
Conceptual image of the mural by Harmonia Rosales that’s being installed this year on the ceiling of King’s Chapel in Boston, Massachusetts

Despite being in the North, King’s Chapel has links to the slave trade. Historical documents reveal that at least 219 persons, most of them of African descent but at least two of them Native American, were enslaved by ministers and members of the church throughout its history, and that even after slavery was abolished in Massachusetts in 1783, donations to the church continued to flow in from people whose wealth depended on Southern slave labor, such as textile magnates. You can read more details in Slavery and King’s Chapel, the thirty-two-page report published by King’s Chapel’s Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery in 2018.

Until at least the mid-nineteenth century, people of color, both enslaved and free, who attended King’s Chapel were relegated to the balcony seats. We know the names of 182 enslaved attendees from the church’s baptismal, marriage, and burial registers. “As a community of faith,” the church writes on its website, “we are working to recover, honor, and remember these long-overlooked members of our community. We hope to make their lives and their presence in early Boston visible in new and powerful ways as we tell a more complete version of our history for our congregation, our city, and the 4 million people who walk the Freedom Trail each year.”

In addition to setting up a “living fund” to “provide monetary support for programs and engagement centered around reparative justice and reconciliation in the community,” the church has hired artist Harmonia Rosales, in partnership with the MASS Design Group, to create a physical commemoration of this history, which has three components: a figurative sculpture in the church’s courtyard, a collection of bronze birds perched throughout the church’s exterior and grounds, and a trompe l’oeil ceiling mural in the sanctuary. The memorial will be unveiled later this year. Here are two videos about it:

>> “How a Freedom Trail landmark is reckoning with its ties to slavery,” GBH News, July 19, 2023: This news segment features interview clips of Cassandra Dumay and Jessie Sage O’Leary, Boston University journalism students who are inquiring further into King’s Chapel’s links to the colonial slave trade; Rev. Joy Fallon, senior minister at King’s Chapel; Marissa Cheifetz, director of the King’s Chapel History Program; and memorial committee member David Waters.

>> “VCS Creative Conversations: Ben Quash with Harmonia Rosales,” Visual Commentary on Scripture, February 27, 2025: Theologian and VCS director Ben Quash sits down with artist Harmonia Rosales inside King’s Chapel to discuss her latest commission for that space, plus her paintings Birth of Oshun, The Creation of God, Strangler Fig, and more. Raised in the Santería religious tradition, in her art Rosales draws Yoruba deities (the orishas) into play with Christian ones and centers Black women. Speaking of the VCS’s commitment to showcasing biblical engagement from diverse vantage points, Quash tells Rosales, “We’ve always said that these conversations should not just be about the Bible’s importance to Christians or Jews, but the Bible’s importance to those of other traditions, as something to bounce off, to use, sometimes to object to. And you are a wonderful example of how to do that in a way that’s constantly creative and generous.”

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ARTICLE: “At the Cloisters, Sor Juana’s Words Ring Out in Song” by Elisabeth Vincentelli, The New York Times: Primero Sueño (First Dream) is a new opera by Magos Herrera and Paola Prestini that adapts to music the seventeenth-century mystical poem of the same title by the Mexican Catholic nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, one of the greatest literary works of the Hispanic Baroque. Commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Live Arts (MetLiveArts) and VisionIntoArt, it was conceived as a processional opera that meanders throughout the Met Cloisters, audience in tow—an appropriate choice, as the poem is about the soul’s journey. It premiered January 23, with Herrera playing Sor Juana, the nun in black, “sing[ing] in an earthy mezzo that complements the heavenly harmonies of the six nuns in white, performed by the German vocal ensemble Sjaella.” Accompaniment was provided by harps, hand percussion, theorbo, and Spanish guitar. Here’s a trailer (not filmed on location):

Primero Sueno performance
Magos Herrera, center, as Sor Juana in a rehearsal of the opera Primero Sueño at the Met Cloisters. Photo: Earl Wilson / The New York Times.

The Cloisters—a building designed to evoke a medieval European monastery and housing a sizeable portion of the Met’s medieval art collection—is one of my favorite spaces in all of New York. What a delight that Herrara, Prestini, and team utilized its halls and rooms as staging ground for this dramatic, musical reimagining of a historic sacred poem by a pioneering female Christian writer.

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INTERFAITH ART EXHIBITION: Cloud of Witnesses: Images of Faith and Divinity Today, St John’s Waterloo, London, March 4–April 27, 2025: A juried exhibition featuring the work of twenty-six artists from the UK, funded and supported by Art + Christianity; The God Who Speaks; St John’s Church, Waterloo; the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales; Culham St Gabriel Trust; and Bible Society. Click here to view the exhibition catalog.

