Our Collective Heart

Stepping off Amsterdam Avenue, out the bright spring day, Hannah and I return to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.  Huge.  Expansive.  Thrilling.  But again today, the most striking thing about this place is its relentless coupling of religion and the arts.  Tapestries.  Photographs.  Sculpture.  Iconography.  The mind isn't neutralized here; it's unleashed.

'Collective Heart' (Eva Petric)

Over the altar, Eva Petric's "Collective Heart" stuns the eye and feeds the soul.  The artist gathered hundreds of fragments of lace, over the course of a lifetime of travel; and each fragment bears its own story.  Stitched together, she's created a stunning piece in the anatomically-correct shape of a human heart.  The heart of Christ.  Pieced together from the world over.  

'Our Lady Mother of Ferguson' (Mark Dukes, 2016)

Mark Duke's icon of "Our Lady Mother of Ferguson" shines with the love of God--even as it grieves for the targeting and maiming of God's sons and daughters in American streets.  Here, the artist turns back to an ancient artform (iconography) and finds it powerfully and urgently right for the contemporary moment.

Photography at the Borders

I'm moved--again this morning--by the promise of "sanctuary."  It's not a place of hidden safety, denial of pain and injustice.  Instead, this "sanctuary" is a gathering of courage, of shared concern, even heartbreak--but the kind of gathering that signals divine companionship and transformative compassion.  The Holy One breathes new life, new hope and unsettling grace into the lives of her faithful.   And that's the kind of sanctuary I'm looking for in 2019!

Many Witnesses, One Love