December 30: Resonant With the Good News
♫ Music:
WEEK FIVE
December 30-January 6
CHRIST’S GLOBAL FAMILY
God sent Christ to the entire world for the salvation of all. Yes, to his beloved chosen people first but then to everyone else. Today, Christ’s body is truly a global family with believers “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Revelation 7:9). This worldwide community is in a dynamic relationship with the Trinity, which provides the model for authentic fellowship with one another so that both vertical and horizontal alliances can be nourished. In Christ’s high priestly prayer (John 17) Jesus says, “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” What does it mean to be a child, a son or daughter, an heir of God? In part, it means that we carry the Christmas message of God’s unconditional love with us wherever we go. It means that like the Missionaries of Charity, we “seek the face of God in everything, everyone, everywhere, all the time, and see his hand in every situation.” It means that we lay aside our small ambitions/allegiances for the “big picture” cause of Christ and his kingdom. It is because Christ first loved us that we have the confidence to love with no strings attached. Author Madeleine L’Engle eloquently writes, “Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, Christ, the Maker of the universe or perhaps many universes, willingly and lovingly left all that power and came to this poor, sin-filled planet to live with us for a few years to show us what we ought to be and could be.”
Day 29 - Sunday, December 30
Good News for All
Scripture: Luke 2:10
And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.”
Poetry:
Advent, again
by John Fry
Advent, again
—after Jean Valentine
I still don’t know
how to think of/with you
God-with-us
as many named as leaves
curled, Emmanuel, like ears
listening in my backyard
every branch bare
this tintype night
*
& your pregnant
mother word heavy
(swollen ankles, back pain,
stretch marks, heartburn)
& the hobbled
possum carrying young on her back
(her one lame leg)
& living & dead those
I love present, absent
(here-with-me)
& the least of those
& then the least of them
& how all their names, spoken, break
broken syllables of your name
& this world, Lord
*
this world overcast
seventy-degree December
amniotic sky when
asleep did you think
of us (how can a lamb
think of us)
*
where not all hours ring
bright some burn blue
below Lady Bird Lake
& as if in said shadow of
we are walking in the darkness
of your face, Mary
inside valleys of Joseph’s
worry if every city is
Bethlehem on the solstice
road angels donkey star
grandmother shepherded dark who
named your child mother father
yes who
called you
child light
RESONANT WITH THE GOOD NEWS
What would it have felt like to bear witness to the cacophony of angels resounding that night?
In Henry Ossawa Tanner’s painting, he invites us into that experience. We participate with the angels—uplifted in the brilliant lavender cobalt sky as if we too are declaring the birth of Christ. And yet, we identify too with the shepherds. The smallness and grandness of human experience is rendered in their humility, bewilderment, and amazement. The shepherds occupy a very small portion of Tanner’s painting, and yet this extraordinary exchange is happening between the holy and the lowly. Angels. Shepherds. Both bodies resonant with the “good news of great joy that is for ALL people.”
Like Tanner’s painting, the music of The Humors of Parasov by Muzaik transports us into the human experience of the holy and the lowly. The piece begins with a mandolin strumming and then we hear the timbre of a stringed instrument called the Gadulka; its singing, mourning, and hopeful cry seems reminiscent of a shepherd, of one who wanders and yet is content to make his home among his sheep.
The Gadulka, a traditional Bulgarian instrument, has three main strings (sometimes up to 4 or 5) that are actually played. The other strings (up to 16) are sympathetic resonating strings. Sympathetic Resonance, according to Wikipedia is “a harmonic phenomenon when a passive string or vibration body responds to external vibrations to which it has a harmonic likeness.” So on the Gadulka, the musician’s bow plays the three main strings, and then the other strings vibrate in response because of their similarity in frequency.
We understand this resonance. The scientific phenomenon holds a deeper truth. The inclination to clap or tap our feet in response to music, the ability for a poignant story to bring tears to our eyes, or to stand in front of a painting with an unspeakable sense of knowing. Vibrations in us respond to the vibrations of our Father because we are like Him.
