LOOK: Stations of the Cross #2 and #11 by Charles Ndege
Charles S. Ndege (Tanzanian, 1966–), Station II: Jesus Takes Up His Cross. Wall painting from St. Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe Church, Nyakato (Mwanza region), Tanzania. Source: Were You There? Stations of the Cross by Diana L. HayesCharles S. Ndege, Station XI: Jesus Is Nailed to the Cross
The cement walls of St. Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe Church in Nyakato, Tanzania, bear a series of murals by the Tanzanian artist Charles Ndege depicting the Stations of the Cross, set around the southern shores of Lake Victoria.
I couldn’t find what year the murals were painted, but the earliest would be 1995, as they are mentioned (and one is reproduced) in the book Towards an African Narrative Theology by the American Maryknoll missionary priests Joseph Healey and Donald Sybertz, which came out in 1996.
I found out about Ndege’s Stations from the book Were You There? Stations of the Cross (Orbis, 2000), a small paperback that reproduces all fourteen scenes in full color and features reflections by the African American Catholic theologian Diana L. Hayes. I recommend it.
See how they done my Lord See how they done my Lord (Can’t you) See how they done my Lord Lord, have mercy on me
Well, they whipped him all night long They whipped him all night long (Tell me) Whipped him all night long Lord, have mercy on me
Well, they whipped him up a hill They whipped him up a hill (Tell me) Whipped him up a hill Lord, have mercy on me
Well, they nailed him to the cross They nailed him to the cross (Tell me) Nailed him to the cross Lord, have mercy on me
Well, two thieves was hanging beside him Two thieves was hanging beside him (Tell me) Two thieves was hanging beside him Lord, have mercy on me
This song is sung by six unidentified men incarcerated at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, known colloquially as Angola Prison, one of the largest maximum-security prisons in the United States. A lament reflecting on Christ’s passion, it’s one of a series of Black gospel songs and spirituals recorded at the prison by the folklorist and musicologist Harry Oster in the late 1950s.
“How they done him” is slang for “how they wronged him” or “how they treated him badly.”
I can’t help but wonder if the singers identified with the abuse Christ suffered and found comfort in knowing that God himself walked the road before them and is with them in their own ways of sorrow. Perhaps (instead or too) they saw themselves in the penitent thief mentioned in the last stanza, who acknowledged the justice of his own sentence and asked Jesus to remember him in God’s kingdom.
The song’s refrain, “Lord, have mercy,” is a common one in liturgical churches, one that invokes God’s mercy in light of personal and corporate sins. It’s a plea for God’s compassion and forgiveness, and for relief.
NEW BOOK: Everything Could Be a Prayer: One Hundred Portraits of Saints and Mystics by Kreg Yingst: Released on October 15, this book features one hundred color block-print portraits by Kreg Yingst of folks in the family of God across time and place, along with one-page biographies. Get to know a wide range of Christian civil rights activists, scientists, environmentalists, social service workers, hymn-writers, artists, poets, evangelists, and monastics and the gospel impact they’ve made. The lineup is a mix of familiar and less familiar names, canonized saints and noncanonized. Examples include Brigid of Kildaire, Ignatius of Loyola, Satoko Kitahara, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mamie Till, Pandita Ramabai Dongre-Medhavi, and Black Elk. Click here to look inside.
The title of the book is taken from a quote by Martin de Porres (1579–1639), a Dominican friar from Peru and the first Black saint of the Americas: “Everything, even sweeping, scraping vegetables, weeding a garden, and waiting on the sick, could be a prayer if it were offered to God.”
Related events:
October 10–November 16, 2024: Art exhibition featuring the block prints from the book at The Gallery of Art, 36 W. Beach Dr., Panama City, Florida
October 26, 2024, 1:00–3:00 p.m.: Book signing at Barnes & Noble, 1200 Airport Blvd., Pensacola, Florida
Through November 1, Yingst is offering 25% off all original woodcuts and linocuts that were used as illustrations for the book; view the discounted pieces in the “Mystics, Saints & Poets” section of his Etsy shop. These are not inkjet-printed photographs of original artworks (which is what some artists misleadingly call “prints”) but are themselves original limited-edition relief prints hand-pulled on an antique proof press from carved blocks; they are made with black oil-based ink and watercolor. If you want original art in your home or to gift a friend or family member for Christmas, Yingst’s work is a great and affordable option!
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SONGS:
November 1 is All Saints’ Day, a feast for commemorating the lives and witness of our siblings in the faith who have gone before us. Here are two songs for the occasion.
>> “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God,” performed by Wendell Kimbrough: This charming little children’s hymn was written by Lesbia Scott and was first published in her native England in Everyday Hymns for Little Children (1929). In the United States the song first appeared in the Episcopal Hymnal 1940 with a tune that John Henry Hopkins, a member of the hymnal committee, composed for it, capturing the childlike cadences of the text.
>> “When the Saints” by Sara Groves: This song from Groves’s album Tell Me What You Know (2007) draws encouragement from the faithfulness of God-followers throughout history, from Moses, Paul, and Silas to Harriet Tubman and Mother Teresa to the martyr Nate Saint and his sister Rachel Saint to rescuers of sex-trafficking victims. It is a call to hearers today to pick up their cross and follow Christ into places of hurt and injustice, pursuing liberation of body and soul for all. The refrain quotes the traditional Black gospel song “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
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ART EXHIBITION: Bruce Onobrakpeya: The Mask and the Cross, National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC, June 21, 2024–January 21, 2025: A father of African modernism, Bruce Onobrakpeya (b. 1932) [previously] is one of Nigeria’s most celebrated artists, and I was thrilled this month to visit his first solo show in the US, which, as it turns out, is centered on his Christian-themed linocut prints! (The artist is Anglican.) Onobrakpeya’s career spans over six decades, and this Smithsonian exhibition is not meant to be representative of the breadth of his oeuvre, which also includes painting and sculpture and various subject matters; rather, it presents two foundational bodies of work from the late sixties, both commissioned by the Catholic Church, that helped launch the artist’s long and esteemed career.
The exhibition displays rare artist’s proofs of the biblical illustrations Onobrakpeya made for Ki Ijoba Re De (May Your Kingdom Come) (1968), a Yoruba-language textbook for students in their fifth and sixth years of Catholic primary school (it was part of the Nigerian National Catechism), as well as a complete narrative series of prints titled Fourteen Stations of the Cross, produced in 1969. I blogged about the artist’s Stations cycle back in 2014, when I saw a different edition at the SMA African Art Museum in Tenafly, New Jersey; you can view better photos on the High’s website. For more on the work of Fr. Kevin Carroll, the Catholic missionary who commissioned Onobrakpeya to paint a church mural of the Stations that became the basis of these linocuts and who helped facilitate the May Your Kingdom Come publication, see here.
