Boston has seen quite a bit of snow this winter. My husband and I marvel at how the snowflakes here, more often than not, are actually star-shaped, like you see in cartoons or on elementary-school art walls. Here’s a photo he took last month on our back porch.
Photo © Eric James Jones, taken February 3, 2013.
Isn’t our God an awesome craftsman? Every snowfall is an occasion for us to give him praise.
“To a Snowflake” by Francis Thompson
What heart could have thought you?—
Past our devisal
(O filigree petal!)
Fashioned so purely,
Fragilely, surely,
From what Paradisal
Imagineless metal,
Too costly for cost?
Who hammered you, wrought you,
From argentine vapor?—
“God was my shaper.
Passing surmisal,
He hammered, He wrought me,
From curled silver vapor,
To lust of His mind—
Thou could’st not have thought me!
So purely, so palely,
Tinily, surely,
Mightily, frailly,
Insculped and embossed,
With His hammer of wind,
And His graver of frost.”
This is part 4 of a series on Christian art of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Read part 1 here.
“The Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in his wings.”—Malachi 4:2a
Don Froese (traditional name: PeqYexwela) belongs to the Seabird Island Band of Stó:lō Nation, a Coast Salish people group living along the Fraser River in Agassiz, British Columbia. Raised by Christian parents and trained by master carvers, Froese has been at his art for twenty-five years.
Carved and painted design on red cedar panel by Don Froese, 10 x 10 ft. Completed 2008.
The carving above was commissioned by Wiconi International for the seventh World Christian Gathering of Indigenous Peoples, held in Jerusalem in September 2008. The purpose of the gathering, according to Wiconi.com, was to “celebrate that we can be authentically Christian (followers of Jesus) and authentically Indigenous (who God made us).”
Using the visual language of his people, Froese depicts the crucifixion of Christ. It’s a picture of a love that suffers long, spills out, and uplifts, that carries us through life and into eternity. The carving shows, paradoxically, how a moment of supreme darkness in the history of the world was also a moment of supreme light.
Jesus is depicted as a sun—a wordplay on his role as “Son.” The sun-face is a traditional motif in Northwest Coast art, and here it evokes Jesus’s self-declaration from John 8:12: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” And maybe less familiarly the Messianic prophecy of Malachi quoted above. Continue reading
This is part 3 of a series on Christian art of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Read part 1 here.
“In the absence of a written language, the Indians of the Northwest had preserved their stories and events carved from cedar logs. They were the nearest thing people had to books. The characters on a totem pole provide an outline so that, after hearing the story, listeners can read the pole for themselves.”
—David K. Fison (quoted in an article by Mike Dubose, United Methodist Communications, November 13, 2000)
The greatest story ever told . . . now available in totem pole.
In 1965, near the end of his tenure as pastor of First United Methodist Church of Ketchikan, Alaska, the Rev. David K. Fison was asked to serve as an interim pastor in the nearby Tsimshian village of Metlakatla. (The Christian community there has been longstanding; the village was founded in 1887 by missionary William Duncan and a large group of Tsimshian converts who followed him there from “Old” Metlakatla, British Columbia.)
While in Metlakatla, Fison fell in love with the Tsimshian people and their culture. He was especially interested in their use of totem poles to tell stories and to commemorate important events. But he noticed a void: among all the magnificent poles they had erected, where were the ones that told the story of their encounter with Christ?
In Western culture, a visual language for telling the Jesus story has long been established. The word “nativity” instantly generates a standard image in the Western mind—a baby in a manger inside a barn, surrounded by an adoring Mary and Joseph, shepherds, three kings, angels, and a smattering of domesticated animals. The words “crucifixion” and “resurrection” likewise carry automatic visual associations. That’s because these events from the life of Christ have been the subject of much of the corpus of Western art since the Middle Ages. But the Tsimshian had no such precedent to follow. Their artistic tradition consists mainly of highly stylized and compressed depictions of humans, birds, fish, and mammals, stacked on top of or within one another. How might they go about rendering the gospel story in their own visual language?
After leaving his post in Metlakatla, Fison spent years studying Tsimshian culture at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. He decided to translate the gospel into a visual format that the Tsimshian could identify with. He wanted them to know that Jesus’s birth, life, death, and resurrection were historical events that could be part of their tribal history if they wanted to claim them.
The Christmas Totem Pole
Found at cafepress.com.
This is part 2 of a series on Christian art of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Read part 1 here.
