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Inviting Epiphany

December 30, 2008

wisewomenalsocame
Wise Women Also Came © Jan L. Richardson

I’m working on a reflection for the gospel lection for Epiphany, but in the meantime, I offer you this festive trio to get the celebration under way. Wise Women Also Came was one of the first collages I did when I started to discover, many years ago, that there was an artist lurking in me. I created this as my Epiphany (i.e., belated Christmas) card the year I graduated from seminary. I made it out of plain construction paper; this was before I had discovered the wondrous world of art papers. (A trip to The Japanese Paper Place, now simply called The Paper Place, while visiting my sister in Toronto changed all that; you could say that walking into its stunning space was, well, an epiphany.)

These wise women made their way onto the cover of my first book, which I was writing during the same time that I was getting to know my inner artist. They also made an appearance in Night Visions, my first book to wed my writing and my artwork. This time a poem accompanied the women:

Wise Women Also Came

Wise women also came.
The fire burned
in their wombs
long before they saw
the flaming star
in the sky.
They walked in shadows,
trusting the path
would open
under the light of the moon.

Wise women also came,
seeking no directions,
no permission
from any king.
They came
by their own authority,
their own desire,
their own longing.
They came in quiet,
spreading no rumors,
sparking no fears
to lead
to innocents’ slaughter,
to their sister Rachel’s
inconsolable lamentations.

Wise women also came,
and they brought
useful gifts:
water for labor’s washing,
fire for warm illumination,
a blanket for swaddling.

Wise women also came,
at least three of them,
holding Mary in the labor,
crying out with her
in the birth pangs,
breathing ancient blessings
into her ear.

Wise women also came,
and they went,
as wise women always do,
home a different way.

Next week, in the wake of an intense season of travels and other endeavors, I’ll resume working on a new book. It’s something of a sequel to Sacred Journeys, the book I was writing when these wise women took shape. Though I rarely find writing easy (when folks ask me if I enjoy writing, I usually say, “I enjoy having written”), I’m looking forward to reentering the rhythm of working on a book in a focused fashion. It seems an opportune time to revisit these wise women as I seek a blessing for the path, and the book, ahead. I wonder who will show up this time, and what epiphanies they will have in store.

Who have been the wise women in your life? What epiphanies have they instigated? Here at the ending of the year, what wisdom do you want to gather up from the past twelve months and take with you into the coming year? What blessing, what gifts, do you need to receive for the path ahead? What gifts do you need to offer, that only you can give?

Peace to you in this time of turning.

[To use this image, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

Posted in art, Christmas, Epiphany, holidays, mystery, sacred time, writing | 6 Comments »

Parabolic Curves

November 11, 2008


Buried © Jan L. Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Year A, Proper 28/Ordinary 33/Pentecost +22: Matthew 25.14-30

So I’ve flown to Toronto, celebrated my sister’s wedding, enjoyed some quality family time (and some crisp Canadian weather), and am winging my way back home as I write. And still those bridesmaids are traveling with me, the ones from last Sunday’s gospel lection. Maybe it has something to do with the synchronicity of their story popping up in the lectionary during the week of my sister’s wedding, but I suspect the persistence of the bridesmaids’ presence simply means they’re not finished with me yet.

It’s the so-called foolish bridesmaids in particular who have lingered with me, the ones who found themselves lacking the oil reserves that would have granted them admittance to the wedding festivities. They’ve been haunting my imagination as curious twins of the wise, well-provisioned bridesmaids. Embodying that which we are urged to reject, the foolish bridesmaids are the wise bridesmaids’ shadow sisters. They challenge us to ponder the part of ourselves that can’t get it together, that is content to live with lack, that is caught in cycles of procrastination and passivity. Their presence calls us to reckon with our resistance toward looking beyond the obvious options.

The foolish bridesmaids appear willing to accept the groom’s verdict, his denial of entry, without question. Perhaps they have forgotten that God performs miracles with oil, as in the story of the hungry widow of Zarephath, who, in her lack, gave hospitality to Elijah, and whose jar of oil was perpetually replenished (1 Kings 17.8-16). The women of Jesus’ parable seem not to know the occasions when God provided water in the wilderness, or the times when Jesus turned a couple of fish and a few loaves of bread into a feast that fed thousands who neglected to pack a lunch, or the story of the woman who told Jesus that even the dogs ate the crumbs from beneath the master’s table, and who thereby won a healing for her daughter. The foolish bridesmaids haven’t heard the story of the widow who hounded the judge until he gave her justice. They haven’t encountered Jesus’ counsel in Luke 11, where, in teaching about persistence in prayer, Jesus invites his listeners to imagine going to the house of a friend at midnight and asking for three loaves of bread for a guest who has arrived. “I tell you,” Jesus says, “even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.” Jesus goes on to say, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you” (Luke 11.5-13).

Denied entry, these oil-poor bridesmaids don’t know—or don’t care—that they can knock harder on the door that bars them from the wedding feast, and that God has a fondness for those who, faced with two choices, search for Option C.

The Parable of the Bridesmaids is not merely a prelude to the parable of this week’s gospel lection but a parallel to it; in a sense, Matthew 25.14-30 is a retelling of the bridesmaids’ tale. Jesus emphasizes these parables’ parallel nature in the simile with which he starts his story: “For it is as if,” he says, and launches into his narrative of the man who, “going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability.” And thus begins one of Jesus’ most familiar parables.

We likely know the rest of this story, how one slave turns his five talents into ten, how the next turns his two talents into four, and how the third slave buries his single talent in the ground. On the day of reckoning, the two slaves proffer their profits and receive the expected praise, while the third offers this account: “Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.” He receives a thorough castigation for being wicked and lazy. His one talent is given to the man who now has ten, with the master offering this rationale: “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” The parable ends with the master’s command to throw this “worthless slave…into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Okay, may I just say it? I find myself liking the third servant more than the first two. The entrepreneurial servants of the parable do precisely as expected: they enlarge the master’s fortune in his absence, they follow his plan without question, they perform as he has compelled them to do. The third fellow, however, calls things as he sees them. He knows his master is corrupt, and, with a curious mix of courage and fear, he says so to his face. And thereby reaps the master’s wrath.