Curated by Lauren Tate Baeza, Bruce Onobrakpeya: The Mask and the Cross first opened last year at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. This is Baeza’s first exhibition as curator of African art at the High, and I’m so pleased that when she dug through the High’s extensive archives, it was a set of Christian prints by a leading Nigerian artist that most compelled her, that she could imagine building a unique exhibition around and that she felt must be pulled out of storage for more people to see. Hear Baeza discuss the exhibition from 23:28 to 35:58 of the video “African Modernisms: A Legacy of Connection.”
Bruce Onobrakpeya (Nigerian, 1932–), Station I: Pilate condemns Jesus to death, 1969. Linoleum block print on rice paper, 24 × 34 in. (61 × 86.4 cm). High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.
For his Stations of the Cross, Onobrakpeya “incorporat[ed] the rich patterns of Yoruba gelede and epa masks and stylized geometric patterns found in northern Nigerian architecture. Then he added generous adire motifs and his signature elongated figures and distortions of scale,” reads one of the gallery wall texts. He also embedded a critique of British colonial rule, portraying the Roman soldiers of Christ’s passion as British officers. (Nigeria had just attained independence from Great Britain earlier that decade, in 1960.) Pilate, though, is shown as a local Nigerian magistrate doing the bidding of the British government, highlighting a deeply felt tension in Nigeria’s then-recent political history.
I really appreciate the video components of the exhibition. One screen plays a compilation of clips from interviews Baeza conducted with the artist, and another displays a two-dimensional animation commissioned from Sadiki Souza specially for this exhibition, which brings to life Onobrakpeya’s fourteen Stations. Neither is available online, at least not that I can find.
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ZOOM EVENT: “Celebration of New Global Church Music Resources,” November 14, 9:00 a.m. CDT (12:00 p.m. ET): From Baylor University’s Dunn Center for Christian Music Studies: “We are excited to announce the launch of two website projects on November 14th! In collaboration with the Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary, the third edition of the Nigerian Christian Songbook will be updated with new songs and content. In addition, a new project, the Global Church Music Bibliography, highlights underrepresented voices in church music scholarship. This is an interactive dashboard and map that features church music scholars writing about their own traditions outside of North America.” At the Zoom event on launch day, you will hear from various project participants. [HT: Global Christian Worship]
POEM SEQUENCE: “The Unfolding” by Michael Stalcup: Michael Stalcup has published a sequence of five short poems in Solum Journal that “tells the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection by unfolding five words that take us from Maundy Thursday through Easter Sunday,” he says. “I wrote these poems in a very unusual way, restricting myself to words that could be formed from the letters in each poem’s title. . . . This poetic form calls for creativity within intense limitations, which seems fitting for Holy Week—a time when Jesus crafted the most beautiful art this world has ever known within the constraints of his own suffering and death.” Stalcup has also presented them on Instagram (click on the image below).
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ARTICLE: “Don’t Rush Past Good Friday” by Brian Zahnd: Pastor and author Brian Zahnd cautions us not to shortchange the cross on the way to Easter, but rather to slow down and dwell there, beholding the crucified Christ.
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SONGS:
>> “Friday Morning” by Sydney Carter, performed by Timothy Renner: This Good Friday song by the English folk musician Sydney Bertram Carter (1915–2004) is difficult—one might even say blasphemous. That’s because it’s voiced from the perspective of the “bad” thief, who is spewing hatred and bitterness over his fate and blaming God for having created such a cruel world. But we’re aware of an irony in the refrain that the convicted man is not: “It’s God they ought to crucify / Instead of you and me, / I said to the carpenter / A-hanging on the tree.”
>> “Go to Hell” by Nick Chambers: This song is a setting of a poem by Pádraig Ó Tuama from his collection Sorry for Your Troubles (Canterbury Press Norwich, 2013). The title is shocking, I know, but it’s derived from a line in the Apostles’ Creed, where we Christians profess that after Jesus died, he “descended into hell.” The singer-songwriter, Nick Chambers, writes in the YouTube video description: “In between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is possibly strangest day of the Christian year. On Holy Saturday, not only is Jesus, the God-Man, in the grave; traditions abound about his descent to the dead, his ‘harrowing of hell.’ What does it mean for the coming down of God-with-us not to end on earth but ‘under the earth,’ extending hope to the furthest regions of human pain and abandonment? Such a question deserves more poetry than explanation.”
“Go to hell” is a slang expression of scorn or rejection, to which Jesus was no stranger. As in the previous song, there’s an irony here, in telling Jesus to go to hell—because he did. Literally. Ó Tuama meditates on how Jesus shares in our vulnerabilities and yearnings and seeks to pull us out of the hells we’re in and redeem our stories.
Hear the poem read by the poet here, or at the end of the Stations of the Cross video below. “he is called to hell, this man / he is called to glory . . .”
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GUIDED MEDITATION: “Stations of the Cross, Good Friday, 2020” by Pádraig Ó Tuama: In 2020 the poet-theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama put together this twenty-minute video reflection for Good Friday structured around the Stations of the Cross, consisting of photos of art he’s taken and the praying of collects he’s written. (Several of the collects can be found in his book Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community from 2017.) The throughline is a set of stained-glass Stations by Sheila Corcoran at the Church of Our Lady Queen of Heaven at Dublin Airport; others are by Jong-Tae Choi, Gib Singleton, Sieger Köder, Richard P. Campbell, and Audrey Frank Anastasi.
Sheila Corcoran, Station 6: Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus, ca. 1964. Stained glass, Church of Our Lady Queen of Heaven, Dublin Airport. Photo: Patrick Comerford.Richard P. Campbell (Dunghutti/Gumbaynggirr, 1958–), Station 10: Jesus is stripped of his garments, 2001. Reconciliation Church, La Perouse, Sydney, Australia.
But before stepping onto Jesus’s Via Dolorosa, Ó Tuama considers Judas, sharing a stained glass panel by Harry Clarke that illustrates a medieval legend about the Irish monastic saint Brendan the Navigator. According to the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, on one of his voyages St. Brendan encountered Judas at sea, tied to an iceberg. He learned that an angel had taken pity on Judas in hell and given him a reprieve of one hour to cool himself from the flames of judgment. Ó Tuama then prays for those who, like Judas, are tormented by guilt and see no way out.
He closes with a reading of his poem “Go to Hell” (set to music in the previous roundup item).
