Here is a sketchbook page I did while watching the kids making art. Below is a blog entry of Chris Heuertz the Word Made Flesh International director... he has a new book out called, Simple Spirituality: Learning to See God in a Broken World

Rabia of Basra

Last month Liz was carrying around this pretty red book. At some point, her and Phileena popped that thing open and the next thing I knew, I was the proud co-owner of a copy of Love Poems From God: Twelve Voices from the East and the West.

Since then Phileena had been savoring the pages and referencing the poems. On more than one occasion Phileena has shared verses from Rabia of Basra or Rabi’a al-Adawiyya al-Qaysiyy.

Rabia’s tale is one of the most heart-breaking and compelling stories I’ve heard in a long, long time.

Rabia lived during the 8^th century in ancient Iraq. She was the youngest of 4 daughters in a very poor, but respectable family. As a young girl her father died, and eventually Rabia was not only separated from her parents but her sisters as well.

She was left wandering and vulnerable.

Known to possess captivating beauty, some biographers tell that Rabia was captured and sold at a considerably high price as a slave to one of the most famous brothels of her day. There she was imprisoned until she was nearly 50 years old.

Reflecting on the torment of her sexual slavery she wrote,

“What a place for trials and transformation did my Lover put me, but never once did He look upon me as if I were impure. Dear sisters, all we do in this world, whatever happens, is bringing us closer to God.”

Her poems are simple, her prayers moving, her life recognized as a saint in the Sufi tradition. Rabia spent her life suffering as a contemplative mystic, faithful to her faith through the exploitation of her sexuality.In the introduction to her section of poems in the book, the translator Daniel Ladinsky concludes with this quote from her writings,

“Show me where it hurts, God said, and every cell in my body burst into tears before His tender eyes. He has repaid me though for all my suffering in a way I never wanted: The sun is now in homage to my face, because it knows I have seen God. But that was not His payment. The soul cannot describe His gift. I just spoke about the sun like that because I like beautiful words, and because it’s true: Creation is in homage to use.”

'three forest sprouts'

Beauty is Useless

Beauty is as useless as

flowers on the kitchen table

as kindness and weeding a garden

wine after dinner, hugs and dressing up for church

Beauty is as useless as

the intricately carved porches in the Romanian countryside

as making a home, giving a child a toy, and singing four part harmony

a sunset, silence, old people, and monks

Beauty is as useless as

wonder and standing in awe of spring

as mourning a miscarried child and thinking on history

and looking into the eyes of one sentenced to death

Beauty is as useless as

quiet country life, as being at home, or writing poetry

as flowers for the dead, hermits, and desert wanderers

gratitude, sharing, contentment, and making peace with your spouse

Beauty is as worthless as

a bird songs, crickets in the evening, and croaking frogs

as laughter, the wind off the ocean, or saying 'I love you'

and putting your bare feet in the creek

Beauty is as useless as

the washing of Jesus' feet with costly perfume

salt, sugar in your tea, as grieving or dancing

giving time to a street kid or cleaning a child's head of lice

Beauty is as useless as

wild flowers which wither immediately after picking them

as making your bed, visiting prisoners, time waiting for the bus

caring for the severely handicapped

Beauty is as useless as

giving gifts which cannot be reciprocated or remembering the dead

caring for an aging parent, as celebration

thanksgiving, birthday parties or your favorite old shirt

Beauty is as useless as

life at the bottom of the ocean and invisible molecular movement

as astronomy, theoretical mathematics, or dressing up for a date

as a fruit tree with forbidden fruit, contemplation, or fasting

Beauty is as useless as

a necklace handed down from grandmother to granddaughter

as purity of heart, humility, taking a shower, putting on deodorant

holding hands while walking or the moments before you fall asleep

Beauty is as worthless

as a life which is only a breath

"He has made everything beautiful in its time" Ecclesiastes 3:11

Beauty is as useless

as the beloved is overcome

with the opened gift in her hands

(This watercolor and the meditation below were done during our communities recent retreat in the mountains in Romania. )

'Brokenness: Maphibosheth at King David's Table'

by joel klepac

This is one of 9 paintings based on the lifestyle celebrations and input from the community in Romania over the past year. We hope to have them up on the chapel walls in the next few weeks. I am still thinking about how they might be presented online.

