Getting Organized

I have been enjoying the Christmas decorations at the Cathedral. Louis Bower Bannister, member of the congregation and visionary behind Cathedral in Bloom, strung evergreens as they appear in nature—with spiny fingers of varying color and texture pointing in all directions. You still have this weekend to see them—they will begin to come down on Monday, the Feast of the Epiphany, which celebrates the Magi’s visit to Jesus.

The wildness of the decoration aligns with the Cathedral’s carvings of leaves and tendrils in stone. It feels right to me that the artists of the past who created our interior have their work shown with nature shaped by Louis, one of our artists of the present. The evergreens speak theological truth to me like the words of a sermon unfurling into the space.

When we strip ornamentation from the holiday, this is what we are left with—that, like evergreens, the birth of the Christ was humble, unremarkable as well as profound. Plants, animals, and the birth of a child are things that return us to our true selves.

Life mirrors life. That we respond to nature as if it orders us reveals the careful hand that placed us here. God’s life in the flesh in the life of Jesus directs us to ponder the Spirit’s role in our own lives.

The ancient Greeks spoke of order as the word, or logos. This is what the Gospel of John  associates with Christ in its prologue, loved by many for its sheer poetry. “In the beginning was the Word……..”

I think preachers must prepare for Christmas as if it is their annual shot at defining logos—what it is really matters. On Christmas, the Dean began by speaking about the chaos that was in the beginning. Give it a listen.

His most recent sermon is a sequel in which he looks deeper into logos. “Is there a word, is there a principle?” he asks. “Or is it just sound and fury signifying nothing?” Give that one a listen too if you can.

In Christ, the light that enlightens all people is come into the world. In Cathedral Arts programs, under this light we look deeper into what calls us—art, poetry and other creative work—and find ourselves. Please check out our calendar for upcoming programs and join us sometime.

And may you find new order—inner peace—in the new year.

Worship as Art

Sometimes at staff meetings at the Cathedral we talk about liturgy and how to help people enter traditional worship. Click here for some of our favorite websites we use to help ourselves. Perhaps they will help you enjoy Advent—the four weeks of the liturgical calendar leading to the birth of Christ.

“Liturgy" means "work for the people” in Greek. Liturgies used by the first centuries of Christians still sound familiar to us who use The Book of Common Prayer. A collection of prayers edited and written by Thomas Cranmer during the English Reformation, the Book is still mostly scripture and has undergone many revisions.

Liturgical worship, especially the Anglo-Catholic variety found at The Cathedral of All Saints, involves all the senses. A new season sweeps into the eyes on changes of cloth on the altars and over arms making the sign of the cross. Boy’s voices descend from above the organ as it groans prayers too deep for words. Faces emerge through clouds of incense. As you come closer to it, it seems there is no end to the work…….

While liturgy often comforts, its practice is not necessarily comfortable. Kneeling, standing, crossing ourselves and being confused about what to do when is good exercise for our brains as well as our bodies. As we speak, smell, listen and move through liturgy it seeps into memory and bone. As St. Claire of Assisi said, “We become what we love.”

Like good art, liturgy brings hope in times of darkness. A tradition of prayer allows us to practice being with God when we are not sure how to be with God. It is my personal experience that submitting myself to common worship gives me a sense of unmerited belonging otherwise known as “grace.”

When wondering how to convey liturgy’s benefits, I think of my life before liturgy entered it. Faith in Christ as a teenager led me to a “Bible church.” The service had little structure. One Sunday, the congregation was surprised when the pastor wanted us to read the Lord’s Prayer. It was in the Bible and therefore we could, he said. We were taught to approach the Bible only as it appeared between its flaps of simulated leather.

My faith did not convert me from being a post-Enlightenment person who can only know things through observation. I drew and painted from nature and trusted God only in what I could observe about God from reading the Bible. While reading it was good for me, the human hands and voices involved in its emergence and preservation were things I eventually also needed to know. My voice and hands itched to engage what I read. I could not see how my church would bear this.

With the birth of our son, my husband and I started attending an Episcopal church. Over the next ten years I gave birth to our daughter, raised our babies, became deeply ill and began to heal. In gratitude I decided to be confirmed in the Church. I reread the stories of Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor. A priest-friend showed me how visual imagery and faith align in her stories and asked if this had to do with my decision to be confirmed.

When Jesus enters our lives through faith, the kingdom that is to come arrives on our doorstep. Light filters in, dark corners are illumined and we see what we can bear until the day comes when we can bear more. The night after I walked through the doors of the Cathedral to be confirmed I wrote that I had “abandoned my lonely creed.” I knew that choosing to walk through the door of tradition meant committing to others who would bear me.