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SONG: “For the Songless Hearts” by Jon Guerra: “There’s a lot of hubbub around Easter weekend in churches. And for good reason,” says singer-songwriter Jon Guerra. “But our hearts can’t always cooperate with the prescribed mood of the Easter season: ‘Celebrate! Be happy! Sing!’ Sometimes the last thing we are able to do is sing. Thankfully, Good Friday and Easter are not about mustering a mood. Good Friday and Easter are about remembering that there is One who meets us in our life and meets us in our death. He sings for us—and over us—when we can’t.”
That’s what “For the Songless Hearts” is about—a single released in 2017, and which Guerra sings with his wife, Valerie. In a Mockingbird blog post about it, Guerra admonishes, “Remember that before the tomb was empty, it was full. ‘When he was laid in the tomb, he laid right next to you.’” Jesus knew the depths of sorrow and the sting of death. We are not alone in such experiences.
ANNOUNCEMENT: Vatican to hold Stations of the Cross art contest: Artists from across the globe are encouraged to participate in the Vatican-sponsored contest for fourteen new Stations of the Cross paintings. The winner will be announced September 30, 2024, awarded €120,000 (about $131,000), given a year to complete the commission, and then have their set of paintings exhibited in St. Peter’s Basilica during Lent 2026. The first step is to fill out an online application, which will become available January 8, with a deadline of January 31. Learn more at the link. (Update: The registration link is now live at https://contest.viacrucis2026.va/en/registration.)
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ART OBJECT: Burgundian Crèche, ca. 1450: In researching depictions of Joseph at the Nativity, I came across this charming little limestone-carved crèche from fifteenth-century Burgundy, France, acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Set inside a dilapidated brick interior patched with wattled matting, the scene portrays the infant Christ lying in a wattled manger that rests on a crumbling wall ledge. Such an unusual composition! I’m not sure why the infant is placed so precariously and at a height when there’s a carved cradle available on the ground, where angels kindly fluff his pillow, but I suppose it was to avoid overcrowding and for visual balance.
Circle of Antoine Le Moiturier (French, 1425–1495), Nativity, Burgundy, France, ca. 1450. Limestone with later paint and gilding, 17 3/4 × 25 7/8 × 7 1/4 in. (45.1 × 65.7 × 18.4 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
A donkey licks Christ’s feet while an ox licks his hand, which he appears to delight in, as he lifts his arm for better access. To the left and right of him are a trio of angels and shepherds, respectively, excitedly leaning in from outside to get a better look. Mary gazes up at her son in adoration while Joseph dutifully tends to a parental chore: drying one of Jesus’s freshly washed linens at the fire. (Dad doing laundry—huzzah!)
ART COMMENTARY: On The Adoration of the Magi by Domenico Veneziano: From the Visual Commentary on Scripture comes this 2022 video, one in a series filmed on-site at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. Theologian Ben Quash and art historian Jennifer Sliwka discuss an early Italian Renaissance tondo depicting the Adoration of the Magi.
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SONGS:
>> “Rejoice with Exceeding Great Joy”: Written by Lanny Wolfe in 1978 and performed by Reggie Smith, Charlotte Ritchie, and Ladye Love Smith at Bill and Gloria Gaither’s Homecoming Christmas 2006:
>> “Star of Bethlehem”: Written by Noel Dexter, arranged by C. S. (Cedron) Walters, and performed by the Jamaica Youth Chorale at their 2019 Christmas concert. Noel Dexter (1938–2019) was a Jamaican composer, choir director, and music educator, and this is probably his best-known work. It’s set to a Nyabinghi rhythm.
When the star of Bethlehem arise, hallelujah When the star of Bethlehem arise, hallelujah When the star of Bethlehem arise Come show me where the young child born!
There were wise men coming from the east, hallelujah There were wise men coming from the east, hallelujah There were wise men coming from the east Come show me where the young child born!
They brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh . . .
Not a man can save my soul . . . But Jesus! Show me where the young child born!
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VIDEO:“#NatZooZen: Giant Pandas Mei Xiang and Tian Tian in the Snow”: This Smithsonian’s National Zoo cam footage from January 2021 shows two giant pandas at play, sliding down a snowy hill! So adorable. Tian Tian and Mei Xiang arrived at the National Zoo in 2000 and in 2020 produced a cub, Xiao Qi Ji. All three pandas returned to Beijing in November, having been lent to the US by China as part of a cooperative research program whose contract has expired.
Solomia Kazanivska (Соломія Казанівська) (Ukrainian, 1996–), Mother of God, 2019. Acrylic and soil on wood, 60 × 40 cm.
I.
Here mothers move more than others
into Mary’s mourning, each chorus
a soul full of crosses, weighted
with her child dying
continuously in the contemplation
of our contrition.
II.
That once-upon-a-time angel’s voice
stretching anew her middle-aged womb,
she who once sang Magnify, O Magnify,
when all she screams for now
is mercy in her urgent rebirth
of sorrow.
III.
When he stumbles,
she cannot fix his fall,
cannot cradle the boyhood
scrapes and bruises bleeding
into crowd-sanctioned murder.
No cock crows; she hears his groans
as if the world’s bones
are splintering within her.
IV.
Besides the tree, he carries
the tears of the one who carried him
beneath her Eve ribs, lifted him
into a world he breathed as good,
gone now into this God-crucified-
as-her-son catastrophe
for salvation’s sake.
V.
Simon of Cyrene stands close.
Understanding too well the two sorrows—
mother and son helpless to comfort the other—
he heaves up and shoulders
the burdens of both,
his back the black tablet
of Moses’ commandments fulfilled
to the jot and tittle.
VI.
Veronica—eyes swollen
for the Madonna and Child
wrenched from their rightful honor—
lifts her veil to cool the Savior’s pain,
alleviate, however slightly, a mother’s anguish.
VII.
Thorns gouge the brow she stroked.
The sweat-caked man that came out of her
stumbles again. Already,
the sharp nails gnaw her own palms.
VIII.
Oh, daughters of Jerusalem,
your tears sweep the streets,
wet the weary soles of Mary.
Weep for your own children
forever dashing away from Yahweh.
IX.
Wretched stones that tip her sinless child,
dirt that drives down the innocent son.
His own earth hurts him more each tumble.
Three times he trips,
crashes to the dust we are,
mortal muscles turning their backs
on Man and his Mother.
X.
Threads twisted by her own fingers,
tugged carefully through cloth:
this is the tunic they rip from him,
fabric tattooed with red;
she remembers his baby body
blood-splattered and matted.
XI.
Her soul stabbed by the tree
that slays her son. Her heart nailed.
She swears his life spurts
from her barely breathing body.
XII.