(this photo was taken by by George D. who writes on Din si Despre Galati of a man living on the streets)

(the photo reminded me of this old poem I wrote after seeing a man like this rocking himself in the train station waiting for something)

He rocks and sways
Sucks and blows white milky smoke
Cradled in a crux of concrete
Comforted by a flame in his fingers

We rock and sway
At each blow we stretch by yellow fields
Cradled in steel grooves
And fight sleep with black potions

He closes his eyes
For his mother to arise
Or a friend or a phantom
To make good the promise

Open they wrinkle and curl
They worry and flood in the night
Broken eyes see golden fields under blue
But open to wipe away the promise

So he rocks and sways
Sucks and blows white milky smoke
Religiously making the sign of the promise
Of yellow, blue, of cradling and being cradled

Beauty and Worship, Art for Advocacy, part 6

I would like to talk about Advocacy as prophecy, 'as giving voice to the true under workings of the empire' as Walter Bruggemann might describe it. The story of David and Nathan the prophet show us how ‘story’/art can reframe life and give us an opportunity for personal insight and repentance. In a recent story I read a spiritual director was speaking with an eager young monk. The young monk was ready to receive his spiritual work assignment to help catapult him towards intimacy and union with God. his Spiritual director oddly asked the young monk to read Charles Dickens, David Copperfield. When the young monk complained of such a worldly assignment the spiritual director said that this young monk needed to learn empathy for normal people in normal life before he could journey into the depths of God.

Much of art is there to help us develop a basic empathy for our fellow human beings. When we sit in the others shoes for 200 pages we see the world different. I believe this is the heart of advocacy. No tricks, manipulation, no arm twisting, just getting to know people we usually are separated from through the mediums of art.

Meet Max Beckman. His painting exposed the Nazi oppression and got him exiled from Germany.

Max Beckman

Guiernica, Picasso

Picasso put the city of Guiernica on the map with this devastatingly real depiction of the bombing of that city.

This is a photograph by Seth Allgire.

These are drawings done by survivors of Hiroshima. This is a great example of letting the victims tell their own story.

“…behind that frightened practice is a symbol gap in which we do not have symbols that are deep or strong enough to match the terror of the reality. What takes place when symbols are inadequate and things may not be brought to public expression is that the experience will not be experienced…’ p48 from The Prophetic Imagination

In the The National Story Project, we see a similar kind of amplifying of voices. This project gives air time to voices that would not ordinarily be heard. I am such there are many similar projects which could be designed to amplify voices of those we work among.

Kathe Kollwitz is another example of illuminating the jewish plight under the Nazi’s. She was a German lady who used wood block printing to print massive amount of pictures showing what was happening to the Jews. Her work is simple and stunningly human.

A more recent example of this kind of global advocacy is Francisco Botero's Abu Ghraib Paintings exposing the horrors of torture in US prison camps. He is giving voice to people who literacy have no advocate...no lawyer.

Kids with Cameras and our Sierra Leone fields, Beauty and Brokenness project in Sierra Leonne again put the cameras into the hands of the kids, letting us see through there eyes.

Georges Rouault, from the Miserere Series

Georges Rouault, from the Miserere Series

By allowing people to see the poor through a humanizing lens, a different angle, stories, songs, pictures, images which give names, face, personality, connect their humanity to ours and evokes a response to their dignity. We certainly do not need to be a Picasso or a Kollwitz to be used in such a way. If the process only helps the artist herself to w in empathy for her brother or sister it is worth all the time and attention given.

True Notebooks, by Mark Salzman gives an inside look at an Orange County Juvenile Detention Center. He combines his own writing describing his experience of teaching writting there as well as he writing of the kids. This is a nice combination of letting the kids speak for themselves and the writer giving voice to the subtleties of their lives.

This was the collaborative animation done with the kids at the Valley center. The hope was to show their beauty and personality. Let them read themselves some of their ideas and dreams.

We can think of advocacy terms of gathering the voices and songs of the poor, of all people. Here is its connection to worship. We gather them from the margins and as Christ does, we place the poor in the center with Him.

