Loading Video . . . Beginning with Joel 1 and then expanding to the entire book, poet GC Waldrep explores the divine act of artistically creating while addressing the book's warnings of destruction in this stunning long poem. Joel 1:1-20 COMMENTARY ON JOEL By GC Waldrep Credits: Curated by: John Estes 2017 Poetry Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link I suspect that for the believing artist the question of where, how, when, and to what extent one engages Scripture is always thorny—especially when the grounds of engagement shift from belief itself (belief qua belief) to art, even when art feels essential to the believing artist’s fundamental sense of vocation. When Spark and Echo contacted me, I had already been thinking about a believing (or belief-driven) art as an exercise in parascription, a writing-around the Word. (I’d lately been co-teaching an interdisciplinary class on art practice, theory, and criticism focused on Dada, Surrealism, and Fluxus; it was Jackson Mac Low that provoked me parascriptively.) In the case of Joel, there’s the added question of how one writes parascriptively around prophecy, around prophetic space. If one approaches prophecy as constantly and simultaneously both fulfilled and yet-to- be-fulfilled, then this space, this prophetic space, is an active, quickening zone. I think think this is especially true for the Hebrew prophets as acknowledged by the Christian perspective, their ministry both fulfilled (in the Person of Christ) and ongoing, as texts that reside and reverberate from and within the Word. It’s easy to imagine Joel, for all his apocalyptic fervency, as a poet’s prophet, not so much for his images (although Joel deploys some fine images) as for his associational panache, which various Biblical commentators assure me has few contemporary parallels. The invasion of locusts is either prefatory to or like an invasion of flame (or drought), which in turn gives way (literally or figuratively) to an invading army. Locusts, flame, and armed invaders flicker, merge, fade back into the tightly-woven fabric of Joel’s verses. Similarly, the three valleys in the latter part of Joel function both literally and metaphorically, their aspects exchanging and imbricating. The structure of the book of Joel is associative, a nuanced equation moving organically into the unknowable. Various terms of that equation would have been very familiar to Jewish readers, but not the motion, the charged manner in which those terms were convoked, written-through. As for my parascription, my writing-around, I worked initially in a constrained, rule-governed compositional space, moving through the text and also through four extensive commentaries (two ancient, two modern). That exercise in constraints gave way to the level of autobiography, the “locust”-ridden summers of my Southern childhood (actually cicadas) as well as my work as a young man in a maximum-security prison in North Carolina. My sense was of a gathering in the margins of the Word, an accretion—and then a paring-away. I kept in mind the ancient and sacramental dictum (found in the Philokalia, among other sites) that God cannot be understood, only participated in. Thus, the poem, the artifact as an act not only of circumference, of writing- (or reading-) around, but also of ecstatic participation. Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection G.C. Waldrep ’s most recent books are a long poem, Testament (BOA Editions, 2015), and a chapbook, Susquehanna (Omnidawn, 2013). With Joshua Corey he edited The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral (Ahsahta, 2012). His new collection, feast gently, is due out from Tupelo Press in 2018. Waldrep’s work has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, APR, New England Review, New American Writing, Harper’s, Tin House, Verse, and many other journals in the USA and abroad, as well as in Best American Poetry 2010 and the 2nd edition of Norton’s Postmodern American Poetry . He has received prizes from the Poetry Society of America and the Academy of American Poets as well as the Colorado Prize, the Dorset Prize, the Campbell Corner Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, a Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative American Writing, and a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature. Waldrep lives in Lewisburg, Pa., where he teaches at Bucknell University, edits the journal West Branch , and serves as Editor-at-Large for The Kenyon Review . Website GC Waldrep About the Artist GC Waldrep Other Works By Related Information View More Art Make More Art And then their gifts looked up, in the shadow of the stranger. I beggared myself at the treasuries of wind. View Full Written Work COMMENTARY ON JOEL G.C. Waldrep And then their gifts looked up, in the shadow of the stranger. I beggared myself at the treasuries of wind. The figs drew in their faces, they pawed the ground. Pears, plucked, stewed in their stone cells. I gathered them from the asphalt’s heavy apron, first at the edge of the mountain, then deep in a midwestern plain. They wore brutal voices in their thighs. We moved further into the orchard, its radiant sleep upon the tilth’s luminous anvil. Radio waves in the galvanized sheds, arrows stored in some persecuted heat. Summon the oaths from their velvet warrens—friend, you recognize this turbid amplitude, abundance’s nodal chain. It was dark inside the body, and the body’s body. The children bareheaded stumbling in single file towards the gap, their tongues like crowns to which the constellations kneel. I did not call to them, speak to them. The war was almost over—we measured dry proofs against our own organs, laid out for just this purpose on exhaustion’s tepid sheen. Acres and acres of prison lighting absorbing the night, contracting the web of low roads by which the dead are loved. I felt the creek’s clean breath against the comet’s shoulder, yeast in my eyes, yeast in my ears, in the pits of my beard. Speak, father, Master, rhythmic bread all time plows under. In my dream dark swallows with blazing teeth chewed right through the letter I’d received. We buried the church in our sojourn; each sculpted his neighbor from wax, disgust, and tears. I had six brothers or I had none, picking my way carefully through the scarlet ranks. I believed in pollen, bones, the twilight valence of the fugue and its dispossessors. We were far away from any village and thirsty, the kingdom shrunk to a single gate, a half-drunk well, one grain lodged in the heart’s torn cloak. And their gifts looked up, the song went. The fruit close to my mouth, enough darkness to garrison any outside world. Little lame empty creatures, imagine another, bolder Christ: go earthless, let speech lay its ancient edge. 1:1 A hymn veins the forest; the hand wears the body like a living suit. The body’s milk spoke as a single voice, a beautiful moon the blood dreams. To wake (the burning animals of the body, the mercy machines). Mercy’s small blue coal disperses. A shadow-embassy, a sleeping lamp—spoken- to , day’s scab, gently burning. 1:2 Hear this, old men (for I am old now, I have dispersed both my javelin and my crown): The steps of fire, leading to the ring of fire. Mercy’s long, unwritten vowel even the forest stretches its green candle towards. 1:3 My face slept. The path of lust, its lipless dualism. Write in the scar’s clear margin, pariah: probe silence’s feast. 1:4 And thus looked back, the breast neither blame nor garment, a perfect salt. Now in the body-dark winter’s decibel hones its bone-knife.> “If a soul were seen as being subject to fire” was my misreading (of St. Cyril of Alexandria), also “dire and intolerable damage,” “insatiable teeth.” Captivities, antigens. Towards God, a single language breaks (the bleak touch of the dead). —Meanwhile we name the animals. This is what the strangers were singing: Inside its blue house, day came burning. 1:5 Neither history nor memory, our bodies reckon blood’s many soul-names, its tine-debt,its perfect blindness. My heart’s winter-palace, snug brother-skin. Wachet auf , the nation’s touch, its emerald question tumbling in the eddy. 1:6 Day-sickle’s tooth season, a white feast. The key of wine, “strong and beyond counting” (see: Green grow the rushes, O). Something blind beneath music’s porcelain law. Considered saints, the living—like peace, grief’s anthem set among stones. 1:7 Beneath mercy, something small and perfect, a flesh or dust. Speak, moon, my brother-within-faith. Children stroked the night’s last honey, within winter’s sweet glands. And yet within war’s bloody Baedeker, grief is always winter’s glass. Strip the fig tree drawn from the black well of war. Mercy’s mind, cold at the edge of Christ. 1:8 “The vintage songs” (Cyril again). Can you teach them to me, can anyone teach them, sorrow’s flushed regime, its bloody tithe. Bride-eye, bride-caught. Sweet noon, the last wars burr this temple’s silence, the discarded husks of constellations. 1:9 Thus, the abolition of sacrifices. View nothing, and the night, thus worshiped, wakes you like a bell. Bread traces its parallax around the image, its blown altars. Enthrone the stones of mourning, which do not know our names. (Once again, we teach them, or try to. Watch us trying to teach the stones our pretty names.) 1:10 In my dream the ovens for the baking of bread were built as mazes. Inside them, birth after birth.... The eye’s scent, discrete, independent of the body. 1:11 The eyes, steeped in language, asked for a perfect church, were offered the body (again) (of course). The very texture of the skin changes as one approaches (nipples, lips). Meat-house, meat-mansion: a good year among those robust silences. 1:12 It’s midnight: Let’s name again, let’s sing the marking song. All together, now? Don’t mind the translations— The heart’s bathed limb, annealed by the clay gate. The pilot’s breath, taken deep through a clear flame, become its own dark fleece. Speak ash, speak garment, speak pinkening desert. Every word made grain. 1:13 Theodore of Mopsuestia observes “the very beginning of his words is a threat.” And yet: here we may pause and think about what we place upon the body, our bodies, any body. The forest making something slowly deaf. The wind’s great door, even hunger, a vagrant lobe (began first to preach its living word). Or: the body’s broken prayer, prayer’s discarded gate, another flesh strung with sleep—its guest-song. Inside night, day clothes the blue wind, the yellow thorn, all of it. Handsome root of the pomegranate. The eye, dead and cold among those green hungers. 1:14 The unavailable ordinances whisper among themselves. They seem troubled. They keep touching their pale wrists, their heavy jurists’ robes. Everybody’s here, the nurses from their weathered cottage, death’s blue map and sine-garment. Something is shifting slowly yet in the tortured ground. The corn’s beautiful tongue sleeps away the hewn night, its ivory amplitudes. 