Death is indigo and indelible,
the Roman sky collapsed and re-scribbled
on the shreds of her memories.
She cannot bear to look upon his face
when breath forgets its maker.
XIII.
Ten thousand stillborns better
than this: his torso in her arms,
icon of the inconsolable,
the flesh Pietà with its nails of pain,
pounding, pounding.
XIV.
The hewn tomb seals her grief.
She remembers his first words,
his final prayer. All else rots
within her. They swaddle him,
implant him quickly behind stone.
This poem is from Weeknights at the Cathedral (Cincinnati: WordTech Communications, 2006) and is anthologized in slightly revised form, as here, in Poems of Devotion: An Anthology of Recent Poets, ed. Luke Hankins (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012).Used by permission of the author.
Note: The Stations of the Cross are a form of Catholic devotion organized around the events of Christ’s passion, from his condemnation by Pilate to his crucifixion and burial.
Marjorie Maddox (born 1959) is the author of fourteen poetry collections, including Begin with a Question (Paraclete, 2022); Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation from the Poiema Poetry Series (Wipf & Stock, 2018); and True, False, None of the Above (Wipf & Stock, 2016). She has also published a short story collection, four children’s and YA books, and 650-plus stories, essays, and poems in journals and anthologies. Living in Central Pennsylvania, she is a professor of English and creative writing at Lock Haven University and is the assistant editor of Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry.
Ulrich Barnickel (German, 1955–), Hoffnung (Hope), fourteenth station from the cycle Weg der Hoffnung (Path of Hope), 2009–10. Iron sculpture, Geisa, Germany.
This is the last of fourteen monumental sculptures situated along the former inner German border that separated Soviet-occupied East Germany and Allied-occupied West Germany from 1952 to 1990. Stretching from Hesse to Thuringia, this highly militarized frontier consisted of high metal fences, barbed wire, alarms, watchtowers, and minefields, a literal iron curtain that divided families, friends, and neighbors.
In 2009, the Point Alpha Foundation, founded to preserve the historic site as a memorial, commissioned German metal sculptor Ulrich Barnickel to create an artwork as part of the memorial. He decided to draw on the traditional fourteen Stations of the Cross, connecting the suffering of Jesus to that of the people on the inner German border under Communism. Collectively titled Path of Hope, his fourteen iron sculptures cover 1,400 meters of ground (scaling down the 1,400 kilometers of the former border). All but the last are figurative, representing Jesus falling, meeting his mother, being nailed to the cross, and so on. They contain artifacts from or references to German Cold War era history, such as a vintage steel helmet hanging on Pilate’s chair, or the grenade and the trench that Jesus stumbles over.
The final station, titled Hope, is a threefold open doorway. After all the heaviness of the previous thirteen stations, we get this breather. Here’s what the doors say to me: Invitation. Possibility. The fourteenth station of the cross is traditionally where Christ is buried in his tomb. But instead of a dead body on a slab or a sealed-up cave, Barnickel gives us an open frame, a door ajar, a view of sky. It alludes to resurrection. Jesus walked through death and came out the other side. And so can we.
While the Path of Hope is a vehicle for remembering, lamenting, and healing from the collective traumas of war and political violence and oppression, it can also speak to personal losses, to any individual’s journey of grief. It’s an invitation to acknowledge the pain we carry but also to see beyond it to the Better Day that is coming, as well as to embrace the life before us here and now. The doors ask us to unburden ourselves of whatever weight is crushing us and to be renewed. (Notice the crown of thorns, an emblem of suffering, left hanging on the corner of the final threshold.) To follow the Man of Sorrows, who walks beside us in our own sorrow, from death into life.
For those accompanying a loved one to the door of death, or who have had a loved one suddenly snatched through, may Barnickel’s Hope meet you in your grieving, filling you with soft consolations of a Love stronger than death, a Love who, once buried, became on the third day the firstfruits of the resurrection harvest.
Waking up to tragic dawn Not comprehending what is going on Alleluia, Christ is risen once again
And it frames a hollow place Lost dreams and accolades Alleluia, Christ is risen once again
Alleluia, Christ is risen Though the walls of castles fall Alleluia, he is risen for us all
From these sights the shadows light In an overwhelming night Alleluia, Christ is risen once again
Hopes fly from us every day Fear reigns far and so does hate Alleluia, Christ is risen once again
Alleluia, Christ is risen Though the gates of all this war Alleluia, Christ is risen evermore
Alleluia, God is able To complete the life you led Alleluia, Christ is risen from the dead
Alleluia, he is risen once again
From the sorrow you have fled You have joy around your head Alleluia, Christ is risen once again
And as from earthly trials you fly You leave sadness when you die Alleluia, Christ is risen once again
Alleluia, Christ is risen And the life you’re living now Alleluia, all’s forgiven somehow
Alleluia, there is beauty When I think of you, joy I feel Alleluia, in my sadness, faith is real
Alleluia, Christ is risen once again Alleluia for you, my friend
Tara Ward [previously] wrote this song during the 2007 Easter season when two tragedies struck within a week of each other. On April 16, a mass shooter opened fire at Virginia Tech, killing thirty-two people, and on April 21, Ward’s friend Liz Duncan was fatally struck by a car while jogging. In the second half of the song, Ward addresses Duncan in the second person, rejoicing through tears that she has entered a state of joy and rest and will one day be raised, body and soul.
Ward returned to the song for Easter 2020 following the death that March of another friend and the initial outbreak of COVID-19. “I was trying to think of what I would sing if I was still working at a church, looking for honest songs to sing on Easter, and this one came up,” she writes on the YouTube video description.
The Nashville community, and America at large, is still reeling from the March 27 shooting at Covenant School that left seven dead, the 131st mass shooting in the US this year. I can only imagine the absolute devastation and rage a parent would feel upon learning that the child they dropped off at school that morning would not be coming home because they were gunned down with an assault rifle.
As I listen to this song, I think, too, of Leslie Bustard, a writer and book publisher, a luminary in the art and faith sphere, who, less than two months after hosting an amazing Square Halo conference on the theme of “ordinary saints,” is now in hospice with late-stage cancer.
Sometimes all the exuberance of Easter can seem disjunctive with the bleak state of the world or our own present circumstances. Christ is risen, but death is still a reality, and it’s still painful. Quiet and aching, this song gives space to grief while also confessing this central Christian doctrine: that Jesus rose from the dead, giving life to all who will receive it. Of course, that doesn’t mean Christians are exempt from experiencing physical death—we will all one day go to the grave—nor from the grief that follows in the wake of a loved one’s passing.