If our art starts and finishes in Advocacy, I am afraid it will be shallow and not do justice to the beauty of the world. I believe advocacy needs to be the last and almost unconscious byproduct of art for play and awe, of contemplative art, of art building and expressing the lives of our communities, and art for therapy which is helping us plumb the depths of our inner worlds. Advocacy needs to come out of a deep and long look at the world in all its horrors and beauties. And hopefully our advocacy in the end will be a celebration of isolated people coming together and seeing each other for the first time as fully human, beautiful, and created in the image of God.

'Beauty and Worship' Concluding thoughts…

Here are a couple considerations for worship music.

worship music = music+poetry+theology

If our worship is a sacrifice...we should consider studying the greatest music, the best theology we are aware of, and reading and understanding poetry. Most people complain about mediocre worship music. I don't see many considering higher level theological training, musical training, and poetry studies. It might help?

If worship is about the gathering of creation (into microcosm ourselves and community) and offering it back to God, liturgy ie the work of the people

Then the more we gather the more attentively we gather the scattered parts, voices, tonalities, rythmes, theological prayer experiences, etc, the more rich and beautiful will be our offering.

Let us expose ourselves to great art and great suffering and great theology and integrate it through reflection in art activities

Ideas for collaborative work.

• Short international films (each using birds eye lense, moving left to right)

• Books/ story telling (on chosen themes try to generate poetry and prose around an idea like distance separation, dark, light) get a range of kids parents, audio video reflections?

• Blogging our work (formatts

• Music (worship, narrative, or experimental)

• “Collections” –Sarah said she likes to collect strange things throughout Calcutta. What if we all tried to collect photograph and reflect on the collections?

• A WMF Art exhibit, installations sounds, impressions, voices, images, videos.

• Inventions and ‘merge si asa’ documentation, ingenious ways people solve basic life problems. (ie. Drill gun for grinding eggplant)

• there are certainly many other ideas to be discovered.
  

This was created over a few months of learning about facial features, drawing and painting them together. Finally we put it all together and then made the sound track with the help of Ferenkeh Tarawally who has been visiting from from Sierra Leonne. He gave me a few Djimbe lessons while he was with us. The text was adapted from a piece written by David Chronic on working with children with varying degrees of attachment disorder.

(text read in animation)

The Face

baby puts everything in her mouth

ingesting her external environment

making it a part of herself.

a drawn face is moved

up and down in front of her

she smiles back.

the Face is the primal prototype

of religious experience

at around six months

the child becomes aware

that the face is not

constantly present.

the Face in whose Presence

each person was created

is that which constantly seeks us (Luke 19:10).

In His incarnation,

the Son has shown us

the Face of God.

"And all of us with unveiled faces,

seeing the glory of the Lord

as though reflected in a mirror,

are being transformed into the same image

from one degree of glory

to another; For it is God who said,

‘Let light shine out of darkness,’

who has shone in our hearts

to give the light of the knowledge

of the glory of God in the face of Christ.(2 Corinthians 3:17-18)

the Face that finds us and liberates us

will never leave or abandon us (Hebrews 13:5).

We no longer find identity

in opposition to others,

now identity is in relationship to the Son,

By responding, the Triune God becomes our primary attachment.

constant loneliness is dissolved in His Face

to whom we belong and correspond. (pause)

As community we come together as a sign

that our cosmic loneliness has found the constant presence of the Face.

As community, we invite people into the Spirit of God

to hear the affirmation of the Father,

and we together incarnate a “face” of consistency,

fidelity, love, and limits, finding together the Face of God.

Lara Lahr works in inner city Philadelphia with mission year and have been part of The Simple Way in Philadelphia. This is a good example of photography which draws you in and invokes a story. With great economy, much is said. Thanks Lara. Please keep looking through the view finder.

Here was her reflection on the photo...

"On my previous blog, I talked about how contentment has been a recurrent theme lately in my life. In many areas of my life, I can truly say that I am closer than ever to finding this contentment. I have grown not only content, but thrilled to be a mom of 3 girls. I have become content living in a city like Philadelphia which is quite different from Wilmore Kentucky (where we lived before). I am content with the low salary (in American standards) that we live on which keeps us from buying too much stuff. I have become content with a messy house (at times). I am content with the cars that God has blessed us with. I can't tell you how many comments I get, even from friends that are like minded to me, that I should get a new car. I have become content with our lack of closet space, drafty house, unfinished projects, and toilet that you have to turn the water off to every time you finish using it...read the rest of the article"