The season of Advent, the first season of the liturgical year, leads us to find Jesus and to bear him. The first Sunday of Advent reminds us that, however we shut him out, Jesus will enter again. This year’s gospel reading is Matthew 24:36-44.

After I was confirmed, I was asked to make a series of black and white drawings for Advent. This was my drawing for the first Sunday, for the above reading…..

The drawing was made to be liturgy—literally—it was work for the people meant to be viewed with the gospel reading in hand. The drawing is more suited to visio divina, a form of meditation with art, than to be a Bible lesson.  It worked for me, at least. As one often experiences in ministry, my work for others healed something in me.

Recovering from illness had illuminated my fear of intimacy with God. Matthew 24 shone greater light on that fear. I dealt with it by drawing Christ tucking people into his beard and gingerly taking a sleeper from his home.

Christ has laid keys on the table because he entered what already belonged to him. Multitasking, he reaches through the window with his free hand to take a farmer from his field. The farmer will join the others on the beard as the floods come. The lovers seem as though they will never notice.

I had not yet heard of the concept of “now, and not yet” to describe Jesus’ vision of the kingdom of heaven, but I gleaned it from reading Matthew and represented time by repeating the contours of the sleeper and of Jesus’ hand under him. The visual effect recalls Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase.”

I chose to bring my whole modern self with all of its education to my liturgical drawing. I did not do this consciously but by this prayer to bear intimacy with Jesus made with my hands. I had just gone to see an exhibit of ukiyo-e woodblock prints with a friend. Christ emerged in my drawing as a samurai, fearsome and protective like the warrior of a favorite canticle in the Book of Common Prayer.

A kingdom that is “now and not yet” is not easy to represent in art and the only way to represent it might be through art. Two examples that mirror each other are liturgical worship and John’s vision of worship in heaven in his Book of Revelation. Two thousand years after the vision’s writing our liturgy still has us say, “Holy, holy, holy…..” The imagery of The Cathedral of All Saint’s high altar and east window is taken from Revelation.

Is there art of any kind that has helped you come closer to God, such as Simone Weil’s mystical experience through repeating George Herbert’s poem “Love Three,” which was written as private prayer never intended for publication? Is there a part you play, visible or hidden, in the worship of others?

Would like to write about it? We welcome your thoughts. And we hope you will be a part of our worship this Advent or Christmastide by gifting us with your presence.

In the coming weeks may you enjoy the presence of Jesus that shines through the darkness.

Story of Love, Part I

The Story of Love, a project of Cathedral Arts, is a narration of God’s love revealed through Bible stories and illustrated by art. Its narrator is the Dean of The Cathedral of All Saints, the Very Rev. Dr. Leander S. Harding. Brynna Carpenter-Nardone draws with charcoal in this first video of the series. Please share this rendering of the beginning of the Book of Genesis with a friend and stay tuned for the release of Part II.

Some Saints

Many of you are familiar with what some call “imposter syndrome.” Harvard Business Review states: “Imposter syndrome can be defined as a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist despite evident success. 'Imposters' suffer from chronic self-doubt and a sense of intellectual fraudulence that override any feelings of success or external proof of their competence.”

 I suspect most people in ministry and other creative fields suffer from imposter syndrome once in a while, if not every day of the week or every five minutes. An artist or person of faith whose identity is wrapped up in his or her work will feel the bounds of identity stretch when approaching a breakthrough in understanding.

Approaching writing another blog post, I was struck with the familiar feeling. I have experienced enough creative blocks to know a good thing to do here is to write about what will not go away.

Imposter syndrome came into the world with Jesus in a big way. Jesus tore apart what it meant to be competent—to be blessed. “Blessed are the poor….the meek….those who hunger and thirst….” What we call The Beatitudes are the gospel reading for All Saint’s Day. These remind us of the earth from which God forms saints.

The following is from a sermon by St. Irenaeus:

 It is not you who shapes God

it is God who shapes you.

If you are the work of God

await the hand of the artist

who does all things in due season.

Offer Him your heart,

soft and tractable,

and keep the form

in which the artist has made you.

Let your clay be moist,

lest you grow hard

and lose the imprint of his fingers.

St. Irenaeus (c. 130 – c. 202 AD) was a Greek bishop who ministered in Lyons, France, called Lugdunum at the time. Among Irenaeus’ flock were potters who used the clay left in the confluence of the Rhône and Saône rivers.

An immigrant, Ireneaus must have suffered from imposter syndrome but he was an effective teacher by using images familiar to his flock to convey his message. He also understood that his message concerning relationship with the living God was impossible to convey without an image of process and its potential for mess.