1:15 Write “temple” (or: the writing temple). Sweet little animals hands beneath the photograph, a scrap of winter grass. Bread-psalms, bread-psalms. Memory asked its sweet gun, What will we place in our wine vats, our granaries, our storehouses now? 1:16 What is authentic the wind breaks, across its broad thigh. People ask: why must the war be beautiful? Father, don this broken church. 1:17 Smallest forest among the animals, friend hunger once again in the goldbitten light. Hunger’s eye, heart-passage. My heart’s breath wandered, lame, in the desert. Seeds shrivel beneath their clods, or else their shovels, every husbandry to its own mute tent, oxen stamp in their enclosures, beasts of burden rot in their own dung. Honey-fruit of the eye, withdrawn. Nothing will bring to blossom the wound’s mute leaven. Salt shimmers like glass in the air, death’s sapling deep in the body. So film the corn as it withers, its bread-shadow, the city’s black pavane or tangent. Little blindbody, set the thorn-water in the smallest field. Alive, alive-O. 1:18 On the perplexity of the animals: Depending on the rescension the cattle weep, or the sheep weep. —Always, either way, weeping beasts. Naked country, word-shadow behind the incision-hut, the broad red seed of village life. Now another chalk town, feast of blue wounds, strung gourds, the desert’s taut and perfect throat. The problem of the desert in winter. The problem of drowning, how it is, how can it be that some drown, in night’s war-glass. Late into the night I studied the grafting of figs, the number of horses and their errands, the distinction between scythe and scroll. —Always, either way, weeping beasts. 1:19 First-flame. A glass expanse, its long turquoise border placed against the prophecy’s bleak day-heart. It’s true, I’ve always lived in the burning orchard. But the dense bone of the heart’s red winter must lily. A lily-dream on the burning sea. The bone of the heart, what we habitually call the heart, knows nothing of the empty hives of love, that God-hum (in winter’s lead machine). The dense bone of day made breath (inside death’s dissuasive limit). A pitted honey— 1:20 Now the animals reparate their Word, no longer final (tempered in its falling-guise). The pastures of the wilderness, the beauties, the charming things, the pastures of the range (as some would have it)—fire is faith’s special friend, its third arm, its crutch. Somewhat later, Jonah will cattle even the cattle to repentance. 2:1 Night’s saline weft. We let the trumpet vine take the stump on which the mailbox was mounted, then the mailbox itself, orange throats studding the clump like snakes on some Medusa’s head around which every insect seemed to buzz, fixed, intoxicated (“intoxicated children,” Cyril of Alexandria suggests). The density of cicadas calling in the darkness enveloped us in a slow wound, as if night’s green skin were some planet sleeping. Cicadas are not locusts, are in fact taxonomically unrelated, but they do look the part. Every winter ghost is blind, yes, but this was summer’s phantom, a ghost’s ghost, something to touch-through, faith’s green throne with its orange heralds, their music sifting towards and into the nerve-church again and again. A little beautiful water (called the tongue), a catchment, a basin: cool little hand, perfect like the blond vestment Christ bears His feast inside. I pulled it tighter around my shoulders, thighs. Music offered love’s almost-grammar, a pleasant bread we carried in the mouth. Its cache of honey handed wine another death. Eventually the postal service refused to deliver our mail. Music’s ancient visage, the beautiful surface of the soul (another wound, yes) in the baptismal acre. We chorused: Build a little garment-shadow / from the marriage song, wake its water. Because even the unseen grain almost has a title now, a church, a debt, a prayer. In June, the storm’s heavy touch, a bit of night waiting just inside the glass. Oxygen’s spastic ash, its pilgrim-mouth. Speak body, pale wine-forest of the hidden bride. 2:2 Thus begins the catalogue of resemblances. (Everything now is winter amid my song, even love’s humid dreamway across which my people row at night.) What destroys: the honey-factions, each borne on its creche of rust. Say, like dawn spread out against green hills; a living debt endowed in faith fumbles the Christ-latch (my fingers, soiled with breath and rest). Say: light’s passage, almost a new tongue. Speak the feast, o beautiful bone machine spread against the hills like dawn. Like dawn, return unto me, famished, crusting reef of your long step at dusk, or any darker tune. I will release you into the wound the forest made, its fleshy gate. 2:3 Neither fire nor body, touch’s savant jab, the surface of the soul waiting, a censure in the twilight. Smell the animals sleeping (when faced with war). Like every partisan, man knows fire’s mineral heart. What I’m talking about is something else,the darkness behind fire, its fragrant blood-vault. Eden’s warm forest recumbent and lithe within every schism, every palace. A day-tongue cast towards level ground, every pilgrim within the self names what is beautiful, verb or church. Neither night nor sky, like all bodies so beautiful when the war touches them. 2:4 What destroys us: is like horses, bears the heads of horses, is like horsemen, no, resembles horses fitted for war. What destroys us: moves swiftly, sharpened like an ark. Go, photograph the soul’s empty Christ. 2:5a Not like chariots but like the sound of chariots, at the summits of the mountains, music’s terraced debt and archived brow. Let’s say even a nest among the snow’s indrawn breath. Listen for its blood-tide, its milk-tide. I climbed to where you showed me lilies rustling, in the shadow of old snow. Gently, the bone-machines ruck the blood. (God knows every sky.) 2:5b Not like the sound of chariots but like the hiss of fire, faith’s eye-stub, the eyes caught burning in prayer’s lavish net. The field-smell comes at night, as memory. Take the honey-rind of war, everything dusk smears. A wedding-whisper, debt’s burning mote. Little eye, close to the burning hum or living feast, the feast made passage (anent my sleeping thought). What’s more, the heart’s clean lambs worship ash. Salt-kirk or day-bone, listen: even a blue mercy knows this castaway world. 2:5c Winter-elm, winter-breath, winter’s water: pale soul-beasts, their cloth hands at large among the assembly, glass fabric dense with the elm’s excision, the chestnut, the ash. 2:6 The oldest hive scrapes a little flesh from the heart, or the heart’s surrogate: is heard as mere beast among the blackened monuments. In the field around the tongue, Christ’s garment-song. Cleanse one’s house of every midnight plasma. Self’s onyx scaffold, mitigating the watch. The animals never make God their bride. 2:7 Or, like athletes, the white houses dream in medieval time, cruelty’s scarred city. 2:8 At home among the officers, the scar all but stilled by the dead’s glass touch. Fire in music’s compound eye, a visible god cast like prey against the forest, that distal liturgy. Perhaps the eye parts in the heaven of animals, a great silence whither every shadow lay glistening, the flames’ brined felon, flesh-friend to God. I’m sorry, I’ll demonstrate the trick again: we are unmaimed. The forest’s heavy children watch. 2:9 Or perhaps the body lies deep enough, after all: a bright leaven, song’s medieval guide or gaud. (I say music but I mean theft. Just think how much things tell, from their circle inside the fire. Someone gathers empty fruit, city prayers: to have and to hold. ) The windows, though: they touch hunger’s eye, the clean wolf-eye of this vagrant world. In the little bell-clearing of the body, reach out, carefully touch the eye of God (like a sparrow waiting). Sing your wolf-hymn to the eye of God through the lips of devastation’s fist, hand’s smallest antiphon—its ancient edge, ridged and teething. 2:10 Let’s call it a lamp, the door’s tiny brother. Milk’s new town, always the greater light—rhythms of siege and shelter. 2:11 The locusts have no king, suspended like souls queued beneath unyielding glass. (The dead make sense as animals, perhaps—memory’s half-thawed grove, its copse of pollards, waiting. Tooth, friend, I call upon the forest’s million broken eyes.) 2:12 You go to work in the factory, and then the factory goes to work in you. The sheriff draws his circle of praise round about your lesioned feet, in yellow paint. Thus your pitiless ancestors seared the Earth around that cool spring— 2:13 and REND your heart, which like a garden shimmers in prophecy’s crude wavelength. You, hive-tongue, gate of flesh. Dream now, come touch death’s white sea. You can almost hear time among the beasts, these stones. Insect time, apparel time. (Jabès: “In the desert, fire is a mockery.”) Invisible season of the wayfeast: now . 2:14 Forsaken, this patch of earth in day’s quilt. My observance, pillaged by flame, taught me fever’s gospel. As for pageantry, a bit for psaltery and shawm: In the field I found a book. It was covered in blood. In the field I found a star. It, too, was covered in blood. I gathered both in my apron and took them home, to wash them— How they screamed. The question I asked, again and again: what sort of music did lepers make? for themselves? or for others? If we knew this, would love still be possible? —What is the ferryman’s citizenship, is what I thought I heard you ask. My mistake. 2:15 Free lily, free radical, free märchen , free church—echo’s flagrant priest. A hungry octave charts faith’s russet tone. The mowers turn from their labor, left destitute among strange languages; they see straight through the animals’ long days, their libraries of pain. Inside the forest-made wound, the green breath of the world— You can hear it, the shofar’s clean and makeshift perigee, hapax legomenon. An ark, a nest, an eyelash’s delicate camber between you and all that lightning. 2:16 Parliament of nurses, the city’s clear motion-banquet, any flesh will do. I smote a milk in its orphan fleece, that you carry. Schism decrees, loudly, starve the tent . 2:17 In which the priests of the past salute the priests of the stranger across dust’s copper shore. In which, without music, the body makes hair, mostly. Rather gather day in the dead’s soft hands. Because one may make a body without music, one may set the stones closely, carefully (and call that weeping ). Or, the hand’s lame animal takes sole possession, almost visible. Take heaven, left back among its glittering primes. (As for gossip: the eye’s mercury, lame mammal in day’s mouth. Work the prey as cladding, cloak, zeal, something the heart let back in amidst the city’s silent reign.) I lift the myth from its yellow plate and set it back down again. There is no sense in treating the alphabet as a trembling in the forest. In darkness, your green mouth shaping the right name when I turn. 2:18 Punctual, this revolution. (And the nurses in fear of [ wolves ] [ wasps ] [ leviathan ] fold the washed bandages, replace them gently on night’s shelf.) 