Hearing Flowers Speak:
The Interwoven World of Art and Religion
by Wilson Yates, Emeritus Editor of ARTS: The Arts in Religious and Theological Studies
I was delighted when Kimberly Vrudny, the senior editor of ARTS, invited me—the former editor—to serve as the guest editor for this issue.
I began with anticipation, awaiting John Shorb’s excellent work on the portfolio and interview. Carole Kunstadt’s pieces that treat history remind us of the importance of remembering. John Shorb also interviews Nazanin Hedayat Munroe, whose textile installations combine poetry, intuition, and Islamic faith into a mystical encounter.
When I turned to the poetry curated by Mark Burrows, I found that each of these poems said to me, simply: “Stop.” So, in my study, I stop. I hear the train that I never notice in the distance and a mouse forewarning me that the season is changing. I hear the floorboards creak in this hundred-year-old house. You can hear corn grow, but when you stop and listen, flowers speak amused at your playing with the trowel and your snipping of branches, branches that seem to bother you, but not them. So the poems made me stop and, if I might be personal, there was a touch of grace in their intent. But they offer much more than I can write about here, though I do hope that you, like me, will sit with each, with their metaphors and images, and see their words turn into doorways toward a transcendent reality to which they point. I hope that you will stop so fully that you will hear your heart beat. And with the poems as introduction, we move to articles that I promise will engage you on their own terms about important matters related to the interwoven world of art and religion.
Robin Jensen has written “A Tale of Two Cities: Jerusalem and Bethlehem in the Mosaics of Early Christian Churches” as an invitation to explore mosaic versions of two cities with their varying treatments. She gives due appreciation to the discussion among historians of the cities and the drama within their walls, as historians disagree about various aspects of interpretation—the coming in or going out of the lambs, the significance of Peter and Paul and, most crucially, the symbolic meanings they give to the two cities and to the way the covenants are or are not represented. Jensen observes that we do well to leave open a final interpretation in light of differences scholars lift up, but she offers her own perspective that gives new insight into the cities’ meanings. Her article is a wonderful invitation, at least for this reader, to see how one of the keenest and most perceptive minds in the field works as she sifts through images and assumptions—without violating their authenticity or power sui generis. And all to the end that a picture can yield the richest insights we can have into this ancient and often puzzling world with its symbols deeper and different in meaning than the modern mind often wishes to acknowledge. It is a tale of two cities and they are our cities if we learn how to enter them. This is the gift she offers.
Jennifer Awes-Freeman begins her essay on “The Kiss of Christ as Communion” by introducing several moments of spiritual experience in her own life. She then flows into her essay, which finally is “a meditation, both academic and personal in nature, on the role of the body and materiality in experiencing the divine.” And she continues, “This essay acknowledges the ability of physical touch, particularly that of the kiss, to express and reveal spiritual truths.” For me, an academic who spent a portion of his career dealing with the study of sexuality and theology with my colleague, James B. Nelson, who taught Christian Ethics at United Theological Seminary, the body together with its sense of touch is a source of spiritual encounter. This is all so beautifully found in Nelson’s book Embodiment. I was delighted to see a new colleague inviting the church to accept the physicality of life and its erotic expression as a source for experiencing the Holy. Awes-Freeman’s essay is a meditation woven primarily through the explorations of two artists’ works. First, she treats the contemporary artist Wayne Roosa (who has a review essay in this issue of ARTS), and enables us to see the spiritual insights he offers through his highly evocative images. The images are plays that engage us, indeed, play with us, and in the engagement press us into a search for their possible meanings. Again and again, to draw on Tillich, the images offer the threat of non-being which Awes-Freeman answers in the affirmation of being and, in that affirmation, she affirms the spiritually charged power of the images and their relationship to the erotic. She then jumps back centuries earlier, to the works of Giotto and his treatments of the Holy Kiss in his frescoes. His bold portrayal of the kiss surprises us with its invitation to see the relationship of the kiss to the Holy. Indeed, he invites us to see the expression of the erotic as expressive of the Holy. Awes-Freeman insists that we stop to see that our humanity is only spiritually complete when the erotic and the Holy are seen as intrinsically bound together. This discussion is all set within the story of her religious journey and eventual dwelling place within the Orthodox tradition, with its rich affirmation of the icon before which we can come with a kiss of holy reverence.