This is because relationships are messy. Tackling them head on leads to things like imposter syndrome. This happens especially when the work begins from a place of lowered self-esteem due to illness, grief, or other disappointments.

Jesus, and then Irenaeus, remind us that in our raw and hungry state, having been disabused or our competence, lies the ability to blessed.

Nicholas Buhalis, now deceased, taught me how to draw, paint, and form with clay. He would patrol our easels and sculpture stands looking for breakthroughs. He regarded us as toddlers who, learning how to run, often headed for the road.

 A few minutes after she heard him pass by, a student would raise a flat palm to wipe out what was unfolding on her easel. Nick would run from the other end of the room.

 “Wait! You are doing something new and you can’t recognize it yet,” he explained. “Put it away until you can.”

 Those of us who learned how to bear with ourselves had enough work left to become called “artist.” This is also how saints are also made. St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873 –1897) told her sister, who was upset with her own faults,

"If you are willing to bear serenely the trial of being displeasing to yourself, then you will be a pleasant place of shelter for Jesus."

 We cannot always find serenity, but we can be willing to engage in a process with what we have and with what we know, and with what we don’t have or know. Serenity breaks in as we learn to regard all these things with equanimity and, imposter syndrome notwithstanding, make our teacher a gift of good clay.

---

Be on the lookout for the release of the first in a series, “The Story of Love,” a visual meditation on process.

If you read the last blog post, you read about a Van Dyck painting of St. Jerome at the Albany Institute of History and Art (around the corner from the Cathedral). The painting was due to leave but it is still there! Go and see it.

All Saint’s Day is approaching. Come all, such as you are, to Evensong and celebrate our feast of title with us!

Presence

Blessing of the Animals Service, October 6, 2019. Special thanks to the Albany Times Union for this photo.

This week the Cathedral of All Saints awaits Dr. Michael Ward to speak on Saturday about C.S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia, with relationship to the Bible. (I must, of course, mention here that you can still get tickets here or at the door.) What follows is from the last paragraph of the Chronicles and if I am not mistaken, it was given to us at the beginning of the a two-year course in spiritual direction, Holy Ground, that I completed last May:

"……. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at least they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."

I still don’t know exactly why the presenters chose to begin our course with it--I suspect because it points to how a course of seeking and praying to be present to God and others is an adventure that proceeds a greater adventure of being present to God and others. Indeed, “presence” is a word used often in spiritual direction. (It is the name of the foremost interfaith magazine of that trade.)

Something else on my mind is the tour I took last week of the Albany Institute of History and Art where a Van Dyck, recently authenticated by its collector and en route to greater glory, was displayed in the room of Hudson River School paintings. (Sadly, it has left, but you can still go to the Times Union to see it.)

The study of the old man is loosely painted, in contrast to the slick surfaces of the Hudson River paintings behind it. For all its earthy tones, the study shone more brightly to me than any sunset through its frankness of human flesh. The flesh was built from lighter, warmer tones than the relatively cool dark walnut color that covered the panel’s surface. (We now call that color “Van Dyke brown.”)

The model is supposed to represent Saint Jerome, but the man with the ruddy face could have been a day laborer, and any old sinner. My painting teacher used to tell a story about Leonardo Da Vinci’s model for Judas. The model said to Da Vinci when he was done painting him, “Don’t you remember me? You once had me sit for Jesus.” I don’t know if this story is true, but it could be. Jesus, who called himself “the Son of Man” is thought to have had an unremarkable appearance.

Tammis K. Groft, the Albany Insititute of History and Art’s director, pointed out how the man in Van Dyck’s study had impasto on his forehead that caught light. She said that the veins of his arms were one way the painting was authenticated. These are painted with an immediacy of wispy brush strokes, similar to, but less thick than the light on the forehead. Van Dyck likely revisited these areas of the painting when it was almost finished to add light paint. But unlike the Hudson River landscapes, he did not smooth or belabor his work.

Hudson River landscapes are often idealized versions of what the artists actually saw. Industrialization and deforestation were well under way when they were painted, and some artists thought of themselves as environmentalists preserving a disappearing world. But last week, the serene landscapes did not impress me. It was the fleshliness of the Van Dyck painting that has stayed with me as a meditation. I have not been able to forget it though, especially in the Albany Institute and in the Cathedral, I have seen so many interesting things since.

But have I really seen so many things since? In liturgy we hear that Christ makes himself very present to us in the breaking of the bread. But I don’t always feel present there, and seeing, I don’t always see.