The image used for the cover of the exhibition catalog is Life 1, a linocut by Svetlana Atlavina consisting of fifty golden concentric circles that she said represent the vibrations of the heart—the sounds constantly being emitted from our cardiac valves, which mean we’re alive.

Atlavina, Svetlana_Life 1
Svetlana Atlavina, Life 1, 2024. Handmade linocut with gold ink on 300g white Somerset paper, 70 x 50 cm.

The work that I find most compelling is the eight-piece series of COME AND REST photographs by Kirsty Kerr.

Come and Rest: Bethnal Green Library
Kirsty Kerr, COME AND REST: Bethnal Green Library, 2018. Photograph of a public intervention, from a series, 30.5 × 44 cm. Documentation by Will Alcock.

COME AND REST documents a series of public interventions informed by the demolition and rebuilding of Bethnal Green Mission Church. Taking letters from a scripture text that had hung on the old building (Jesus’ words: ‘Come to me and I will give you rest’), Kirsty spelt the phrase in Bethnal Green locations, recording the process with local filmmaker Will Alcock. The words were a gentle yet radical proclamation: of welcome, refuge, and quiet protest against loneliness and exhaustion often synonymous with city life. The act of spelling them out became a performed prayer, symbolic of the church’s continued presence and God’s enduring invitation.

Against the backdrop of this racially and religiously diverse neighbourhood, the words were both witnessed to and overlooked by passers-by of all faiths and none.

Kerr displayed Christ’s invitation in fields and basketball courts, on street corners and scaffolding and bandstand steps, outside subway stops and housing estates and libraries. View the full series here, using the right scroll arrow. I also enjoyed exploring the artist’s other projects on her website.

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EVENT: Taste of Heaven Intercultural Worship Festival, Coventry Cathedral, May 24, 2025: Organized by Intercultural Churches UK. “The Taste of Heaven Festival will be an exciting opportunity to celebrate the rich cultural diversity and creativity of the UK church through live performances, workshops, food and worship. The festival will take place in the iconic venue of Coventry Cathedral and its beautiful surrounding ruins. The day will trace our history of increasing diversity, by highlighting different cultural worship expressions from Celtic to Choral, South Asian and Caribbean, to more recent immigrant communities including Middle Eastern, African, and Hong Kong. It will culminate in a celebration of Intercultural Worship, demonstrating how churches can draw from different cultural streams in their corporate worship.” Tickets range from £10 to £25. Register here. [HT: Global Christian Worship]

Intercultural Worship Festival

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SPOTIFY PLAYLIST: April 2025 (Art & Theology): The song selections on my short monthly playlists are somewhat random—a smorgasbord of what I’ve been listening to, a mix of brand-new releases and older faves—but for thematic playlists keyed to where we are in the liturgical calendar during April, see my Lent Playlist, Holy Week Playlist (I’m especially proud of this one!), and Eastertide Playlist.

Let the Christ-life grow in you

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Monsalve, Dubian_Pregnant Mountain
Dubian Monsalve, Pregnant Mountain, 2012. Mountainside carving in Santo Domingo, Colombia.

The law of growth is rest. We must be content in winter to wait patiently through the long bleak season in which we experience nothing whatever of the sweetness or realization of the Divine Presence, believing the truth, that these seasons which seem to be the most empty are the most pregnant with life. It is in them that the Christ-life is growing in us, laying hold of our soil with strong roots and thrust deeper and deeper, drawing down the blessed rain of mercy and the sun of Eternal Love through our darkness and heaviness and hardness, to irrigate and warm those roots. . . .

The seed must rest in the earth. We must allow the Christ-life to grow in us in rest. Our whole being must fold upon Christ’s rest in us, as the earth folds upon the seed.

—Caryll Houselander, The Passion of the Infant Christ (1949)

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.”

Lent, Day 34

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“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

—Matthew 11:28 (KJV)

LOOK: 62-33 (White Feathers on White Background) by Henk Peeters

Peeters, Henk_White Feathers
Henk Peeters (Dutch, 1925–2013), 62-33 (White Feathers on White Background), 1962. Feathers and velvet on hardboard, 153 × 133 cm. Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Netherlands. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones. [object record]
Peeters, Henk_White Feathers (detail)

Soft, light, pillowy, peaceful.