So I find myself wondering, why is it that we most often read this passage as a judgment against the third servant and not against the man who has perpetuated an unjust system? Do we really think that the harsh and reportedly corrupt master of this parable represents God, who, after a period of absence, comes back prepared to throw out those who have not performed as expected? Do I really want to be like the first two servants, willing to participate in and perpetuate injustice?

Much like the wise bridesmaids, the two multi-talented men serve as the foil for the one who proves inept and unprepared. One could say they are the suck-ups who provide a contrast to the screwup. We might wonder at a parable that presents a narrative ecosystem in which the only available choices seem to lie either in perpetuating the master’s corrupt business plan or hiding his loot in the ground.

But we might wonder, too, at the servant who perceives these as the only options. He is savvy enough to recognize the system that surrounds him, and, presumably, he has participated in it up to this point. He finally demonstrates a measure of bravery that enables him to, as the phrase goes, speak truth to power. But like the foolish bridesmaids, he possesses a streak of passivity that, within the landscape of the parable, proves his undoing. Perhaps this is what makes each of them—the hapless bridesmaids, the single-talent servant—foolish: ultimately, they prove unwilling to take responsibility for pushing toward another option, looking for another choice. They have forgotten the God who startles with stunning abundance in the midst of the starkest lack.

The servant who buried his sole talent reminds me that when we cannot imagine other possibilities, we tend to hoard what we have, clinging to what is comfortable or at least familiar. And not only to hoard, but to hide. In the absence of eyes to see the wealth that God reveals in the wilderness, we secret away what small measure we have, thinking it will be enough to sustain us, and hoping it will protect us. It’s difficult, however, to draw sustenance from secrets, and it’s hard even for God to bless and multiply that which remains hidden. Darkness has its uses, and its gifts: growth requires gestation, a season of deep shadow, the absence of light for a length of time. But what we leave underground too long grows distorted and becomes decayed. As the third servant discovered, what we hide—our habits, our beliefs, our own selves—has a way of unburying itself.

I take this parable seriously as a profound call to unhide ourselves, to resist accepting the obvious options, to stretch ourselves toward the fullness for which God created us. I recognize how this story, along with the parable of the bridesmaids, warns of the pain that comes from our passivity. Yet I also read this parable in the light of the stories of the God who does miracles with what is most basic and elemental: oil, water, wine, bread, our very selves. This is the stuff in and through which God brings transformation, and the means by which God sustains the world.

This week I find myself wondering, what do I hide, and why? What parts of my created self have I sent underground? Is there anything I’ve left too long in the dark? Do I harbor any passivity that I need to invite God to turn into persistence? As the season of Advent approaches, with its rich play of light and dark, what might God desire to reveal and to transform in my own life?

In these lingering days of Ordinary Time, may God stir our imagination, sharpen our vision, and give us courage to unhide what God desires us to offer. Blessings.

[To use the “Buried” image, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

Posted in art, Gospel of Matthew, lectionary, mystery, Ordinary Time | 9 Comments »

Feast of All Saints: A Gathering of Spirits

October 26, 2008


A Gathering of Spirits © Jan L. Richardson

Ahhhh…it’s the Feast of All Saints, almost. I love this time of year. Here in central Florida we’re just beginning to touch the fringe of Autumn’s cloak. There’s something stirring, a shift in the works, and it doesn’t have to do solely with the weather.

I’m not sure quite when it started, but for many years, the trinity of days from October 31 to November 2, encompassing Halloween, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day, has been a thin place in the landscape of my year. The ancient Celts, who celebrated the major festival of Samhain around November 1, believed that the veil between worlds became especially permeable at this time. In something of that spirit, I find that these days offer an invitation to ponder the past. Not with a desire to return to it, or to second-guess it, but with a mindfulness of what has gone before, and perhaps to have a brief visit from the ghosts of What Might Have Been.

It’s this kind of impulse that gave rise to the feasts of All Saints and All Souls. Recognizing the ancient habit of looking to the past at this time of year, the church created new ways to remember the dead with practices in which we can still hear the echoes of the ancient celebrations. Each culture that observes these feast days continues to add their own layers of meaning and mystery, as with the Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebrations that originated in Mexico (and which, of course, rest on pre-Christian festivities). My own observance of these days usually includes setting aside some time for quiet, for remembering, for prayer, for doing some writing that’s just for me. And good food, of course. And lighting a few flames.

I had a taste of the Feast of All Saints a bit early this year. The theme for the Grünewald Guild’s gala dinner and auction that Gary and I helped with in Washington last weekend was A Gathering of Spirits. The title came from Carrie Newcomer’s song of the same name, which she wrote out of her experiences of teaching at the Guild. I created a piece of artwork for the auction and the cover of the evening’s program—it’s the image you see above—and designed it with the theme, and Carrie’s song, in mind. It shares the same title.

The folks who contributed artwork to the auction each had to write an artist’s statement to accompany our piece. Here’s how mine went:

Before the paint, before the color-drenched layers, it began with a prayer. Penciled words across the white paper: a litany of blessing, a liturgy of thanksgiving for a holy place in the Plain Valley where the worlds of art and faith intertwine. Then the painting, then the cutting, then the layering of papers atop the penciled prayer. With every piece, another prayer; with every layer, another memory of those who have passed through the thin, thin place that is the Guild. Remembering how their presence lingers. A communion of saints, say, to sustain us when the way grows daunting. Or call it this: a gathering of spirits.