I got down on the floor of the Cathedral to see as The Blessing of the Animals service brought dogs into the Cathedral and I drew portraits. I saw flashes of nervousness, fear, and excitement in bodies and faces in ways I would not have if I were not drawing. I tried to allow every view of writhing bodies to imprint on my mind so I could put them together into likenesses. I enjoyed the company of Sally Easterly painting dogs on my left. All of us enjoyed observing the dogs and made portraits of them together through telling stories about them.

Dogs are open-hearted—they are unable to hide what they are. We bless them for that and recognize that they are blessed in being that. Whatever they are is fully present to us. Even if we idealize them, they do not idealize themselves. If there was ever a person so fully willing to be known by us as they are, who gave of himself so freely, we might sense his nature as divine because, however good we humans can be, we find it hard to be fully present to each other.

Perhaps that Narnia’s Christ figure, Aslan, is a lion makes him believable? The picture of our Blessing that appeared in the paper of a brother and sister hugging their golden retriever, with the Dean blessing her, is Narniaesque.

If “liturgy” is the story we have written to help us worship, our assortment of furry and smooth bodies together in the cathedral for the Blessing of the Animals made liturgical sense. It was as though the animals’ ability to be utterly present complemented our ability to articulate hope and love, and that together we offered ourselves to God more fully than we could have done without each other.

Cathedral Arts' Letter to Artists

Editors note: This post is written by Eugene K. Garber, one of Cathedral Arts’ visionaries. A writer, Gene has written grants that have preserved art of the Cathedral—you might imagine his words holding the East Window together. Currently Gene is offering a workshop in the poetry of T.S. Eliot with co-presenter Evan Craig Reardon—you can learn more about it and see a picture of Gene here.

I’m writing what may appear to some readers an unnecessarily abstract piece. But I believe it’s a good thing to rethink root convictions from time to time.

In 1999 Pope John Paul II wrote “Letter to Artists.”

The letter is inspiring and profoundly insightful, a solid foundation for a dialog about the ongoing conceptualization and design of our Cathedral Arts.

Some of the Pope’s fundamentals:

·       The artist is inspired by the Creator Spirit. She imitates consciously or unconsciously the great acts of creation recorded in the Bible (and one might add in the sacred literature of many religions and spiritual communities).

·       The artist is always involved in a process of self-discovery and of revelation, finding the deepest grounds of her being and gifting them to others.

·       The artist works always for the renewal of the common good, even if her art takes the form of harsh cultural critique.

·       The artist’s work keeps alive a sense of mystery. The Pope: “ . . .  a momentary glimpse of the abyss of light which has its original wellspring in God.”

The Pope provides a history of the glories of spiritual art from the Byzantine era to the present. Of great interest to us who worship at a great Gothic cathedral are the Pope’s words about “. . . the soaring splendors of the Gothic,” forms that “ portray not only the genius of the artist but the soul of a people. In the play of light and shadow, in forms at times massive, at times delicate” these forms create “the tensions peculiar to the experience of God, the mystery both ‘awesome’ and ‘alluring.’”

Nothing so beautifully expresses this experience as the music of our Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys.

Beauty is a watchword for the Pope, a means of transcendence, but he knows that modernity has brought us art “marked by the absence of God and often by opposition to God.” How does Cathedral Arts confront this grim contemporary reality? Here is my thought.

To begin, we confirm our spiritual ground. Every person who picks up a paint brush, arranges words, sings, dances, and does so with the serious intention of discovering and expressing a unique self and offering it to her fellow humans is an artist possessed of a divine spark. We reserve distinct celebration of artists and artworks past and present that bear witness to the endless quest for spiritual fulfillment.

But for those many contemporary artists and their works that seem spiritually barren or even a violation of the spirit, we reject nothing. We take the position that the artist is unconsciously crying out to fill a spiritual lack. She yearns to commune with the Creator Spirit, to discover and reveal an inviolable self, to join herself to that long train of seeker artists that winds through the centuries. We say to her we need you. Come to us. The absence you feel we have felt and often still feel. And you need us. We offer you, however imperfect and incomplete, a homeland of the soul.

Cathedral Artists' Talks II

Stephanie Durr Demers writes this post. She joined the Cathedral staff in February 2019 as the Director of Communications, working closely with Cathedral Arts to spread the word about its mission and new programming.

He who works with his hands is a laborer.
He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.
He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.  

-St. Francis of Assisi 

Watching the light pour into the Cathedral I’m reminded of the many people who have stood where I stand. Felt what I feel. I’m sure you’ve all felt it - you know - the feeling that you’re so small, while simultaneously part of something so much larger. It’s comforting and inspiring and terrifying all at once. 