LISTEN: “Rest” by Sarah Juers, on In Moonlight (2017)

https://soundcloud.com/jesusloverrr/rest

“Come to me, all who are heavy with burden
And I’ll give you rest”

And be still and know
That he is God alone
And be still and know
He is good

“Come to me, come to me and rest”

(Related post: https://artandtheology.org/2021/12/19/advent-day-22/)

Roundup: Art and the Psalms, “We Americans,” the Walking Roots Band, and more

Victoria Emily Jones2 Comments

“Psalms in Dialogue: Psalms 22, 23, and 24,” presented by Duke University Chapel: This multidisciplinary video presentation brings together dancers, musicians, a theologian, a painter, and (other) members of the Duke community to draw out the meaning of, or respond to, these three sequential psalms through art, prayer, and conversation. The livestreamed event aired October 17 and will be available for viewing for a limited time. Several of the segments, which I’ve time-stamped below, are intercut with photos from the streets in 2020 (showing the impact of the pandemic and racial unrest), of artist Makoto Fujimura in his studio and of his three finished paintings, and of Ekklesia Contemporary Ballet dancers in training. I wish more university chapels and well-resourced churches would offer experiences like this! Thank you to my friend Peggy for telling me about it. Read more about Duke Chapel’s multiyear Psalms project here.

1:51: “How do we name the impossible mystery?,” a theological reflection by Morley Van Yperen

6:02: Organ: “Jésus accepte la souffrance,” from La Nativité du Seigneur [previously] by Olivier Messiaen, performed by Christopher Jacobson

10:58: Psalm 22 by Makoto Fujimura, 2020, oyster shell on Belgium canvas, 48 × 48 in.

11:09: Reading of Psalm 22:1–22 by Luke A. Powery, with balletic responses by Paiter van Yperen, Elijah Ryan, Heather Bachman, and Sasha Biagiarelli

15:40: Lament, ballet solo danced by Paiter van Yperen (music by Max Richter, choreo by Elisa Schroth)

18:10: Psalm 22:22–32 chant by Zebulon Highben

21:09: Conversation on the Psalms with Makoto Fujimura and Ellen F. Davis, moderated by Amanda Millay Hughes

29:32: Organ: “Christus, der uns selig macht,” BWV 620, by Johann Sebastian Bach, performed by Christopher Jacobson

32:00: Prayer by Nathan Liang

34:11: Recitation of Psalm 23 by Julia Hendrickson

35:22: 6IX, a tap dance by Andrew Nemr

37:10: “The 23rd Psalm,” text adaptation and music by Bobby McFerrin, performed by the Duke Chapel Staff Singers (*this was my favorite!)

40:42: Prayer by Jonathan Avendano

42:39: “The Lord Is My Shepherd,” music by Howard Goodall, performed by the Royal School of Church Music in America Choristers

46:13: Psalm 24 remix produced by Andrew Nemr

48:21: Prayer by Jordyn Blake

49:45: Recitation of Psalm 24 by Julia Hendrickson

51:32: Conversation continued

1:11:49: “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” African American spiritual arranged by Mark A. Miller, performed by the Duke Chapel Choir

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POEMS: This week’s edition of ImageUpdate includes two poems that I really appreciated. The first, which was new to me, is “America” by Claude McKay, a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Originally published in The Liberator in 1921, it expresses the pain of living in a country where you’re hated for your race and yet remains optimistic, beginning, “Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, / And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth, / Stealing my breath of life, I will confess / I love this cultured hell . . .” The second poem is “Making Peace” by Denise Levertov, one of the best-known Christian poets of the twentieth century. “The poets must give us / imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar / imagination of disaster,” she writes. Poets can help us feel our way toward shalom—give us a vision of its permeating the world that inspires us to live out its rhythms, its metaphors, its structure, its grammar, our lives like poems.

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MUSIC VIDEO: “We Americans” by the Avett Brothers: I’m so moved by this song from the Avett Brothers’ 2019 album Closer Than Together—its grappling with the historical legacy of the US, its greatness and its guilt, with a mixture of heartache, empathy, and hope. It’s one of the healthiest expressions of patriotism I’ve ever come across in a song. We need to see America as the complex entity that she is, which means in part not ignoring her flaws but with love exposing them so that they can be remediated and we can move forward together more faithful to her celebrated ideals. “We Americans” is both confession and supplication, an “I’m sorry, God” and “God, help us to do better.” The final chorus:

I am a son of God and man
And I may never understand
The good and evil
But I dearly love this land
Because of and in spite of We the People
We are more than the sum of our parts
All these broken bones and broken hearts
God, will you keep us wherever we go?
Can you forgive us for where we’ve been?
We Americans

I was reminded of this song in the September 17 episode of the RTN Theology podcast, “You Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Unsettle You.” Chris Breslin interviews Mark Charles, a Native American activist, public speaker, Christian leader, and independent candidate in this year’s US presidential election. He is the coauthor, with Soong-Chan Rah, of Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery. Charles enters at 12:40 with a discussion of the lack of common memory.

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SONGS:

>> “Whatever Comes Next” by Drew Miller: This song came out of “Hutchmoot: Homebound,” a virtual arts gathering organized by the Rabbit Room that took place earlier this month. In writing the song, Drew Miller [previously] was inspired in part by Shigé Clark’s new poem “Grateful” (see her perform the poem here).

