Spirtituality

The Epiphany: Human Power Encounters Divine Authority

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James Tissot, The Magi Journeying (detail)

 

Instinctively, there is something we all seem to seek. We want to find purpose and meaning, and organizing principles for our lives. This desire is anchored in a larger one: we seek to discern what is real, and true.

But where does our common impulse come from? In what does this impulse consist? I think the best answer to these questions is found at the heart of the Feast of the Epiphany. On Epiphany, we celebrate how God has revealed to the world the real and true meaning and purpose for our lives. Epiphany is all about God revealing to us the divine center of everything. Epiphany highlights God’s self-revealing in the natural world, and preeminently in God’s Incarnation, which the Magi came to discover and then worship.

We are able to recognize that it is in the nature of a Creator to order reality, imbue it with purpose and meaning, and hence to bring order, purpose, and meaning to our lives. A perhaps-unexpected word that captures this broad idea is authority, in that God possesses the authorizing power to create things, and guide them. Specifically, we discern this authorizing power in God’s creation of the universe and in the divine agency shaping ongoing history. For God is the author of all that is real and true.

In human life, authority and power are not always neatly aligned, and we experience trouble when the two are at odds with one another. We see this dialectic between the two at work in the events of Holy Week, in the confrontation between divine authority (in the vocation of Jesus), and worldly power (as exemplified by Pontius Pilate). Less obvious is the way this dialectic is manifest in the events that are commemorated in our celebration of Christmas and the Epiphany of our Lord, especially in connection with the visit of the Magi from the East.

James Tissot, The Magi in the House of Herod

The Magi, also called ‘wise men,’ or ‘kings’ from the East, arrive in Israel having been guided by an authoritative power greater than themselves. Because of their witness to this higher authority and its implied power, the visitors pose a threat to Herod and his courtiers, who exercise earthly authority and its attendant power. This emerges in the interaction between people who are witnesses to divine authority and its power, and others who are possessors of worldly authority and power. The emerging conflict, later seen in the events of Holy Week, arises amidst the challenges surrounding the beauty revealed in what we call the Epiphany, the revealing of divine light to the whole world rather than to just a particular nation or the people of a particular religious tradition.

The Magi from the East, by explaining their quest, prompt Herod to act. He acts viciously and violently through orders given to soldiers under his command. The result is the series of murders we acknowledge every year on December 28, in the ‘red letter day’ we call the Massacre of the Innocents.

James Tissot, the Adoration of the Magi

What are we to make of the Epiphany of God in human form, and the tragic circumstances to which it led? At the heart of Christian belief is the conviction that God became present to us through a human birth. He revealed himself in a human person who embodied two natures, one fully divine, and one fully human, whose natures are distinguishable yet inseparable. Such a person, regardless of appearances, was and is the transcending center or heart of all that is, manifest in human form. He is, therefore, the One who truly possesses divine authority and divine power. Einstein – who was not in any sense a traditional believer – said this: “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.” The divine center of reality, manifest and revealed in a human being, is the most mysterious beautiful thing that we can experience.

Here is the wonder of it: in God’s mysterious Providence, the birth of the Messiah would bring death to many (in the Massacre of the Innocents). And – years later – the death of the Messiah would bring the possibility of new birth to all, through the redemption of human being from the power of sin and death.

Yet, it would be some decades later before those who proclaimed Jesus as Messiah, and the embodiment of God, could understand the connection between his birth along with those soon-resulting deaths of the Innocents, and his later death, along with its soon-resulting new births for those who came to believe in him.

Our proper response to all this — indeed our only response to all this can and should be to praise the Holy One of Israel, the one whose death brought new life to all who receive him. He has come to us. Come let us adore him. And let us receive him with renewed hope and joyful hospitality, in all his light-filled glory.

A blessed Epiphanytide to you and your loved ones.

 

The Arrival of the Messiah in James Tissot’s Art

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James Tissot, The Vision of Zechariah, with which Luke begins the great story (Luke 1). The priest, Zechariah receives an epiphany, telling him that he and Elizabeth will have a son, to be named John, later known as ‘the Baptizer.’