What stirs your memories in this season? Who are the folks, living or dead, who linger close in these days? Whom do you gather with? Who or what haunts you? How do your memories help inspire your path ahead?

May this week offer you a thin place and a gathering of good spirits. Blessings.

(To use this image, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!)

Posted in art, Celtic, mystery, Ordinary Time, sacred time | 8 Comments »

Crossing the Country, Thinking of Love

October 24, 2008


The Two Commandments © Jan L. Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Year A, Proper 25/Ordinary 30/Pentecost +19: Matthew 22.34-46

Last week. Thursday. Gary and I are somewhere over the continent, making an arc toward Seattle. We are flying across the country to help with an event for the Grünewald Guild; Gary to perform, me to serve as emcee for the gala dinner and auction that will help raise funds to sustain this remarkable retreat center. This is a bonus trip, an out-of-season treat; I’ve never been to Washington State except in the summer, when I go to teach at the Guild, nor have I seen most of these folks anywhere but on the Guild’s property.

I’ve finished the collage for this post and am ambitious to think that I can write the accompanying reflection en route to Seattle. With my tray table serving as a makeshift desk, I turn to Sunday’s lection once again. Matthew gives us another encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees, with this one containing their question, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Quoting from the Hebrew scriptures, Jesus tells them, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments,” Jesus says, “hang all the law and the prophets.”

I pull out some notes that I had jotted down as I prepared for this trip. They are filled with impressions, questions, points of connection between the text of the scripture and the text of my life. There are scripture verses I’ve scribbled down. This passage not only drew from earlier sources but also inspired later scripture writers, so there is a web of texts that link to this one. I’ve written down Deuteronomy 6.5, from which Jesus quotes in responding to the Pharisees. It’s part of the Shema, the prayer that lies at the heart of Jewish life: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone,” the ancient prayer begins. And Leviticus 19.18: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people,” God compels Moses to tell the people of Israel, “but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” There is Mark 12.28-34, a parallel to Matthew’s version, which places Jesus’ questioner in a rather different light. And Luke 10.25-37, where, alone among the synoptic gospels, Jesus uses the question as an occasion to tell the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

Romans 13.8-9 appears among my notes. “Owe no one anything,” Paul urges the church in Rome, “except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” Galatians 5.14, in which he writes, “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'” And James 2.8, where the writer refers to love of one’s neighbor as the “royal law.”

Psalm 110.1 made its way into my notes. It’s the piece of poetry that Jesus quotes in the second portion of this week’s lection, where he poses his listeners a question about how David can call the Messiah “Lord,” if the Lord is his son. It seems a bit of an odd turn, a particularly circuitous question that Jesus has devised to stump his listeners. (It works, evidently. “No one was able to give him an answer,” Matthew says in concluding the passage; “nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.”)

Looking up from my notes, I hand the gospel passage to Gary, ask him what he thinks. Does this second part of the reading offer a connection with Jesus’ words about love, or is it a distinct passage that happens to be in the same lection but requires a separate treatment? Gary ponders the passage for a bit, then suggests that each portion offers a commentary on the relationship between humans and God. The first part seems straightforward, if sometimes gut-wrenchingly difficult. In the second part, there is a deft subtlety in Jesus’ confounding question. In challenging his hearers to ponder how the Messiah can be both David’s ancestor and heir, Jesus underscores the manner in which he stands both within time and beyond it. He is Love embodied, entering into the fullness of what it means to wear flesh in this world. Yet he reminds us that Love is not bound by time, is not confined to chronology, can take us in seeming circles as we enter deeper and deeper into its mysteries.

I ponder these things, then finally I put my notes away, and my Bible, and my laptop. I am tired in body and in brain. There is time yet to try to work all the scattered notes and questions and thoughts into some sort of coherence. For now, I sit back, speeding over the darkened, unseen landscape below. Jesus’ words persist like a refrain, like a heartbeat, a steady pulse as we pass through another time zone, and another. Arcing across the country, I am traveling with someone I love, traveling toward people I love, all of whom continue to teach me about the mysteries of the simple yet achingly intricate commandment of love, this ancient law that draws us so far beyond ourselves and yet circles us deeply back within.

I close my eyes, resting before the arrival. Waiting. For now, it is enough.

How about you? What challenges and what gifts do you find in Jesus’ words in this passage? Where has love led you? Toward what—or whom—do you feel it drawing you? What sustains you along its path?

Blessings.

[To use the “Two Commandments” image, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

Posted in art, Gospel of Matthew, lectionary, mystery, Ordinary Time | Leave a Comment »

Something Old, Something New

July 23, 2008


Something Old, Something New © Jan L. Richardson

While I was at St. John’s University in Minnesota last week, I made a couple of visits to the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (known in those parts as the HMML). The Benedictine monks of St. John’s founded the HMML to preserve the medieval manuscript heritage of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, and it’s always a favorite destination for a girl with a blog called The Painted Prayerbook. This summer the HMML is home to a tasty exhibition of original folios from The Saint John’s Bible, the first Bible to be written and illustrated entirely by hand in more than five hundred years. Featuring the Wisdom Books section of The St. John’s Bible, the exhibition marks the completion of five of the planned seven volumes of this contemporary manuscript. By the time that Donald Jackson and his team of scribes and artists complete their lavish, monumental work, the Bible will have absorbed about ten years of their lives.

A group was touring the exhibition during one of my visits to the museum. As I took in the folios, with the gold dancing on their pages, I tuned an ear to the comments that the group’s HMML guide offered. After her presentation, she fielded a number of questions. “Why,” one person asked, “in this age of high-quality printing technology, would someone spend the time to create an entire Bible by hand?” As the guide responded, she spoke about the value of recovering ancient practices of bookmaking as a sacred art, and of the beauty that emerges in fashioning something by hand. She pointed out that contemporary technology has played a significant role in The Saint John’s Bible; a designer used a computer to plan the entire layout of the pages before the team began to lay the first strokes of ink, paint, and gold leaf on the vellum sheets.