While many that enter the Cathedral look above, this summer I’ve spent some time looking down at my feet. I’ve talked to the artisans and masons, watched as the terrazzo tile was polished, the decades of wax cleaned from the stone molding, the foundation smoothed. 

Witnessing the transformation of the Cathedral has been cleansing and I can’t help but feel connected to those who have entered before me. Did they too feel inspired? Comforted? Overwhelmed? 

As Missioner of Cathedral Arts, colleague and friend Brynna Carpenter-Nardone so articulately wrote, “Cathedrals were built on the understanding that art is an expression of God’s glory that has power to convert human hearts. In the age before the printing press and before most people had access to scripture, Cathedrals served as sermons in glass and stone.”

From my perspective as the Cathedral's apprentice, it became clear to me that thinking I experienced art and God separately had divided my emotions for God. That of course, experiencing art and faith together would amplify them and draw me closer to God. It suddenly made sense to me why a stone mason would spend hours, days, years to make sure terrazzo tile was placed perfectly within a Cathedral. Why 10 different architects would work on St. Peter's Basilica - knowing they may not see the final product. 

It’s not only important that the final product helps to illustrate God. The spiritual journey of the artist also teaches us.

Through Cathedral Arts, we all have the opportunity to be artists. To write, to read, to meditate, to paint, to draw, to play, to speak, to listen. Through doing these things we make our own creative expression to illustrate God to others while bringing God closer to ourselves. What a gift. 

I know now why when I walk into the Cathedral I feel close to those who have entered before me. Sure, they stood where I stand (although not on the new part of the floor), but the real connection comes from experiencing the sanctity and the beauty of the Cathedral and realizing that God’s presence is all around us. We are immersed and blessed.

Cathedral Artists' Talks I

CATHEDRAL ARTS TALKS WITH ARTIST AND DESIGNER
Andy Jerabek

This story behind the new visual identity of The Cathedral of All Saints is told in the first of a series of interviews with artists influential in helping Cathedral Arts grow into its mission.

Cathedral Arts: What is a visual identity?

Andy: It is a visual system created by an organization used to communicate its message.

Cathedral Arts: Why, after 131 years without it, does the Cathedral need one now?

Andy: The Cathedral of All Saints began a new ministry this year, Cathedral Arts, which is charged with the Cathedral’s mission—Helping people fall in love with God—through the arts. Cathedral Arts will present programs and speakers, promote events and classes, partner with other organizations, and fundraise. Many of these will need visual materials—ads, programs, posters, appeals. It became evident that a consistent message was required—both so Cathedral Arts is easily recognized through its materials and so the people who produce the materials have visual guidelines to work with. Cathedral Arts is actually part of the “brand” of the Cathedral, so its visual identity should be informed by the Cathedral’s. And since the Cathedral had no formal visual identity, I started there.

Cathedral Arts: What was the process you went through?

Andy: I explored the Cathedral’s essence as distinct from the Anglo-Catholic form of worship, which has its own visual rules established over centuries that govern such things as Easter, Christmas, Pentecost, liturgical seasons, and other spiritual concepts. In creating a visual identity that is specific to the Cathedral, I had to acknowledge those established rules while focusing on the distinct elements of the Cathedral of All Saints itself. I interviewed the people in the Cathedral who had the greatest interest in its “brand,” asking, What is the Cathedral’s historical purpose? What is its current mission? Who is it trying to reach? What are the symbols that represent the Cathedral? I collected printed pieces from the Cathedral Archives from the early days to the present to discover what kinds of visual communications have been used. I took hundreds of photos of the Cathedral, from overall architectural elements to such small details as the cornerstone carving, windows, memorials, and sacred objects.

Cathedral Arts: What are the elements of the visual identity that you created?

Andy: A word-mark of the Cathedral’s entire name; a monogram of its initials; a font system; and a color palette.

Cathedral Arts: How will it be used?

Andy: It will inform the production of major visual materials associated with the Cathedral—signage, programs, brochures, posters, ads, etc.

So, in the future, when anyone sees something from The Cathedral of All Saints, they will recognize it without a second glance because their eye will have absorbed Andy’s designs based on the art of the Cathedral and its Christian history. See what was hidden in the Cathedral in plain sight revealed through Andy’s work on September 15, when The Cathedral of All Saints reveals its new visual identity.

Chiaroscuro

Posts relating to classes and other events coming up at the Cathedral, and other interesting musings born of Cathedral Arts, are in the works. I look forward to other voices appearing here, and what they might say. The Dean’s blog is also now accessible from our website.