 

With this post for Christmas, I share with you a series of paintings by James Tissot on the theme of the Nativity of Jesus. Readers of this blog will know of my high regard for this artist’s life and work. I am pleased to share this collection of Tissot’s paintings related to the great events we celebrate for twelve days in the Church’s calendar year.

The paintings featured here, and many others, later became the illustrations in Tissot’s four volume, The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, published in English in 1897-8. The originals of these paintings were purchased by the Brooklyn Museum in 1900, and examples from this collection are periodically on display, both there and elsewhere.

May you and your loved ones have a holy and blessed Twelve Days!

The Betrothal of the Holy Virgin and St. Joseph (mentioned in Matthew 1 & Luke 1)

The Annunciation to Mary (Luke 1)

The Magnificat (Luke 1)

The Vision of St. Joseph (telling him of the coming child, and that he is to receive Mary as his wife / Matthew 1)

The Visitation (of Mary to her cousin, Elizabeth, the expectant mother of John, who would become the Baptizer / Luke 1)

St. Joseph Seeks Lodging at Bethlehem (Luke 1)

The Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ (Luke 1)

The Adoration of the Shepherds (Luke 2)

The Adoration of the Magi (Matthew 2)

The Flight Into Egypt (Matthew 2)

The Massacre of the Innocents (Matthew 2)

The Sojourn in Egypt (Matthew 2)

The Presentation in the Temple (Luke 2)

Jesus Among the Doctors (the boy, Jesus, at age 12, visiting the Temple in Jerusalem with his parents / Luke 2)

 

Note: the titles attached to the images above are those that are provided by the Brooklyn Museum

An Advent Magnificat

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Jim Janknegt, Joyful Mystery 1

 

Neither the Bible nor history tell us the precise details about the Annunciation to Mary, such as on what day the Angel appeared, or when Jesus was later born. The Angel’s wondrous appearance could have happened on a drab winter’s day. Yet, by virtue of the Angel’s message, it was also like spring. Our Church calendar and holy tradition reckon that the Annunciation was in March. If it was in the spring, the average high temperature in northern Israel would have been in the 60’s. So it could easily have been a season colored by the appearance of emerging flowers and foliage.

Faithful to the pattern of Scripture, Jim Janknegt seeks to portray something beyond literal circumstances. He has more than flowering plants, trees, and shrubs in mind. The decorated edge of the painting is a border of roses, which evoke the mysteries named in the Rosary, of which this scene is only the first. Inside that border are more flowers, and these also play a symbolic role. For we find lilies on Mary’s dress, suggestive of a later-to-be-revealed Easter, and calla lilies in a vase on the table, traditionally associated with the Annunciation to Mary.

Even more dramatically, flowers cover a large part of the angel, which suggest something transcendent and other-worldly. The Angel has come to speak the Word: the Word of Life, which is also a Word of blessing (look at the Angel’s hand-gesture!). Central in the painting, but depicted in a very subtle background way, is a great tree. Surely, it is the Tree of Life, from Genesis and Revelation, the first and last books of the Bible. Surely, the tree also prefigures that toward which everything in this moment is heading ~ the dead wood of the Cross, which paradoxically became a life-giving tree. Yes, it is springtime! But, this is springtime in salvation history.

So this is what we begin to see in Jim Jangknegt’s painting: his portrayal of the Angel’s Annunciation to Mary is not so much about springtime in the world. Instead, it is about springtime for the world.

 

Jim Janknegt’s painting, featured here, is used by permission of the artist. The text of this post is based on my homily for Sunday, Advent IV, of this year, which may be accessed by clicking here.

Allan West: Japanese Culture and Art

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In more than one way, Allan West is an unusual artist. His life and work have been deeply imbued by the spiritual aesthetics of Japanese culture and its traditional art of painting. For over forty years, he has dedicated himself to Nihonga, the less and less practiced method of painting using minerals for pigments, mixed with the liquid medium of a glue made from deer protein. This approach to painting has been practiced consistently in Japan, where luminous paintings from the 11th century can still be appreciated for their original beauty. The closest parallel in Western art is egg tempera painting, in which painters in earlier centuries mixed pigment with egg yolks instead of the modern practice of mixing pigments with oil or an acrylic medium.