It seems the shepherds too would have understood this. Shepherds sometimes play a flute to teach their flocks; one song can tell the sheep it is time to be at pasture, another melody directs the sheep to come in for the night. (We even hear a chromatic flute called the Kaval in today’s music). So, when the shepherds were watching their flocks and were suddenly confronted by the voices of the angels, it seems they would have understood the concept of a song eliciting a physical response. Like the sheep responded to their voice, they responded in sympathetic resonance to the birth of Christ. They followed the directive of The Shepherd’s song to Bethlehem.
May we too resound today with the sound of our Lord’s voice—not out of our own ability or determination or will, but because we share a likeness with our Lord, our Maker, our Shepherd. We cannot help but declare with the angels: “Behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.”
Prayer:
O God, by the leading of a star you manifested your only Son to the Peoples of the earth: Lead us, who know you now by faith, to your presence, where we may see your glory face to face; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit one God now and for ever.
Amen.
(Book of Common Prayer, The Epiphany)
Kari Dunham
Adjunct Art Professor
Biola University
About the Artwork:
Angels Appearing Before the Shepherds, c. 1910
Henry Ossawa Tanner
Oil on canvas
25 ¾ in x 31 7/8 in
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C.
This distinctly mystical rendering of the angels appearing to the shepherds to announce the arrival of the Christ was completed by Henry Ossawa Tanner a few years after traveling to the Holy Land. As spectral angels hover high above the rugged hills near Bethlehem on the left, we see an oddly brightly lit clearing in the foreground where several shepherds are gathered near a small fire, a wisp of smoke rising into the twilight sky. The muted blue, gray, and green palette that is neither warm nor cool and active surface texture lend the scene a hushed quality, imbued with the spirit of God which seems palpably present. Time seems suspended, taking us into the wonder of this moment. Tanner sought to demonstrate how religious painting of biblical subjects could be highly relevant and accessible to a modern age.
About the Artist:
Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) was one of the first African-American painters to gain international acclaim. Born to a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, religious themes pervade much of Tanner’s work. Trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, Tanner moved to Paris in 1891 and was readily accepted into various French artistic circles. His style could vary tremendously from renderings of meticulous detail to loose expressive brushwork, wielding color, and shadow and light to set the tone, sometimes within a single painting—all in the interest of finding the best means to capture the essence of the subject at issue. Tanner took a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1896-97 and responded to his journey with powerful paintings of the life of Christ.
About the Music:
“The Humours of Parov” from the album Changing Trains
About the Composer and Performer:
Mozaik is a multicultural Indie folk band consisting of Irish musicians Andy Irvine and Dónal Lunny, American fiddler Bruce Molsky, Bulgaro-Hungarian multi-instrumentalist Nikola Parov, and Dutch multi-instrumentalist Rens van der Zalm. Their repertoire includes selections of Irvine's own compositions, Irish traditional songs, Southeastern European/Balkan folk music, and Molsky's “old-timey” songs and Appalachian fiddling. Since their collaboration began in 2002, they have toured Australia, Europe, USA, and Japan with great success. Mozaik’s Changing Trains is a musical journey hindered not by genre, place or time signature. Recorded in 2005, Mozaik’s album explores and celebrates the fusion of Irish, European, and American folk music.
About the Poet:
John Fry is an American poet whose works has appeared in West Branch, The Laurel Review, Washington Square, American Letters & Commentary, and The Offending Adam, among others. He is a graduate of the MFA program at Texas State University, and currently serves as a poetry editor for Newfound Journal. He lives in San Antonio, Texas, where he teaches community workshops for Gemini Ink. Fry’s first full-length poetry collection, With the Dogstar as My Witness, was a finalist for the 2017 Orison Poetry Prize. Organized around the canonical prayer hours, beginning in the evening and moving into morning (vespers, compline, vigils, lauds), and set in an ethereal South Texas landscape, the poems in With the Dogstar as My Witness wrestle with theological and deeply personal concerns in language, and forms a tapestry of (sometimes tortured) prayer.
About the Devotional Writer:
Kari Dunham
Adjunct Professor of Art
Biola University
Kari Dunham is an artist living in Orange, California. She is an adjunct art professor at Biola University, Concordia University, Irvine Valley College, and Azusa Pacific University. Recently, she also wrote for the latest issue of the SEEN Journal, a publication of CIVA (Christians in the Visual Arts).