Creating Holy Week: Weaving together theology, poetry, and music

Art has long been understood as being able to convey emotion in deep and creative ways. Holy Week is a week full of emotion: love, loss, suffering, redemption, hope, guilt; it's all there. After hearing the story many times it runs the risk of losing its sting. Last year I came up with the idea of creating my own Holy Week--not just participating in the services--the active remembering as a church--but in using art--poetry and music in particular--to help me experience Holy Week anew.

Holy Week is the time in the Christian calendar that celebrates the final week of Jesus' life: his triumphant entrance into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday); the last supper he shared with his disciples and arrest in the garden (Holy/Maundy Thursday); Jesus' death on the cross (Good Friday); and, his resurrection from the tomb (Easter morning). Holy Week is certainly somber--as Christians reflect upon the death of Christ and how their sins are in some way responsible for the brokenness of creation that lead Jesus to the cross. But at the same time, Holy Week brims with hope: hope in the resurrection, promise of the forgiveness of sins, and promise of new life. And, perhaps, the most overwhelming emotion of the week is love: the love in John 3:16 (For God so loved the world...), the love of Jesus for the disciples as he washed their feet, the love of the New Commandment that Jesus gives his disciples, the love Jesus had for humanity that lead him to the cross, but also the heart-wrenching love of the women and the beloved disciple who watched Jesus die, the mourning love as the women came upon the empty tomb.

This exercise can be done with any art form: visual art, performance art, pop music. I chose to narrow it down to poetry and classical music, but I encourage you all to identify artwork that is meaningful to you and helps deepen your understanding, and feel free to comment below with your own suggestions. Some of these are intended by the author for theological/liturgical use, most are not. But they all communicate the emotions of Holy Week in deep ways that allow me to create my own Holy Week, my own deep encounter with love, loss, and redemption.

Just a note: some of the poems I only included excerpts as they are still protected by copyright. In those instances, I provided a link so you may read the entire poem.

 Jean Langlais' Suite Francais, No 6 "Arabesque sur les flutes"
This is a beautiful piece of music. To me, it communicates a jovial, playful love, tinged ever so slightly with melancholy.  

Kathleen Jaime's "The Wishing Tree"
And though I’m poisoned
choking on the small change

of human hope,
daily beaten into me

look: I am still alive—
in fact, in bud.
(See the full poem here.) 

 This is my favorite poem of all time. It communicates deep sacrifice, being in bud in spite of the human hopes "daily beaten into me."  

Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring
Stravinksy's The Rite of Spring is a ballet about a pagan sacrifice. Thus, the themes of new life, spring, sacrifice, loss of innocence, and rebirth are all present in this magnificent piece.  

Rajzel Zychlinska's "God Hid His Face"
All the roads led to death,
all the roads.
All the winds breathed betrayal,
all the winds.
At all the doorways angry dogs barked,
at all the doorways.
All the waters laughed at us,
all the waters.
All the nights fattened on our dread,
all the nights.
And the heavens were bare and empty,
all the heavens.
God hid his face.

I first encountered this poem in a volume of collected poetry called The Last Lullaby: Poetry from the Holocaust. This poem... yeah. I'll just leave it as is.  



Sergei Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet Suite 3 No 6: "The Death of Juliet"
Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet is a masterpiece. I only linked to the final song, "The Death of Juliet," which communicates the deep heartache that is felt after the loss of one you love. I recommend the entire ballet, as the piece brilliantly shows how maddening, passionate, sexual, and despairing love can be.

Craig Czury's "Morning"
Crossing barbed wire
I cut my face
and taste you everywhere.

A short, beautiful poem. Love, loss, pain--it's all there in those three short lines.  


