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Ryan Pendell's work, Happiness is God, restructures biblical text into a powerful response to the theme of "destruction" and Lamentations 3:1-18.
Lamentations 3:1-18
Happiness is God
By
Ryan Pendell
Credits:
Artist Location: Omaha, Nebraska
Curated by:
Self-submitted
2014
Film, poetry
Primary Scripture
I am the man who has seen affliction
by the rod of his wrath.
He has led me and caused me to walk in darkness,
and not in light.
Surely he turns his hand against me
again and again all day long.
He has made my flesh and my skin old.
He has broken my bones.
He has built against me,
and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship.
He has made me dwell in dark places,
as those who have been long dead.
He has walled me about, so that I can’t go out.
He has made my chain heavy.
Yes, when I cry, and call for help,
he shuts out my prayer.
He has walled up my ways with cut stone.
He has made my paths crooked.
He is to me as a bear lying in wait,
as a lion in secret places.
He has turned away my ways,
and pulled me in pieces.
He has made me desolate.
He has bent his bow,
and set me as a mark for the arrow.
He has caused the shafts of his quiver to enter into my kidneys.
I have become a derision to all my people,
and their song all day long.
He has filled me with bitterness.
He has stuffed me with wormwood.
He has also broken my teeth with gravel.
He has covered me with ashes.
You have removed my soul far away from peace.
I forgot prosperity.
I said, “My strength has perished,
along with my expectation from Yahweh.”
Lamentations 3:1-18
Share This Art:
My theme is destruction. I selected a passage from Lamentations, in which the author weeps for the ruin of Jerusalem–yet with some hope (or at least faithfulness). I took the text and destroyed it. I cut it up into pieces. Then I tried to figure out what could come out of it. The poem exists in a liminal space; it hardly exists at all. I think of the Biblical text as a kind of environment that this text lives in, like an animal, an ecological niche, an endangered species. Like a lion alone.
Spark Notes
The Artist's Reflection
Ryan Pendell received in his MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009. His poetry has appeared in literary journals nationwide. He is the managing editor of Silicon Prairie News and was an editor for the Sundance Film Festival in 2014. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska.
Ryan Pendell
About the Artist
Ryan Pendell
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