2:19 The dead, long since manifest, make their orchid-ways inside the flesh. Children nestled outside the heart may lift their heads, may seek the palace prayerfully glistening among thorns. Now , little city, cast and gather—cast and gather what ye will. 2:20 The great dark chancel of the body’s bell (orchid of the invisible) laves its Galilee. Day’s blind odor, left lame in the blood-ark, less darkness than a voice (a ghost, a theft, a pressure). —What does it preach, Master? 2:21 The first address is to the land, and it goes like this: want carefully, and fear not. (A pentatonic scale.) The world’s flesh-course, acute possession waiting in the still eye of the muscle, a god (like a god, waiting)—its plangent folds. Myth asked the world for its organs, two ancient wars by the great granite sea. Go, Master, quietly outside the body. This page bears where night crept, breathing. 2:22 The second address is to the beasts, not all of them but those “of the field” with their vested interests, their broken, tiny sacraments, what never a tongue nor house might heal. Ho, beasts of the field! The world bears its difficult eye, which you may now drink. Drink the eyes, yes, before the great milk sea and all its most tender prosthetics— the cold tongue’s Christ-tenement, sleeping music’s master-green. 2:23 The third address: to the children: say it slowly, bring the gift to bear: the instruction, NOW, MAKE A TOWN. The silence behind every page, a worship-well. Really, just try: be God’s prelate grove, always a bright silence in the mouth. The former rain, the master teacher, God bears within His body (or almost, so the animals aver and affirm). Yet cast not away the dawn glade’s piping music, nor turn every breath towards fire, sleeping. Men learn almost nothing through time, the skin’s single lymph, that worships day. —Hence, a new town. Tell us new things, the smallest distance friendship measures. Go on, try. I dare you. I’m watching. I hold the bow in my hands. 2:24 Every great waiting’s last call and rhythmic cast (set fast into touch, a blind dart). First gather every orchid, read the testament. First the chapel, first the axe. First gather something blind, then further along, the beautiful city (like a flesh) opens. 2:25 At the point God turns and, heard (the things man proves impossible!), stows His blue breath: another finite point, neither gash nor gland. God’s silent prey, clearing the blind from the presence of some other god(s). Pray away, as the dead gloss the field, part skin, part knowledge. 2:26 Taste the lily’s broth. Taste the breath-sine. Taste the black bread of the poem’s city-heat. Savor winter’s mouth-speech, its smallest sea. Taste this winter-Christ, the church clothed in exile. Taste warmth’s green mercy, upon which the children sprawl. We think they’re sleeping. We hope they’re sleeping. Taste the waiting fruit, make the green tooth suckle. and yes, the small room once appointed for the lepers: take me there, (silence’s) true and perfect stent, inside its prone mammal. O taste and see, little glass church of the blind eye, heat-bearing, fur-bearing, little glass town. Empty light within this new little town. Empty light within new glass, as if sleeping. 2:27 The eyelash: not ashamed. The master-body: not ashamed. Time’s eye knows everything like all prostheses, cast around worship. Day’s million hands bind the sea. 2:28 First, touch the past’s page, its lucid well. Then, empty the past. First, call the church together, I mean from within man. Two bodies well-met asked the world: who bears the animals’ scapula? What is surfacelessness? To whom have I cleaved? 2:29 Friends, this is important. God presses forward: towards time, light, music. I am merely your brother-lamp, creaturely in every aspect. But: we can be visited. Sleeping perhaps outside our first door the cold eye’s miles and miles of nought. Night’s gum bears silence’s cast, whither shall we nurse? Imagine the space around a child’s discarded kite, mollusc in the rubble. Next, imagine what the dark might bear, if the dark could carry. Then, imagine the dark. Everyone circle, watch, imagine, turn. The hand’s small eye-tent, its plasmic skin. The hand, tuned to prey’s zeal, glistening (outside, among prey’s silent fires). Healing : part stone, part invisible touch. 2:30 A brief catalogue of wonders: everything music bodies forth, part flesh, part orchid, part God. Beryl. Heaven’s empty fruit, that science sucks. Things bent outside the making world, for instance the two great margins passing across time. Prey’s possession, like all small debts visible in any green thought. ( Omit Mutter Museum, Fractal Museum, National Children’s Museum of Exploding Toys. Omit wild horses.) The tongue’s lamp, anatomically correct. Smallest night creatures, around which myths clothe and muster. All matter. War’s bright, greasy trumpet. Any desert my brother bears, in lieu of a church. 2:31 That sound—locusts? Tongues of fire? A dew in the high places. Let the animals tell the lost what lame worship wanted, after all. 2:32 Broken, like the great light in breath’s house— Call . This time, it’s a choice, as with apparel. Little mouth, every glass takes your sharp hand. Place the call upon the body. The eye’s milk-well, a brotherly stone. Time’s vast broken music, over which your badge passes. Let me tell you what I taste: the church’s difficult silence (vs. the forest’s). I think of you tonight, having been abandoned by another lover, greater. Sometimes, the sea bears touch’s silence away. 3:1 Where distance went, later, there is always a second master. I stood in the court of the prison and spoke of poetry with another man, a younger man. At that point I remained unscarred, I bore all the usual organs within my one regular body. Even the blood, the breath must house ancient children, I volunteered—Christ bears nothing green (through the eye) was his response. Each week I made the trip, sometimes alone, on foot, sometimes with the beast who was, for a time, my companion. (O companionate beast.) War’s music makes the tongue hum. He had, the young man told me, no memory of the crime for which he had been sentenced, although since he woke, later, covered in that blood, he presumed his guilt. At the shore, later, splendid creatures went on imagining nothing, breathing in the great dark cold skin of the sea. The church makes everything quite small and every war a friend, he guessed. I thought: heal this green well, Master; heal the night, or whatever time calls its other king, brother-arson, sibling-sea, every sensible sorrow: set the lamp to worship, fly. Then I moved from that place. I read in the newspaper, in the light of the trumpet vine, when his appeals ran out. Take back either birds or (invisible)memory, I argued: with distance, the lamp’s skin at the door’s blind edge. Sent, yes, and yet the proper chaplains must find this tedious—all this broken talk. 3:2 The first of the cipher-valleys, where the wind had sculpted the tongue’s brute respiration, a breathing skin. Two difficult things: the mouth, sleeping; milk. What does the tongue worship, then? I thought, perhaps just touch Christ’s door, and go. 3:3 On the buying and selling of children: for the cash to purchase a prostitute, or for wine. (Elsewhere: for silver, or a pair of shoes.) I had written: if a math, I hope / a clean / equation— that for which one casts lots, if one is a soldier (and who, in this century of war, is not a soldier?). Cast away, behind the famished arsenal, the milk-sense of the animals, this war’s lamp, alert and choiring. 3:4 Or, you can bet on the girl, as the soldiers say, Earth’s maimed green nescience. But you must read silence’s beautiful tower first, its aria at the edge of the sea. Turn always inside the blood, speak . Brother, close the organ-case, lock the glass. 3:5 My goodly pleasant things: everyone’s last armistice, whether perhaps marking out another pain or waking the incision. Reparation plays nightly. Empty light, make sense out of the nothing that brought you here, bedighted. Speak first, green tooth (or suitor; I track your cinders among the potsherds, the blazing marquee). Even the hawthorn is susceptible to triage, war’s cataract and theorem-torch. Except that nobody steals a hawthorn. The palette hauled from the village in its canvas sack: all the master tones, their stitch and fletch. You said, Nothing that man imagines blinds the eye. 3:6 Go up, thou bald head. Go up, thou— (Enter bear.) Now take the children away, back past all visible flesh. 3:7 Meaning, then, the resurrection (in facsimile, at least). I want to say this very clearly: LITTLE NIGHT CREATURES, PLACE ME THERE, AMONG THE TWILIGHT BODIES. Me, always the last child brought lame to the sea’s myth. Which is why, when you said “Set a place for everything, even the war,” I did so. In exile. 3:8 It’s the logic of Job’s daughters all over again: children, children, we can always make more, you sell mine, I’ll sell yours. Yet breath perhaps lay near, a tiny town, came within a few bright motes of pearl, of echo.... Speak, Master, imagine music. The resurrection, though: try blood’s mouth-glass, the tongue’s heavy blood. 3:9 Prepare: sharpen the fountains to their diamond depths. Stock the chapels with broken glass, salt the avenues. I could myself play a long note on a wren’s thigh bone—having killed a wren, or found it dead. Your breath Magdalenes you, partisan. 3:10 What the dead man thought first, he thought with his tongue: all the old stories agree. Also the broken page must first mask the blind, and suffer. Friend, tell me a little about the Earth, your place among its robes, its master-distance. Milk the bodies (of their pasts, their castes; later, music). Yet the sea’s broken tower, everything the eye wears, Christ’s bright patch. The fields lie unattended, the orchards all destroyed (locusts, fires, armies). I who lived in the burning orchard now live in the burnt. In the distance, people queued to view the bodies in long rows. 3:11 Almost legibly the white uniform assembles itself. Thinking lends a combustive edge to God’s discrete direction, towards which the sycamores bend. “I do what I do in sensely ways, not crazy ways.” Sprinkle the sulfur where previously clean things had rested, where the ache raised a boil. “Red thing hung up like on a cross”—don’t be afraid of the dead, the veil’s “potential visitors, with labors and contradiction.” 