Stanley Peters, Totem Cross, 1975. Poplar carving, 9.5 x 6.5 ft. Photo: Thomas E. Moore. Source: Jaroslav Pelikan, The Illustrated Jesus through the Centuries (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997).
In 1975 the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned twenty artists from across Canada, eight of whom were First Nations artists, to create works that would convey the Christian message. (See a sampling here.) Stanley Peters of Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, an Athapaskan of Tlingit origin, chose to represent Christ on the cross—as a Thunderbird.
In Northwest Coast culture, Thunderbird is known as a strong and powerful protector and the personification of “chief.” A messenger of the Great Spirit, he shoots thunder from his wings and lightning from his eyes. He rules majestically from the mountaintops, keeping watch over all.
This association appropriately evokes the triumph of the cross. Christ-as-Thunderbird extends his wings as a statement of power. He is the Messiah, come to establish kingdom rule on earth. He came with fearsome words against sin and hypocrisy but also offering care and protection to those who place themselves under it.
Peters wrote the following description of his work:
God’s eyes [represented by the black ovoids] watch from the four directions, from above and below, from both wings, saying that God is all around us at all times. All races, black and yellow, red and white, are represented in the four colours taken from nature and found in the earth-circle [on the vertical beam] and all over Thunderbird. Christ-as-Thunderbird, in dying for us, restores happiness and understanding; he fills us with new dignity and great richness.
The figure on Thunderbird’s chest appears to be that of a man—probably another evocation of Christ himself, as his arms are outstretched in the cruciform position, and his face expresses pain. It’s quite common for Northwest Coast artists to depict one figure inside another, a reminder of the interconnectedness of all life.
Thunderbird can be identified in Northwest Coast art by the curled appendages on the top of his head and his sharply curved upper beak, which is similar to that of Hawk’s. He is almost always depicted with his wings outstretched, and sometimes with his claws in the back of a whale, an animal he is fond of eating.
A smaller-scaled replica of Peters’s Totem Cross is on display at the Musée des religions du monde in Quebec.
Read part 3.
This is part 1 of a series on Christian art of the Pacific Northwest Coast.
In an address given at Martyrs’ Shrine in Huronia, Ontario, on September 15, 1984, Pope John Paul II said that “not only is Christianity relevant to the Indian peoples, but Christ, in the members of his body, is himself Indian.” This series is a celebration of the divine image-bearing First Nations peoples of coastal British Columbia, Alaska, Washington, and Oregon, and their art. Due to the nature of my blog, I have selected a handful of contemporary carvings and prints done in the traditional style that represent Jesus and/or his work. Each piece communicates powerfully who Jesus is in the eyes of its artist and is a reminder that even though historically God embodied himself in Jewish culture, his Spirit has taken residence in cultures all around the world.
Tribes and clans
First let me acquaint you with some of the names you’ll encounter. Within the Northwest Coast area, anthropologists have classified local groups into six large units speaking related languages: the Haida, Tsimshian, Kwakwakw’wakw (formerly Kwakuitl), Nuu-chah-nulth (formerly Nootka), Nuxalk (formerly Bella Coola), and Coast Salish. (Sometimes the latter two are combined under the name “Salishan,” and the first two are combined along with Tlingit and called the “Northern cultures.”) Within each of these broad classifications, however, are many distinct tribes that have formed their own nations with their own social structures and traditions, and within each tribe there are two or more clans (some of the most common are the Raven, Eagle, Bear, Killer Whale, and Wolf clans), based on descent from a common (nonhuman) ancestor. Clan crests are what make up much of Northwest Coast art.
For a more detailed map and pronunciation guide of First Nations peoples in the Northwest Coast area, visit the British Columbian government website.
Totem poles
The Northwest Coast is the region where totem poles originated. Made of red cedar and sometimes painted, sometimes not, totem poles were carved to commemorate a family clan by recounting its history, qualities, privileges, and beliefs. Most commonly they tell of a clan’s mythological beginnings or of some legendary event from the clan’s past. Continue reading
Found at zazzle.com.
Here’s a six-minute video by Jarrod McKenna on why prayer is important, and what the Lord’s Prayer means to him.
Excerpts:
“Often we talk about inviting Jesus into your heart. . . . But prayer is in fact Jesus’s invitation into God’s heart for the whole world.”
“Prayer is about learning to be present to the presence of God that is breaking into this moment.”
Calvary as a picture of a fire that burns but does not destroy, the antitype of the burning bush in Exodus.
The Jesus Question 