>> “Bring Your Peace” by the Walking Roots Band: This song was written this year by Seth Thomas Crissman and Greg J. Yoder of the Walking Roots Band as part of a collection of fifteen songs for Shine, a children’s Sunday school curriculum published by MennoMedia and Brethren Press. It appears on Everybody Sing: Worship Songs for Children, released in June as a double album with Everybody Sing: Songs for the Seasons (which comprises ten original songs by The Many). The song asks God to bring his peace into our fears and into the storms we face, and to make us instruments of that peace to others.

>> “Rest Assured,” sung by the Walking Roots Band: TWRB learned this song from a bandmate’s parent (original authorship unknown) and recorded it a cappella in their separate locations at the start of quarantine in March. The chorus goes,

Rest assured, He’s not forgotten
Rest assured, He’ll take care of you
Look at the times He’s been there before
He’ll be there again, rest assured

>> “Let Justice Roll Like a River,” sung by Eric Lige: Bobby Gilles and Rebecca Elliott of Sojourn Music wrote this song in 2017, inspired by Amos 5. In this lyric video from July 5, it’s performed by Eric Lige and Paul Lee of Ethnos Community Church. The singing starts at 1:33. [HT: Global Christian Worship]

The savasana of Lent

Victoria Emily Jones8 Comments

I just finished proofreading a book on yoga, and one of its chapters in particular is going to stick with me through Lent: “Practice Dying.” In it the author, Michael Stone, discusses the significance of savasana (pronounced sha-VA-sa-na), literally “corpse pose,” which involves lying face-up on the ground, arms at your side, palms up, in a state of attentive relaxation. It is the final pose of every yoga session—and it’s the practice of death, of letting go.

In corpse pose, the practitioner embraces the impermanence of life and, by doing so, is empowered to live with greater gratitude for what is, right now, and with a continual attitude of surrender. Facing one’s mortality is seen as freeing rather than fearsome.

Savasana is a restorative pose, meant to rejuvenate the body, mind, and spirit. It’s widely considered the most important pose in yoga and also the most difficult. It’s deceptively hard to slow down and be still! And still more, to let the unwanted elements within us die.

Preparing for Flight by Michelle Kingdom
Michelle Kingdom (American, 1967–), Preparing for Flight, 2016. Embroidery.

This Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, Christians around the globe will enter a savasana of sorts as they receive an ashen cross on their foreheads, along with the pronouncement that they are dust and will return to dust. Christians, like Buddhists, recognize life’s impermanence and teach nonattachment to the things of this world, but unlike Buddhists, we are theists who believe that there is One who is permanent, the only ground, the only stability, and that we are to attach ourselves to that One at all costs.

In many ways, to observe Lent is to practice dying. We die to self—so that we can rise to new life in Christ. This act involves purging our hearts and lives of those things that only cause clutter, and relaxing into that empty space with God. In asana practice, it is, ironically, savasana, corpse pose, that wakes you up, that rebirths you into the rest of your day, the rest of your life. So, too, is Lent a putting-to-death posture that leads to resurrection.

Some people tend to associate Lent with extra exertion—and it’s true, there are disciplines associated with it (fasting, prayer, almsgiving). But what if Lent were reconceived as a time of “attentive relaxation”? Of meeting with the Breath (the Spirit) in stillness, listening and leaning into her promptings? Indeed, fasting and prayer are intended to open up that meeting space, and giving money and food to the poor is no burden to those who have relinquished their grasp on material possessions.

Like savasana, the “corpse pose” of Lent is both simple and difficult. Lying down and letting go. It can be painful to put to death those habits and things that have been keeping us from God, as can the sacrifice required to reach out to others in their need. But the life that awaits us when we die to self makes the choice obvious, and God’s very Spirit is active on our behalf.

Michelle Kingdom’s embroidery Preparing for Flight visualizes, for me, this idea of Lent as savasana. (That is, my theistic reinterpretation of it.) As the figure relaxes into the Ground of Being, she is made ready to soar.

Lent is about renewal, a coming to life that can happen only when we lie down and die (see, e.g., Jesus’s parable of the grain of wheat). In the stillness, in the dust, in the cessation of striving, is where God meets us and raises us up, as Rami M. Shapiro suggests in his poem “Renewal”:

Imagine not that life is all doing.
Stillness, too, is life;
And in that stillness
The mind cluttered with busyness quiets,
The heart reaching to win rests,
And we hear the whispered truths of God.

May your Lent be a time of blessed stillness that restores you to the abundant life of God.

The soundtrack for this post, embedded above, is “Death” by the Coptic Australian oud virtuoso Joseph Tawadros, inspired by Kahlil Gibran’s poem of the same name. “. . . [L]ike seeds dreaming beneath the snow, your heart dreams of spring. / Trust the dreams . . .”