Allan West was born and grew up in Washington, D.C., and his sojourn in Japan began in a period of mission work there as a member of the Latter Day Saints. Two factors transformed the vector of his life. He came to realize that he had an affinity with Japanese culture, especially with its artistic tradition, and he was struck by the Japanese sensitivity to living in harmony as much as is possible with the natural world.

More particularly, with his memory of pursuing painting from the time of his childhood, he recalls his own experiments with mixing pigments with various liquids to achieve a more fluid paint medium. This predisposed him to accept an observation offered by a viewer of his early work, who told him that his preferred approach to painting had a long tradition in Japan. As a result, West moved to Japan in 1987, with his wife and children, to learn from that tradition. He has lived and worked in Tokyo, ever since.

In a short video introduction to the artist, released by the Prime Minister’s Office in Japan, Allan West shares the following about his life’s work (screenshot above, and link below):

I use the Japanese painting technique to express the beauty and essence of the natural seasons. It has been 40 years since I moved to Japan, attracted by the traditional pigments and techniques of Japanese painting. Japanese natural materials can retain their clear vibrancy for more than a thousand years. I’m proud to inherit the tradition of Japanese painting and its wisdom that cherishes nature’s beauty and harmony with humankind. Through my art I’d like to convey the appeal of Japanese culture to the world.

With these few words, spoken in a soft and nuanced voice in the video, Allan West is saying much. Having returned to Japan with the intent of learning a method or a technique, he had the sensitivity to realize that he needed to learn the Japanese language and let its culture become ingrained within him in order for him to be able to practice Nihonga painting with some degree of integrity. The photo below contains a number of important cues concerning what West has received and learned from the tradition of which he describes himself as an inheritor.

Allan West paints sitting on the floor in a Japanese way, on mats woven from rice-straw. As has been noted, the paints he uses are made up of ground minerals mixed with a glue-like medium of deer protein, paints which he values for their fluid quality. Hence, the surfaces that are to be painted need also to rest upon the floor, to avoid the paint running. Many of the surfaces upon which West works are large in size, like the sometimes wall-sized decorative folding screens for which he has become known. To be able to paint such expansive surfaces in their totality, instead of panel by panel, the artist designed a narrow rolling platform, allowing him to reach any area of a full-sized screen (as in the image above). This photo also displays West’s use of vibrant mineral-based colors as well as metalic foils and powders, such as gold leaf, some of which are found in the glass containers on the shelves behind him.

Allan West’s present Yanaka, Tokyo, studio

Unlike some artists, both Western and Asian, Allan West welcomes visitors to his studio, and actively encourages those who are curious not only to view his art, but to witness his creative process. To this end, his present studio, much modified into a traditional Japanese-looking structure from its prior use as an automotive maintenance facility, has large and welcoming sliding panels and windows, through which those walking by can view him painting. Through providing this access to his creative work, he hopes to promote a sustainable future for Nihonga, and to persuade Japanese visitors in particular that even an American immigrant can appreciate, learn, and become proficient in an ancient Japanese art form.

The following images provide examples of Allan West’s beautiful work:

The following image displays the interior of Allan West’s attractive and welcoming studio and gallery building:

 

Readers who wish to become more acquainted with Allan West and his work might view the YouTube video mentioned above (the link is here). Allan West’s studio and gallery can also be visited in a virtual way by clicking this link.

Reconciliation is Always Possible

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A recent LA Times article was titled, “Hello Simon, my old friend…” Those of us who can remember the late 1960’s surely have clear memories of hearing tunes from Simon and Garfunkel’s milestone album, Bookends, and especially of the way their music was featured in the December, 1967, release of the movie, The Graduate. Even those born years later may have in their minds an inescapable link between the names of the two artists, whose cooperative work remains so memorable. Despite their ‘Oh, so beautiful’ recordings, the two broke up their musical partnership in January of 1970, shortly before the release of their best-selling and perhaps providentially titled album, Bridge Over Troubled Water.

