Moveable Garden, a community art project organized by Sojourn Arts, 2021. Mixed media on panel.
Sojourn Arts is a ministry of Sojourn Midtown in Louisville, Kentucky. As one way for their community to engage the springtime theme of Easter, on Easter Sunday 2021, Tim Robertson led a riso printing project in the church’s art gallery between services, open to all. Participants selected and arranged live flowers on the glass copier of a risograph (a type of digital printing machine that uses a process similar to screen printing to create vibrant, textured prints), printed their designs onto colorful paper, cut them out, and collaboratively collaged them into a floral arrangement on a wood panel—a “moveable garden”! View more photos here.
LISTEN: “Christ Is Your Spring”|Words by Edward A. Washburn, 1863 | Music by Andy Bast, 2024 | Performed by Bellwether Arts, feat. Emily Hanrahan, 2024
Christ has arisen, And Death is no more! Lo! the white-robed ones Sit by the door. Dawn, golden morning, Scatter the night. Haste, you disciples glad, First with the light!
Break forth in singing, O the world newborn! Sing the great Eastertide, Christ’s holy morn. Sing him, young sunbeams Dancing in mirth; Sing, all you winds of God Coursing the earth!
Sing him, you laughing flow’rs Fresh from the sod; Sing him, wild, leaping streams, Praising your God! Break from your winter, Sad heart, and sing! Bud with your blossoms fair; Christ is your spring.
Sing alleluia!
Christ is your spring.
What a beautiful hymn text! Andy Bast found it in Jane Eliza (Coolidge) Chapman’sEaster Hymnscompilation, published in Boston in 1876. In the introduction to the hymnal, Chapman’s uncle J. I. T. (James Ivers Trecothick) Coolidge, an Episcopalian minister, delights in how
[Easter’s] sun shines with fuller radiance each year upon the world, whose night of darkness it broke on the Resurrection Morning. The anthems which greet its rising are caught and repeated by increasing millions of grateful hearts of every tongue, kindred, and people, until the wide earth is filled with their sounding praise. How sacred a privilege to have part in this mighty and triumphant symphony, how sad to be out of harmony with its sublime strains!
Written by Rev. Dr. Edward A. Washburn (and given a new tune by Bast), “Christ Is Your Spring” apostrophizes the whole newborn world, enjoining it to praise God. Sunbeams, winds, flowers, streams, the human heart—all are encompassed in God’s project of renewal and invited to sing each in their own way.
>> Light in the Dark, Sojourn Church Midtown, Louisville, Kentucky, November 17, 2023–January 7, 2024: Organized by Sojourn Arts, this juried exhibition features work by twenty-four artists from throughout the United States. It explores contrasts between light and dark, a powerful artistic as well as biblical theme with strong connections to the Christmas story. A complementary lecture on “Light in the Gospels” by Dr. Jonathan Pennington will take place on January 11, 2024.
Brandon Hochhalter, The Incredible Power of Light, 2023. Reclaimed lath wood from homes in Old Louisville, 18 × 24 × 1 in. [artist’s website]
>> Wilson Abbey Advent Windows, 935 W. Wilson Ave., Chicago, December 1, 2023–January 6, 2024: A business under the umbrella of Jesus People USA, Wilson Abbey in uptown Chicago is a neighborhood gathering place for coffee, art shows, workshops, theater, dance, film screenings, and live music. Every December since 2016, they have installed a three-story-tall Advent calendar in their windows to be enjoyed from the streets, with one new artwork revealed each day from December 1 to 24. Directed by the building manager, Karl Sullivan, the project commissions local artists to contribute a painting, photograph, or other graphic work, and this year there are twenty-three participating artists. It will be a brand-new series of images, all on the theme “The Soul Felt Its Worth”—which, Sullivan told me, will “explore the idea of the Christ child coming to earth as a promise of justice and care for those who are seen by God, showcasing people groups who may not be seen, or whom we may not want to see because their problems are bigger than us.”
Below are two of the paintings from a previous iteration of the project, which together form an Annunciation scene. The drone video that follows was shot in 2020 by Mike Angelo Rivera.