But what Ward’s song helps us do is sing “alleluia” in our sadness, because Christ’s resurrection life is at work in those who have passed on in him, and it’s at work in those of us who walk through the valley of death’s shadow here on earth. The “once again” language—“Christ is risen once again”—indicates that Jesus’s historical rising has ongoing implications, its efficacy extending to every new place of death.
PRINT SUITE: Via Dolorosa by William Frank: Commissioned by SSM Saint Louis University Hospital for their chapel, this set of Stations of the Cross prints by William Frank combines depictions of Christ’s passion with diagnostic X-ray imaging of patients from the hospital’s archives. “The human body, and the community, act as the landscape,” he told me. A bullet in the spine, a kidney stone, a wrist fracture, a tumor, tuberculosis of the bones—Jesus’s suffering unfolds against the backdrop of these specific, tangible forms of suffering. But the rainbow color scheme transforms the stark black-and-white medical images into something a little less scary, suggesting hope and promise—maybe healing, maybe not, but at the very least, divine accompaniment along the path of sorrow.
William Frank (American, 1984–), Via Dolorosa (installation detail), 2020. Etching, archival inkjet, chin collé, with embossment, suite of fourteen prints, overall 4 × 16 ft. SSM Saint Louis University Hospital Chapel, St. Louis, Missouri. Photo: Lisa Johnston, courtesy of the artist.
This year, the Catholic Health Association of the United States created a set of video reflections around Frank’s Stations, one for each piece, which you can find at https://www.chausa.org/prayers/lent-reflections. They also shot a video conversation with the artist:
NEW SONG: “Spooling” by Rev. Matt Simpkins: Diagnosed with stage 4 skin cancer, the Rev. Matt Simpkins [previously] of Lexden in Colchester, an Anglican vicar and a rock musician, said the only way he could calm his nerves enough to get through his next MRI scan was by writing a song from inside the machine. He composed some words and harmonies in his head to the “groovy,” sonorous beeps of the scanner, recording the song afterward using sampling, thus turning a typically threatening, antiseptic medical sound into a party vibe. He was interviewed on the BBC about it last month:
And here’s the bizarre music video, with special effects!
“I’m in a difficult situation with stage 4 cancer, but again, you’ve got a choice, and this song is a good example of that—how you can take something up into song and live,” he says. He hopes the song will minister to those who are undergoing cancer treatment or facing a possible diagnosis—that it is a small oasis, a source of silly laughter, comfort, and strength, for those in dire health.
ART COMMENTARY: The Apostle Judas by Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin: As part of the Visual Commentary on Scripture project, Dr. Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin has selected three artworks that in some way interpret Matthew 26:20–25 (and parallel passages), when at the Last Supper Jesus announces that someone there will betray him. Rather than featuring the more common portrayals of Judas as malevolent, halo-less, and/or segregated from the group at the far end of the table, Dengerink Chaplin has chosen works that show him integrated and indistinct, one of twelve betrayers, whose treachery, she boldly proposes, we might construe as “a happy fault.”
Chris Ofili (British, 1968–), The Upper Room, 1999–2002. Oil paint, acrylic paint, glitter, graphite, pen, elephant dung, polyester resin, and map pins on 13 canvases, each 183.2 × 122.8 cm, except head canvas, 244.2 × 183 cm. Installation at Victoria Miro Gallery, London. Collection of Tate, London.
Duccio di Buoninsegna (Italian, d. 1318), The Last Supper, from the Maestà Altarpiece, 1308–11. Tempera and gold on panel, 50 × 53 cm. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Siena, Italy.
Chris Ofili (British, 1968–), Iscariot Blues, 2006. Oil and charcoal on linen, 281 × 194.9 cm. Photo courtesy of Victoria Miro and David Zwirner.
With the Duccio panel, she points out something I’ve often contemplated as well: that Jesus feeds Judas with the element he calls his body, keeps communion with him, and is there not a preemptive forgiveness implicit in that act?
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SONG: “In the Night” by Andrew Peterson: At a Laity Lodge retreat in 2015, Andrew Peterson of Nashville performed one of the songs from his album Counting Stars (2010) with fellow musicians Buddy Greene, Jeff Taylor, and Andy Gullahorn. “In the Night” rehearses “dark night” stories from scripture: Israel wrestles with God, is enslaved by Egypt, is pressed in by Syria; a prodigal son must resort to eating pig slop; the Son of Man is beaten and killed. But in each of these stories, deliverance comes. Hence the refrain: “In the night, my hope lives on.”
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VISUAL MEDITATION: On TheHoly Women at the Tomb by George Minne, commentary by Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker: Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker, the creator of ArtWay, writes about a nineteenth-century bronze sculpture by the Belgian artist George Minne, which shows the three women who went to Jesus’s tomb on Easter morning in an attitude of grief—bent backs, bowed heads—drawing on the gothic pleurants, or weepers, of late medieval tombs. The women are “totally enwrapped in mourning their beloved,” Hengelaar-Rookmaaker writes. “This is in fact the very last moment of the passion, the last moment of suffering past the Pietà and the burial of Christ. It will only be a minute before their hoods will come off and the news of the resurrection will enter their numbed minds.”
George Minne (Belgian, 1866–1941), Les saintes femmes au tombeau (The Holy Women at the Tomb), 1896. Bronze, 44.5 × 62 × 20.5 cm. Groeningemuseum, Bruges, Belgium.
This composition by Minne also exists in granite, wood, and plaster versions.
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NEW PLAYLIST: April 2023 (Art & Theology): Includes an excerpt from the psychedelic rock–style Mass in F Minor by the Electric Prunes, “The Outlaw” by Jesus Movement icon Larry Norman, a chuckle-inducing bluegrass song first recorded in 1926 by Gid Tanner and Faith Norris and covered here by the Local Honeys, a choral setting of Psalm 128 (“Happy is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways . . .”) by the Italian Jewish Renaissance composer Salomone Rossi, Whitney Houston’s rendition of “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” and a short Kiowa Apache church song that translates to “Son of our Father will set up a cedar tree / Now he is calling to us / He’s going to heal our minds / That’s why he is calling to us.”
Holy Week begins Sunday. I will be publishing short daily devotional posts during that time and through the first eight days of Easter. Also: don’t forget about the Art & TheologyHoly Week Playlist and Eastertide Playlist! I’ve made some new song additions since last year, mixed in to preserve the narrative flow.
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ART VIDEO: “The Crucifixion, c. 1200 (from Christus triumphans to Christus patiens)”: When I was a student in Florence for a semester, my first paper for my Italian history, art, and culture class traced the evolution of the painted wood-panel crucifix in late medieval Italy, from the Christus Triumphans (Triumphant Christ) type to Christus Patiens (Suffering Christ). I lived less than a five-minute walk from the Uffizi, which has in its collection a beautiful example of each—explored by Drs. Steven Zucker and Beth Harris in this short Smarthistory video. Longtime readers of the blog may recognize the latter, which I posted back in 2018.