Our third essay, John Randolph LeBlanc and Carolyn Jones Medine’s article Displacements of Identity in Palestine/Israel: Edward Said and Jean Mohr, brings us, foremost, a clear and substantive interpretation of Edward Said on Palestine. That interpretation is then placed in dialogue with Jean Mohr’s photographs of Palestinian people. Said is brought alive in his own voice as he speaks of the Palestinian experience of occupation “as one that drives Palestinians into their own interiors, physically and psychically, away from possible engagement with Israelis.” And Jean Mohr’s photographs portray, through Said’s eyes, people in their ordinary worlds who come to us with a “presence” of who they are. It is a presence that defies a simple narrative of identity that the West so easily wishes to impose—for a narrative of a multi-layered people with historical moments that include the ever present possibility of destruction or erasure, is complicated. The Palestinian must live with a sense of being that informs one’s worth, one’s strength, and one’s openness to possibility. Thus, art and thought come together to reveal the interior of a people, that if recognized, might lead to hands touching in reconciliation. In a time when the American/Israeli relationship is uncertain in the midst of the Israeli/Palestinian relationship that seems to defy any singular definition, this essay offers the possibility of our seeing into life the presence of Palestine—and seeing all the more clearly through the lenses of art.
James B. Janknegt writes in his article, “Learning to See: From Urban Landscapes to Jesus’ Parables,” his journey of becoming an artist. As a young child, he had talent that a teacher recognized. She invited him to become a part of an arts education group taught by a graduate student from the University of Texas. But if, for him, there was a telling moment, it was when a class, taught by this same junior high school teacher, provided him an understanding of the difference between looking at and seeing a work of art. At seventeen years of age, Janknegt experienced a dramatic spiritual conversion. He soon became a University of Texas “Jesus Freak”, a title he wore cheerfully and productively. During this period, his work took on a seriousness in which he tried out different styles—with a Dali-esque style launching his work. He continued to do graduate work in art. He moved to the Episcopal Church and, during this period, he drew heavily on cubism. His early work focused on the urban landscape, but his more mature work emerged as he began to paint images of the New Testament parables. He later moved to the Catholic Church where he is now an active member as well as an active artist. It is an honest and downhome story of an artist, his religion, and his art, told in a fashion whereby our viewing of his art is deepened by the narrative.
Our final essay is a review by Wayne Roosa of Kimberly Vrudny’s book, Beauty’s Vineyard: A Theological Aesthetic of Anguish and Anticipation. (Roosa’s artwork is treated in Jennifer Awe-Freedom’s essay in this issue of ARTS). Vrudny’s book is a major work in theology, ethics, and aesthetics that offers us an image of the vineyard about which Jesus spoke in his parables—the vineyard where love and justice, equality and hope are the marks of a healthy personal, relational, and structural world. It is a world we aspire to create, but our aspiration is balanced by a dialectic of injustice, corruption, and violence that are the marks of the world in which we actually live. She undertakes the very great task of helping us understand how the vineyard might be cultivated and, in that cultivation, become a response to the distortions about us. Through the prophetic voice that is the Vineyard’s voice to an unjust world, a beginning might be made. For in the prophetic is both the judgment of human destructiveness as well as the vision of human creativity that can bring into being a good and healthy community—a society that offers safety to those who fear and equity to those who are denied participation in and access to the goods of society. Roosa, near the end of his essay, notes that Vrudny’s book can be related to “the genre of utopian literature,” and he suggests Plato’s Republic, Augustine’s City of God, Thomas More’s Utopia, or John Winthrop’s City on a Hill. Each of these can be found wanting by using Vrudny’s vision of the vineyard, but there are parallels. It is well that she does given us the utopia for our time—a utopia imbued with a balance of realistic awareness that we can tend to her vineyard—to our vineyard—and know in moments that have been well tilled the Beauty and Goodness of which she speaks.