It’s a treasure that draws from what is old and what is new.

We hear about such treasures in this week’s gospel lection, Matthew 13.31-33, 44-52. Jesus, who is in a parable-telling mood at this point in the gospel, offers a series of images that describe what the kingdom of heaven is like. He speaks of a mustard seed that grows into a tree, yeast that a woman mixes with flour, a man who discovers treasure hidden in a field, a merchant who finds a pearl of great value, and a net filled with fish. Jesus closes the litany of images by saying, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

The scribe about whom Jesus speaks is a rather different sort of scribe than those who have been laboring over The Saint John’s Bible. Jesus’ scribe is one versed in Mosaic Law, a person who knows and draws from the wealth of the law and also recognizes new treasure when it appears. Yet the scribes of The Saints John’s Bible, and the pages they have created, embody what Jesus’ kingdom-images evoke. Each reminds us of how the holy, which so often seems hidden, emerges when we stretch ourselves into searching for it, seeking it, laboring toward it. The bakerwoman kneading in her kitchen, the man who sells all that he has to buy the field, the merchant who gives up everything to purchase the pearl of great price, the scribe trained for the kingdom of heaven, the householder who brings forth treasure old and new: each of these has given themselves, devoted themselves, to a particular process by which treasure emerges. They know what skills it takes, what vision, what devotion. Each trained in their particular art, they possess in their bones the knowledge that tells them what ingredient to use, what tools old or new to employ, what treasure lies before them.

Offering these images, Jesus recognizes there are things that are worth a long devotion; there is treasure worth giving ourselves to for a decade, a lifetime. Such treasure might not have a usefulness that is obvious, or readily grasped. In a world where technological shortcuts abound (and are useful at times, to be sure)—bread machines, metal detectors, faux pearls, computer printers—something happens when we take the long way around, when we hunt for the holy that often loves to hide in work that takes time, takes the development of skill, takes commitment, takes the long view.

I think of when I was first learning calligraphy a few years ago. There was no getting around the need for practice. Over weeks and months, as I covered page after page with ink, shaky lines steadily grew more sure, and awkwardness began to give way to art.

This type of long laboring and searching reveals something about our own selves. Submitting ourselves to a process of practicing brings secret parts of ourselves to the surface; it draws us out and unhides us, and the holy that dwells within us. “The kingdom of God is among you,” Jesus says in Luke 17.21. Among us, and meant to be uncovered, to become visible, to offer sustenance and grace for the life of the world. Like bread. Trees. Pearls. Pages. Treasure born of what is old and what is new.

What treasure have you found, or long to find, in the hidden places of your life? What searching, what seeking might God be challenging you toward, to uncover what’s been buried? Is there anything in your life that invites you to encounter the holy in a process that takes time, practice, skill, devotion? What of yourself do you find in that, and what do you find of God?

May this week bring a hidden gift your way. Blessings.

[To use the “Something Old, Something New” image, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

Posted in art, books, Gospel of Matthew, lectionary, medieval, monastic stuff, mystery, Ordinary Time, writing | Leave a Comment »

Mapping the Mysteries

June 11, 2008


Mapping the Mysteries © Jan L. Richardson

Reading from the Gospels:
Year A, Proper 6/Ordinary 11/Pentecost +5: Matthew 9.35-10.8 (9-23)
Year B, Proper 9/Ordinary 14/Pentecost +5: Mark 6.1-13
Year C, Proper 9/Ordinary 14/ Pentecost + 7: Luke 10.1-11, 16-20

Early in my ministry, I traveled to Alaska with a mission team from my church. During a free day, we did some exploring that included a stop at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art. As I wandered through the rooms, I found myself in an exhibit titled A World of Maps. These maps were unlike any I had ever seen. Artists from across the United States had taken the familiar forms of cartography, stretching and pushing and translating them into a fascinating library of landscapes. There were altered maps, painted maps, collaged maps. There were maps in the form of sculpture, of books, of pottery. There was a map that unfolded like a scroll, a map in the form of a diptych, a woven map. More than describing the geography of the physical world, these maps charted worlds of imagination, fantastical realms, the terrain of the soul and spirit. The maps told stories of things seen and unseen, and they challenged ideas about borders and boundaries. They embodied the lure and the hazards of exploring worlds unknown—and the worlds we think we know.

This week marks fifteen years that I have been in ministry. Yesterday, as part of my reflecting on this past decade and a half, I pulled out the catalog from that Alaskan exhibit and spent some time revisiting the maps I had encountered so early in my vocation. Looking back, I wonder if part of my fascination with those maps lay in my awareness, even then, of what an uncharted path I was on. I entered ordained ministry with a sense that at some point God would open a door that would take me off the beaten path. I had a gut sense, some hunches, a sense of longing about the ways the path might take shape, but no real idea of how it would unfold.

In this week’s gospel lection, Jesus gives the disciples the closest thing they ever get to a map for their ministry. Telling the twelve to go and proclaim the good news that “The kingdom of heaven has come near,” Jesus provides a rough—not to mention sobering—chart of the landscape they will venture into. He tells them of the hazards the terrain will likely pose, what towns and people to avoid, and how to navigate occasions of hospitality and resistance and hatred. And he gives them the authority to do the work he has called them to do: to chart a path that will be marked by healing and restoration.

So early in their ministries, the disciples could know little of what the territory ahead would actually look like or where it would take them. I wonder—as they looked back after Jesus’ death and resurrection, what kind of map might they have drawn to describe the paths they had walked with him? Reading the landscape with the eye of a cartographer, what marks might they have made to trace their travels? What would those contours and patterns have looked like—the places where, with the authority given to them, they cured the sick, raised the dead, cleansed the lepers, and cast out demons? Or where they shared meals together, or fed those who hungered, or listened to Jesus teach and challenge and encourage and stretch them? Or where they watched him die, and witnessed him alive again? How would they map all the terrain they crossed in the spaces of their own souls?