Stop by 935 West Wilson Avenue in Chicago to see the progressively illuminated windows throughout the month of December (the full display will be up from December 24 to January 6), or follow along on Facebook or Instagram @wilsonabbeywindows. What a unique gift to the city! A fun way to engage the community.
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LAND ART: Snow Drawings by Sonja Hinrichsen: German-born, San Francisco–based artist Sonja Hinrichsen creates large-scale, ephemeral “snow drawings” in wintry locations around the world with the help of local volunteers who don snowshoes and track through the snow in patterns. She then photographs the land art from a helicopter or ski lift. These are amazing! Here’s a video by Cedar Beauregard of a drawing in progress at Rabbit Ears Pass, Colorado:
Snow Drawing by Sonja Hinrichsen, Rabbit Ears Pass, Colorado, 2012
CALL FOR ART: Light in the Dark, Sojourn Arts: Sojourn Arts, a ministry of Sojourn Midtown church in Louisville, Kentucky, is accepting entries for wall-hung visual artworks on the theme “Light in the Dark” for its juried art show this Advent and Christmas. It is free to enter (see email submission instructions at link), but selected artists will be responsible for shipping costs to the venue. Three cash prizes will be awarded. Deadline: October 8, 2023. Open to continental US artists only.
>> “O My Hope (A Prayer of Saint Isaac the Syrian)” by Symon Hajjar:Symon Hajjar is a singer-songwriter from Tulsa, Oklahoma. I love, love, love his setting of this passage (lightly adapted from an English translation by Sebastian Brock) from the writings of Isaac the Syrian, a seventh-century theologian from Mesopotamia. Because the song would work well for Epiphany, Hajjar released it as the final track on his album Finally Christmas (2015), although it’s not available on Bandcamp as all the other tracks are.
O my Hope, pour into my heart the inebriation that consists in the hope of you. O Jesus Christ, the resurrection and light of all worlds, place upon my soul’s head the crown of the knowledge of you, and open before me suddenly the door of mercies; cause the rays of your grace to shine out in my heart. . . . I give praise to your holy nature, Lord, for you have made my nature a sanctuary for your hiddenness, a tabernacle for your mystery, a place where you can dwell, a holy temple for yourself.
Currently, Hajjar writes and performs kids’ songs under the name Hot Toast Music.
>> “Mahima Mariyeko Thumalaai” (महिमा मारिएको थुमालाई) (Glory to the Lamb Who Was Slain), arranged and performed by Psalms Unplugged: This song is #505 from Nepali Khristiya Bhajan, the definitive Nepali-language hymnal; the words are by Rev. Solon Karthak, and the music is by the late Kiran Kumar Pradhan, the most influential writer of Nepali hymns, who was particularly active in the 1990s. Inspired by Revelation 5:12, its refrain translates to “Glory to the Lamb who was slain / Praise to the Lord of lords / Shouts to the King of kings.” Read the original Nepali lyrics here.
The musicians who form the Nepali worship collective Psalms Unplugged are extraordinary. In this video are Subheksha Rai Koirala (vocals), John Rashin Singh (flute), Ayub Bhandari (keys), Sagar Pakhrin (guitar), and Enosh Thapa Magar (drums). The group’s mission is to see the transformation of lives through the preservation, cultivation, and spread of Nepali Christian music.
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LECTURE: “Janet McKenzie’s Women: Mothers, Midwives, and Missionaries” by Sister Barbara E. Reid, OP, September 27, 2015, Catholic Theological Union, Chicago: In this lecture, New Testament scholar Barbara Reid, OP, discusses three painted artworks by Janet McKenzie featuring women of the Bible, all in the collection of Catholic Theological Union: The Succession of Mary Magdalene, a triptych that shows Mary Magdalene deaconing with Susanna and Joanna (Luke 8:1–3), seated with Jesus Christ, her commissioning teacher (John 20:17), and preaching the Resurrection to Peter and John (John 20:2–9, 18); Mary with the Midwives, showing the Mother of God in the early stages of labor; and one of McKenzie’s most reproduced images, Epiphany, which replaces the traditional three wise men with wise women!
