of the Bible. We'll be soaking in the major narrative that weaves all the smaller stories together from Genesis to Revelation in all of its beautiful, grand, surprising, mysterious, conflicting, sometimes-romantic, often-bizarre, prosaic and poetic splendor. As part of my job as Worship & Arts Director at Union Center, I've been researching the way the deep truths (or magic, if you're C.S. Lewis) of the written Word of God informs art. In other words, how do humans try to make sense of the truths stitched into the seams of the universe through their art, literature, music, poems, architecture, exploration, operas, dance, plays and so on? There is no way to collect all these works into one place; most certainly not in the brief seventy-five minutes we spend together each week as a corporate assembly. Consider the posts here each Sunday a cutting room floor of sorts. A tiny sampling of the age-old journey of artists influenced by the biblical narrative.
p.s., I hope you'll be watching for these lower-case i incarnations of truth in the art you encounter in your own journey. Feel free to share them in the comment section!
Week One: Genesis 1-8
Garden of Earthly Delights
Heironymus Bosch (Madrid, 1503-1504)
oil-on-wood triptych
Themes: human origins and purpose, collective longing for Utopian-ideals, inability to achieve those ideals, shattering of relationship, jealousy, murderous rage, cosmic disaster
[I]n his hand
He took the golden compasses, prepared
In God's eternal store, to circumscribe
This universe, and all created things...
This God the Heav'n created, thus the earth,
Matter unformed and void. Darkness profound
Covered th'abyss; but on the wat'ry calm
His brooding wings the Spirit of God outspread...
(John Milton, Paradise Lost)
Literature:
- Canterbury Tales
, Geoffrey Chaucer (14th century)
- Paradise Lost
- East of Eden
, John Steinbeck (1952)
- The Similarion
, J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Magician's Nephew
, C.S. Lewis
- Many Waters
, Madeleine L'Engle
 |
| The Expulsion from the Garden Massacio fresco, 1425 |
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright
wings.
(Gerard Manley Hopkins, God's Grandeur)
Poetry:
- The Epic of Gilgamesh
, (ancient Babylonian poem)
- Divine Comedy
, Dante Alighieri (1308 - 1321)
- The Pulley, George Herbert
- Kubla Khan
, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1797)
- God's Grandeur, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1877)
 |
| The Deluge Gustave Dore' illustration, 1866 |
It hath the primal eldest curse upon't
A brother's murder.
(Shakespeare, Hamlet, act 3, scene iii, lines 40-1)
Theatre:
- The Tempest, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, The Merchant of Venice
(William Shakespeare, 1564-1616)
- Noye's Fluddle, Benjamin Britten, 1957, opera
 |
| Babel Revisited Julee Holcombe digital photographic composition of modern-day skyscrapers, 2004 Oh, Oh Deep water Black, and cold like the night I stand with arms wide open I've run a twisted mile I'm a stranger in the eyes of the maker. (Daniel Lanois, The Maker) |
Music:
- The Dream of Gerontius
, Edward Elgar (1900, oratorio)
- The Maker
, Daniel Lanois
- I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
, U2
- A Beautiful Day
, U2
Union Center Worship, September 26, 2010:
- Indescribable
, Laura Story
- Responsive Reading, Genesis 1
- For the Beauty of the Earth
- What A Savior
, Laura Story
- Blessed Assurance
- Creed
, Rich Mullins (with a gorgeous live hammered dulcimer)
- Message
- All Creatures of Our God and King
- Benediction
Art from the archives influenced by Genesis 1-8:
- everything I've read by Flannery O'Connor
- this movie I wrote about here
- this essay I wrote grieving the loss of a perfect family gathering place
- this poem I wrote during last year's Lenten season, titled Genesis 3:24
- this narrative I wrote after I saw a rainbow on a hard day
Resources:
The Writing on the Wall
: High Art, Popular Culture and the Bible by Maggie Dawn
: High Art, Popular Culture and the Bible by Maggie Dawn