But the guest posts aren’t ready, yet. We have been dealing with the renovations in the Cathedral, been away on vacation, or working on getting ready for our Homecoming Sunday celebration, to which you are all invited. So I now write one more summer-themed post.

But I don’t know what to write that is summery or light. My job as the Cathedral Arts missioner urges me to connect our desire for God with what we make of it. I want to show beauty now but, like many Americans right now—even after a vacation—I feel darkness. And even while I visited beautiful beaches and ate fresh figs and seafood, that darkness never went away.

It was heightened by a day at Virginia Beach. I saw a sign advertising what I thought was vacation Bible school, “VBS.” I saw something similar in a couple of more places, and then in longer form, “VB Strong.” Then it dawned on me that Bible camps were not cropping up everywhere. These were references to a slogan written for the mass shooting that had occurred in Virginia Beach two months earlier.

On our way home from the aquarium, a bus ahead of us stopped short and our van was rear-ended. As I fought down my impatience over waiting for police to come I imagined a different family in a fender-bender two months earlier, kept waiting because of people being shot.

As I waited with the others, all of us trying to be kind, I realized that the sense of security I thought I was missing on vacation was something false. Contemplating my family’s vulnerability was a vacation activity I did not plan or want. But it deepened me.

People, Americans especially, resent feeling small and powerless. We invent countless ways, vans and big houses and five-dollar coffees among them, to fortify ourselves against our weakness. Though we differ, we often agree in the great lengths we go to to feel strong.

We don’t notice even when refusing to name what we lack is threatening everything we love.

I think I am not alone in wishing to wake and find violence gone without having felt it myself. I think others also meet their children’s belief that they might be shot with little better than disbelief. Others, even after coffee, must also have the insane thought that the biggest problem with all of this is that it interferes with our motivation to get to school and work on time.

Avoiding the darkness of this summer’s violence—for others, every summer’s violence—is not something I feel I can do at this moment. But I will point to light. A psalm offers a picture of where God is in relation to light and dark:

Even the darkness is not dark to You; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to You. (Psalm 139:12, NRSV)

Gospel stories reflect us now in how Jesus reveals people always wanting more. Jesus is counter-cultural, now, in how he reminds us of our vulnerability. Competence never impresses Jesus.

It is the needy people who demand his help, often exhibiting something better described as desperation than as faith, whom Jesus dramatically heals. By contrast, those who appear less shabby leave their encounters with Jesus with a change of career or with a deep sense of dissatisfaction.

The dissatisfied people are those who ask Jesus for answers instead of for healing. They get none--only an indication that answers might come if they change their questions. Facing their unknowing can infuriate people. I imagine that this fury had a part in what killed Jesus.

I am not trying to offer answers for the darkness we face. I am trying to imagine what would it look like if we didn’t fill our abyss with stuff--material goods, blame, slogans--and knew how to sit in darkness together and be vulnerable, even desperate.

Might we appear as Gospel characters--not necessarily healed, but coming to life in the strange light of Jesus?

This is from the prologue of the Gospel of John, which is an artist’s gospel in how it deals in chiaroscuro—in how its scenes use darkness and light to tell the story:

In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. (John 1: 4-5)

August 14 is Maximiiian Kolbe’s feast day. St. Maximilian was a Polish Catholic priest who died in Auschwitz when he offered his life for another man’s life—that man escaped and lived to 95. Visit Pray-As-You-Go for this audio meditation on reconciliation.

Welcoming the Stranger

Recently I have been sorting through old drawings and came upon the same folio I find every couple of years. I open it, the small pages slide over each other as if clamoring for attention, and memory opens in me.

The drawings were made at a tiny Baptist church I attended over twenty years ago, several years before I began to attend an Episcopal church. It was around the corner from my home and studio. One day I heard joyful singing that pulled me in. A ten-year-old boy was playing the drums, a woman was playing an electric piano, and the pastor played funky riffs on his bass guitar.  The small children sat in pews like peas in pods and shook tambourines while they watched their parents pray, sing, dance, laugh and sometimes cry.

The pastor was my father’s age and a communications professor at a mostly white college. He was Black, as most of his congregation was, and had been raised Episcopalian on an island in the West Indies, while many of his parishioners had been born a few blocks from the church. Some of them, especially the ministers, had been addicted to drugs and incarcerated. Now they were pursuing Jesus with the same fervor with which they had once pursued sin, some joked.

The pastor and his wife discussed things I had rarely heard discussed, much less in church. They joked, teased, and expressed frustration with each other in front of us. Now I realize they had a pact to show us how to wrestle in God’s presence in community—how to pray, live, and love—while fighting the temptation to give up.