In Katharine Harmon’s wondrous book You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination, she includes an essay by Stephen S. Hall entitled “I, Mercator.” Hall writes,

I like to say that I never travel without a map, but then none of us do. We all travel with many maps, neatly folded and tucked away in the glove compartment of memory—some of them communal and universal, like our autonomic familiarity with seasonal constellations and the shape of continents, and some as particular as the local roads we have each traipsed. As we navigate on the trip that Dante called “our life’s way,” we are all creating our private maps. Like Mercator, we are not discovering entirely new worlds; rather, we are laying a new set of lines down on a known but changing world, arranging and rearranging metaphysical rhumbs that we associate with successful navigation. To each, her or his private meridians. To each, a unique projection. I, Mercator, and you, too.

This week’s collage is a map I made as I reflected on these past fifteen years in ministry. As with most maps, I can chart the landscape only in retrospect; I recognize the roads because I have traveled them, often making them up as I went along. Making this collaged map, I had certain kinds of landmarks on my mind, but I fashioned it with the awareness that I could have charted the landscape any number of ways. I could have marked the locations where pivotal conversations occurred, where I witnessed healing, where I encountered birth or death. I could have charted the places of peril, of heartbreak, of unexpected wonders. I could have marked the spots where the territory seemed to take me in circles, or was barren, or graced me with splendors. The map might have noted the underground streams, the secret passages, the wellsprings of sustenance, the paths not taken.

And it might tell of those sites where the convoluted terrain finally opened up and spilled me out into a plain where I knew more deeply who I was, what I was called to do, what Christ was giving me authority to do.

Still making the map as I go, I pray for a measure of the imagination of those artists whose work I saw in Anchorage, who pushed and stretched the traditional forms, who ventured beyond the customary boundaries, who dared to look deeper into their landscape, and deeper still. More than that, I pray for the imagination of the one who looked out into the terrain of a world “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd,” a world broken by illness and injustice, a world bent by pain and hunger. I pray for the imagination of Christ, who dared to look into this world and to ask those who traveled with him, “Want to make a new map?”

So what’s your map look like? How would you chart the terrain of your last fifteen years, fifteen months, fifteen days? What landmarks would you note? What stories would your map tell? What are the maps beneath the map of your life—the hidden landscapes, the secret stories that shape the lay of your land? Are there tools you need in order to do some new mapping—to revisit and rethink and redraw the territory you thought you knew, or to change the course ahead?

Many blessings and traveling mercies as you continue to chart your way.

[To use this artwork, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com.]

Posted in art, books, Gospel of Mark, Gospel of Matthew, lectionary, mystery, Ordinary Time | 2 Comments »

Trinity Sunday: A Spiral-Shaped God

May 12, 2008


A Spiral-Shaped God © Jan L. Richardson

Some years ago, at a retreat center in Ontario, I led a retreat in which we explored some of the riches that come to us from Celtic Christian traditions. When I saw that our meeting room had a smooth linoleum floor, an idea stirred. After tracking down several rolls of masking tape, I returned to the gathering space and got to work. When I finished a couple hours later, the center of our space held a circle with a triple spiral inside, large enough to use for walking prayer and meditation.

The symbol of the triple spiral is particularly prevalent in Celtic lands, where, in Christian times, it came to signify the Trinity. Evoking the energy, interconnection, and mystery of the triune God, the triple spiral graces such works as the remarkable insular Gospel books of the early medieval period, including the Book of Durrow and the Book of Kells.

On Trinity Sunday, we both celebrate God’s triune nature and also acknowledge the great mystery that it holds. Throughout the centuries, theologians have sought to define just how it is that God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit dwell together and with all of creation. Symbols of the Trinity abound, evidence of our desire to describe a being that comprises a community within itself. Attempts to convey the nature of the Trinity in images have occasionally produced some curious artwork, as in this image from a medieval Book of Hours that depicts three fellows sharing a single crown, and this image, added to a medieval English Psalter, that shows Abraham adoring a three-headed Trinity.

In their commentary on Trinity Sunday, the authors of Handbook of the Christian Year counsel us that rather than approaching this day with an emphasis on “the Trinity as an abstract concept, idea, or doctrine,” and seeking to explain or define it, it rather “seems more in keeping with the character of worship and of the Christian Year to treat Trinity Sunday as a day in which we praise and adore the infinitely complex and unfathomable mystery of God’s being to which we point when we speak of the Holy Trinity.” They go on to write,

Because our celebration of the Easter cycle is based upon the mighty acts of the triune God, and because we are entering upon the Sunday-to-Sunday half of the year when the emphasis is wholeheartedly upon each Sunday as the Lord’s Day, whose celebration is also based upon the mighty acts of the triune God, it is appropriate that we pause on this transitional Sunday to give ourselves over to the adoration and praise of the being—as distinct from the acts—of the triune God.

It is sometimes difficult, of course, to separate the doing of the Trinity from the being of the Trinity, for it is part of the nature of the Trinity to be in action, to work in relationship within itself and in cooperation with creation. This is one of the reasons that the Celtic symbol triple spiral speaks to my imagination: it evokes the God who both exists in a dynamic wholeness within itself yet also reaches out (or is it in?) to embrace us.

Historically, Celtic Christians offered no systematic theology by which they sought to define the nature and work of Trinity, but evidence of their experience of the triune God abounds. Beyond their artistic and symbolic depictions of the Trinity, they left a remarkable body of prayers and poetry that offer us an incarnate experience of the Trinity. In their poems and prayers, Celtic Christians moved from the abstract to the actual; for them, the triune deity was not a theological concept but rather was deeply embedded in daily life. In the Celtic imagination, God, Christ, and Spirit are intertwined with one another and with all of creation.

