The Broken Path: stations of the cross - Station 4

 

"The Broken Path: Station 4 - Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem"

gregory a. milinovich

broken glass, tile, sea glass on old farm window

march, 2021

this year during lent, i was inspired to design a set of eight pieces of art for a "stations of the cross" installation, which is currently on display outside on the front lawn at St. Paul's UMC and Wesley Foundation at 230 E. College Ave. in State College, PA.  it will be there on display until april 3rd, 2021.  if you aren't able to see it in person, you can see the whole collection here.  

i've also decided to write a bit about each one, so that you can find out a little "behind the scenes" information for each one, and hear a little about my inspiration.  here are the posts for station 1, station 2, and station 3.  today we turn our attention to station 4: Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem. 

we meet these women in luke 23:27-31, where we are told they are following him, along with a huge crowd, and they are mourning and wailing for him.  this is a part of the scene of Jesus' final hours that i haven't thought too much about before.  what did it sound like?  how "huge" is this huge crowd?  are there alot of other sounds, too, or is there an eerie kind of silence, given the severity of what is happening?  can you hear the sobbing of the women? is that why Jesus speaks to these women, saying, "don't cry for me, there will be plenty for you to weep about in this broken world."  okay, maybe not exactly, but that's part of what he's saying, at least as i read it.  i wanted to capture some of that idea of weeping in my art.  

if you've been following along, you know that each station was inspired not only by the scripture, but by a prayer written by Padraig O Tuama from "Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community" (copyright 2017, canterbury press, norwich, london).  here is the prayer for this station: 

Women of Jerusalem,

while you mourned,

Jesus saw you

and spoke to you —

he in his sorrow seeing you in yours.

May we see each other,

even when we feel unseen.

Because when we see each other,

we are seen ourselves.

Amen.

what i was most inspired about here was this idea that "Jesus saw you," and "he in his sorrow seeing you in yours."  this idea of seeing these women in this huge crowd really spoke to me, so i wanted to convey that sense of seeing.  i was struggling with how to do this without being too literal, and my wife suggested using a mirror for the pupil in the center of the eye, so that the viewer would see themselves in the eye.  i loved this idea because it could cause the viewer to feel like they, too, are being seen by Jesus, like the women in the story.  or it might be that the eye is the eye of the grieving women, beholding the brokenness in the viewer, in us.  i love that ambiguity, and wonder what those who look into the eye think about it.  

one of the challenges i gave myself was for each station to include a kind of "explosion" of broken glass, and a sort of vertical/horizontal interplay to create the idea of a cross.  in this case, as with all the windows, the center wooden part of the window frame is the vertical piece, and i tried to make the eye seem like the horizontal beam of the cross.  as for the brokenness, it is the tear in this piece.  the sorrow, maybe in Jesus' eyes (Jesus wept), or in the eyes of the women, or in our own.  

as for brokenness, it is really the theme of this whole thing.  as i was driving all 8 of these windows to the church on monday morning, praying that i didn't hit some huge pothole and make them all shatter, i found myself praying a prayer that went something like this, which i decided to write down later.  so i will end with this poem today.  

A Prayer While Transporting an Extremely Fragile Holy Week Art Installation Made of Broken Glass in my Minivan on a Monday Morning (on the Day After a Rainbow, and the Day Before a Funeral)

thank you, God, for the breaking

   of morning. for mondays, even

   for mourning.

thank you for smooth rides and 

   straight stretches; for shocks. 

   for awe.

thank you for the bright ideas of coworkers,

   the royal we, the spark

   of inspiration, the joy in creation.

thank you for glass, for the almost

   cellular shine, the shimmer of hope,

   the crystalline edge of reflection. 

thank you for windows, for seeing through boundaries

   being broken, darkly, glass.

thank you for last night's rainbow,

   the breaking of the weather,

   the strangely-lit sky pierced

   by double arc of spectrum-stained glass, 

   for the dreamy eyed hope

   of so much scandalous color.

thank you, God, for the cross. 

   for that broken crucible,

   that unlikely intersection of you

   and us; of life and death.

   for the torn clothes, discarded

   funeral garments lying on the floor

   of some stone tomb 

   like so much shattered glass.