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, station 3, station 4, station 5, and station 6.
this seventh station of the cross is meant to urge us to consider the very last breaths of Jesus' life. no more do we linger on the agony and torture, but we come right to the edge of life. the world grows dark. Jesus cries out, shouting loudly: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" after a moment, according to matthew's account, Jesus shouted again, though we don't know what he said this time.
then he died.
the life left his brown body, only a few decades old, strong from working and living on the move. it's the striking youngness of this figure on the cross, lifeless, that seems to catch in the throat of Padraig O'Tuama in his prayer for this station from "Daily Prayers with the Corrymeela Community" (copyright 2017, canterbury press, norwich, london):
Jesus of the imagination,
You never grew old, always a young man,
and most of us grow older
than you did.
When lives are cut short
the living question the meaning of living.
May we live with meaning,
even when meaning fades,
making meaning
so that we
have something to live for.
Amen.
we often start dealing in questions of meaning when facing death, particularly when death visits someone who is far too young. this prayer makes me think of what meaning we find in this violent execution, but also it encourages me to think about the meaning of living, as much as dying. how do i make meaning with this one wild and precious life (Mary Oliver)?
as for the art in this station, i wanted something that felt unabashedly broken. broken beyond repair. the large black pieces you see are a large black ceramic plate. what was once used as a host for sustenance, as a vessel for breaking bread, has become a broken explosion of shards, it's life cut too short, it would seem. the black shrapnel of death flies in every direction from that broken red heart in the center. our one wild and precious hope has been stilled and silenced.
all is broken.
Ode to Broken Things
Things get broken
at home
like they were pushed
by an invisible, deliberate smasher.
It’s not my hands
or yours
It wasn’t the girls
with their hard fingernails
or the motion of the planet.
It wasn’t anything or anybody
It wasn’t the wind
It wasn’t the orange-colored noontime
Or night over the earth
It wasn’t even the nose or the elbow
Or the hips getting bigger
or the ankle
or the air.
The plate broke, the lamp fell
All the flower pots tumbled over
one by one. That pot
which overflowed with scarlet
in the middle of October,
it got tired from all the violets
and another empty one
rolled round and round and round
all through winter
until it was only the powder
of a flowerpot,
a broken memory, shining dust.
And that clock
whose sound
was
the voice of our lives,
the secret
thread of our weeks,
which released
one by one, so many hours
for honey and silence
for so many births and jobs,
that clock also
fell
and its delicate blue guts
vibrated
among the broken glass
its wide heart
unsprung.
Life goes on grinding up
glass, wearing out clothes
making fragments
breaking down
forms
and what lasts through time
is like an island on a ship in the sea,
perishable
surrounded by dangerous fragility
by merciless waters and threats.
Let’s put all our treasures together
— the clocks, plates, cups cracked by the cold —
into a sack and carry them
to the sea
and let our possessions sink
into one alarming breaker
that sounds like a river.
May whatever breaks
be reconstructed by the sea
with the long labor of its tides.
So many useless things
which nobody broke
but which got broken anyway.
—Pablo Neruda
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