Simon and Garfunkel performing in the earlier days of their musical partnership

Many of us who remember hearing their music when it was first released, or who have come to love and appreciate it since those years, don’t realize the extent of their difficult creative relationship as artists. All too soon, they drifted apart, speaking only occasionally with one another, though in subsequent years they did perform together on a few occasions, including at Jazz Fest in New Orleans in the spring of 2010. To his later regret, Art Garfunkel made some unwise and unguarded comments during an interview in 2016, that were hurtful to Paul Simon.

At Jazz Fest, New Orleans, 2010, with Garfunkel singing with a damaged voice adding to the strain in their relationship

Art Garfunkel has now spoken to the press about his regret concerning those prior comments, and shared what he had said to Paul Simon at a recent lunch together: “First time we’d been together in many years. I looked at Paul and said, ‘What happened? Why haven’t we seen each other?’” Garfunkel then shared this: “I cried when he told me how much I had hurt him.” “Looking back,” with obvious regret, he reflected that he had perhaps “wanted to shake up that nice guy image of Simon & Garfunkel.”

An early photo of the duo which may suggest some of the tensions in their partnership

Their reconciliation came at that long overdue lunch, which Garfunkel said, “…was about wanting to make amends before it’s too late.” Having acted upon his desire to reconnect with Simon, Garfunkel offered that “it felt like we were back in a wonderful place. As I think about it now, tears are rolling down my cheeks. I can still feel his hug.”

This recent reconciliation between Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel is heartwarming and a beautiful thing. It can be a source of hope for all of us regardless of who we are, or our place in this often confused and fast-paced world.

Simon and Garfunkel at a reunion concert in Central Park, NYC, in 1981

Reconciliation, especially following upon things we have done to hurt and impair a relationship with another person, is perhaps one of the most difficult things for us to contemplate doing, and then to try and enact. Surely, we can all acknowledge this based on personal experience. Especially when we are aware that this reality has the potential to be a shadow presence at some Thanksgiving gatherings this week, whether among family members or groups of friends.

Achieving reconciliation with another person in this life is never assured, no matter how much we may desire it. And what such a desired result may require is an openness to that hoped-for resolve happening between us, even if the circumstances surrounding that possibility seem remote and uncertain. Yet, though this kind of openness is necessary, it is not in itself sufficient for the desired result. Forgiveness by one or both parties plays a key role in the process. And forgiveness usually requires an acknowledgement rather than a dismissal of what may have happened to cause the breach in the relationship.

This is how and why memories, even of hurts, injury, and injustice, have the potential to be holy, and why forgetting (especially willful forgetting) may limit the extent to which we experience reconciliation. To forgive is an act of will, whether or not feelings of forgiveness arise within us or abide. And once forgiveness is willed, and then expressed, the reconciliation that follows upon openness might -and even may – in time happen.

There are grounds for hope, at least with regard to Simon and Garfunkel. They appear to be planning a series of reunion concerts in 2025. We can look forward to enjoying once again the fruit of this most creative musical collaboration.

 

The Stirring Choral Music of Michael John Trotta

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Michael John Trotta introducing his choral work, “Requiem,” in a YouTube video

 

Recently, I had the providential opportunity to meet Baton Rouge resident, and LSU School of Music doctoral recipient, Michael John Trotta. Only later did I learn of his impressive and internationally recognized accomplishments. Four albums incorporating recordings of his musical work can be found on Spotify, among them his stirring and evocative setting for the traditional Latin Requiem. Through subsequent messaging with him, I learned of the recording session that he directed this year of his “Requiem,” with the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Voices. It is a beautiful work of music, all the more meaningful for him and subsequent listeners in that the recording was made in support of the charity, Hospice UK.

A recent screenshot from Spotify featuring the music of Michael John Trotta

Michael John Trotta writes passionate and lyrical sacred music – a series of words not everyone will string together. Reflecting on his music, I am aware of my inclination to find verbal analogies rooted in the visual arts. And so, parallel to how some painters, sensitive to the role of light in our perception of color, seek to mix several colors to achieve a particular hue, Trotta’s choral music strikes me as an effort to express a wide and full spectrum of harmonious sound.

My initial perception of his compositions, that he presents sacred music that is passionate and lyrical, may also be akin to my use of the word beauty in connection with the paintings of Jackson Pollack. In both cases, I may be expressing an unexpected conjunction of ideas that can, I believe, properly belong together. Trotta’s musical works inspire me to write about them in this way.