The Carmina Gadelica, a collection of prayers, poems, and blessings that Alexander Carmichael gathered in the Scottish islands and highlands in the 19th century, offers a feast of examples of this rich relationship with the Trinity, as in this prayer for the baptism of a child:

The little drop of the Father
On thy little forehead, beloved one.

The little drop of the Son
On thy little forehead, beloved one.

The little drop of the Spirit
On thy little forehead, beloved one.

To aid thee from the fays,
To guard thee from the host;

To aid thee from the gnome,
To shield thee from the spectre;

To keep thee for the Three,
To shield thee, to surround thee;

To save thee for the Three,
To fill thee with the graces;

The little drop of the Three
To lave thee with the graces.

With an intent both poetic and practical, this baptismal prayer serves as a graceful commentary on, and response to, the gospel reading for Trinity Sunday. In Matthew 28.16-20, we read the words that are, according to Matthew, Jesus’ final words to his disciples. In this passage that we often call the Great Commission, Jesus tells them to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” Jesus’ words here are about the closest thing we have to an articulation of the Trinity in the scriptures. Jesus never uses the term “Trinity,” and he offers nothing like a doctrine of its nature. His words here, however, perhaps provide doctrine enough: he lets us know that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist in an inextricable relationship that propels us to be in relationship with the world, to live in service and to cultivate community. “And remember,” Jesus tells them at the last, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” I am with you, he says: that being thing again, invariably bound together with the doing of the Trinity, an endless spiral of action and existence in which it dwells, and calls us to dwell as well.

In the Celtic triple spiral, there is a space where the three spirals connect. It is both a place of meeting and of sheer mystery. Its vast, vibrant emptiness reminds me that, in this life, we will never know all the names of God. Even as the Trinity evokes, it conceals. We will never exhaust the images we use to describe the One who holds us and sends us, who enfolds us and impels us in our eternal turning.

This week, as we travel toward Trinity Sunday, I’ll be holding that image of the triple spiral and the community in whose company I walked its path: inward, outward, journeying ever around the mystery at its center. Those walking companions remind me of how we are to be a living sign of the Trinity who dwells in eternal, intertwined relationship within itself and with all creation. As individuals and as communities, we are beckoned to times of spiraling inward, to attend to our own souls. We are propelled, in turn, into times of spiraling outward, to attend to the world beyond us. In all our turnings, the presence of God persists. With you always, Jesus said.

How do you experience the God who exists as a community and invites us to intertwined lives? How does this God become incarnate in the rhythm of your days?

Blessings on your spiral-shaped path.

[To use this image, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

Posted in art, books, Gospel of Matthew, lectionary, mystery, sacred time | 17 Comments »

Easter 2: Into the Wound

March 29, 2008

Image: Into the Wound © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Easter 2: John 20.19-31

Tonight I pulled out a card, received from a friend years ago. On the front of the card is Caravaggio’s depiction of the scene that we find in this week’s lectionary reading. As Caravaggio sees it, Christ stands to the left, chest bared, drawing Thomas’s hand into his wound as two other disciples look on. It is an intimate scene: Christ bows his head over Thomas’s hand, gazing at Thomas as he pulls him toward his wound; Thomas leans in, brow furrowed, the other disciples standing so close behind him they threaten to topple him straight into Jesus. Yet Thomas seems about to tumble into the wound of his own accord. He is doing more than merely looking where Christ leads him; his whole being is absorbed in wonder. The first time I saw this image, I immediately had the sense that Thomas was thinking, There’s another world in there.

The title sometimes given this remarkable painting, and this remarkable man, is “Doubting Thomas,” which grates a bit. Three weeks ago, contemplating the gospel lection for Lent 5, I was reminded that in the story of the raising of Lazarus, Thomas is the one—the only one—who steps forward and expresses his willingness to die with Jesus. In this week’s reading, Thomas once again crosses into a place where others have not ventured: into the very flesh of the risen Christ.

Caravaggio’s painting illumines a point that the gospel writers are keen to make in the post-resurrection stories of Jesus. They want to make sure we know that the risen Christ was no ghost, no ethereal spirit. He was flesh and blood. He ate. He still, as Thomas discovered, wore the wounds of crucifixion. That Christ’s flesh remained broken, even in his resurrection, serves as a powerful reminder that his intimate familiarity and solidarity with our human condition did not end with his death. Perhaps that’s what strikes me so about Caravaggio’s painting: it stuns the viewer with the awareness of how deeply Christ was, and is, joined with us. The wounds of the risen Christ are not a prison; they are a passage. Thomas’s hand in Christ’s side is not some bizarre, morbid probe: it is a union, and a reminder that in taking flesh, Christ wed himself to us.

The presence of the Christ who joins himself to us, who is intimately acquainted not only with the delights that come in being human but also in the ways it breaks us open, comes as a particular solace this week. As I write this in the middle of the night, my sweetheart is keeping vigil by his mother’s hospital bed. She is dying. Just a month ago, we—Gary and his brothers and their families—threw a surprise party to celebrate Shirley’s 80th birthday. Shortly afterward, she was diagnosed with a recurrence of leukemia, and where we expected that another series of chemo would buy her some more time, complications set in with startling speed in the past week. Shirley remained alert until Gary and his three brothers arrived to be with her, and now she is letting go.

In a dozen hours I’ll fly to North Carolina, where Shirley’s extended family has begun to gather. I’ve been doing laundry today, working on taxes, paying bills, doing dishes, preparing for a retreat I’m scheduled to lead in Connecticut next weekend—all the mundane and sometimes marvelous details of life that persist even as another life is ending. As I pack, I’ll tuck in the card that my friend gave me all those years ago. And instead of Doubting Thomas, perhaps I’ll call him Believing Thomas. Thomas Who Asked for What He Needed. Thomas Who Crossed the Boundary.