3:12 Enamel, fossil, abdomen: Awake 3:13 and thrust in the sickle, because it’s harvest time again. (I read that on the threshing floors, within the vintagers’ presses “traditional morality was often relaxed,” which enabled something like informal courtship. Comes music’s heavydrawl, friendship’s dusk-academy, a little bell inside the body chiming softly at, say, Compline. Friendpain, the blond room’s sea-lantern, which I sense rather more than I actually see.) 3:14 The second of the cipher-valleys, every second stone through which the night passes (never quite enough). God’s little forest, broken off inside the church. Speak now, dark edge of time’s carafe: multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision, glass’s single distance borne right through this nave of the world and its crutched celebrant. Little night-companion, sharp lamp: I don’t tire of your blurred rood, your anxious chrism. Let the mason gouge every stone, let him fill all the wards of the infirmary. (Theodore of Mopsuestia’s variant text reads “sounds rang out in the valley of judgment.” That, too.) 3:15 Which is to say: we will choose, yes, but in darkness. (Will we be judged in darkness?) 3:16 The vintager’s knife, an ancient implement, related to the grafter’s knife. A sociable debt, very loud knives, as far as knives go. Look, here I have a diagram of one. You may cover your ears, you may set your mouth as a dwelling among the evergreens. 3:17 In their natural park, the strangers ripple—the heat tunes them like instruments. You may hire a little ship to move among them. Fire’s labials suggest some sort of mouth-like part. Shooting directly into the wall of ice, its abandoned sanitarium. Every shot’s gravity, as if the thorn of exile had been returned to us, borne on the backsides of living men. 3:18 The third of the cipher-valleys: the Valley of Shittim, a.k.a. the Valley of the acacias, a.k.a. the torrent of rushes, a.k.a. the torrent of thorns. —We shall be at play in the torrent of thorns, indeed. The pasteurized groves towards which the dead resort (beneath hunger’s plank, lapsing green into war’s nerve). Animals bear the master-myth again, past the blind, past the palace. May want, may lamb, may flock. Little blindbody, alive, alive-O. 3:19 Exile slakes this, the event that’s imminent vs. the one that’s already happening, now. A few earnest souls are still arguing over “trumpet” vs. “shofar.” Mercy’s gift-toll (takes music’s wound and shadow, notches its leather belt). “Some have spoken, to be sure, of the reflection of the sun on the wings of insects.” Shed as vowel-blood, love’s thinking lathe, abandoned trestle over which the moon’s bone travels. We’re past the self-disclosure oracle as well as the assurance oracle. One critic notes, “waiting is a mighty deed.” 3:20 Or, not locusts, rather “peoples, tongues, governments, and kingdoms.” Can you feel me when I touch you here (pause), here. Concede the form of a question, concede form as a question, and what then? Another almost-wound traveling through the forest at night. But we may dwell here, we are permitted. The third garment may keep its guest. (See my entry in the Book of Guests, see “skein of birch,” milk’s lame worship.) 3:21 On the cleansing of the blood: from the tooth to the fig to the yoke. The young bride, or widow, snatched from sight, a parched toy. The truth, when it comes, pronounces . How many incisions are required? The tools the priests bear in mourning may also be cleansed, for they are cast in blood. I was there, I slew their armies. (Remember, the locusts have no king.) * Perish, nation of pierced children. I wrap you in my flag of questions; I will not watch the messengers come from death’s distant city—they know me by a different name. The clouds deny that they have broken me. Brothers, surely you know all the ancient plays: the child with cancer, the desolate palace of unrequited love. Wars versus their generals, surely the smell from the streets was a dream’s long incubation. At dusk, the long shadow cast by simple bread—I stand in it, it’s my child—God blinked once, twice and then night’s lavra descended. In this place three swans, two living, one dead—pain’s Rorschach: two elm trees, no, an idle lover on a fire escape, smoking, no, an animal with the hide of a map. Faith reigns here, invisibly. I wash the stone steps, which are my prayers—with my rags I wear them clean of inscription, day after day. Many corpses decorate the landscape of faith, which is my country. Bees nest in their softening lungs, as Milosz claimed. It’s not a dream, what we’re capable of. Or else some slender green shoot pierces them. And that’s good, right? That wick of compassion, so far from any sea—my warder’s back is arable land, facing the plow. It is possible, it must be (theoretically) possible, to build a city from corpses. I stepped out onto the rock shelf and undid my sadness, let it fall from my chest and loins. I asked, how do I wake a trap from its long sleep, as of tears? I dwelt in the side of a tired hill, like a rib or a cancer. Even there, the servants of the state came to me. Even there, unmarked graves bound in tongue. There was a harp I wanted to buy. Someone else bought it first, though my credit was good enough (at the kiosk of available harps). Still, I felt, I thought, sometimes, its puncture in the night. Out of the pot, cleansed of its fine sand, faith, ready to be devoured. Instead I rubbed it on my arms, my chest, both cheeks perhaps this was the problem: I didn’t know what to do with faith, what others did with faith. When the musicians began to play, I neither danced nor sang nor mourned. I watched them, lined up like teeth in the darkening hall. I built a bridge with it, or tried to. It fell deep into my throat, lodging there like a clef, a scar. You see I am terribly serious, though I laugh often. It’s death that laughs in me, a king I once knew. The uncircumcised graves of my terror provoke me, captain. (Thy trumpet preacheth blood, friend.) What they required of me was my wife, outside the house of praise. NOTES Prefatory to writing this poem I referred to two ancient commentators on Joel (Cyril of Alexandria and Theodore of Mopsuestia) and two modern commentators (Hans Walter Wolff and James L. Crenshaw). Section 1:12 refers (“the marking song”) to Karin Tidbeck’s novel Amatka . Section 3:11 appropriates quotes from Alabama folk artist Emmer Sewell (in interviews conducted by William Arnett, from Souls Grown Deep , vol. 2, pp. 178-191) and from René Char (from The Word as Archipelago , p.29 in Robert Baker’s English translation). Thanks to John Estes and to Spark and Echo Arts for commissioning this piece. Close Loading Video . . . And then their gifts looked up, in the shadow of the stranger. I beggared myself at the treasuries of wind. Download Full Written Work

Loading Video . . . This fast-paced sound and vocal collage by composer Jonathon Roberts sets Paul's urgent words, "The night is nearly over, the day is almost here." Romans 8:10 Romans 11:17–21 Romans 12:1 Romans 13:11–12 Romans 14:7 1 Corinthians 9:24 1 Corinthians 16:13 1 Corinthians 15:51–52 2 Corinthians 5:14 Galatians 5:7 The Day Is Almost Here By Jonathon Roberts Credits: Voice: Jonathon Roberts (Paul, Hans Ternes, Chorthip Peeraphatdit, Nora Hertel, Choyning Dorji, Ki-yong Min, Tasneem Mirza, Won Joon Kim, Bao Ha, Phyllis Odoom, Sandra Obeng, Tariq Engineer, Olia Shapel, Emily Clare Zempel // Additional text: Christy Bagasao // Image: Scott Baye Curated by: 2005 Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link This sound and music collage sets the urgency with which Apostle Paul spoke to people about what lies ahead. The beats are made from chopped vocal sounds while voices join Paul in many languages from around the world saying "the day is almost here." The focus of this piece is Romans 13:12, "The night is nearly over, the day is almost here." Additionally, twenty-four other passages from Paul's letters related to this theme are incorporated in the piece. Additionally there is a brief line of poetry from Christy Bagasao: If the battle ends and your heart is still beating, it is because you have lost. If the battle ends because you have breathed your last, then you have won the race! We imagine Paul nearing the end of his life, racing forward while countless thoughts and phrases race through his head from years of traveling and preaching. This piece is part of the larger theater work, Project Paul . Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection J onathon Roberts is a composer and sound designer for games, film, theatre, and ensembles. His style grew out of classical and jazz training, and evolved through quality life adventures: touring the country in an RV with a one person theater piece on the Apostle Paul, living in Brooklyn with an improv music ensemble, performing in a downtown NYC absurdist comedy band, and a long stint writing music for the renowned slot machine company, High 5 Games. He has released four albums including the latest, Cities a song cycle personifying biblical cities. He created the popular podcast/web series ComposerDad Vs. Bible , in which ComposerDad accepts intense compositional challenges from a mysterious Bible while out with his kids. He frequently collaborates on music and theater projects with his wife, actor Emily Clare Zempel. They live in Beacon, NY, with their two boys and a tangled box of electrical cords. www.jonathonroberts.com Website Jonathon Roberts About the Artist Loving Arms I Make Tents The Sower Response There Is Room These are My Sons Consider Me a Partner Weakness Surrogate Babbler Remember Me Prayer How Beautiful I Am a Fool The Constant Ecclesiastes Cows Blessing Fools for Christ More Than Rubies Only a Few Years Will Pass Dear Friend Jonathon Roberts Other Works By Related Information View More Art Make More Art View Full Written Work Close Loading Video . . . Download Full Written Work