Those who love to hear large groups of voices singing in harmonic patterns, especially of examples from Renaissance and early English vocal music, as well as modern compositions influenced by them, may find a similar pleasure in hearing his work. For me, this is due to how Trotta’s original choral music and his arrangements provide a moving and also meditative listening experience.

Trotta conducting the London Symphony Orchestra and London Voices while recording his “Requiem”

As an amateur listener, I find that Trotta’s compositions and arrangements are evocative of traditional art forms without sounding imitative. Composed in creative dialogue with musical history, his work retains what we might call a traditional ‘vocabulary.’ This may have parallels with what we can discern in various works by contemporary practitioners of other art forms. Parallel examples of an engagement with traditional elements in an artistic field may include composition and subject matter in painting; ornament or the lack of it and the use of certain structural elements in architecture; as well as selected harmonic patterns and chord sequences in music.

Nigel Short leading the ensemble, Tenebrae, accompanied by organ, while recording “Requiem” in the parish Church of St. John the Evangelist, Islington, North London

Michael John Trotta’s music helps support my renewed sense of confidence that contemporary artists and composers, as well as writers, can utilize and work creatively with inherited forms of expression and yet present new, fresh and compelling compositions. Trotta may epitomize the wisdom expressed by Jesus in another context, that “every scribe {or composer} who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old (Mt. 13:52).”

Michael John Trotta, in Carnegie Hall, conducting the premier of his compositional setting for the traditional Septem Verba Ultima (The Seven Last Words {of Christ})

The pieces that Trotta has composed and or arranged are not only musically harmonious, but also spiritually congruent with what we know about the grace-filled peace and presence of God. Michael John Trotta’s approach to the art of music can broaden our appreciation not only for beauty expressed in the past, but also for beauty as it may be presented anew today. I am very encouraged by my new experience of historically informed music that Trotta’s compositional work has opened for me.

A performance of Michael John Trotta’s” Requiem,” Sunday, April 21, 2024 at Tabernacle Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana

 

Since first posting this piece I have corrected a couple of the details mentioned in two of the photo captions.

The Elusive Biblical Idea of Ransom

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In late 1987, two American college students were exploring the jungles of Columbia. After obtaining a canoe, they embarked upon the Putumayo River and strayed into territory held by a Marxist rebel army. Formally known as FARC, these guerrilla soldiers abducted the students and held them captive for ten months in various jungle camps.

At first, the FARC guerrillas thought the two men were CIA agents, though the students corrected this. But then their captors came to see them as hostages having economic value. Soon, their parents hired an American explorer, who found the hostages and their captors. After four months of negotiations, conducted by a Roman Catholic Bishop, the students were released and taken to the American Embassy in Bogata.

Release for the young explorers surely came about through the payment of money, probably a lot of it. Ransom is a way to describe this kind of payment, where something valuable is exchanged for the freedom of captives. John Everett Millais’ painting (above), The Ransom, depicts a father handing over of fistful of jewelry and a bag of coins to some men who have taken his daughters hostage. Revolutionaries, terrorists, and criminals have long used ransom as an efficient means of fund-raising, especially when their captives come from wealthy families or are politically well-connected.

Clearly, when payments are made to captors, the purpose is not to honor or reward the hostage-takers. Instead, these payments reflect an abiding concern for those who are held-captive, awaiting redemption.

This concept of ransom is deeply rooted in our Judeo-Christian tradition, and it shapes how we understand redemption. Think of the beloved Advent hymn, which begins this way: “O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel…” In the Old Testament, in many passages like Psalm 49; Isaiah 35, 43, and 51; Jeremiah 31; and Hosea 13, we hear about how God’s promises inspire hope for the possibility of ransom from the power of death.