Perhaps I’ll call him Thomas of the Passage, who reached out his hand and found what Shirley is finding in these passing hours:

There’s another world in there.

[To use the image “Into the Wound,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Advent Door possible. Thank you!]

Posted in art, Easter, Gospel of John, lectionary, mystery | 6 Comments »

The Painted Prayerbook

January 8, 2008

blog2008-01-08.jpg

Some years ago, while browsing through the savory bookstore at the Washington National Cathedral, I happened upon Roger Wieck’s book Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art. I was vaguely familiar with Books of Hours, mostly from seeing individual images that had been lifted from them for Christmas cards or book illustrations, but this was my first real introduction to this kind of book. Called the “medieval bestseller,” the Book of Hours was a popular prayerbook that enabled lay people to keep a similar rhythm of prayer as the monks, nuns, and priests who prayed the Liturgy of the Hours—the eight times of prayer that helped them remember the presence of God throughout the day and night.

In the days before the printing press, scribes and illuminators created these exquisite books by hand. They were often lavish creations that employed paints, inks, and dyes crafted from such materials as plants, flowers, and—yes—crushed bugs, as well as costly stones and minerals including lapis lazuli and gold. The contents of the Book of Hours varied. Virtually all of them contained a section of prayers called the Hours of the Virgin (with illuminations of the life of Mary, the mother of Jesus), the Hours of the Cross (with illuminations depicting the events around Jesus’ crucifixion), and the Hours of the Holy Spirit (with an illumination of the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost).

As a writer and artist who creates books for reflection and prayer, I was enchanted by Wieck’s descriptions of these remarkable prayerbooks and by the wealth of color illustrations that he included. I began to cast about for more information on Books of Hours and, as I discovered the wondrous resources available, was soon thanking my lucky stars that I live in an age where color reproductions in print and on the web are so readily available.

One of the things that particularly struck me about these prayerbooks was how frequently the illuminated artwork (“illuminated” refers to the use of gold in an illustration) had an architectural context: in any given Book of Hours, most of the scenes are framed in a fashion that gives them the appearance of taking place in an arch, a doorway, a window. This kind of framing creates an entrance, a passageway that beckons the reader to cross into the scene being depicted. The passage, however, doesn’t go just one way: this kind of depiction also challenges readers to allow the characters to cross through the frame into their own world, and to ponder how the stories embedded in Books of Hours—stories of biblical characters and saints—might unfold in the reader’s own landscape.

This kind of artwork, with its two-way passage, underscores how the Book of Hours was a threshold book. Usually of a size that was small enough to carry in a pocket or purse, such a book’s owner could open it anywhere and, in that place, open themselves to the presence of God. The book offered a thin place, a sacred, illuminated space where heaven and earth met.

Fittingly, Wieck calls these books “portable cathedrals.”

My fascination with and research into Books of Hours eventually led me to other kinds of illuminated manuscripts that offer their own unique thresholds. Illuminated Psalters, Gospel books, Apocalypses, and other dazzling genres: they each have quickened my imagination and deepened my understanding of how a book can offer a threshold, a thin place, an invitation to go deeper into the mystery of God. For me, the bookly intertwining of words and images is particularly compelling and intriguing, both as a reader/viewer and as an artist/writer.

I share all this because this is the kind of stuff that’s been on my mind as I’ve been redesigning this blog in recent days. I’ve pretty much been lying low, blog-wise, the past couple of weeks, in the wake of the intensity of doing the daily writing and art-making for The Advent Door (I think I’ve nearly recovered!). Doing the Advent blog stirred some ideas and imaginings for what this blog could become.

I loved reflecting on the season’s lectionary readings in a way that intertwined image and words; I especially loved creating the abstract collages and seeing where they took me. One of the main things I envision doing with this newly redesigned/revamped/renamed blog is offering an artful reflection on a lectionary reading for each week, as I did during Advent. More broadly, this blog will be a place where I’ll contemplate the intersections of art and writing and faith, and a few other things besides.

A blog is different from a printed or handcrafted book, but it shares some common ground in the ways that it can invite us into a reflective, contemplative, sacred space. My hope is that, in the spirit of the medieval and Renaissance books that offered places of worship, respite, and challenge on the journey, the artful pages of this blog will invite you to notice some thin places along your own path.

With thankfulness for the generations of artists and scribes whose skills far exceed mine but whose books continue to inspire me and invite me into places of wonder and worship, it seems fitting to call this blog The Painted Prayerbook. Thank you for opening its pages. I look forward to sharing the journey with you.

(Today’s artwork is a [triplicated] detail from an original mixed-media piece titled At Her Prayers: Mary Magdalene with a Book of Hours; it’s part of a series inspired by medieval Books of Hours. To see the series, visit The Hours of Mary Magdalene. For a related series, check out The Advent Hours.)

Posted in art, books, monastic stuff, mystery, writing | 11 Comments »

The Feast of the Epiphany: Magi and Mystery

January 6, 2008

Image: Magi and Mystery © Jan Richardson

Merry Epiphany to you! I preached at First United Methodist Church of Winter Park this morning; here’s an approximation of what I shared.

Magi and Mystery
Matthew 2.1-12

We’ve seen them everywhere over the holidays: three regal men, sometimes depicted with camels, bearing gifts that they have traveled hundreds of miles to offer to Jesus. Although their story, which appears in the Gospel of Matthew, is distinct from the nativity story in Luke’s Gospel, and although it’s likely that they didn’t reach Mary, Joseph, and Jesus until Jesus was a couple of years old, these wise travelers are almost always depicted along with the shepherds and others who inhabit the story of the birth of Christ. Christmas cards and nativity sets vividly bring together the stories that Matthew and Luke offer. In the manger scene in my parents’ home, the wise men join not only the shepherds and the traditional cow and donkey who welcome Christ into the world; owing to my mom’s great sense of whimsy, they stand also alongside such creatures as a dinosaur, a moose, and a giraffe. Kind of a “Noah’s Ark meets the Nativity” sort of thing.