! Loading Video . . . Focusing on the idea of "perception," we are pleased to feature two works by painter Paul Trapp, "Substantiate" and "Behind". Paul paints images of ordinary objects and places derived from empirical observation, however, he employs various strategies to alter or distort the observed spaces. 1 Corinthians 13:12 On Perception By Paul Trapp Credits: Artist Location: Illinois Curated by: Charis 2010 24 x 24 inches (both works) Acrylic on panel Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link (The artists words are in italics. Additional commentary from Spark+Echo Arts drawn from conversations with the artist.) I want to know more about our sensory experience of God's creation, and how we can use our imaginations to experience this world in new ways. I think we take for granted what is right in front of us, so in my paintings I try to counteract this inactive approach to seeing. I use planar space to distort common objects to show that although things may appear to be ordinary, they are not. I not only depict what my eyes see but I also paint spatial anomalies in my work that do not happen in reality. I contrast representational and planar painting space because it is foundational or "common" to the picture plane — like objects are to this world. For, a new perspective on common experience only requires an active curiosity to see one's surroundings as unique, magical, and new. (Paul Trapp) Paul says that this body of work "investigates perception and the phenomenological concept of intentionality" or, "how an object is seen as apposed to how it is mentally approached." Paul quotes Joseph Campbell where he notes that there may be a conflict between what a (Christian) artist sees and what he or she may believe: "People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive." (Campbell, Joseph. "The Message of the Myth." The Message of the Myth. TV mini-series with Bill Moyers. PBS. 1988.) Connecting the Real with the Ideal We are reminded of Paul (the Apostle)'s well-known chapter about love that he wrote to the Corinthians. Though most people – able to cite the reference or not – may be able to quote, "Love is ___, love is ___, ‚..." there is a seminal passage in that chapter that we draw in reference to Paul (the artist)'s thoughts on perception: 1 Corinthians 13:12 "For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." Perhaps the Apostle Paul was pulling from his philosophic background, drawing a reference to what Plato muses on regarding the ideal nature of things. We see in Paul Trapp's paintings both the ideal and the real, parts of the whole – a vibrating connection between what we know to be rooted in this world and what we find in moments of beauty and transcendence. I parallel the visual aspects of my work (representational and planar space) with the concepts involved in my work (perception and intentionality). This contrast is intended to raise questions concerning subjective experience in the objective world, and to suggest that actively observing objects in daily life leads to a new awareness of daily surroundings. Ultimately, I use this visual conflict to create an unexpected visual experience where something new can be discovered within something familiar and to bring to consciousness the experience of seeing. (Paul Trapp) Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection Paul Trapp was born in Madison, Wisconsin and has studied at Minnesota State University and in Florence, Italy. Currently he teaches at Illinois State University. His studio work investigates perception and the phenomenological concept of intentionality. His work has been shown in Washington, New York, Italy, and Malaysia. His work is in the collection of Penang State Museum & Art Gallery and Bethany Lutheran College. Website Paul Trapp About the Artist Paul Trapp Other Works By Related Information View More Art Make More Art View Full Written Work Close Loading Video . . . Download Full Written Work

Loading Video . . . There are a lot of ways the world can end. Robert Hass—a poet I love so much that I once fell in love with someone largely because they studied with him in college—once wrote: all the new thinking is about loss in this way, it resembles all the old thinking I lost my father 8 months ago, almost to the day. Find the complete progression of the work linked below. Revelation 9:10-20 Revelation 11:3-7 Isaiah 8:11 Proverbs 4:23 Artist in Residence 2017: Lily Maase Part 2 By Lily Maase This album contains some strong language, references to violence, and allusions to drug use, and may not be suitable for all audiences. Discretion is advised. Credits: Composed, Written, and Performed By Lily Maase. 2017 Curated by: Spark & Echo Arts, Artist in Residence 2017 Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link June 12, 2017 There are a lot of ways the world can end. Robert Hass—a poet I love so much that I once fell in love with someone largely because they studied with him in college—once wrote: all the new thinking is about loss in this way, it resembles all the old thinking I lost my father 8 months ago, almost to the day. Decades ago I lost my mother—and by extension, my younger sister, who was my mother’s favorite—to mental illness, and to this date I have yet to marry or have a family of my own. So in the years between my childhood and today my father had slowly become my whole universe: the man who taught me to walk, to drive a car, change a set of guitar strings, who showed me how to value myself enough to walk away from heartbreak; who resolutely held me up when I thought the misogyny I encountered in music school and in my early days as a career guitarist was going to break me; who brought me back into the arms of Christ when I was ready; who became first my mentor and then—at long last—came to regard me as a trusted and capable peer. There are a lot of ways the world can end. My world ended on October 1, 2016. There was no reason for his passing. I had spoken to him earlier that day and he was happy, healthy, fine. Looking forward to a gig that weekend. Had a busy day, had to get off the phone, he would talk to me early next week if not before. The next time his face popped up on my caller ID, there was a police officer on the other end, asking if I knew some guy named Steve. He had gone to bed that night, and that was that. He never made the gig. There are a lot of ways the world can end. I buried my father and packed up his guitars and drove them back to Brooklyn, and when I got there I returned to an old job as a DJ, to defray the cost of his funeral (my father was rich in many things but money was not one of them). This is how I found myself face-to-face with a man nearly 15 years my junior, who was out of his head on god knows what, who had decided for some reason that I belonged to him. This was the weekend before the election, and at the time it seemed there was an end in sight. But by the end of the evening, our current president’s name had been invoked, my hand had been smashed in a doorway about a dozen times, and—to make a long story short—the following Tuesday I cast my vote in a neck brace, drove myself home from the polls somehow, and went to bed for what turned out to be quite some time. When my father died all the strength left my body, and after I was attacked I discovered I didn’t have any resources left over for myself. The road to recovery was—and still is—longer and harder than I expected. I started spending more time at home and I’ll be damned if I didn’t discover that my man (of Robert Hass fame) had been keeping a second girlfriend in another state. So the world had already ended, and then it turned out it ended two more times before all was said and done, and then we all lived through the election together and the world as we know it really DID end. We live in a new world now. The reality is, we have probably been living in this new world for quite some time. If all the old thinking was about loss, this new thinking is about losing harder, faster, and with less grace. I wrote at the outset of this project about the idea of circles, and about the keeping of lists. That the literal experience of something happening in the world around us is often mirrored by the struggles we have within. So, what happens, when the world ends and you are somehow still just…here? There was a moment, having lost so many things both personally and on a global level, where I certainly prayed for the easefulness of death. The old thinking is gone. But the new thinking is maybe just the old thinking all over again, only accelerated to a breakneck pace. In a lot of ways, I think those of us who are perplexed by the current state of affairs in this country and in the world at large seem to be struggling with this one a bit. Are we being challenged, or destroyed? Are we truly concerned for others, or only for the others that most resemble us? Are we growing as a society, or are we suffocating our civilization because we have already grown too much? When I think about the two pillars God appointed to bear witness to the end of the world, I marvel at how incredibly tired they must have been. I wonder if they asked their Father, at some point, if somebody else might be better suited to bear their load. So I wrote this for my father mostly, but also for the olive trees, the glowing lanterns I have always imagined as being daughters of the Lord. For who else but two women could be strong yet supple enough to bear full witness to the final days of life on earth? Read: Release Me lyrics The message that I take from this is twofold: that God never gives us more than we can handle, and that neither witness was asked to bear this weight fully on their own. It’s taken the better part of a year to begin to get my fighting spirit back, and in another year or so I’ll hopefully have my strength. I am a new person now. In truth I liked the old person quite a bit, so I’m still not sure how I feel about all this. It is hard, sometimes, to be tough enough to navigate this new terrain. There are a lot of ways the world can end. But where one thing ends, another begins, whether we want it to or not. This is why we have faith. Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection Lily Maase is a rock, country, jazz and classical guitarist raised in New Mexico, educated at the University of North Texas, and living in Brooklyn, New York. She is contributing writer for Premier Guitar Magazine and has contributed to Guitar World and Guitar World’s Acoustic Nation, who recently lauded her as a “master guitar teacher.” She is the founder and owner of Brooklyn GuitarWorks, a workshop-oriented center for guitar and bass guitar education located in Williamsburg. Lily is the lead guitarist, musical director and bandleader with the Rocket Queens all-female tribute to Guns N Roses and the Suite Unraveling (Tzadik). She is the lead guitarist with Gato Loco, and is endorsed by Godin Guitars. Her playing has been featured by Vans.com, Maxim.com, Guitar World’s Acoustic Nation, Teen Vogue, and Elle Magazine. Website Lily Maase About the Artist Artist in Residence 2017: Lily Maase Part 1 Artist in Residence 2017: Lily Maase Part 3 Artist in Residence 2017: Lily Maase Look Out Below Lily Maase Other Works By Follow Lily's project's development throughout the year by reading her previous first , third and final posts. 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Loading Video . . . Poet Kent Shaw creative this challenging work exploring conviction, the theme of destruction, and 2 Timothy 2:3. 2 Timothy 2:3 Why God Keeps Making Conviction So Easy By Kent Shaw Credits: Artist Location: West Virginia Curated by: Hayan Charara 2014 Poetry Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link I have always been fascinated at the role of God's will in human lives, especially from the human perspective. How many times does a person sense a certain inclination and attribute it to God's will? How complicated, unnerving and angular would God's will be as it runs through the human heart? Conviction is such a potent word, and it wields such authority over a person's actions. But what is the source of conviction? So much of this poem positions God in ways that are more suitable to human views of God. He's here. He did this. He told me to listen to Him. People have a remarkable way of attaching their certainties to God. But what makes anyone so certain the voice they hear is God's? During a reading for my first book, someone in the audience asked me if I thought I had the authority to write poems about God, or to recast a Biblical passage so that it appears in a new light. To this day, the answer I gave to that question dissatisfies me. Hers was a reading of the Bible that presumes to "know" it completely, as though the Bible were a text operating on a single dimension of right and wrong. But I believe the Bible is more complicated than that, because my faith is more complicated. Since that reading, I have tried writing poems that unsettle the condescension I hear in simplistic readings of the Bible. My personal faith life is full of self-interrogation. And the reward is a complex, unnerving and angular relationship with God. Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection Kent Shaw ‘s first book Calenture was published in 2008. His poems have since appeared in The Believer , Boston Review , Ploughshares , Witness and elsewhere. He is an Assistant Professor at West Virginia State University and a poetry editor at Better Magazine. Website Kent Shaw About the Artist Kent Shaw Other Works By Related Information View More Art Make More Art At first, God made conviction the size of a rabbit 's throat. Which was a matter of poor planning. In the suburbs, a rabbit is meandering and conspicuous. View Full Written Work WHY GOD KEEPS MAKING CONVICTION SO EASY by Kent Shaw At first, God made conviction the size of a rabbit’s throat. Which was a matter of poor planning. In the suburbs, a rabbit is meandering and conspicuous. A rabbit is running through the suburban neighborhoods and we’re starting to think that they’re pests. Maybe there was a time when they were precious and vulnerable. That’s when we were children. Conviction, Lord. The kind like boys after school chasing a rabbit and pinning it to the driveway. Does a rabbit hear the inside of a rabbit? Does it have a productive dialogue with absolutely terrified or petrified or inconvenienced or provoked or angry but not angry enough because look, it’s just boys. But the rabbit can’t move. The rabbit is helpless. And the boys found something heavy to hold over the rabbit’s head. It’s bigger than the rabbit’s head! Are you all seeing all this? Maybe the Lord started explaining conviction but we weren’t paying attention. Maybe conviction changed to the size of the heaviest thing in the picture. Maybe it’s the boy who can’t let go of what he used to think of rabbits, but that was before this rabbit. The other boys are laughing at this rabbit. Which is definitely easier. Lord, conviction runs deep. Conviction is plentiful. The shape of young animals running at evening. The shape of evening. The shape of God being boys, whatever a boy is or the inside of a boy or the inside of many boys when they’re laughing, so that one boy feels like it’s OK now. It’s a fucking rabbit, already. Don’t make it so hard. Close Loading Video . . . At first, God made conviction the size of a rabbit 's throat. Which was a matter of poor planning. In the suburbs, a rabbit is meandering and conspicuous. Download Full Written Work

Loading Video . . . Composer Sidney Marquez Boquiren explores the theme of healing through passages from Ecclesiastes, John, and Revelation in his work folia ligni. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 folia ligni By Sidney Marquez Boquiren Credits: Composed and Performed by Sidney Marquez Boquiren Artist Location: New York City Curated by: Jonathon Roberts 2014 Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link folia ligni takes as its inspiration three sets of Biblical verses: Ecclesiastes 3:1-8; John 14:27; and Revelation 22:2. The work itself is a diptych that consists of meditations on the verses from Ecclesiastes and the Gospel of St. John, written for piano, with the title ("leaves of the tree") taken from Revelation 22:2 which is the verse that undergirds folia ligni : "The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." It is this healing of nations and (by extension) of peoples that I tried to get at, not in the sense of a direct depiction of some process of healing but more as a sort of struggle to achieve this healing, a striving to reach "a time of peace." Et in terra pax. Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection Sidney Marquez Boquiren is a composer-performer who grew up in the Philippines and Saudi Arabia but has spent most of his life in the United States. He collaborates with artists on various projects that include opera ( Independence Eve with Daniel Neer); Biblical illumination ( folia ligni for Spark and Echo Arts); and multi-media ( The Gretel Project with Lauren K. Alleyne, Catherine Chung, and Tomiko Jones). As a pianist, he performs regularly with Rhymes With Opera and pulsoptional. A MacDowell Fellow, Sidney is currently the Chair of the Department of Music at Adelphi University in Garden City, New York, where he teaches music theory and composition. He is also a cantor and sings in the choir of The Church of St. Francis Xavier in Manhattan, New York. Website Sidney Marquez Boquiren About the Artist Sidney Marquez Boquiren Other Works By Related Information View More Art Make More Art View Full Written Work Close Loading Video . . . Download Full Written Work

Loading Video . . . Will Shine interprets the passage of Job 28:20-28 through rhythm, composition, and performance. Job 28:20-28 The Rhythmic Search for Wisdom - Job on Drums By Will Shine Credits: Curated by: Jonathon Roberts 2019 Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link Where does wisdom come from? What does it sound and/or look like? Navigating through life, its highs and lows is a task that no degree of strength or intellect is truly ever sufficient for. It would seem then that to be ‘wise’ is to know how best to respond in the midst circumstance. I think this is what Job is all about. We can certainly speculate about the universe and perhaps even glean some minute amount of insight–Job reminds us that ‘fear of the Lord’ or said another way, understanding your smallness and simpleness is wisdom; departing from evil (when complacency and distraction become idols) is understanding. Read the passage below and then watch/listen to the video. Let the textures of the drumming remind you of the text and let the visual on the screen provide a focal point for meditating on this most important question: Where does wisdom come from? Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection Will ‘Honey Pockets’ Shine comes from a musical family and was ‘made to play drums’. Will’s dad, a professional guitarist and band leader often joked (hopefully) that the only reason he had a kid was because he needed a drummer he could rely on. All joking aside, Will became that reliable drummer and, by age 8, began playing local festivals and talent shows in the San Diego area. Will eventually went on to study music and ministry at Point Loma Nazarene University where he developed as a drummer, guitarist, bassist, vocalist, and worship leader. After he left college as a musical-Swiss-army-knife-of-sorts, Will recorded and performed his own music and frequently sat in for other artists around Southern California. In 2011, just after releasing his first solo record Here, There, and Everywhere In Between , Will moved to Hawaii where he served as a music teacher and worship leader on the island of Oahu. Will kept playing and took on numerous students in these years, most of whom were aspiring drummers. He released a second solo offering, Pacific Sessions, in 2014. During this time, Will also sat in for Hawaii-based artists such as Mailani Makainai, Trey Terada, the Seumanu brothers, Kyle Furusho, Sammy Johnson, Tenelle, I.A., and Pou Jackson (to name a few). Will moved back to California in 2015 to attend Fuller Theological Seminary. He was immediately asked to join the All Seminary Chapel Staff where he’s most frequently served as the drummer for weekly chapels that stream online around the world. Will met his wife at Fuller and they currently reside in the LA area. These days, apart from being a full-time worship leader and the programming director for the non-profit ‘ The Power of Song’ ( http://www.thepowerofsong.org ), Will is the music director and drummer for both Adi (Aditya Rao) and Corey Ferrugia and does fly-dates with George Williamson/ ‘Westfall Gold’ events. Amidst all this, he’s currently working on new solo material! You can check Will out on his Instagram @Honey_Pockets . Website Will Shine About the Artist Will Shine Other Works By Related Information View More Art Make More Art View Full Written Work Close Loading Video . . . Download Full Written Work

nicora-gangi_2013-air-6_memories_popout.jpg Loading Video . . . Resident Artist Nicora Gangi's final work for 2013 deals with the theme of "Memories" and responds to Ecclesiastes 9:5-7 as part of a collection inspired by each of the year's six themes. Ecclesiastes 9:5-7 Memories By Nicora Gangi Credits: Curated by: Spark+Echo Arts, 2013 Artist in Residence 2013 20 x 14 inches Paper Collage on Strathmore Paper & Adobe Photoshop Mixed Media Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link The living know that they are going to die it is a thing yet to come and therefore provision may be made for it. The dead know they are dead and it is too late they are on the other side of the great gulf fixed. When life is gone, all this world to us is gone with it. There is an end of all our acquaintances with this world and the things of it . While the dead were still alive they were intimately acquainted with it. It does not appear that they know anything of what is done by those they leave behind. There is an end of all our enjoyment in this world. They don't regard their toil any more but all they acquired must be left to others: they have a reward for their holy actions but not for their worldly ones. The things of this world will not be a portion for the soul . The grave is a land of forgetfulness; the memory of those that are laid there is soon forgotten. Their place knows them not, nor does the lands they called by their own names. The person and their actions die together. In that place we shall never be the better for our friends (their love can do us no kindness) nor ever the worse for our enemies, their hatred and envy can do us no damage. Those things which affect us now and demand so much of our attention will end there. By wisdom make the best use of life and manage wisely what remains. Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection Nicora Gangi was educated at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, USA (BFA 1974 and MFA 1976). She was a Professor of Art at Syracuse University for 29 years. Gangi has been awarded many Grand Prize and First Place awards and grants. She has been and continues to be published in numerous artist’s books on pastel paintings. She has lectured regionally and nationally as a visiting artist at universities and artist’s guilds. She is represented by: Edgewood Gallery (Syracuse, NY), and Gangi Studio (Winter Garden, FL ). Website Nicora Gangi About the Artist The Mountain of the House of The Lord I See Him but Not Now So Shall Your Descendants Be This One The Body without the Spirit | 1 The Body without the Spirit | 2 The Body without the Spirit | 3 The Sealed Ones Peace with God The Everlasting Protective Love of God Our Father When the Lord Gives Us The Land I See Him but Not Now The Mountain of the House of The Lord Paneled and Ruins Series The Harvest Spirit of God-The Spirit Hovering Lies Fool Dance Your Truth from the Great Congregation Psalm 18 Sound of Their Wings Psalm 16 Kiss the Son EAST, WEST, NORTH & SOUTH AT HIS TABLE Nicora Gangi Other Works By Nicora Gangi created a collection of mixed media works in response to scripture and the six themes of the year as a 2013 Artist in Residence. Explore her works created throughout the year: Spirit of God – The Spirit Hovering Light and Darkness (February 4, 2013) Fool Fools (April 13, 2013) Dance Dancing (June 13, 2013) Lies Lies (August 22, 2013) The Harvest Harvest (October 17, 2013) Memories (This piece) Memory (December 12, 2013) Related Information View More Art Make More Art View Full Written Work Close Loading Video . . . Download Full Written Work