Janet McKenzie, The Succession of Mary Magdalene (triptych), 2008. Left to right: Companion; The One Sent; Apostle of the Apostles. Collection of Catholic Theological Union, Chicago.
Professor Reid’s talk starts at 13:55. Before that, there is an introduction by Barbara Marian from Harvard, Illinois, who commissioned the paintings and donated them to CTU (“The giftedness of women and our call to minister in the church must be made visible, no longer hidden or ignored and devalued,” she says), and by CTU President Mark Francis, CSV. Because the feast day of Mary Magdalene is coming up on July 22, it’s a particularly apt time of the liturgical year to share this!
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VIDEO: “12 Ways to Be a Christian” by SALT Project: The nonprofit production company SALT Project creates beautiful short films for churches and other clients. In sixty seconds, this one lists (and visualizes) twelve practical ways of living Christianly. The video is fully customizable to include your church’s name, logo, worship times, and website; click here for prices.
SONGS: The following two songs appear on the Art & Theology Lent Playlist on Spotify. (Note: I’ve also integrated some Lovkn, Sarah Juers, and a few others into the list since originally publishing it.)
>> “Kyrie / Oh Death,” performed by Susanne Rosenberg: March 11 marks one year since the coronavirus outbreak was officially declared a pandemic, and the tremendous number of lives lost is staggering. (A friend from Japan reminded me that it’s also the ten-year anniversary of the Great Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that killed some 16,000 people; 3/11, he says, is as important in Japan as 9/11 is in the United States.) This lament by Susanne Rosenberg, one of Sweden’s foremost folk singers, seems appropriate. It combines a twelfth-century Kyrie chant with the Appalachian folk song “Oh Death,” the latter made famous by Ralph Stanley. Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Greek for “Lord, have mercy, Christ, have mercy,” is a short, repeated invocation used in many Christian liturgies, and Rosenberg seamlessly integrates it with these few lines: “Oh Death, oh Death, won’t you spare me over till another year?” The video recording is from a February 2010 concert in Dublin, and a similar version of the medley, in a different key, appears on Rosenberg’s album of the same year, ReBoot/OmStart.
>> “Washed in the Blood,” performed by Pokey LaFarge and Harry Melling: The Devil All the Time (2020) isn’t a great movie, but it has a great soundtrack. Harry Melling—known for his roles as Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter series and, more recently, Harry Beltik in TheQueen’s Gambit—plays a spider-handling preacher named Roy, and singer-songwriter Pokey LaFarge (whose style pulls from ragtime, jazz, country, and blues) plays his guitar-playing sidekick, Theodore. The two actors sing as their characters in the film, this classic hymn by Elisha Hoffman. Love it!
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SERMON: “Chagall at Tudeley” by the Rev. James Crockford, University Church, Oxford, April 7, 2019: This sermon, preached on Passion (Palm) Sunday two years ago, is an excellent example of how pastors can draw on visual art as a theological and homiletical resource—not to merely illustrate a point already made or to add some pretty dressing to a sermon, but taking it on its own terms and allowing it to generate insight and guide the congregation someplace new. Crockford uses the East Window in All Saints’ Church in Tudeley, Kent, England, designed by the Russian Jewish artist Marc Chagall, to open up profound discussion on human loss, hope, renewal, and the cross. [HT: Jonathan Evens]
The window was commissioned by the parents of twenty-one-year-old Sarah d’Avigdor-Goldsmid, who in 1963 drowned off the coast of Sussex in a boating accident. “What I see in that East Window,” Crockford says, “is a remarkable exercise in the nature of suffering, and the interaction of human tragedy with the reality of Christ’s death and victory on the cross. It is a carefully composed centrepiece that asks us to face the depths of an abiding experience of grief, and to be faced with that grief each time we remember the grief of God, in broken bread and wine outpoured. But the window also shows a bigger picture – one that does not shut out the pains of our past, and the wounds in our hearts – and you’ll notice, when we come to it, that the scene of Sarah’s death still takes up over half of the window – but the bigger picture asks us to frame our grief and suffering on the centrality and promise of a God who, in Christ, is both suffering and victorious, broken and yet glorious, wounded but risen and standing among us to breathe Peace.” You can read the full transcript, or listen to an audio recording, at the link above.