Matthew Harris' "Fear No More" (Shakespeare)
 
This is the only musical piece that is also a poem, in fact, it is a setting of William Shakespeare's "Fear No More the Heat o' the Sun" from his play Cymbeline. Why I chose to use this particular musical setting (as opposed to letting the poem stand on its own) is because Harris' music brings out the emotion of the piece in really profound ways: the somber introduction to the build in the middle, finally ending in a lullaby, all the while using Shakespeare's beautiful and almost peaceful description of death.  

John Keat's "Faery Song"
Shed no tear! oh, shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Weep no more! oh, weep no more!
Young buds sleep in the root's white core.
 Dry your eyes! oh, dry your eyes!
For I was taught in Paradise
To ease my breast of melodies,
-- Shed no tear.

Overhead! look overhead!
'Mong the blossoms white and red--
Look up, look up! I flutter now
On this fresh pomegranate bough.
See me! 'tis this silvery bill
Ever cures the good man's ill.
Shed no tear! oh, shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Adieu, adieu -- I fly -- adieu!
I vanish in the heaven’s blue,
-- Adieu, adieu!

Resurrection--shed no tear, I flutter now on this fresh pomegranate bough. Simple, perfect, beautiful.
  
Eric Whitacre's "Alleluia"
 
This piece encapsulates the entire mood of the Easter Vigil more than any other piece I have encountered. It begins with a solemn "Alleluia," that is slowly joined by the full choir in a melancholy, pastoral melody that slowly builds into a joyful acclamation, yet, all the while never fully reaching the true triumphant joy that we often hear in other settings (think Handel's "Halleluia Chorus").  

Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise"
Out of the huts of history's shame
 I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
(view the full poem here.) 

This poem is one of redemptive self-love of a black woman; a love that is strong in spite of oppression. It is a poem of resurrection in spite of persecution. This poem captures the emotion of redemptive love more than any other poem I know.

Book Review: The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

I will admit when I am wrong (at least most of the time). And this is one of those times. When I first saw early press releases for The Invention of Wings—famous spiritual writer Sue Monk Kidd’s latest work—I could not help but roll my eyes. Don’t get me wrong—I absolutely loved Dance of the Dissident Daughter and Travelling with Pomegranates, and enjoyed The Secret Life of Bees. But at first glance, this looked like another work in the white girl finding herself while helping black people in the process genre. You may know of this genre: the film The Help is the first that springs to mind, but the aforementioned The Secret Life of Bees is another example.

The basic premise: a white girl is feeling oppressed. In her journey to define herself, she interacts with oppressed black people who teach her their wisdom. At the end of the story, white girl helps black people overcome their oppression and, in the process, overcomes her own. In the film adaption of The Help (I have not read the novel, so I cannot say anything about that), Skeeter is an aspiring writer who befriends Aibileen and Minny, two black maids serving in white houses in the early 1960s south. After hearing their stories, Skeeter writes a book chronicling their experiences.  The book becomes popular and the money is split with the help, allowing them greater mobility in society, and also helps Skeeter prove to herself and her family her ability as a writer.

This trope is often called “White Man’s Burden,” and is exhibited in other films like The Blind Side and The Soloist, and has many parallels with “The Mighty Whitey” trope (Avatar, Dances with Wolves, etc.). From the explanation on tvtropes.org:

“This trope is about a plot where an ordinary, ethnically-European (white) person meets an underprivileged non-ethnic-Euro character. Taking pity on the other character's plight, they selflessly volunteer themselves as the other's tutor, mentor, or caretaker to make things better…. The white character is the one who gets all the Character Development while the minority character's main purpose will be to advance that character development. The focus of this plot will be on the white character's saintliness rather than the minority character's journey.”

This is a problematic trope for many reasons. For one, the black characters are generally foils to the main white character. Secondly, the black characters have no capacity to free themselves and are underprivileged; it is only with the benevolent help of the white (main) character that they are able to achieve freedom, social mobility, or whatever. Furthermore, the white person generally has little to do to adapt to the black person’s culture, whereas the black person is forced or helped to integrate into white culture. And, the trope focuses on the white person’s guilt and self-pitying over the whole affair. I could rant about this obnoxious trope all day but I’m stopping myself. This is a review about The Invention of Wings after all. Not The Help.

