Retrieve Lament, Day 4 (art meditations + suggested resources for Lent 2013)

"Once, ritual lament would have been chanted; women would have been paid to beat their breasts and howl for you all night, when all is silent. Where can we find such customs now? So many have long since disappeared or been disowned.

That’s what you had to come for: to retrieve

the lament that we omitted."
 (Ranier Maria Rilke, from Requiem For A Friend)

During Lent I'll share almost-daily meditations of Scripture, hymns, and art reflecting this time of tension between dying and birth.

Won't you join me?




February 16 , Day 4

Psalm 32

Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven,
   whose sin is covered.
Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity,
   and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

While I kept silence, my body wasted away
   through my groaning all day long.
For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
   my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.
          Selah

Then I acknowledged my sin to you,
   and I did not hide my iniquity;
I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord’,
   and you forgave the guilt of my sin.
          Selah

Therefore let all who are faithful
   offer prayer to you;
at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters
   shall not reach them.
You are a hiding-place for me;
   you preserve me from trouble;
   you surround me with glad cries of deliverance.
          Selah

I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go;
   I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding,
   whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle,
   else it will not stay near you.

Many are the torments of the wicked,
   but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord.
Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous,
   and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.

A Song of Response:



Visual meditation:

Grid of Beauty, Sublimity and Grotesquery

Matthew Whitney

Vancouver Project at By/For

Suggested Resources for Lent:

• Lenten Daily Devotional from Christ Church of Austin, 2013
• Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter 
• Living the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God, Bobby Gross

Now it's your turn!  What art are you enjoying this season? 

 Tell us about it in the  comments below.  

If you've written your own post, share the link.

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"Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east." (Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Wreck of the Deutschland)

Living and Dying Palm, an addendum

Litania*

My name is Tamara.  It was my parents' choice to name me as this Hebrew maiden.  Tamara is palm branch, like we see in the triumphal entry laid at the feet of the donkey-riding Messiah.  Crushed under the feet of hopeful crowd and donkey- hoof, the verdant branches return to arid desert soil.  Become dust again. For centuries the Church ground up the branches waved in worship on Palm Sunday, lived the cycle of life and light again, and marked the foreheads with the charry cross on Ash Wednesday.  

Each year I've been able to attend an Ash Wednesday service, I watch the foreheads of our community go from shiny oil to blackened grit.  Each sign of the cross a mirror over bodies all-too-familiar with death, sin, decay.  Even the least among us, the babies carried to the priest, darkened with the visible sign of invisible truth.  From dust we came, to dust we return.  

In the past I've said  I find it strangely peculiar that the very people naming ourselves after the Christ who took on dusty flesh in order to redeem peoples from their flesh, try so hard to forget the frailty of their humanity.  Who long only for triumphal entries without crucifixion and death, which of course means no resurrection and life.  We keep trying to make the Church walk on coloured coats instead of ground, thinking our mass-marketed spirituality and worship noise will drown out the hungry rumbles in our stomachs.  The creaking of our broken hearts.  The rattly breath of death blowing on our necks.  

This year I need to make an addendum.  I realized today sitting in my Sunday row how much I am to blame for hating the Christ who rode the donkey, how much I've been offended by his humility to move toward the people He knew would betray Him.  How guilty I am of standing in judgement of His mercy-giving heart.

This morning I spent a few moments looking at this work from Giotto, The Entry into Jerusalem.  I subscribe to a weekly visual meditation from an organization called Artway.  Each Sunday morning an image and a few words show up in my inbox and I choose whether or not to engage with them.

Giotto

When I was walking toward our church building this morning, I wished I hadn't spent time with this picture.  I normally take pleasure in the choir of mourning doves in the trees that line the sidewalk to our building.  This morning I found myself wishing they'd tone it down a notch.  I was angry.  Angry because when I was a little girl my Dad made Palm Sunday a special day for me, because of my name.  Angry because I wanted to join in the Hosannas and palm-waving with joy.  But I spent time looking at this image this morning and all I could see was the difference in the expression on Giotto's image of the disciples' faces and the expression on Jesus'.   