We have these really familiar images of these wise men who come to welcome the Christ and lavish him with gifts, but the truth is that Matthew’s Gospel tells us very little about them. Matthew refers to them as “magi,” a word that means wise men or astrologers. We’re not certain where they came from; possibly Persia, about a thousand miles away, where there was a class of priestly folk who were referred to as magi. We’re not sure how many of them there were. Because they offered three gifts, tradition has often assumed there were three wise men (one gift per wise man, please!), but estimates across the centuries have ranged from two to twelve. We don’t even know their names, though legend has called them Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar.

The wise men are sometimes referred to as the three kings, a designation that comes not from Matthew’s Gospel but from passages in the Hebrew scriptures that refer to kings who come bearing gifts for a great new ruler.

All this is to say that the magi are shrouded in mystery. In the midst of Matthew’s relative lack of information, we do know these things: they possessed the ability to read the heavens, they felt compelled to follow a star, they traveled a vast distance to welcome and pay homage to Jesus, and they brought him amazing presents.

I’m intrigued by the fact that Matthew, who is so fuzzy on certain details regarding the magi, is very specific about the gifts they brought. This suggests that the gifts are part of Matthew’s whole point in telling the tale of Jesus’ birth. The first hearers and readers of Matthew’s story would have understood the significance of the wise men’s offerings, but, as we ponder the story two millennia later, it’s good to remind ourselves of what these gifts would have meant.

In Jesus’ day, the first gift, gold, had lots of the same connotations that it does for us. It’s precious. It’s lavish. It’s a gift fit for a king. In the Bible, gold is sometimes mentioned in the same breath as royalty. Isaiah and the Psalms refer to kings who bring gold to honor a great ruler. For the wise men, the gift of gold was a way of acknowledging Jesus as a king.

It is, perhaps, a little harder for us to grasp the value of frankincense and myrrh. Both frankincense and myrrh come from the aromatic resin of trees. More bluntly put, they are dried tree sap. What a gift for a child! But in Jesus’ time, they were costly, myrrh especially so. Frankincense was typically used in religious rituals. In Exodus 30, God tells Moses to make an incense that includes frankincense, for use in the tent of meeting, where God meets with the priests; God tells Moses, “It shall be for you most holy.” The wise men’s gift of frankincense symbolizes that God has come in the person of Christ, that Christ himself has become the place of meeting between divinity and humanity.

Myrrh seems like perhaps the strangest gift of all. In Jesus’ time, it was especially associated with funerals and was used in the process of preparing a body for burial. In the New Testament, the only mentions of myrrh, besides today’s reading, are in the gospels of Mark and John, in connection with Jesus’ crucifixion and death. This seems a curious gift for a young child, and I have to wonder if this gift haunted Jesus a bit. Though it carries some foreshadowing of what will happen to Jesus, I think the magi intended it not as a morbid gift but rather as a reminder to Jesus that, even for him, earthly life is brief, and we are called to use it well.

On this day of Epiphany, as we set off into the new year, I want to invite us to think of the wise men’s gifts to Jesus as gifts for us as well. These gifts, rich with symbolism, have invitations for us who seek to follow Christ, who are the body of Christ. I want to suggest that within these gifts, so rich with significance and symbolism, are questions that can accompany us into this new year.

The gift of gold, the gift that recognized Jesus was as a king, invites us to consider the question: Who were you born to be? This is perhaps the most crucial and most complicated question of our lives. Some of the most interesting people I know are those who, well along in their journey, are actively discerning who God has called them to be. When I was in seminary, half of my classmates were what we call “second career students,” folks who had been doing some other work in the world before discerning a call that involved theological training. I entered seminary straight out of college, very wet behind the ears, and it was a wonderfully rich experience to be in classes with folks in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. They were a great reminder that this process of becoming who we were born to be is a lifelong adventure. That’s true even for those of us who carry a strong sense of what we’re called to do. I tend to be really focused—I sometimes think of it as Attention Surplus Disorder—and have always had some sense of what I’ve wanted to do. What I wanted to do went through some changes before I discerned a call to ordained ministry, but I can see the common thread linking those vocations I was interested in. Even now, in a vocation that has taken me deeply into who I believe I was born to be, I’m still growing into my understanding of that call.

The gift of frankincense, the gift that recognized Jesus as the one who is a meeting place of humanity and divinity, invites us to ponder the question: How do you want to encounter God? This kind of question is at the core of the Connect theme that we’re living with at First Church. As we set out into this new year, how might you seek to stay connected with God, within and beyond this congregation?

The gift of myrrh, the gift that recognized that even for Jesus, earthly life is brief, a twinkling of an eye, invites us to reflect on the question, What is your relationship with time? How do you enter into your days in a way that helps you discern who you are and helps you seek God? Annie Dillard writes that “how we spend our days is, after all, how we spend our lives.” She also writes, “Live every day as if it were your last and then someday you’ll be right.”

So, a trinity of questions for this new year:

Who were you born to be?

How do you want to encounter God?

What is your relationship with time?

Carrying the crucial questions can be uncomfortable. It’s not always easy to live with mystery, but I’ve found that a good question can carry me a long way. It invites me to rely on God to show me the path, rather than thinking I should always rely on myself to know everything and do everything.

The magi didn’t show up with maps; they brought gifts that helped Jesus know who he was. Like the wise men, who had to travel by another road when they left Jesus, we may find ourselves on some strange and unfamiliar and mapless paths when we seek to follow Christ. But in his company, we will, like those wise travelers, find our way home.

[To use the image “Magi and Mystery,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]

Posted in art, holidays, lectionary, mystery, sacred time | 1 Comment »

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