Anyway, I bring up the White Man’s Burden tope because The Invention of Wings is so not that! I was legitimately surprised. First, the plot focuses on two main characters: the historical Sarah Grimké and the fictional Hattie “Handful” Grimké. Set in antebellum South, Sarah is given a slave—Hattie—for a present on her 11^th birthday. Sarah vows to free Hattie in any way possible, but is unable to do so before she leaves for Philadelphia. The story chronicles their lives through several decades, following Sarah’s history as an outspoken abolitionist and woman’s rights activist and Hattie’s life as a chattel slave in Charleston, South Carolina. What makes this story unique is that both Handful and Sarah are given equal time in the book, as the novel alternates first-person narratives of the two characters. Rather than Handful being a foil to Sarah, and rather than Sarah being the architect of Handful’s freedom from slavery, the novel instead looks at both people’s stories. Yes, it does have a load of White Man’s Burden—Sarah is consumed with guilt over slavery and is outspoken on behalf of the slaves. Sarah is a person of privilege, a rich daughter of a lawyer, and her primary story arc is one of self-discovery. But, Handful is also a character in her own right—she has her own hopes and dreams, she is given her own voice, and, without revealing the end, Handful’s “Invention of Wings” is her own doing, and that of her black mother’s and black sister’s, not Sarah’s.

The story really is about the invention of wings—as both Sarah and Handful seek wings to free them from the oppression of their time. It’s not a perfect novel (is there such a thing?), but it is an excellent and surprising read, and perhaps one of my favorite works by Sue Monk Kidd. The novel takes some historical liberties, which Kidd explains in the afterward of her book, and they do make sense and help build a compelling tale. Kidd’s writing has certainly evolved since her more devotional nonfiction days, and even one can see a progression between this her third novel and her first, The Secret Life of Bees.

I think that given time this novel has the potential to be a classic in American fiction. It is one of the few books written by a white person dealing with themes of racism, civil rights, and empowerment not to fall into the aforementioned tropes. It is beautiful, heartbreaking, and heartwarming. It can be a little too sweet in its discussion of empowerment, but not as cringe worthy as others in the genre.

Kidd said herself that she erred on the side of being too bold in the inclusion of Hattie’s tale, but I think she made the right choice. The book is unique, powerful, and imaginative, a welcome addition to my book shelf, at very least. Well done, Sue Monk Kidd! We needed this kind of book.

In Defense of Lenten "Dieting"

Dr. Largen, one of my professors at seminary, recently posted a blog in defense of giving up chocolate for Lent (view here post here). During the weeks leading up to Ash Wednesday, there are always a flurry of posts about what is a "proper Lenten discipline," and, as Dr. Largen states, chocolate is "definitely the go-to negative example of what you are 'supposed' to do for Lent, and what Lent is really about." She then writes about how giving up chocolate for Lent really is an important part of her Lenten practice and does help her "create a mindful connection with God and with others."

I agree with her post wholeheartedly. Giving up chocolate might not be able to create that mindful connection with God and others for everyone, but for some, it certainly has the potential to do so. Thinking about Dr. Largen's post also made me examine the concept of Lenten fasting in general.

One of my friends recently stated that "Lent is not a diet plan." And I agree--Lent shouldn't simply be an excuse to drop a few pounds. But can Lent be a time to examine our relationship with food? Can Lent be a time where we examine unhealthy relationships with food or body-image and try to change them? I think so.

First, there is still a dualism implicit when people favor spiritual practice over physical practice, as if both cannot be related. Some say you can give up fast food for Lent, providing you have right intentions by giving money save from that experience to the poor. It's as if anything one does for their own physical betterment is devoid of anything spiritual and is somehow missing the point or being selfish. Eastern religious practices, such as yoga, point to the fact that what we do with our bodies also can have spiritual significance. God created our entire being--spirit, body, intellect--all of it. Neglecting one's physical fitness can have just as much of a negative spiritual impact as not going to church (particularly if it leads to self-esteem, body-image, or depression issues).