These insights help us understand Jesus’ words about ransom in Mark’s Gospel (in 10:45; parallel in Mt. 20:28). After predicting his suffering and death three times, Jesus tells the oblivious disciples that “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Yet, instead of a ransom-based understanding of Jesus’ sacrifice and death, many Christians think of Jesus’ saving work in a largely legal or juridical way. In this view, our sin involves a degree of corruption and guilt so bad that it’s beyond what we can make right. And so, human captivity to sin means that ‘a penalty must be paid, and punishment meted out.’ By this reckoning, only a ‘sinless one’ could pay the uncountable price, and bear the penalty for all. Therefore, Christ as a substitute for us, paid the price and endured the punishment so that we, ourselves, don’t have to, even though we are the ones who deserve it. Yet, according to this very common theory, the ‘price’ was paid to God, to satisfy God’s justice!

This legal or ‘punishment-substitution’ understanding of Jesus’ death did not become widespread for at least a thousand years after his crucifixion. Instead, during the first millennium, a different concept of Jesus’ mission was preeminent. It springs from the ransom words in Mark, as well as from 1st Timothy 2:5, where Paul writes, “…there is … one mediator between God and human kind, Christ Jesus… who gave himself [as] a ransom for all.”

According to this ransom view, ever since Creation, we have placed ourselves in the hands of Satan, by refusing to ‘delight in God’s will or walk in God’s ways.’ In effect, we have strayed into ‘the jungles of sin,’ and have allowed ourselves to be taken hostage by the Devil. We are held captive by our sin, and by our inclination to follow our own will. Like the two student hostages, we might have ‘paid’ our way to freedom ~ if we and they had had the means to do so. But we did not.

And so, showing his great love for us, Jesus offered himself to the Devil, as a ransom for our freedom. Jesus allowed the Devil to take him, as someone of even greater value than all of us. For Satan received as a ransom the sinless One, God’s own son. C.S. Lewis employs a similar ransom metaphor in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. In this biblically-derived approach, the ‘price to be paid’ was a concession to the power of an enemy, and compensation for a loss, rather than (as in the later and more prevalent legal view) a payment to satisfy God’s sense of justice.

An image of Aslan’s self-sacrifice, from a film version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

 

This post is adapted from some material previously published in this space, with some additional imagery. It is based on my homily for Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024, which may be accessed by clicking here.

St John the Divine – A Building and a Gospel

 

 

In the summer of 1974, I left my Massachusetts prep school as one of the few graduates not intending to go on to college. I moved to Manhattan in a youthfully naive venture to try and replicate an aspect of the life of my hero, Frank Lloyd Wright. I wanted to follow his career path of eventually obtaining architectural licensing through practicing in the field, something that was and may still be possible.

Unfortunately, as a career move this was at an improvident time, largely due to what was then called “the oil crisis,” and its effect upon the economy. No architectural office was hiring beginning draftsmen, and some were taking on licensed architects to do the kind of basic drafting work for which I wanted to be hired. The former Frank Lloyd Wright associate, Edgar Tafel, was most gracious in allowing me to come to his New York City office for an interview and then by how he tolerantly responded to my youthful exuberance and evident lack of preparedness for the work. Philip Johnson was less patient with me. When I managed somehow to reach him by phone, he said, “Look – I don’t do the hiring around here. Talk to my associate!”

I had found a room a block and a half from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, which was a prominent local landmark and soon became a welcome place to visit. Only years later did I discover that the house in which I had been able to rent my room, the former Alpha Delta Phi fraternity house, on 114th St, opposite the Columbia University Library, was where Thomas Merton had lived when he was a student there.

I would walk over to St. John’s, an alluring place to stop and rest. Now, at this point in my life, I would say it was ‘to pray.’ But I would not have said that then. Yet, as one beautiful phrase in The Book of Common Prayer Catechism puts it, “Prayer is responding to God.” Those are profound words. If taken seriously, we can recognize how many, many people in this world ‘respond to God,’ quite spontaneously and quite naturally – and aside from doctrine or ritual.

The magnificent space and architectural achievement of the unfinished cathedral of St. John the Divine was a profoundly converting space for me, in ways I did not realize then, and in ways that would not really make sense to me until much later.