Painted cross (detail), Pisa, ca. 1180–1200. Tempera and gold leaf on wood, 277 × 231 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Inv. 432. [object record]
Zucker provides wonderful photos of both in high resolution on his Flickr page (start here and scroll right)—the full crosses and details of each apron scene—available for free noncommercial use under a Creative Commons license. And there are many other art historical images there as well!
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ONLINE EXPERIENCE: “Anamnesis: Journey through the Stations of the Cross”: This year visual artist Daniel Callis and the music and liturgy collective The Many collaborated on a self-guided set of online Stations of the Cross. There are fifteen total, which are being released one at a time every morning and evening from March 30 through April 5. Each station consists of an artwork, a prayer, a song, and a written meditation that help us enter into lament.
Daniel Callis (American, 1955–), Grief Station #1, Prognosis, 2022. Ink, oil, palm ash, fiber, clay, ash, fabric, 60 × 24 × 24 in. (total work). Photo courtesy of the artist.
The artworks are by Callis, and they’re from his Stations: Resurgam series, a body of work that was just exhibited this month at Green Art Gallery at Biola University in La Mirada, California. He began the series in January 2021 in response to the death of his son, Jeremy David Callis (1980–2020). It consists of fifteen mixed-media works on paper (his process involves printing, “wounding,” stitching, etc.) and fifteen raku-fired offering bowls that incorporate, from the cooling process, copies of letters, hospital documents, and drawings from Jeremy. “They are about pain and the absurd insistent pursuit of hope,” Callis says of the series. Resurgam is Latin for “I shall rise again.”
The songs are by The Many.
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BOOK EXCERPT from The Unvarnished Jesus: A Lenten Journey by Brian Zahnd: In this post from his blog, Pastor Brian Zahnd excerpts a passage from his book The Unvarnished Jesus (2019). “To interpret the meaning of the cross is more than a life’s work—in fact, it has and will remain the work of the church for millennia,” he writes. “The cross is the ever-unfolding revelation of who God is, and it cannot be summed up in a simple formula. This is the bane of tidy atonement theories that seek to reduce the cross to a single meaning. The cross is many things: It’s the pinnacle of God’s self-disclosure. It’s divine solidarity with all human suffering. It’s the shaming of the principalities and powers. It’s the point from which the satan is driven out of the world. It’s the death by which Christ conquers Death. It’s the abolition of war and violence. It’s the supreme demonstration of the love of God. It’s the re-founding of the world around an axis of love. It’s the enduring model of co-suffering love we are to follow. It’s the eternal moment in which the sin of the world is forgiven . . .” Read more.
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SONGS:
>> “The Leaves of Life”: “The Leaves of Life,” alternatively titled “The Seven Virgins,” is a traditional English ballad carol of Christ’s passion, first set down in the nineteenth century. It is narrated by (the apostle?) Thomas, who on a fateful Friday runs into the Virgin Mary and six of her companions, who are looking for Jesus. He directs them to the hill where Jesus is being crucified (“And sit in the gallery” may be a corruption of “The city of Calvary”). The women tearfully fly to the site, and Jesus tries to console his mother from the cross before breathing his last. The song ends with Thomas imbibing a strong scent of rose and fennel as he meditates on Christ’s love. [HT: Global Christian Worship]
Here the song is performed in the chapter house of Wells Cathedral in Somerset by William Parsons, founder of the British Pilgrimage Trust and author of Singing for Our Supper: Walking an English Songline from Kent to Cornwall, a book about the seven months he spent as a wandering minstrel. Parsons refers to it as a gypsy carol because Ralph Vaughan Williams collected one version of it from the Roma singer Esther Smith during his 1908–13 collecting trips that resulted in the publication, with Ella May Leather, of Twelve Traditional Carols from Herefordshire (1920).
>> “Were You There”: This African American spiritual is performed here by Pegasis, a vocal trio of sisters—Marvelis, Rissel, and Yaina Peguero Almonte—originally from the Dominican Republic but now living in Green Bay, Wisconsin. It’s as if they’re the three Marys singing their testimony! The song is on their 2016 album Peace Through Praise, which they released under the name The Peguero Sisters. Their harmonies are gorgeous.
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PODCAST EPISODE: “Malcolm Guite: Poems on the Passion”: In this special passion- and resurrection-themed Nomad devotional episode from 2018, Malcolm Guite reads and reflects on three of his poems, and David Benjamin Blower performs an original three-part song that he wrote in response and that has not been released elsewhere (see 4:30, 16:04, and 27:18).
Guite’s “Jesus dies on the cross,” part of his Stations of the Cross sonnet cycle, was inspired by a line from George Herbert’s poem “Prayer”: “God’s breath in man returning to his birth.” And his “Easter Dawn” [previously] is based in part on a sermon by the seventeenth-century Anglican bishop Lancelot Andrewes. Paraphrasing Andrewes, Guite says, “Jesus is the gardener of Mary [Magdalene]’s heart—her heart is all rent and brown and wintery, and with one word, he makes all green again.” Beautiful! For more on the theme of Jesus as gardener, see my 2016 blog post “She mistook him for the gardener.”
This roundup is a bit longer than usual, but I’ve found that these six items I’ve gathered over the last month complement each other well, so I’m sharing them all at once. The Art in America and Hyperallergic articles raise interesting points about sacred art—what it is, how it functions, what its relevance is to contemporary life—and this is a topic I discuss in a podcast episode that was released earlier this month. Tammy Nguyen and Wes Campbell are two artists whose work I am glad to have just learned about and plan to explore more of. And there’s always something going on in London’s art scene to remark on as relates to theology or Christian history—this time a National Gallery–sponsored virtual exhibition on the fruits of the spirit, and the latest winning entry for the Fourth Plinth competition, which honors a Baptist pastor and freedom fighter from Malawi.
ARTICLE: “Seeing and Believing: Christian Imagery in Painting Now,” a roundtable conversation with four artists moderated by Emily Watlington: Religion is the theme of the December 2022 issue of the influential contemporary art magazine Art in America, and its cover story is a conversation with painters Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, Tammy Nguyen, Alina Perez, and Jannis Marwitz on their “bold reinventions of traditional Christian iconography.” They discuss the generativity of Christian imagery, the power of sacred images, their favorite Christian paintings, the function of metal leaf in illuminated manuscripts, Jesus as recognizable not by his specific likeness but by body language and symbol, “revisiting and repurposing history” as “a core practice of decolonization,” and the role of storytelling and transcendence in art.