See that gaggle of halos?  See the wary faces, the fearful faces, the you-can't-fool-me-I-know-you're-up-to-no-good faces?  That's me.  Or I should say, that's my learned-response, my sinful response to suffering and pain and abuse and betrayal.  The disciples had just spent the week trying to figure out Jesus' dire warnings about His upcoming death and, in Giotto's mind anyway, they were on guard.  They could not take pleasure in the Psalm-shouting crowds.

Living like Jesus would mean my face would change from guarded distance to a merciful moving-toward.  Knowing that it was His Father alone He could truly trust, Jesus rode upright and humble right into the very hands that would betray Him.

I do not like this truth.  My wounded and sinful self flails against it.  I want to save my Psalm-shouting for the triumphant, steed-riding Jesus.  I want to be the waving palm, verdant and lush.  I don't want to be the crushed, trampled palm.  I want to be the Living Palm, not the Dying Palm.  

Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord.  Hosanna, Jesus, turn my face toward Yours.  Hosanna, Jesus, turn my face toward those You love, including my own sad heart.  Hosanna, Jesus, save me now.

*artwork credit: Litania, Created by Jen Grabarczyk and photographed by Ken Wagner
Creative Commons Licenses through By/For Project

Monday Mix Tape: Advent, 2

Welcome to Monday Mix Tape, 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).

Today's mix continues in the marking of Advent.  Over the four weeks I'll be sharing many of the ways my family and I are trying to step out of our own tyranny of the urgent and step into the alternate universe of kingdom time. Won't you join us in this counter-cultural, counter-consumeristic, counter-Church-as-therapy, counter-instant gratification, counter-mass media experiment?

track 1:  visual art

Matthew Whitney: Annunciation 

Rembrandt van Rijn: The Annunciation (ca. 1635)

Joan Bohlig: Annunciation 

track 2: annunciation song


track 3:  music

Thanks to Cardiphonia for yet another excellent recommendation!

track 4: Advent devotionals 

• Christ Church of Austin:  Advent Devotional 2011
• All Saints Church, Durham:  Even So, Come Quickly, Lord

track 5: poetry

John Donne (1572-1631)

Annunciation

Salvation to all that will is nigh;
That All, which always is all everywhere,
Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,
Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,
Lo, faithful virgin, yields Himself to lie
In prison, in thy womb; and though He there
Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet He will wear,
Taken from thence, flesh, which death's force may try.
Ere by the spheres time was created, thou
Wast in His mind, who is thy Son and Brother;
Whom thou conceivst, conceived; yea thou art now
Thy Maker's maker, and thy Father's mother;
Thou hast light in dark, and shutst in little room,
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb.

Thursday is for Imperfect Prose: circling the presence

I wonder what marked the moment as the acceptable time for tongues of fire to fall down?

A certain magic word?

What ancient riddle opened the door?  Moved the mountain into the sea?

What familiar Spirit fluttered the dead eyelid?  Called deep up from deep?  

I do not have the word, have not discovered the incantation.

                                                                                       But I've met the Spirit

and I think I know the answer.

I do not know the answer in the way one memorizes a flashcard formula, babbles 
incessant technical jargon, wishful thinking, vain repetitions of one-hit wonders.

Not in short-term memory exercises.  Not in altar-call professions

sudden inspiration,  prickly goose-bumpy revelation.

I do not know the trick to conjure down the flames.

                                                                                        But I studied the dusty photographs
read unfeeling the prayers, practiced the old language on inert tongue.
                                                                                        I slept under the canopy of intercession,                squatted in the hallway with the Son,
rocked sweaty in the lap of the Father,
eavesdropped under the door crack the Spirit-guide

and we knew it when we saw it.