Loading Video . . . Creative writer Seth Villegas explores the aftermath of the old prophet's lie in his short story, "The Old Prophet Stands," based off of 1 Kings 13. 1 Kings 13 The Old Prophet Stands By Seth Villegas Credits: Curated by: Rebecca Testrake 2016 Short Story Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link When reading the Bible, certain stories tend to stick with you. The story of the “Man of God from Judah” in 1 Kings 13 has stuck with me for a long time. As an aspiring Christian leader, this story has always bothered me. I still have trouble seeing why a person in a position of influence would deliberately mislead someone else, especially in a religious context. The story that I have written in response to this story contains many of my own reservations about the old prophet. Perhaps that is how the story ended up being one focused on generational reconciliation. While I am sure that is not all this story is about, it has to end for me with the reunification of father and son in the actual roles that they inhabit. Within the current Christian sphere, there continues to be a tension between the generations of people that makeup the church. 1 Kings 13 seems to show just how much damage one generation can do to another. But I also think it also shows just how much the younger generation yearns for support. In the end, we need one another. As Jesus himself said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection Seth Villegas is a creative writer and arts organizer living in the greater Pasadena area. He grew up fascinated by stories, most notably the mundane and fantastical stories told to him by his father. He wrote his first short stories in high school and has continued to write regularly ever since. In college at Stanford University, Seth took every creative writing class available to him, including a seminar taught by Pulitzer Prize winning author Adam Johnson. He feels that he best expresses himself in prose, though he sometimes works in poetry and drama. In his current work, Seth seeks to articulate the tension between pain and possibility. For Christians, these possibilities are rooted in a hope in God. This is not an easy hope, however, because we must still acknowledge our pain and our failures to find it. His stories try to draw out these themes in the lives of his characters. Seth is currently finishing up his master’s degree at Fuller Theological Seminary and hopes to pursue doctoral studies in the area of theology, science, and technology. Website Seth Villegas About the Artist Seth Villegas Other Works By Related Information View More Art Make More Art An old man rides into the city on a donkey. A staff rests across his lap and a young man leads the donkey through the city gates. View Full Written Work The Old Prophet Stands by Seth Villegas An old man rides into the city on a donkey. A staff rests across his lap and a young man leads the donkey through the city gates. Once they get to the city square, the young man helps the old man down off the donkey and onto a stone platform, one perhaps as old as the city itself. Standing halfway between the temple and the city gates, the old man raises the staff over his head to address the crowd. “Test the prophets! Is that not what we are told in the To’rah? Test the prophets!” says the old man. His voice rings out but his raised arm shakes. The bustle of the people appears undisturbed. The old man sees that the young man is watering the donkey from a nearby well. “Does the prophet’s message not stand? Shall you continue on as if he were never here?” The old man notices the people of the Book strolling through the crowd from the direction of the city gates. They wear long gowns and tassels. Their attention is focused forward as they pass between the well and the stone platform. “Do not act as if you do not know of whom I speak,” the old man continues, “the man of God from Judah, the prophet who rebuked the king in his own chambers!” One of the men of the book turns toward the platform and spits on the ground. The donkey screeches. The young man pets the donkey’s neck, looking up at the men of the Book. “He knew the Lord spoke,” says the old man. He raises his voice as the men of the Book near the far side of the city square. “I lied to him just as you continue to lie to your king! “But I am guiltier than you,” he continues, “because I pretended to be what he most wanted in a hostile land: an ally, a colleague, a kindred spirit…a father.” The men of the Book enter the temple. A section of the crowd follows them in. “His prophecy was not just to protect him from you nor even from the king, but to protect him from me,” he says. “Me, the man he should have been able to trust.” The old man looks at the younger man, but the younger man does not return his gaze. The younger man continues to pet the donkey. “When had I changed so much that I could not longer recognize a move of God when it was before me? But as the donkey and the lion sat next to the prophet’s corpse, it was a sign against me just as it is now a sign against you. “Priests! I have no temple; I have no courts. King! I have no armies; I have no crowns! But let me now be a sign against you for this prophecy shall come to pass: should you continue as you are, your kingdom and your house cannot stand.” The old man tries to raise his staff again, but instead it breaks his fall as he drops to one knee, his face wet and hot. The younger man pushes through the crowd of gawkers that has gathered around the old man. Once he gets to the platform, the old man stops him with a raised hand. “I cannot bury anymore prophets,” he says, looking at the young man. He manages to stand. “I cannot bury any more of my sons. The cost…is too high.” The younger man urges the old man down from the platform. The old man stumbles again as he reaches the ground. The younger man holds his arm out and the old man takes it. They walk together through the crowd to the well and the donkey. The young man helps the old man onto the donkey. As they leave, various people come to the younger man to ask if he and the old man would like to stay the night. But in each instance, the younger man looks back to the old man and declines. The old man says nothing. The two travel together through the night, away from the city back to their small village. Along the way, they stop at the tomb of their ancestors to offer a prayer. They finish the final leg of their journey as father and son. Close Loading Video . . . An old man rides into the city on a donkey. A staff rests across his lap and a young man leads the donkey through the city gates. Download Full Written Work

Loading Video . . . As the third work in a collection curated by Shann Ray, featuring the works of Vanessa Kay, Mary Jane Nealon and Shann Ray; this short story by Alan Heathcock explores theme of "Light and Darkness" from the perspective of Isaiah 61:3. Isaiah 61:3 Cheer By Alan Heathcock Credits: Curated by: Shann Ray 2013 Short Story Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link I watched a documentary about a man who lived as a prisoner of war for a number of years, each day bound in a little hut, very little daylight, very little human interaction. How did he survive? He survived by the strength of his inner life, and that made me contemplate the fragility of our bodies versus the power of everything that is us that is not our bodies. The garment of praise overcoming the spirit of despair in this case is the recognition that our strength cannot not be diminished by physical means, as that place of truth that resides behind our eyes cannot be touched or slapped or maimed. Instead of a prisoner of war, I decided to use a cheerleader as the vehicle for this story because I felt people often separate themselves from the exceptional despair of the world, as if that POW has nothing to do with them and their lives. But if a cheerleader could be touched by despair then it could touch anyone, which, of course, is as true as anything else I could write. Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection Alan Heathcock ’s fiction has been published in many of America’s top magazines and journals. VOLT, a collection of stories, was a “Best Book 2011″ selection from numerous newspapers and magazines, including GQ, Publishers Weekly, Salon, the Chicago Tribune, and Cleveland Plain Dealer, was named as a New York Times Editors’ Choice, selected as a Barnes and Noble Best Book of the Month, as well as a finalist for the Barnes and Noble Discover Prize. Heathcock has won a Whiting Award, the GLCA New Writers Award, a National Magazine Award, has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and is currently a Literature Fellow for the state of Idaho. A Native of Chicago, he teaches fiction writing at Boise State University. Website Alan Heathcock About the Artist Alan Heathcock Other Works By As the third work in a collection curated by Shann Ray, featuring the works of Vanessa Kay , Mary Jane Nealon and Shann Ray ; this short story by Alan Heathcock explores theme of “Light and Darkness” from the perspective of Isaiah 61:3: and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. Related Information View More Art Make More Art The other girls shot their fists in the air, kicked high, went seamlessly through the routine. Shell couldn’t remember the cheer. Her mind was a mess. View Full Written Work Cheer by Alan Heathcock The other girls shot their fists in the air, kicked high, went seamlessly through the routine. Shell couldn’t remember the cheer. Her mind was a mess. A buzzer sounded from the scorer’s table. The boys broke their huddles. Shell knew all those in the green uniforms: Lester and Billy James and Harold and John Censia and John Defenthaller. She’d kissed the lips on three of these faces. The other girls clapped and shouted, now off the court and by the double-doors. Shell