I especially appreciated being introduced to Nguyen’s work and hearing her thoughtful and nuanced perspectives. She mentions her Stations of the Cross series, inspired by her visit to the island of Pulau Galang in Indonesia to connect with her Vietnamese parents’ history as refugees on nearby Kuku Island following the Vietnam War. In the decommissioned Galang Refugee Camp, now a tourist site, fourteen golden Stations of the Cross statues are preserved in the forest, which served as devotional aids for the many Vietnamese Catholic refugees—but they are now overgrown by nature. Nguyen was struck by this tropical takeover, and her resultant body of work setting Christ’s passion in the jungle explores not only environmental agency but also legacies of colonialism and the important role of faith in circumstances of trauma and grief. Hear her discuss the series in this five-minute video that the gallery Lehmann Maupin put out:
Tammy Nguyen (American, 1984–), Man of Sorrow, 2022. Watercolor, pastel, vinyl paint, and metal leaf on paper stretched over wood panel, 84 × 60 in. (213.4 × 152.4 cm).
I regret that besides Nguyen’s, all the other featured contemporary paintings in the Art in America article have only a very tenuous, sometimes indiscernible, connection to Christianity. Toranzo Jaeger’s End of Capitalism, the Future, a “queer utopia,” is based on Lucas Cranach’s Fountain of Youth—but Cranach’s subject (elderly women entering a pool to become young again) is not Christian, it’s mythological. And Marwitz’s The Raid supposedly references Caravaggio’s Madonna of Loreto, but I don’t see it at all, compositionally or otherwise. Perez mentions growing up Catholic in Miami, but that influence isn’t apparent in It Never Heals, unless we’re meant to read it in the painting’s flair for violence and drama. So the article’s subtitle, “Christian Imagery in Painting Now,” is a bit of a misnomer.
With the criteria of currently active painters consciously engaging with Christian imagery in ways that are not merely illustrative, I might have chosen to interview, for example, Jyoti Sahi (India), Daozi (China), Emmanuel Garibay (Philippines), Wisnu Sasongko (Indonesia), Marc Padeu (Cameroon), Harmonia Rosales (US), Stephen Towns (US), Rodríguez Calero (US), Trung Pham (US), Laura Lasworth (US), Patty Wickman (US), James B. Janknegt (US), Mark Doox (US), Sergii Radkevych (Ukraine), Ivanka Demchuk (Ukraine), Natalya Rusetska (Ukraine), Paul Martin (England), Filippo Rossi (Italy), Michael Triegel (Germany), Janpeter Muilwijk (Netherlands), Arne Haugen Sørensen (Denmark), Brett a’Court (Australia), or Julie Dowling (Australia).
I’m also disappointed that, from what I can tell from the interview, none of the four artists approaches their subjects from a place of Christian belief. I absolutely welcome non-Christians to engage with Christian stories and symbols—to play with them, reinterpret them, question them, or even use them as tools of critique or subversion. I just wish that in a conversation about ways that Christian imagery is being used today, the editors had thought to invite a Christian to the table, who could have provided a different viewpoint. But, kudos to Art in America for at least broaching the topic of religion in contemporary art!
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NEW STATUE: Antelope by Samson Kambalu: The fourth plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square is the prestigious site of rotating contemporary art installations, and from September 2022 to September 2024, it is home to Antelope by Malawian-born artist Samson Kambalu. This two-man bronze sculpture group reimagines a photograph of the pastor, educator, and revolutionary John Chilembwe (1871–1915) of Nyasaland (now Malawi) standing next to his friend John Chorley, a British missionary. Posing at the entrance of his newly built church, Chilembwe proudly wears a brimmed hat, flouting the law that Africans were not allowed to wear hats in the presence of their then colonial rulers. (Read more from Inno Chanza on Facebook, and from Harvard Magazine.) Kambalu’s sculpture shows the men facing away from each other instead of side-by-side, and he’s made Chilembwe almost twice as large as Chorley, elevating an underrepresented figure in the history of the British Empire in Africa.
Samson Kambalu (Malawian, 1975–), Antelope, 2022. Bronze, resin, 18 ft. high. Photo: Future Publishing / Getty Images.Pastor John Chilembwe and John Chorley at the dedication of Chilembwe’s New Jerusalem Baptist Church in Mbombwe village in what is today southern Malawi, January 24, 1914. The British colonial government demolished the church the next year and imprisoned or executed most of its leaders following an unsuccessful uprising against forced labor, racial discrimination, and conscription led by Chilembwe.
After years of agitating peacefully against British colonial rule to no avail, Chilembwe led an uprising in 1915, which resulted in his death but which laid the seeds for Malawian independence. John Chilembwe Day is observed annually on January 15 in Malawi.
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VIRTUAL EXHIBITION: Fruits of the Spirit: Art from the Heart: Curated by the Rev. Dr. Ayla Lepine as part of the National Gallery’s Art and Religion research strand, this new virtual exhibition was inspired by a passage from the apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatians, where he writes, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things” (5:22–23). The exhibition pairs nine artworks from the National Gallery’s collection with nine from UK partner institutions that represent these spiritual fruits, these virtues, which are held in common across faith traditions. The Renaissance through contemporary eras are represented. [HT: Jonathan Evens]
Screen capture from the online exhibition experience Fruits of the Spirit. This fictitious space consists of seven side galleries and two central displays, which can be navigated with your keyboard.
Accompanying the exhibition is a web-based catalog (with contributions by theologians, activists, novelists, artists), an audio guide, and a series of in-person and online events from November 2022 through April 2023. Next up is a free online talk by the curator on January 30 at 1 p.m. GMT (8 a.m. EST).
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ARTICLE: “The Church of Secular Art” by David Carrier: “Bill Viola’s installation at a Naples church misses the spiritual mark,” reads the deck to this Hyperallergic article, a critic’s response to the Ritorno alla Vita (Return to Life) exhibition that ran from September 2, 2022, to January 8, 2023, at the Church of Carminiello in Toledo. The exhibition was organized by Vanitas Club, a Milan-based organization that throws artistic and cultural events in underutilized historic spaces, in collaboration with Bill Viola Studio.
Bill Viola, left: Fire Martyr (2014); right, Water Martyr (2014). Photo courtesy of Vanitas Club.