As we approach our thirtieth year, let me take just a moment to thank you for your loyal readership and for your ongoing support of this academic journal. Please consider renewing your subscription or making a donation to sustain the journal, or become a member of SARTS. Good reading to you all! —Wilson Yates
I was delighted when Kimberly Vrudny, the senior editor of ARTS, invited me—the former editor—to serve as the guest editor for this issue.
I began with anticipation, awaiting John Shorb’s excellent work on the portfolio and interview. Carole Kunstadt’s pieces that treat history remind us of the importance of remembering. John Shorb also interviews Nazanin Hedayat Munroe, whose textile installations combine poetry, intuition, and Islamic faith into a mystical encounter.
When I turned to the poetry curated by Mark Burrows, I found that each of these poems said to me, simply: “Stop.” So, in my study, I stop. I hear the train that I never notice in the distance and a mouse forewarning me that the season is changing. I hear the floorboards creak in this hundred-year-old house. You can hear corn grow, but when you stop and listen, flowers speak amused at your playing with the trowel and your snipping of branches, branches that seem to bother you, but not them. So the poems made me stop and, if I might be personal, there was a touch of grace in their intent. But they offer much more than I can write about here, though I do hope that you, like me, will sit with each, with their metaphors and images, and see their words turn into doorways toward a transcendent reality to which they point. I hope that you will stop so fully that you will hear your heart beat. And with the poems as introduction, we move to articles that I promise will engage you on their own terms about important matters related to the interwoven world of art and religion.
Robin Jensen has written “A Tale of Two Cities: Jerusalem and Bethlehem in the Mosaics of Early Christian Churches” as an invitation to explore mosaic versions of two cities with their varying treatments. She gives due appreciation to the discussion among historians of the cities and the drama within their walls, as historians disagree about various aspects of interpretation—the coming in or going out of the lambs, the significance of Peter and Paul and, most crucially, the symbolic meanings they give to the two cities and to the way the covenants are or are not represented. Jensen observes that we do well to leave open a final interpretation in light of differences scholars lift up, but she offers her own perspective that gives new insight into the cities’ meanings. Her article is a wonderful invitation, at least for this reader, to see how one of the keenest and most perceptive minds in the field works as she sifts through images and assumptions—without violating their authenticity or power sui generis. And all to the end that a picture can yield the richest insights we can have into this ancient and often puzzling world with its symbols deeper and different in meaning than the modern mind often wishes to acknowledge. It is a tale of two cities and they are our cities if we learn how to enter them. This is the gift she offers.
Jennifer Awes-Freeman begins her essay on “The Kiss of Christ as Communion” by introducing several moments of spiritual experience in her own life. She then flows into her essay, which finally is “a meditation, both academic and personal in nature, on the role of the body and materiality in experiencing the divine.” And she continues, “This essay acknowledges the ability of physical touch, particularly that of the kiss, to express and reveal spiritual truths.” For me, an academic who spent a portion of his career dealing with the study of sexuality and theology with my colleague, James B. Nelson, who taught Christian Ethics at United Theological Seminary, the body together with its sense of touch is a source of spiritual encounter. This is all so beautifully found in Nelson’s book Embodiment. I was delighted to see a new colleague inviting the church to accept the physicality of life and its erotic expression as a source for experiencing the Holy. Awes-Freeman’s essay is a meditation woven primarily through the explorations of two artists’ works. First, she treats the contemporary artist Wayne Roosa (who has a review essay in this issue of ARTS), and enables us to see the spiritual insights he offers through his highly evocative images. The images are plays that engage us, indeed, play with us, and in the engagement press us into a search for their possible meanings. Again and again, to draw on Tillich, the images offer the threat of non-being which Awes-Freeman answers in the affirmation of being and, in that affirmation, she affirms the spiritually charged power of the images and their relationship to the erotic. She then jumps back centuries earlier, to the works of Giotto and his treatments of the Holy Kiss in his frescoes. His bold portrayal of the kiss surprises us with its invitation to see the relationship of the kiss to the Holy. Indeed, he invites us to see the expression of the erotic as expressive of the Holy. Awes-Freeman insists that we stop to see that our humanity is only spiritually complete when the erotic and the Holy are seen as intrinsically bound together. This discussion is all set within the story of her religious journey and eventual dwelling place within the Orthodox tradition, with its rich affirmation of the icon before which we can come with a kiss of holy reverence.
