Arts and Music at Redeemer

Matthew Whitney, one of the artists in our “Visions of the Cross” exhibit, will be having a solo show of 20+ of his most recent works throughout the month of May at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Lynnwood. He extends his invitation to the artist reception to be held next week. I am looking forward to seeing more of his work in person! Hope to see you there too!

Artist Reception and Opening

Friday, May 4th, 2007 between 5pm and 9pm

Exhibition continues through May 31.

Church of the Good Shepherd

2609 Larch Way

Lynnwood, WA 98036

Contact: Shannon Schaaf : 425-299-1967 : schaaf3@gmail.com

On the night of the Great Vigil, local jazz musician and Redeemer parishioner Hunter Close performed a musical interpretation of Ezekiel 36:24-28.

Hunter says that John Coltrane’s album “A Love Supreme” is one of his inspirations for this piece.

Ezekiel 36:24-28

Say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.

Click here to listen

On the night of the Great Vigil, I read a short story that I wrote about Israel’s deliverance through the Red Sea.

In honor of International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, this story is free to read and adapt under a Creative Commons license.

- Wade

Download the PDF file here

Listen to the audio of the reading here

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Karl Oles presented a creative interpretation of the Creation story on the night of the Great Vigil.

Download the PDF file here

Listen to Karl’s reading here

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We have a new call to artists for an exhibition called “Speaking in Tongues: The Spirit Unleashed”.

Call to Artists

“Tree of Life”, acrylics/collage painting on canvas, 40″ x 30″, ©Angela Wales Rockett 2007 

And the last “Visions” artist is, well, me.

To read more about the inspiration behind this painting, please visit my blog entry about it. In it, I wrote about how it was inspired by a sermon by St. Theodore of Studios. Father Geoff recently approached me to tell me the painting reminded him of a poem by 16th - 17th century metaphysical poet and Anglican priest John Donne, though I can’t put my finger on the quote just now. But it was quite appropriate.

You can see more of my work on my website, and on my blog.

“Difficult”, textile painting, 33″ x 22″, ©Faith Alexander, 2007

This entry is from one of our parishioners, a very active member of our Ecclesiastical Arts Committee, Faith Alexander. I’ve dubbed it a textile painting, sort of a painted quilt/wall-hanging. You can contact Faith at fcalexander@earthlink.net.

The idea of “faith as performance” comes to the fore in a very blatant way during Holy Week.

On Passion Sunday we reenacted the Passion of our Lord, taking the parts of Pilate, the Pharisees, the crowds, and Christ himself during the liturgy.

Then during the Great Vigil on the following Saturday, several of us presented the night’s readings through creative interpretations: music, fiction, spoken word, and dance. (I’ll post a couple of the pieces here over the next few days.)

Stanley Hauerwas addressed faith as performance in this interview on Homiletics online:

HOMILETICS: Your recent book on Bonhoeffer, Performing the Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Nonviolence — I thought “performing” was an interesting word. Faith as performance.

HAUERWAS: That was very intentional. One of the things that liberal democratic society has encouraged Christians to believe about what they believe is that what it means to be a Christian is primarily belief![laughter]. So you hold to these 26 absurd propositions before breakfast, you know.

This is a deep misunderstanding about how Christianity works. Of course we believe that God is God and we are not and that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit but that this is not a set of propositions — but is rather embedded in a community of practices that make those beliefs themselves work and give us a community by which we are shaped. Religious belief is not just some kind of primitive metaphysics, but in fact it is a performance just like you’d perform Lear. What people think Christianity is, is that it’s like the text of Lear, rather than the actual production of Lear. It has to be performed for you to understand what Lear is — a drama. You can read it, but unfortunately Christians so often want to make Christianity a text rather than a performance.

- Wade

The Easter altarpiece

Originally uploaded by Church of the Redeemer.

Cut paper. Each sheet of paper is 14′ by 3′. Angela drew on the sheets and then teams of Arts Committee members cut out the shapes in the course of three work parties of roughly four hours each.

There are 50 square or cross-shaped elements with designs in them, representing the 50 days of Pascha. A vine design winds up between them.

Holy Week at Redeemer is not for the weak–especially if you are in charge of the music program! At the end of the service on Palm Sunday I was reminded of an article in the American Guild of Organists’ magazine which listed old newspaper accounts of organists who had died on Easter morning, often in dramatic ways. However, I’m sure an extra trip to Starbucks will be all I need after Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, The Great Paschal Vigil…and, lest we forget, midnight champagne reception!

Thankfully, my energy is matched and rewarded by the choir and instrumentalists involved in the liturgies. The services and community life at Redeemer have such amazing contrasts during this period:

Lenten fasting
communal meals

solemn processions
the joyful pageantry of children

choir families in difficult times
vibrant, focused singing

the darkest psalms
the brightest hymns.

I look forward to sharing these ever more deeply as we move into Holy Week.

In the words of a hymn we’ll sing tomorrow night from Wonder, Love, and Praise:

Draw us to you and with your love transform us:
the love we’ve seen, the love we’ve touched and known;
enlarge our hearts and with compassion fill us
to love, to serve, to follow you alone.

(”You laid aside your rightful reputation”, Rosalind Brown)

–Sheila