Back to our [somewhat] normal format here for Mondays, in which I pretend I'm Ira Glass. You know, I choose a theme and share with you several variations on the theme from the worlds of art, faith and culture. To keep up the fun little facade of making a weekly mix tape, I label each of these finds as "track 1". "track 2" and so on (and just like the stack of mixtapes you've got hidden in a box in your attic, you never know when you might see some love song from Journey or Lionel Richie show up here).
This week I'm going back to the series of spiritual disciplines I'm following this year from A Year With God: Living Out the Spiritual Disciplines by Richard Foster. I'm entering twenty days of meditating the discipline of Study. The primary focus is on the value of digesting large doses of Scripture with an intent to dig deeply into the meaning and context of the passage(s). This can also include, however, communing together with the work of the Church's saints in their own study of scripture.
Study as a spiritual discipline is the craft of readying the mind and heart for meditation. It is the work of letting this mind be in us; the regular and repeated exercising of our attention on that which we want to form and change us.
Today's mix tape includes work from artists who've paid much attention to the Scriptures as an expression of Spirit and truth. Enjoy!
track 1: visual art
From the website: This small book contains an imaginary page with fragments of ancient script barely visible within the gilded surface of the work. Agada is an Aramaic word meaning “teaching or recitation of scripture” and often is associated with a collection of stories or moral lessons from the Talmud. The outside of the book is clothed with squares of fabric forming a kind of mosaic covering.
Agada Book
Sandra Bowden
Click on the links to see the artist's entire gallery of work meditating on the beauty of text and book.
track 2: music
Brian Moss, prayerbook project
Joy Will Come To You from Psalm 1Kiss The Son from Psalm 2
Arise, O Lord from Psalm 3
I Will Lie Down from Psalm 4
In The Morning from Psalm 5
Heal Me from Psalm 6
I Hide Myself In You from Psalm 7
Glory On Display from Psalm 8
I Worship You from Psalm 9
You Are The Only Hope from Psalm 10
To See Your Face from Psalm 11
I Will Rise Up from Psalm 12
How Long? from Psalm 13
Not Even One from Psalm 14
Only Believe from Psalm 15
All songs released via Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States
track 3: film
The gorgeously-rendered mythology behind the very real, magnificent Book of Kells, created by Irish monks to turn the medieval darkness into light. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful....
See Steven D. Greydanus' review at Christianity Today, here
.
track 4: poem
Illuminated Page
A gold box of Latin words
rests in a dazzling, fanciful field
someone raised to life, lavishing
flowers with untraceable roots, histories
too distant to discern,
upon skin-pale, palm-sized vellum.
Imagine the one who did this, lost
in dwindling light, a trembling flame
and painstakingly lovely colors:
blood red, violet, heavy yellow
and fierce, unnatural green.
Framed like a window
to the artist's heart, the mother
and child, uncomprehending men
offering what they can: the infant
touches a tiny, gold-leaf casket.
All around him the dark, heraldic blue
of angel winds, night sky, her veil.
And below him, you can see
the word God printed
over infinitely
careful erasures.