Our third essay, John Randolph LeBlanc and Carolyn Jones Medine’s article Displacements of Identity in Palestine/Israel: Edward Said and Jean Mohr, brings us, foremost, a clear and substantive interpretation of Edward Said on Palestine. That interpretation is then placed in dialogue with Jean Mohr’s photographs of Palestinian people. Said is brought alive in his own voice as he speaks of the Palestinian experience of occupation “as one that drives Palestinians into their own interiors, physically and psychically, away from possible engagement with Israelis.” And Jean Mohr’s photographs portray, through Said’s eyes, people in their ordinary worlds who come to us with a “presence” of who they are. It is a presence that defies a simple narrative of identity that the West so easily wishes to impose—for a narrative of a multi-layered people with historical moments that include the ever present possibility of destruction or erasure, is complicated. The Palestinian must live with a sense of being that informs one’s worth, one’s strength, and one’s openness to possibility. Thus, art and thought come together to reveal the interior of a people, that if recognized, might lead to hands touching in reconciliation. In a time when the American/Israeli relationship is uncertain in the midst of the Israeli/Palestinian relationship that seems to defy any singular definition, this essay offers the possibility of our seeing into life the presence of Palestine—and seeing all the more clearly through the lenses of art.
James B. Janknegt writes in his article, “Learning to See: From Urban Landscapes to Jesus’ Parables,” his journey of becoming an artist. As a young child, he had talent that a teacher recognized. She invited him to become a part of an arts education group taught by a graduate student from the University of Texas. But if, for him, there was a telling moment, it was when a class, taught by this same junior high school teacher, provided him an understanding of the difference between looking at and seeing a work of art. At seventeen years of age, Janknegt experienced a dramatic spiritual conversion. He soon became a University of Texas “Jesus Freak”, a title he wore cheerfully and productively. During this period, his work took on a seriousness in which he tried out different styles—with a Dali-esque style launching his work. He continued to do graduate work in art. He moved to the Episcopal Church and, during this period, he drew heavily on cubism. His early work focused on the urban landscape, but his more mature work emerged as he began to paint images of the New Testament parables. He later moved to the Catholic Church where he is now an active member as well as an active artist. It is an honest and downhome story of an artist, his religion, and his art, told in a fashion whereby our viewing of his art is deepened by the narrative.
Our final essay is a review by Wayne Roosa of Kimberly Vrudny’s book, Beauty’s Vineyard: A Theological Aesthetic of Anguish and Anticipation. (Roosa’s artwork is treated in Jennifer Awe-Freedom’s essay in this issue of ARTS). Vrudny’s book is a major work in theology, ethics, and aesthetics that offers us an image of the vineyard about which Jesus spoke in his parables—the vineyard where love and justice, equality and hope are the marks of a healthy personal, relational, and structural world. It is a world we aspire to create, but our aspiration is balanced by a dialectic of injustice, corruption, and violence that are the marks of the world in which we actually live. She undertakes the very great task of helping us understand how the vineyard might be cultivated and, in that cultivation, become a response to the distortions about us. Through the prophetic voice that is the Vineyard’s voice to an unjust world, a beginning might be made. For in the prophetic is both the judgment of human destructiveness as well as the vision of human creativity that can bring into being a good and healthy community—a society that offers safety to those who fear and equity to those who are denied participation in and access to the goods of society. Roosa, near the end of his essay, notes that Vrudny’s book can be related to “the genre of utopian literature,” and he suggests Plato’s Republic, Augustine’s City of God, Thomas More’s Utopia, or John Winthrop’s City on a Hill. Each of these can be found wanting by using Vrudny’s vision of the vineyard, but there are parallels. It is well that she does given us the utopia for our time—a utopia imbued with a balance of realistic awareness that we can tend to her vineyard—to our vineyard—and know in moments that have been well tilled the Beauty and Goodness of which she speaks.
As we approach our thirtieth year, let me take just a moment to thank you for your loyal readership and for your ongoing support of this academic journal. Please consider renewing your subscription or making a donation to sustain the journal, or become a member of SARTS. Good reading to you all! —Wilson Yates