Especially in the United States, given our fascination with food, focusing on having a healthier understanding of food is a valid Lenten practice. And this fascination is on both ends: the United States is the most obese nation in the world yet at the same time has some of the highest rates of eating disorders in the world--and both are on the rise. It is clear that as a culture we have a very unhealthy relationship with food. The reasons behind this are many, stemming from American culture's fascination with a false body image, flawlessly airbrushed models, celebrities that are on the low end (or under) a healthy BMI; yet at the same time a culture obsessed with food--Eat more! Treat yourself! Give in! Buy one get one!

Furthermore, self-esteem is so often tied to with physical appearance. Eating disorders are becoming more prevalent. Depression, eating disorders, and more can stem from having a negative body-image. This is a very unhealthy cycle.

Our relationship with food truly can get in the way of our relationship with God, each other, and with ourselves. Our self-esteem suffers, we may suffer from depression or an eating disorder, we may yo-yo in our weight. We may develop conditions like diabetes or high-blood pressure. And yet we don't think this can get in the way of our relationship with God? Learning how to eat healthy, how to be active: these are certainly spiritual practices because they affect the way we see ourselves and the way in which we are able to interact with the world. (On the flip side, I'm also not suggesting that one has to have a BMI of 25 or under in order to have a healthy relationship with God--by no means! I am simply suggesting that a healthy relationship with our bodies is also an important aspect of our relationship with God).

Let me be clear here: I am not talking about joining a fad diet, as those are unhealthy practice to begin with. By no means am I suggesting giving up carbs or joining the South Beach Diet, as both can have very unhealthy consequences.

What I am talking about is meeting with a nutritionist, going to the US Dept of Health and Human Services page on nutrition and exercise, joining a gym, or simply going on a daily fifteen minute walk outside (which has the added bonus of participating in and reflecting upon God's creation). I'm talking about standing in front of a mirror and learning to look at yourself with love, realizing that that is how God sees you. To take the Barbie and Ken dolls out of our eyes and see ourselves as beautiful as we are.

Most importantly, Lent gives us the time to remember that God loves us as we are, no matter what. No matter if I struggle fitting in my airplane seat, or into my pair of pants, or feel the need to hide behind super baggy clothing, God loves me. Even if I hate myself or the way I look, or if I go to bed crying because a kindergartner at work called me fat (true story), God still loves me just the way I am, from a BMI of 21 to a BMI of 42, God loves me. And in a culture where we are preached self-loathing and that we can never be good enough, perhaps the most powerful and life changing Lenten discipline is to remember that we are loved by God as we are.

Here are some suggestions for Lenten Disciplines centered around physical well-being:

1. Go on a 15 minute walk every day, making it a part of your daily routine. Pay attention to how your body feels. Pay attention to God's creation--notice the sky, the trees, and notice how you are a part of that.

2. Practice learning to love yourself as you are. Look in the mirror and tell yourself that "I am beautiful as I am" and "God loves me as I am."

3. Pick one of the simple tips on healthfinder.gov, such as "Eat Less Sodium: Quick Tips" and spend a little time before each meal thinking about how to incorporate that healthy eating tip into your meal.


4. Eat more fruit and veggies! Have at least one fruit and low in starch vegetable every meal. Many websites have recipes on simple ways to incorporate fruit and veggies into every meal.

5. Train for a 5k--there are many 5ks in the spring and summer months, and most support charities and other good causes for the community. Registering for one has the added benefit of giving back to the community in addition to being more active. The couch to 5k training program is a fun way to start training, as well.


Disclaimer: I am not a nutritionist or expert on healthy eating. Any weight-loss or healthy eating plan should be discussed with a doctor before starting.