East Window, All Saints’ Church, Tudeley, Kent, designed by Marc Chagall and executed by Charles Marq. Installed 1967. Photo: George Rex.Detail photo by Jonathan Evens
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ART RESTORATION:“Hidden Gem: The Crucifixion by the Master of the Lindau Lamentation”: A Crucifixion painting from around 1425 by the Master of the Lindau Lamentation was recently restored by conservator Caroline van der Elst, and this short video documents part of that process. The Museum Catharijneconvent in Utrecht, the Netherlands, acquired the painting in 1875, but since then it had lain mostly forgotten in storage until being rediscovered by a staff member a few years ago, who recognized it as a masterpiece worthy of restoration efforts and public display. After the surface dust and discolored varnish were removed, in addition to other treatments, it was unveiled last year as the centerpiece of the Body Languageexhibition (check out that link!), which ran from September 25, 2020, to January 17, 2021.
Curators Micha Leeflang and Annabel Dijkema discuss how the painting was made, how it was originally used, and its theological significance, and van der Elst explains some of the conundrums she faced while restoring the work—when it came to light, for example, that the azurite background was added in the sixteenth century. View the full painting here.
Master of the Lamentation of Christ in Lindau, Crucifixion (detail), ca. 1425. Tempera on panel, 125 × 89 cm. Catharijneconvent Museum, Utrecht, the Netherlands. Photo: Marco Sweering.
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CALL FOR ARTISTS: Pass the Piece: A Collaborative Mail Art Project: A neat opportunity for artistic collaboration, organized by Sojourn Arts [previously] and open to US artists ages 13+. “Pass the Piece is a collaborative mail art project to be exhibited at Sojourn Arts in June 2021. Deadline for participating artists to sign up is March 31, 2021. Project is limited to 100 participants. We’re mailing out up to one hundred 8″ × 10″ panels, one to each participating artist. Each artist will start a panel that another artist will complete. Each artist will finish a panel that someone else started. Each artist will have their work exhibited and have a printed zine-style catalog of each piece from the exhibit. Artworks will be auctioned online with 50% going to the artists and 50% going towards Sojourn Arts interns’ travel expenses for the upcoming CIVA conference.”
NEW ALBUM: for / waters by Joshua Stamper:Joshua Stamper [previously] composed this four-movement instrumental piece about marriage for pianist Bethany Danel Brooks and violinist David Danel, who are themselves married and perform on the recordings. Its title and that of each movement is taken from Isaiah 35, which was read at the couple’s wedding.
Stamper writes,
Marriage, ideally, is about two people in a state of mutual belonging. But marriage is more than a state of belonging: it includes an ongoing journey toward and into belonging. It encompasses the trajectories and momentum of individuals towards each other, even before an initial connection takes place. People are therefore in relationship with each other before they are “in relationship” with each other. From this perspective, marriage might be understood as another mystical manifestation of the inscrutable and unknowable fault line between free will and providence. Two lives are always in reference to one another before the initial “hello,” because though individual trajectories have not yet crossed, they will. This interweaving begins early: each life is conditioned, shaped, sensitized to see, hear, feel the other. Home is created in each for each.
Stamper goes on to describe how he reflects these ideas through the structure, melodic and rhythmic motifs, harmonies, and other musical elements of for / waters. Read more and stream/purchase at Bandcamp.
“Joshua Stamper has been a restless composer and collaborator for over twenty-five years. His work reflects a deep interest in the intersection points between seemingly disparate musics, and a profound love for the intimacy, charm, and potency of chamber music. Equally at home in the jazz, classical, avant-garde, and indie/alternative worlds, his work ranges from large-scale choral and instrumental works to art-pop song cycles to chamber jazz suites. Joshua has worked as an orchestral arranger and session musician for Columbia / Sony BMG and Concord Records, and for independent labels Domino, Dead Oceans, Important Records, Sounds Familyre, Smalltown Supersound, and Mason Jar Music, collaborating with such luminaries as Todd Rundgren, Robyn Hitchcock, Sufjan Stevens, Danielson, and Emil Nikolaisen.” [source]
BLOG POST: “Jesus as Dancer: Jyoti Sahi’s ‘Lord of Creation’” by Victoria Emily Jones: I wrote a guest post for the Sojourn Arts blog about a gouache I own by Indian artist Jyoti Sahi, which shows Jesus leading the dance of new creation. On one side he pounds a drum, and on the other he emerges from a lotus. The painting brings together Jyoti’s interests in Christian and Hindu theologies and folk symbolism.
