Found at ebay.com.
This essay is published in Christian Worship in Reformed Churches Past and Present, edited by Lukas Vischer (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003). Here are a few concrete points I’ve taken away from it:
Sioin Queenie Liao, Wengenn’s Symphony No. 1.
“Creative Mom Turns Her Baby’s Naptime into Dream Adventures”: Queenie Liao likes to take fairytale-inspired photos of her son, Wengenn, while he sleeps. She calls the series “Wengenn in Wonderland.” A book of these photos was published last year in Taiwan, and an English edition is in the works. Visit Queenie’s website at wengenninwonderland.com.
“A Pastor’s Reflections: Public Prayers” by VFT: “This may come as a surprise but one of my least favorite things to do as a pastor is offer public prayer. . . .” Very interesting post on how public prayers differ from private ones and how pastors can prepare for giving them. I share this pastor’s hesitance to pray publicly, and I feel that his three tips can be adapted to my situation as a layperson who is sometimes called upon to offer verbal prayers on behalf of a group of people gathering for dinner, Bible study, or some other event.
“Family hosts 200 homeless people for dinner after daughter’s wedding gets called off” by Mia Fitzharris: When life hands you lemons . . .
“Can You Define the Relationship?” by Owen Strachen: “We are living in strange times — specifically, in the age of the abortion contracts, wedleases, and throuples. . . .” Strachen comments on three modern-day relationship practices that debase the institution of marriage. I had not heard of the first two, but sadly, I am not surprised.
Noah trailer now released: This $125 million epic film starring Russell Crowe is scheduled to open in theaters in March. I’ll be interested to see how director-screenwriter Darren Aronofsky interprets the story. The fact that in the trailer Noah says he is building a vessel “to hold the innocent” already makes me skeptical of its theological message. But it definitely looks worth seeing, and it can be a good conversation starter with friends.
Found at honcho-sfx.com.
This is what the LORD says to the house of Israel: “. . . You who turn justice into bitterness and cast righteousness to the ground. . . . You trample on the poor and force him to give you grain. . . . You oppress the righteous and take bribes and deprive the poor of justice in the courts. . . . I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5)
P. Solomon Raj, Thirst for Justice, 2001. Batik, 225 x 150 cm.
This over-seven-foot-tall batik (dyed cloth artwork for hanging), called Thirst for Justice, was commissioned in 2001 by Bread for the World, an organization that seeks to end world hunger.
The artist, Solomon Raj, set the focal point at the center, at the man in white. This man—a prophet, maybe Amos—points to a flaming wheel, which represents God’s coming judgment on all those who fail to uphold social justice on the earth, who continue to oppress society’s most vulnerable people. With each turn of the wheel, his righteous anger burns. As God has said, “Cursed be anyone who withholds the justice due to the immigrant, the fatherless, and the widow” (Deuteronomy 27:19), and to those who ignore the plight of the hungry, naked, sick, and imprisoned, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). Continue reading
Found at ebay.com.
I highly recommend the book Visual Theology: Forming and Transforming the Community through the Arts. Click here to read my review, and see below for chapter summaries.
VISUAL THEOLOGY AND THE TRADITIONAL
1. “Art’s Last Icon: Malevich’s Black Square Revisited” by Charles Pickstone
Pickstone sees Kazimir Malevich’s oil painting Black Square (ca. 1923-30) as expressive of the apophatic tradition of spirituality, which finds God in silence, in darkness, in absence of speech. Using the Russian icon tradition as his discussion framework, Pickstone examines the topics of power, presence, and democracy as they relate to the image.
2. “‘Living on the Outside of Your Skin’: Gustav Klimt and Tina Blondell Show Us Judith” by Sarah Henrich
Here Henrich contrasts two portraits of the same subject: the apocryphal Judith, an Israelite widow who, through courage and cunning, decapitates the Assyrian general Holofernes and so saves her people. Whereas Klimt’s painting depicts Judith as a femme fatale—exotic, erotic, and deadly—Blondell depicts her as an angel “fallen into reality, scarred by her experience of tension and grief and able to challenge viewers, male and female, to see her as she is” (26). The paintings’ disparate meanings derive in part, says Henrich, from the artists’ different uses of nakedness and ornamentation.
3. “Wholly Porcelain: Mimesis and Meaning in the Sculpture of Ginger Henry Geyer” by Deborah Sokolove
Ginger Henry Geyer, Holy Roller, 2000. Adaptation of Giotto’s Pentecost from Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. Glazed porcelain with platinum, 2.3 x 10.5 x 17.2 in.
Geyer’s art juxtaposes, often humorously, the ordinary stuff of daily life (toys, kitchen utensils, bedding, etc.) with reproductions of religious works of art from earlier periods of history. For example, her Holy Roller is a glazed porcelain paint tray with a roller that is either picking up an entire scene out of the tray or spreading it down there. By drawing on religious symbols in this nontraditional way, she challenges viewers to consider the relationship between everyday life and the life of faith. Other works discussed in this essay are Cookie Cutter Christ and Faith and Reason Sleeping Together. Continue reading
When most Christians think “theology,” they think the study of God as expressed in words—in either verbal or written forms. Theology is communicated through sermons, catechisms, creeds, dialogue, books, and articles, this we know. But few Christians have considered that theology can also be conveyed through visual art—through paint, wood, stone, cloth, ceramics, and other materials. This is the conviction that’s posed and exemplified in Visual Theology: Forming and Transforming the Community through the Arts, edited by Robin M. Jensen and Kimberly J. Vrudny (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009).
I was unable to confirm whether Edward Shillito (1872-1948) was actually a soldier during World War I or only writing from the perspective of one. In any case, he lived during the horrors of the Great War and published this poem in its wake, in 1919.
“Jesus of the Scars” by Edward Shillito
If we have never sought, we seek Thee now;
Thine eyes burn through the dark, our only stars;
We must have sight of thorn-pricks on Thy brow,
We must have Thee, O Jesus of the Scars. Continue reading
The Jesus Question 