The Tree of Presence Completes the Forest
Scott Erickson
Vancouver Project, By/For

*Linking with Emily and the imperfect prose community today.*

Friday is for new finds: free Lenten resources

Add caption

Music

From Cardiphonia:  Red Mountain Music along with a number of other fantastic musicians largely from the New York area have released a new CD today called “Songs for Lent.”  The texts were curated by Cardiphonia from the Sacred Harp as they entered into conversation with the traditional Stations of the Cross.  The music is available on NoiseTrade for Free, but please make a donation. The money will go to support Plywood People – a 501c3 organization helping address social need.

<Listen and Download Album @ Noise Trade>

<PDF of the Texts>

Also, a few years back, a few churches in the Pacific Northwest patroned an album for Lent through By/For. 

Michael Card, Brian Moss and others wrote and produced the thirteen songs that make up the album, Sweet Sacrifice.

Follow instructions for the free download here. 

Album cover derived from
Golden Countenance by Makoto Fujmura

Liturgical Readings

(another ht to Cardiphonia)  The Stations of the Cross service

Daily Reading and Artwork

My friend, Terri Fisher, is an arts pastor in Austin.  She shared with me the work that her community is doing to mark the season of Lent and I'm fascinated with their collaboration. From Christ Church's website:

This Lenten season, we created a collaborative art piece with several intersecting parts. It began with a vision for using the luminous encaustic medium, creating 19 abstract pieces for the devotional, out of naturally whitened beeswax. The colors you see applied are densely pigmented oil pastels fused into the wax. The black is palm ash (the same as used on Ash Wednesday) melted into the wax and then painted on. There were 11 artists; six from Christ Church and five from Hope Chapel, who took part in the creation of the pieces. Two of our professional photographers photographed the work in progress, as well as, each finished 5”X5” square. These pieces were created with the intention of being the visual counterparts to the writings in the Lenten devotional. The final destination for the encaustic pieces will be found in the construction of an eight foot tall cross. We hope that you find much to meditate on, in both the writings and the artwork.

Today's entry. Beautiful.

What new-found glories have you discovered lately?  I'm opening up the link-sharing on Fridays for all of your great finds.

Bloggers, use the Simply Linked function below to share the link from your post with us.  I'd be honored if you included a link back to me on your blog.  Not a blogger? Share with us through the comment feature!  Neither of these work for you?  I also accept carrier pigeons.

Heavy Man Stuck

Scott Kolbo
Creative Commons Attribution


I've known this for a long time.

I know it because I know what we are referring to when we pretty up the last day of Christ by calling it His passion. The Passion of the Christ. What we're really saying is suffering. The suffering of Christ.

But I forgot.

I forgot when a few weeks ago my cousin/friend Robin sat me down in her mother's kitchen -- not two minutes after I arrived from about eight years since the last time I'd sat in that kitchen. When it was just her mother's and not hers, too. She sat me down and asked: What is your passion? At that time I didn't think: She's asking me about my suffering. I didn't even think it when my eyes got liquidy and I exhaled: I haven't felt safe to speak of my passion for a while now.

Why else but the suffering?

And I forgot last weekend at a Labor Day bonfire when my new friend Laura asked me the same question, just put another way: What do you love to do? I forgot that the prickly pain in my gut is actually passion.

I almost remembered when I talked with another friend on the phone this week and she told me that she didn't feel like it was the right time for her to be pursuing her musical gifts. I told her: My heart hurts that you don't. I didn't realize right that minute that pricking, teary, insomnia-producing pain is passion.

Last night I sat with my friend Lori, drinking Yuengling's on her couch so late that it was almost the middle of the night. And I told her how earlier that day Pastor Craig had reminded me that the root of the word passion is the same as suffering. And that I had a bad case of it. And I told Lori that what made it worse was that I felt shame to care so much. That I felt like I just annoyed people all the time caring so much. And that I had to get over that quick.

Or die.