Jyoti Sahi (Indian, 1944–), Lord of Creation, 1982. Gouache on paper, 14 3/4 × 20 in. Collection of Victoria Emily Jones.
Sojourn Arts is a ministry of Sojourn Church Midtown in Louisville, Kentucky, that seeks to support artists and build up the church through the arts. They have organized and/or hosted numerous exhibitions over the years and have commissioned temporary installations for their sanctuary, as well as coordinated community art projects. Visit www.sojourn-arts.com.
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THE DAILY PRAYER PROJECT: This fall I joined the team at the Daily Prayer Project as curator of visual art. The Daily Prayer Project is a periodical that covers every season of the Christian year with robust, rooted, and cross-cultural liturgies for use in congregations, households, workplaces, small groups, or other gatherings. Released in seven editions per year, it features daily morning and evening prayer guides for the week, which include Psalm, Old Testament, and New Testament readings; short prayers sourced from around the globe and from different eras; specific prayer prompts; and songs (including lead sheets). In addition to the cover image, there is a mini-gallery of two art images inside, reproduced in full color, to serve as visual prompts for further contemplation and prayer. There is also a section called “The Practices,” with two page-long seasonal reflections by staff members or guest contributors.
The Advent 2020 issue of the DPP, covering November 29 through December 24, was released last week. It features prayers by African American civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer, the tenth-century English saint Ethelwold, and others; a Hebrew folk song, a Taizé chant, and an Argentine hymn by Federico J. Pagura; a striking cover image by Hilary Siber, which shows heaven coming down to earth; Charles White’s Prophet I, which resonates with passages from Isaiah; and an apocalyptic paper collage by Nicora Gangi.
The periodical is available as a physical booklet or as a PDF download. Visit the website for more information. If you are an artist and are interested in having your work considered for publication in a future prayerbook, email team@dailyprayerproject.com.
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VIDEO: “Local Riches: Ethnoarts and Sumba”: A workshop for churches on the island of Sumba in Indonesia, led by Yayasan Suluh Insan Lestari in July 2019, reinforced that God is best honored, and the global body of Christ built up, when people worship God using their unique cultural and linguistic gifts, bringing their whole, authentic selves before him in praise. [HT: Global Christian Worship]
For centuries many Christian missionaries to other countries brought with them Western hymns and images, presenting them as definitive—as forms that alone are good and pleasing to God. (For example, a woman in the video mentions how she had previously thought that worship songs had to be based on Western scales and performed using certain instruments to be acceptable.) But in the last fifty or so years especially, at least from what I’ve noticed, many missionaries have recognized the falsity of this line of thinking and seek to undo negative conditioning by promoting the use of indigenous artistic expressions (sometimes called “ethnoarts”) in Christian worship, be it dance, drama, music, storytelling, carving, or what have you. I found it interesting that the interviewees seem to suggest that now it’s the forces of modernism that most threaten the survival of traditional cultures, whereas it used to be that the church was largely blamed (missionaries did undeniably play a large part, banning this and that, though in every era there were exceptions to the rule). Now the church is at the forefront of trying to preserve not only traditional languages but also traditional art forms.
“Everything we have was created by God, and we need to return to it with gratefulness because this is how God made us!” says Rev. Herlina of the Christian Church of Sumba. “With whatever we already have, we can be a blessing to our people.”
