Art and Time

One thing I wish the independent Christian Church did more of was celebrating the significance of how God moves through time.

My friend sent me this link which celebrates the liturgical year through painting. This was featured at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. which I was first idle and later fortunate enough to bother to visit last year. Each color choice and brush stroke is intended to celebrate some form of interaction between God and humanity. Revelation.

I especially love the section on Epiphany. I use that word occasionally, most often comically, due to the fact that my first introduction to that word was the movie Hook in the dialogue between Hook and Smee:

"I've just had an apostrophe."
"I think you mean an epiphany."
"Lightning has just struck my brain."
"Well that must hurt."

Anyway in the enjoyment of such comedic frivolity, I neglected to truly mine the meaning out of the word.

The website says "Epiphany is an astonishing word that suggests the unfurling of a great mystery. Chinn remarks, 'Epiphany brings the wonder of that Incarnation present and available to all people of the earth.'"

And later on Lent: "Lent is the season that inexorably leads us to the cross of Good Friday, where we recall a dark night of the soul. We journey to Golgotha where light and dark collide and we are blind-sided by death."

Recently I was reading through Eugene Peterson's "Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places" and one part in particular struck me. Peterson wrote about the validity of each person's experience of the "absence of God." Meaning, since Christ himself experienced the aching, burning question of "My God, my God why have You forsaken Me?" that we should not consider extreme doubt and questioning to be a symptom of unbelief, but rather compelling evidence for the presence of real belief. For if Christ himself uttered such words in anguish, being held captive to the "dark night of the soul" for a season in life brings us closer to the mind and heart of Christ, and therefore a deeper, richer encounter with God.

Anyway, if you have the time, I hope you check out the link.