Drawn to this place, absorbed with my intuitions about its architecture, and visiting frequently with inquiries, I volunteered to become a docent, a kind of tour guide for visitors before places like this cathedral became commercially oriented, leading to the charging of fees and the like. In the process of my time as a guide, I learned many arcane and obscure things, among them the size and height of the granite columns surrounding the main altar (54’ tall, 6’ in diameter); the number and architecturally significant variations among the chapels adjacent to the ambulatory surrounding the apse that encloses the high altar; as well as significant features of other side chapels in addition to the crypt.

If you had asked me then about the nature of my interest in that building, I would have said it was purely of architectural significance. Ask me now and I will tell you that I was seeking a closer experience of what St John the Divine shares with us in his Gospel. I was – as we say in a paradoxical way – unconsciously looking for God. But what I was really looking for, as we all do, is the experience of being found… and of feeling found, by God.

I think it is also providential that my year in New York, and the brief time I served as an occasional volunteer guide at the Cathedral, was when Canon Edward West was Sub-Dean, and Madeleine L’Engle was officially the cathedral librarian. I may have had only passing contact with either of them, but both were exemplars of how the arts may draw people into a more direct experience of what our Christian faith is all about. The Cathedral of St. John the Divine has represented this vision and value for decades.

Where St. John the Divine as a building nurtured my nascent spiritual awareness, the Gospel given to us through St. John the Divine, and the hymn-poems in his Revelation, have been for me a key, a doorway, and a beckoning gateway into a greater fullness of life.

 

Finding Beauty in the Most Unexpected Places

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Actor Koji Yakusho portraying Hirayama looking upwards, in the film Perfect Days

 

An improbable premise underlies the remarkable film, Perfect Days, and it is displayed in two principal ways. A Tokyo public toilet cleaner has a positive attitude, even a cheerful spirit, as he approaches his daily routine of attending to places where other people leave their waste. And yet, the primary places where this man is lucky to work are the architecturally significant public toilets commissioned and built for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The film portrays these places well. Some have suggested that the architectural features of these structures may have inspired the movie’s production. Nevertheless, the film is centered upon one man’s approach to how he lives every day.

He is a man about whom we know only his surname, and we learn more about his daily routine than we do about his inner life. The latter, his interests and perhaps aspirations, are suggested by the books he reads and the music to which he listens while driving. Many scenes depict him at his work. But the film does this in ways that do not romanticize his occupation, while he is shown cleaning and polishing toilet bowls and seats, as well as sinks and other aspects of plumbing. The film skillfully negotiates the ambiguous terrain lying between a heroic portrayal of an apparently righteous man, and a sentimental celebration of an unreal figure.

A montage of some of the public toilets featured in Perfect Days

The approach to life epitomized by Hirayama in the film is one of contentment. He models someone who accepts the limitations presented by the contexts in which many of us live, and he displays an openness to unexpected moments of discovered and quiet beauty. The film is not overtly spiritual. Yet, these qualities may represent – to some Western viewers like me – compelling reflections of Japanese culture as it has been shaped by Buddhism.

Hirayama at work on a hobby, Bonsai

In addition to the overt paradoxes at the heart of the film – a happy toilet cleaner and beautiful public toilets – the film subtly presents other aspects of Japanese society that Western visitors might notice. In what may surprise many who are not of Japanese heritage, regarding a very private culture where people typically meet one another in commercial establishments rather than in personal dwelling places, public baths with full nudity are common. I experienced occasional visits to public baths in my youth, growing up in Japan.

Hirayama in the neighborhood bath house

And within the context of this very private culture, some Tokyo public restrooms were created with transparent glass walls, appearing to risk users to full disclosure (the glass walls magically become opaque when the doors are locked).

Three motifs or tropes in the film are memorable. Hirayama is portrayed as always looking up to the sky when emerging from his home in the morning on his way to work, and is also seen gazing upwards (as in the photo at the top of this post). This suggests that he unconsciously senses a connection with something bigger than himself, and this may be the source of his frequently displayed habit of smiling at others.

Another motif, surely related to the first, is the employment of black and white sequences that portray flickering images, usually of dappled sunlight glimpsed through tree limbs, which Hirayama captures with his old-fashioned film camera. Most often, he seems to take these photos during his lunch breaks in a local park. In relation to these images, the movie highlights the Japanese word, and concept, of komorebi, which in a single word expresses the idea of sunshine filtering through the leaves of trees overhead.