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NEW ART SERIES: “Organic, Sunrise Gradients Mask Front Pages of the New York Times by Artist Sho Shibuya”: Since the lockdown started in March, Brooklyn-based artist and graphic designer Sho Shibuya has been painting color gradients in acrylic over the front pages of the New York Times, inspired by each morning’s sunrise. He calls the series “Sunrises from a Small Window.” I love how he’s able to express gratitude for a beautiful new day and to access calm amid dire news cycles. Shibuya is still reading those headlines and articles; he’s just putting them in a larger perspective. (As for myself, call me escapist, but I’ve found that actually blocking out the news—turning down the noise—for certain periods can be a helpful spiritual practice.)
Sho Shibuya, Sunrises from a Small Window, June 22–28, 2020. Acrylic on newsprint.
“I started . . . contrasting the anxiety of the news with the serenity of the sky, creating a record of my new normal,” Shibuya says. “Their front page has always been a time capsule of a day in history, so it made sense to use history as the canvas because the paintings are meant to capture a moment in time. . . . The spirit of the project is that maybe, even after the pandemic subsides, people can continue some of the generosity and peace we discovered in ourselves and that the sky reminds us of every day with a sunrise through a small window. If one thing the news has made clear, we need generosity and peace for all people now more than ever.”
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TWO FILMS: “Death on Netflix: I’m Thinking of Ending Things and Dick Johnson Is Dead” by Mitch Wiley: I really liked both these cinematic reflections on mortality, but they’re completely different, as this short Gospel Coalition article bears out. Dick Johnson Is Dead is the more “Christian” of the two because of its hopeful perspective—the human subject of the film is a Seventh-Day Adventist, so death for him is not a final end. After her father was diagnosed with dementia, filmmaker Kirsten Johnson asked her dad if he’d be interested in a collaborative film project where, to help them both face the inevitable, she would stage his death in inventive and comical ways. Relishing the opportunity to spend more time with his busy daughter, he enthusiastically agreed.
The documentary shows them preparing and carrying out these stunts but also interacting in other contexts—birthday parties, trick-or-treating, looking through old photo albums, cleaning out Dick’s office, Dick’s being asked to give up driving, and so on. It made me laugh and cry—films that can do both tend to rate highly on my favorites list. There’s so much love and warmth and heartache and whimsy in it as father and daughter confront death together, talking very openly about it, which I found, strange as it may seem, refreshing. Oh, and the heaven sequences just may be the best I’ve ever seen.
For a more cynical take on death, here’s the trailer to I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman isn’t for everyone, but I’m still thinking about this movie after watching it a month ago, which means it made an impression!):
Seeing and Believing, a Christ and Pop Culture podcast, covered Ending Things and Dick Johnson in episodes 264 and 266, respectively, as have most other film podcasts and reviewers, with Dick Johnson being uniformly lauded as one of the best movies of the year.
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SONG: “Hodu” (Give Thanks), performed by the Platt Brothers: The Platt Brothers [previously] singing scripture to me? Yes, please. The text of this song is Psalm 118:1–4, and the music is by Debbie Friedman (1951–2011), a Jewish singer-songwriter whose songs are used widely in Reform and Conservative Jewish liturgies in North America. Friedman’s “Hodu” was originally released on her 1981 album And the Youth Shall See Visions. (Find sheet music here.)
In this video from earlier this month, Henry, Jonah, and Ben Platt sing “Hodu” to a guitar accompaniment by Al Seller.
Hodu l’Adonai kitov Ki l’olam chasdo, ki l’oam chasdo Yomar na, yomar na, Yisraeil Ki l’olam chasdo, ki l’olam chasdo Yomru na, yomru na veit Aharon Ki l’olam chasdo, ki l’olam chasdo
Let all who revere G-d’s name now say Ki l’olam chasdo Give thanks to the Lord for G-d is good Ki l’olam chasdo
The first time the Platt Brothers performed in public as a trio was this April, when they appeared in a virtual Yom Ha’atzmaut celebration at the request of the Jewish Federations of North America, singing “Ahavat Olam.” Ben and Jonah are musical theater performers: Ben originated the title role in Broadway’s Dear Evan Hansen and won a Tony for it, and Jonah is best known for playing Fiyero in Wicked on Broadway from 2015 to 2016. Henry is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, where’s he’s a member of the a cappella group Counterparts.
Art & Theology 