The pastor seemed to perceive me. I thought I must remind him of his students. It seemed he perceived them, their lack of direction, their insecurity and inability to wrestle with relationships, with themselves, and with God. The pastor seemed to turn all the people God sent to him around in his mind, studying and marveling at each one’s unique attributes.

I, the artist who had a gallery down the street, did not know what to do with my hands or my mind during the church service. I wanted to be there, but I thought I knew I would never fit in at any church. Here my whiteness made it obvious I was not trying to fit in, and this was a relief.

One day, I asked the pastor if he thought it appropriate for me to draw as others sang. “Do it,” he said. He had wanted to be a painter when he was young. Young, foolish and macho, he said, he decided being a painter would not make him look tough. He gave it up and now he regretted it.

On Saturday mornings, the pastor brought artwork to my gallery for me to frame. His support showed me that my ability to believe God wanted me to be an artist was a blessing. When he answered my questions about the city beyond my artist enclave, he gently reflected more of my privilege to me. I began to feel the weight of it as I kept drawing and listening in church. I had never before sat with women who wept over siblings killed in Vietnam, or who were dying of AIDS.

The pastor and his church taught me to struggle against my own isolation. When a story of shame surfaced in church, they told it and prayed. But I learned Jesus was a stranger to me when a prison inmate I was assigned to write to revealed she had killed someone. I was ashamed I could not bring myself to write back to her. I did not tell anyone, even though they would have taught me how to open my heart.

But I learned how to persevere in church-going by watching how the others insisted, Sunday after Sunday, that they all belonged exactly where they were. I belonged with them there too, when I chose to show up. Being invited to be myself, with pencil in hand, made it easier to show up.

As I look at these drawings I think, thank God for each one of them who accepted me for what I was. Thank God for their skilled and elaborate worship that ran its course through glory and human weakness like a psalm. (I think that, along with Shakespeare, their worship prepared me to fall in love with Anglican liturgy many years later.)

May more churches welcome artists, who often don’t feel they belong, like the people in these drawings welcomed me.

And we welcome you to join us! A Cathedral Homecoming Celebration is being planned for Sunday, September 15, 2019, to bless and dedicate our new floor and garden space, to launch the new Cathedral brand, and to announce the 2019-2020 Cathedral Arts program. A picnic on the grounds with music by The Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys and a brass quintet will be a part of the celebration at 11:30 am, preceded by a special service of thanksgiving at 10:00 am.

REST

CATHEDRAL ARTS BLOG: NOTES FROM WITHIN

Rest

Summer is here. Some of us cannot wait for time away from the office, or we are on a long break from school and are learning to breathe again. But some of us might find it hard to rest even when we have a vacation if we love our work.

Some of my favorite moments at meetings at the Cathedral are when the Dean asks everyone how they are doing. In listening to a podcast at On Being with CEO coach Jerry Colonna last week, I learned the Dean’s question is a recommended tool for leaders. Quoting from Augustine and Parker Palmer, Colonna teaches how creativity and productivity connect to bringing ourselves to work. (On Being is one of eight podcasts for spiritual searchers recently recommended by the New York Times.)

Being at the Cathedral includes being part of work that regenerates. The work here, creative and otherwise, will never be done, while spiritual rest is a gift that comes with being part of a caring Christian community. The passion and rest in the other creative work of my life: painting, drawing, writing, and raising a family, informs my work at the Cathedral, and the reverse is also true.

Being fully present wherever you are is necessary for doing good work. And for good or for evil, artists, activists and ministers--people who are passionate about their work--often feel most at home while they are working. We often have to be reminded to take rest in spending time with friends, family, the earth, and God. Thomas Merton, In Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, offers sobering words for when we find ourselves becoming overwhelmed by our own zealotry.

Now, thanks to technology, work travels with us everywhere and, whether we are passionate about it or not, it is hard to ever call it done. When we do, email and ads about what else we must do, buy, think, and love keeps coming. Even so, can we look at our work and feel, as God did on the seventh day, that it is enough and that “it is good”?

Believing that our work is good is regenerative--it feels like a completed music or floral arrangement, someone we care for sleeping peacefully, or a strong wall fully built. A feeling of oneness with ourselves and our labors makes for a deep, sighing sort of rest. And when we have difficulty loving our work, a vacation--like prayer--can include time and intention to find again whom and what we truly love.

Theologians say that with God (unlike with people, who are fragmented) being and doing are the same thing. The Christian scriptures say “God is love.” Augustine described Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as the “Lover, Beloved, and Loving.” What does it mean for you to remember that Love itself, after fully expressing its identity through creation, chose rest?