The third is the employment by the movie makers of the Sumida River in Tokyo, long celebrated in Japanese art, over which we see Hirayama cross while walking, driving, or biking. The river appears to symbolize a form of divide between the part of the city where his small apartment is located, and the more elegant commercial district where he usually works.

My favorite image of Tokyo’s Sumida River in art, a woodblock print by Kobayashi, Kiyochika ({1847-1915} name in traditional Japanese order)

These juxtapositions in Perfect Days of contrasting details, color versus black and white, and interior privacy and public life, along with the harmony in which they are presented, distinguish this film. To me, it is remarkable that this movie was made by a Western filmmaker, regardless of the assistance provided by Japanese colleagues. A studied sensitivity to what I know about Japanese culture is evident in the film’s portrayal of this fictional character in improbable circumstances, as it invites us to discover – along with Hirayama – beauty in the most unexpected places.

Hirayama, gazing upwards, holding his old-fashioned film camera

 

Chora Church: A Byzantine Treasure

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Dome over the Side Church (or parecclesion), Chora Church

 

We missed being able to visit this remarkable place by a day! Sadly, after staying in Istanbul for four nights, the historic Chora Church that had undergone four years of renovation would not reopen until the day after our departure.

Dating back to the time of Constantine in the early fourth-century, the Chora Church was built as part of a monastary outside the walls that were constructed when Constantinople became the new capitol of the Roman Empire in 330 A.D. Its rural location led to its formal title, Church of the Holy Savior in the Country (or Chorai, in Greek).

Interior of the original central nave (naos) in use as a mosque, with Christian mosaics and frescoes covered over

Chora, like the later Hagia Sophia, has over its history served as a church, a mosque, a museum, and now once again as a mosque. As I have noted in prior posts, the fact that buildings like Hagia Sophia and Chora have been able to transition from church to mosque without significant structural change helps us perceive how what became normative in mosque architecture had its origins in churches from the early Christian, pre-Islamic era. As a precursor to Hagia Sophia, the original walls of Chora may provide one of the earliest examples of what would develop into the cruciform plan for churches, a design pattern that became predominant in the Christian East. This approach to design for worship spaces is centered on a square, covered by a dome, a departure from the early rectangular basilica plan favored in the western Roman region.

Floor plan of the Chora Church

In the floor plan above, note the subtle Greek Cross pattern of the central nave (or naos) below the large dome. As this plan indicates, the original, late Classical period Chora was significantly expanded during the Byzantine period, between the 11th century and the 14th century.

Section drawings of Chora Church showing the location of some murals and frescoes

In addition to its cruciform plan, and the church’s great antiquity, another feature that distinguishes Chora is its impressive collection of well-preserved Byzantine mosaics and frescoes, largely from the early fourteenth-century.

Visitors to Chora admiring the murals in the Byzantine-added “side church”

The bulk of the surviving mosaics and frescoes are located primarily in the side church (or parecclesion). This may be due to the central nave or naos having been used for Islamic worship during a significant portion of the building’s history. One of the many beautiful frescoes depicts a common theme found in works of art from the Christian East, that of the Harrowing of Hell. Images based on this theme depict the Christian belief concerning the first saving actions of the Risen Christ: pulling Adam and Eve out of their tombs and the clutches of the underworld (image below).

A fresco in the Side Church – Anastasis (or Resurrection): The Harrowing of Hell

A beautiful example of the Chora mosaics depicting Joseph and Mary’s enrollment for taxation in Bethlehem

Interior view of the side church

Like the later Hagia Sophia, Chora Church – for a time as a museum and now a mosque – still serves as an edifying spiritual place for Christians and people of other faiths to visit. For Orthodox Christians in the East, Chora’s numerous mosaics and frescoes provide multiple opportunities to (re)engage with biblical stories and with articles of faith in a way that the contemporaneous art in the much larger Arena (or Scrovegni) Chapel in Padua, Italy, provides enrichment for Western, Latin, Christians.

Exterior view of the southeast corner of Chora Church (note the later addition of a ‘flying buttress’)

A 1903 photograph of the west entrance to Chora in the late Ottoman period