ran from center court, bumped through the green jerseys and towards the cheer line, and Mrs. Marlene shouted her name, then grabbed her elbow and dragged her from the gymnasium. “What’s going on with you, Shell?” Mrs. Marlene asked. Shell touched her own lips. “I don’t know.” “You on your moon?” “Moon?” Mrs. Marlene glanced downward. “ Your moon ?” Shell shook her head. “You sick?” “No.” “You’re just acting so strange.” “Oh,” Shell said. “Well…” She looked back into the gymnasium. The teams positioned themselves for the jump-ball. She knew she couldn’t say what was on her mind because cheerleaders don’t speak of such things, but she couldn’t shake the woman’s face, darker than her own and scarred from acid. Her husband had thrown acid on her. Shell didn’t know why the husband had done what he had, because she couldn’t bear to read to the end of the article. Why didn’t matter. People always wanted to know why . Shell had seen the woman’s face, the blood and bone where the skin was gone, even her bold eyes shot through with red. It all terrified Shell. She shut tight her eyes and closed her hands into fists. Why, why, why… “Good lord, girlie,” Mrs. Marlene finally said. “Whatever it is, you’d best go shake it off.” *** Shell walked the vacant school halls. At the end of the building farthest from the gymnasium, a cold breeze wafted out from an open classroom. Shell turned into the cold, pushed in through the open door. The room smelled of formaldehyde. She switched on the lights and there were rows of high tables with burners and sinks. A skeleton by the blackboard wore a red and white cap. A far window was tilted open. Wet snow blew in from the darkness outside. Shell crossed to the window. On the ledge by the window sat a terrarium coated in frost. She stuck her face in the frigid draft, lifted off the terrarium lid. One lone frog–no bigger than her fist, yellow spots on its brown body–lay on a bed of glistening cabbage. The frog didn’t struggle in her grasp. It was cold and hard, very much dead, its eyes black pebbles flecked with gold. Its slick skin was beautiful, sparkling almost, the muscle of it hind legs so gracefully curved. What a magnificent creature, Shell thought. “How do you work?” she said to the frog’s tiny face. *** The frog’s miniature organs were the color of burlap. It wasn’t at all as she’d imagined. It had been an impulse, a strange inclination that had overcome her, and Shell stood, scalpel in hand, and thought cutting the skin of a living creature should be more difficult. How does a frog ever live a day with such thin skin? How does anything live a single day? She could hardly imagine it had once hopped and croaked and eaten flies. Maybe it thought, too. Of course it did. It had to know pond water felt nice, flies tasted good. But this thing, this lifeless fragile thing on the table was so different. Shell pictured herself on the table, just her body, her delicate skin and organs. Just a thing . Sometimes people are things to each other. Then Shell remembered the woman’s scarred face, a face of ravaged clay, like something melted, and she sobbed then her body shook and she began to weep because she never wanted to be a thing to anybody, or to treat anybody like a thing , and she left the frog flayed on the table and quickly shut the window and dashed out of the classroom, arms pumping, her sneakers padding on the hall’s checkerboard tiles, faster, faster. *** The fieldhouse steamed with sweat and breath warmed in the guts, the noise of hands clapping, feet stomping bleechers, air forced out of lungs and into screams. Boys running, jumping. John Defenthaller drove to the basket, leapt and dunked the ball. He landed and pumped his fists and howled. The crowd howled. Shell wiped her sweaty brow, set a palm against her thumping heart. There’s such a difference between something alive and dead, Shell mused, and in that moment she understood that difference as mostly being everything that is you that is not your body. That’s what makes you alive. That thing in you that says to howl, to want and love. That thing no one can touch or harm. You’re never a thing if people know that part of you. Shell felt herself stirred, potently aware of that thing brimming behind her eyes, what her mother might call a soul, and an eerie accompanying feeling of her body being nothing beyond bones and blood and skin. Mrs. Marlene came beside her and put her arm around Shell’s shoulder. “You okay, girlie?” Shell smiled, nodded, and ran off clapping to join the others. Close Loading Video . . . The other girls shot their fists in the air, kicked high, went seamlessly through the routine. Shell couldn’t remember the cheer. Her mind was a mess. Download Full Written Work

Loading Video . . . Actor and sound designer Matt Bittner presents an intriguing musical exploration of the meal Zacchaeus shared with Jesus, and the change it had upon his life. This work is in response to the theme of "meals" as inspired by Luke 19:1-10. Luke 19:1-10 Fellowship, Food, and Redemption By Matt Bittner Credits: Written and recorded by Matt Bittner Artist Location: Ridgewood, Queens Curated by: Aaron Kruziki 2014 Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link When I first began to think about this project, I was attempting to view modern day meal experiences through a biblical lens. For example, a question I asked myself early on: “How can I somehow extract the beauty of the gospel (or the trinity, or Love) through the picture of a shared meal?” Then I thought of a small portion of a sermon I had heard during Lent. The speaker, as part of a larger theme, briefly examined the significance of Jesus sharing meals with people. He spoke of the act not as some spiritual gesture (or as a physical gesture wherein the spiritual world was magically accessed) but as the real life, every day, human event of sitting down to talk and eat. That event is necessary. So, I imagine, because Jesus knew this, much of his time of uplifting, teaching, nurturing, and redeeming was spent sitting down to talk and eat with people. After all, when we eat, we truly rid ourselves of all pretense of being anything other than simple humans with needs. And only then (it seems) can we begin to practice the world-toppling exercise of seeing others as simple humans with needs too. I then reinvested in the project with a different approach: to find a biblical example of a shared meal as it ought to be. Suddenly the story of Zaccheus, which I’d known seemingly forever, took on a new meaning. There is an embittered, unloved outcast working selfishly to fortify himself against a world of which he is so wholly terrified and with which he is so wholly angry. He hears tell of a man that selflessly gives himself to a world with which he is so wholly in love and by which he is so highly esteemed. The outcast pushes himself to his physical limits just to catch a glimpse of what it must be like to truly live in communion with others. When Jesus spots the lost soul alone in a tree, he calls him down. Not to offer a sermon, not to lay hands on him, but to ask if Zaccheus would like to experience true community through hosting a group of people and eating with them. (I understand that the text does not clearly state that food was part of the deal, but culturally it would have been implied.) Zaccheus finally experiences the wonderfully simple reality of communion. The result? He does not suddenly have friends thronging to his house. Nor does he begin to preach. He doesn’t even leave his home to follow Jesus as so many did at the time. He instead subverts a lifetime of fear with a brave leap into generosity. He begins a new life of love and community. This is the story I hope to have captured with this song. Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection Matt Bittner is an actor and sound designer based out of Ridgewood, Queens. He has composed original music and designed sound for collegiate, regional, and NYC theatrical projects. He holds an MFA in acting from Rutgers University and his musical education comes primarily from church and participating in choral groups in school. He is currently performing in Much Ado About Nothing — the first of this year’s Free Shakespeare in the Park productions. www.mattbittner.com Website Matt Bittner About the Artist Matt Bittner Other Works By Related Information View More Art Make More Art View Full Written Work Close Loading Video . . . Download Full Written Work

Loading Video . . . This video art work by artist and priest Regan O'Callaghan explores the edges of faith and the liminal space between the holy and the mundane in response to 2 Peter 2:18-21. 2 Peter 2:18-21 Fonisoun By Regan O'Callaghan Credits: Curated by: Spark+Echo Arts 2018 Site-specific Video Art Performance Primary Scripture Loading primary passage... Loading Passage Reference... Share This Art: Facebook X (Twitter) WhatsApp LinkedIn Pinterest Copy Link The scripture from 2 Peter is a reminder to be aware of false teachers. Their words are a façade. As a priest in the Church of England I am aware of the power of spoken words. They can build up or break down, enlighten or deceive or simply bore and fall onto stony ground. As an artist I am thankful there is another way to explore the indescribable mysteries of faith, a creative alternative to verbal expressions and proclamations. As an outward sign some priests wear the clerical collar, which is meant to denote their role and their responsibility in sharing the Word of God. But it is also just a strip of cheap plastic which when worn to tightly restricts and suffocates not only the wearer but also the listener. But wonderfully in the midst of religious grandstanding and performance, sometimes the living word can be seen, heard and experienced in the mundane, simple events of every day life. Spark Notes The Artist's Reflection Regan O’Callaghan is an artist who lives in London, England. Originally from New Zealand he moved to the United Kingdom in 1993 where he studied art and religious studies including the technique of icon painting. In 2001 Regan was ordained into the Church of England. He combines his religious ministry with art leading many art projects and workshops as well as painting a number of commissions including an icon for Saint Paul’s Cathedral London. He believes in a ministry of encouragement where art is the facilitator. Artist Statement "The nature of my practice is based on the application of contemporary and traditional techniques and the morphing of different religious themes and symbols in painting, installations and video. All my work explores ideas of ritual, the sacred and profane with the intention of drawing the viewer into challenging realms of order and chaos, apophatic and cataphatic, light and dark." www.reganocallaghan.com Website Regan O'Callaghan About the Artist Regan O'Callaghan Other Works By Related Information View More Art Make More Art View Full Written Work Close Loading Video . . . Download Full Written Work