CATHEDRAL ARTS BLOG: NOTES FROM WITHIN

Evan Craig Reardon, one of the presenters of the T.S. Eliot workshop beginning in October, lighting candles before Evensong on June 9.

Greetings—if you are getting this, the first Cathedral Arts Blog post is complete. I don’t know what it will grow to be, but I know it will contain writings, video and other creative projects born of, or connected to, Cathedral Arts, a program born of The Cathedral of All Saints, whose mission is “to help people fall in love with God.”

After people fall in love (as I did, “awe” is a word others use but “lovesick” describes the feeling I left Evensong with the other night) and after the beautiful liturgy, music, art and architecture have done their work, what next? Cathedral Arts programming offers ideas to take with us on our way. I hope that the Cathedral Arts Blog is good company in how it speaks to you on your journey. Whoever you are and wherever you are on your path, welcome to the Blog.

This blog has been given a subtitle: Notes From Within. This is because, as I and others at the Cathedral ask God’s help and make creative stabs at articulating who we are, a theme has been emerging. It has to do with our story of being Albany’s hidden cathedral…..

Cathedrals can take hundreds of years to finish. Sometimes cities grow up around them and they are never finished. If you look at the original architect’s plan, you will see that The Cathedral of All Saints is only 40% finished. Due to a conflict between its first bishop and the visionary of the New York State Education Building, the state building was built around the Cathedral in such a way to hide it from view from the State Capitol Building and the city surrounding it.

It was not hard to hide The Cathedral of All Saints because, for a cathedral, it is short in stature—its towers were never built. But, like all cathedrals, it has a large interior meant for a crowd. Of all buildings meant for crowds, cathedrals are the most charismatic and muscular artists. Something like what Picasso did with the work of African artists in the beginning of the last century, a cathedral gleans beauty from lesser-known or anonymous artists— their stained-glass windows, carvings, music and art—and projects it through its own oeuvre. A cathedral’s oeuvre is the lens of Christian scripture and tradition.

As all of this art forms its body, a cathedral gets credit for all it contains. We hope that all of the art and labor contained in this body of The Cathedral of All Saints is, and always will be, offered up for the good of the people to the glory of God. When we think about doing this in terms of money or time, it’s a heavy lift. When we think about it in terms of love, the exercise is exhilarating, even after all these years.

Here is what we have been doing lately with our unfinished body on the outside. Recently, we “finished” the foundations of our towers into a garden and an outdoor stage which we welcome people to use. This cathedral is moving forward because its people have chosen to grow toward God in a permanent state of unfinishedness. Meanwhile, as we welcome others to a moment of peace outside, we are inviting them to discover treasures hidden within.

Growth and unfinishedness are challenging for old cathedrals as they are for us individuals. Many young people, and some older people, find holes in their foundational beliefs when they examine them and look deeper within. Beliefs left unexamined have a way of toppling us. I want my teenagers to know that people can change and grow, perhaps forever (despite what might appear to them to be my increasing obsolescence). There are many stages of spiritual growth, and one isn’t better than another. What is best is that we are where God delights in us and that we are where God calls us to be.

Sometimes, being unfinished is a very dark place to be. Some years ago, as I healed from illness, I developed an almost physical attachment to God who I sensed suffering with me, that is, for Jesus Christ. Now, having completed a two-year program in spiritual direction, I can usually live peaceably with my beliefs even while I question them. I mostly puzzle over what it is that brings a sense of God’s nearness and an increase of faith, hope and love. Going where God called me was, and still is, a journey and a process—as it is for everyone, though we might each describe the way very differently.

In my dark night, I grew through writing with others, as I had done through painting in brighter times when I was young. Among all things that the arts are for us, they do have a way of helping us over the bumpy patches of becoming ourselves. Sharing art with others, both in the darkness and in the light of our lives, makes us into companions together.

Whatever your level of spiritual or artistic experience, we have some wonderful opportunities for personal growth and group study coming up in Cathedral Arts programs. Foremost in my mind right now is an eight-session, eight-month workshop with T.S. Eliot’s poems beginning in October. This will be a journey from darkness to light with the poet and some other good companions: Eugene K. Garber and Evan Craig Reardon. I will be there too. Will you? I hope so.

You can find out more about the Eliot workshop here, and email me to register.

Wishing you blessings on the way,

Brynna

Brynna Carpenter-Nardone

Assistant to the Dean for mission and Cathedral Arts.

The Cathedral of All Saints with the State Education Building., together on South Swan Street since 1908.