I didn’t see the exhibition, but I’m familiar with Viola’s work [previously], and I don’t agree with Carrier’s assertions, if my understanding of them is correct. It sounds to me like he’s saying that when a sacred artwork—say, a medieval altarpiece—is transplanted to a museum, the work becomes secular, and that when a secular artwork is shown in a sacred space, rather than the space sacralizing the work, the work secularizes and thus undermines the space. It seems that he’s saying that art made in a contemporary idiom, like Viola’s video art, does not belong in churches, because it does not and cannot function as religious art. Art museums and churches have fundamentally different goals that are irreconcilable.
“The paintings and sculptures in Neapolitan churches are meant to support and strengthen the spiritual lives of believers; representations of St. Gennaro and other saints are intended to reinforce faith. The videos in Ritorno alla Vita call for a fundamentally different response. The exhibition website notes that these videos ‘exemplify the human capacity to transform and to bear extreme suffering and even death in order to come back to life through action, fortitude, perseverance, endurance, and sacrifice.’ These are important ideals, but they can apply equally to secular and nonsecular contexts.” The description Carrier quotes does seem to water down the art’s Christian content/messaging in an attempt to make the art more widely accessible. I’ve noticed that fault with some other displays of contemporary art in churches—where the curator, seeing their role primarily as one of hospitality to the wider (unchurched) community, underinterprets the art’s Christian angle. Though it can be difficult, there is a way to honor a work’s particularity and universality in the exhibition text.
I think we need to let art function differently for different viewers. Cannot a contemporary artwork, regardless of the artist’s intentions or where the art is placed, cultivate my affection for Christ as much as a traditional artwork? How I as a Christian read and experience Viola will differ from how an atheist does, and that’s OK. The same is true for a religious painting hanging in a national gallery—it may elicit prayer in me, boredom or contempt in another, emotional identification in another, purely aesthetic contemplation in another, and historical curiosity in yet another. I don’t think an image loses or gains its sacredness by its location, though I don’t underestimate the power of the staged environment to enable that sacredness to best shine through. I think that if the viewer receives a work as sacred, then it is.
That Viola does not depict specific historical saints in his Martyr panels—originally commissioned as a quadriptych by St. Paul’s Cathedral in London—does widen their interpretive horizon, but it doesn’t make them less “Christian.” I see the work as a memorial to all the unknown martyrs. I think of all the contemporary Christian martyrs around the world whose names I do not know, who have died with Christ’s name on their lips and his Spirit within them, and am prompted to intercede immediately for believers suffering religious persecution in their countries, who worship Jesus under threat of imprisonment or execution.
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ARTICLE: “Openness to the world: Wes Campbell and his disturbing illusions of peace” by Jason Goroncy: In December 2022 theology professor Jason Goroncy spoke at the opening of a retrospective of the paintings of the Rev. Dr. Wes Campbell, hosted by Habitat Uniting Church in Melbourne. That talk is adapted here on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Religion and Ethics web portal. Campbell is a retired Minister of the Word in the Uniting Church of Australia with experience in parish ministry, university chaplaincy, UCA synod and assembly roles, and a sustained commitment to peace, justice, and social responsibility. His roughly three decades of art making was integrally connected to these roles, as through his paintings he expounds a faith-fueled poetics of hope, “bearing witness to the trauma of creaturely existence alongside a refusal to abandon the world to its violence, nihilism, and despair.”
Wes Campbell (Australian, 1948–), Transfiguration of Christ, n.d. Acrylic on canvas, 59 × 23 5/8 in. (150 × 60 cm).
“Wes’s art . . . does not shy away from the risky boundaries where hope is threatened, sustained, lost, and birthed,” Goroncy says. “It, therefore, embraces the tragic and the ugly, as well as joy and beauty. Whether his subject matter is the human condition, or explicitly religious stories (such as the nativity or the transfiguration), or the Earth itself, Wes’s work is replete with this kind of fidelity to the contradictions that mark our lived experience. . . . It embodies the conviction that the arts can unmoor us, disrupt the worlds we assume, facilitate our lament, and open up possibilities for futures we hardly dare imagine.”
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PODCAST EPISODE: “Victoria Emily Jones: Art & Theology”: In early December I spoke with Luminous podcast host Peter Bouteneff, a systematic theology professor and the founding director of the Institute of Sacred Arts at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, about my work at Art & Theology. We discuss how I got into this cross-disciplinary field, definitions of “sacred art,” and more.
Bouteneff earned his DPhil in theology from Oxford University under the supervision of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware. Besides theology, he also has an academic background in music, having studied jazz and ethnomusicology at the New England Conservatory. He has written two books on the music of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.
I’ve been following the podcast since its inception in 2021. My favorite episodes are the ones with poet Scott Cairns; artist Bruce Herman; art historian Lisa DeBoer, author of Visual Arts in the Worshiping Church; curator Gary Vikan, a specialist in Byzantine art and the director of the Walters Art Museum from 1994 to 2013; and historian Christina Maranci, an expert on the development of Armenian art and architecture. Browse all the episodes here.
Christ Nailed to the Cross, mola (reverse appliqué panel) from the San Blas Islands, late 20th century. Bowden Collections.
The Kuna (also spelled Guna or Cuna) Indians live on the San Blas archipelago off the east coast of Panama, a cluster of some 378 islands in the Caribbean Sea. They are politically autonomous, and much of their traditional culture is intact.
Since the late nineteenth century, Kuna women have been making what are called molas, reverse appliqué panels made in pairs for the front and back of women’s blouses. As mola collector Jane Gruver describes, “several layers of cloth are stacked together and the design is made by cutting through the different layers of fabric to expose the desired color. Once the specific shape is achieved, the area is stitched around. Sometimes embroidery and applique are also used to add detail.” This colorful, wearable textile art is an integral part of Kuna culture.
The earliest molas featured geometric designs, which the Kunas translated from their customary body painting designs, but now a vast variety of representational subjects are common, including animals, plants, domestic scenes, political satire, dragons, mermaids, superheroes, spacecraft—and biblical stories!
The first Christian missionary to the San Blas Islands was Annie Coope, a single woman from the United States who arrived in the first decade of the 1900s and established a school on the island of Nirgana in 1913. A significant number of the Kuna embraced Christianity, such that there are now churches on thirty of the islands, as well as eighteen Kuna churches in and around Panama City, according to Wycliffe. A Kuna translation of the New Testament was published in 1995, at the behest of Kuna pastor Lino Smith Arango, and a Kuna Old Testament was completed in 2014.
The mola above shows two men hammering nails into Christ’s palms as two mourning figures—presumably John and Mary—stand behind. This piece is from the collection of Sandra and Bob Bowden in Chatham, Massachusetts, who are among today’s major collectors of modern biblical art. It is one of forty molas in the traveling exhibition Eden to Eternity: Molas from the San Blas Islands, available for rental for a nominal fee.
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Art & Theology 