One Day ...

I'm irritated tonight honestly.  I want to share songs by Black artists which don't have injustice, oppression, inequality, or civil rights as their theme.  And I will.  But not tonight.

Those themes are unavoidable in 2020 and 2021.  I sit here continually brokenhearted over the state of violence in our country as I read headlines of the third mass shooting in as many days, analysis of bodycam footage of the killing of a 13 year old boy, remembering the recent death of a local unarmed Black man, all while the nation awaits news of a verdict in a trial for the murder of George Flyod.  And I know that beyond the theme of violence and the excessive prevalence of unnecessarily destructive weaponry, the themes of injustice, oppression, inequality, and civil rights are right there at the surface, inextricably linked.

When the nation has seen forty-five mass shootings in a single month, and our prisons are disproportionately filled with black and brown men charged with nonviolent minor crimes and held on unaffordable bails, it ought not be offensive to say: Our system is broken.

So why speak about things like injustice and oppression on a blog devoted to the intersection of faith and the arts?

Because these issues are intimately close to the heart of God.  Verse after verse of the Bible tout the virtues of justice, fairness, equality.  Chapter after chapter speak to God's disdain for oppression and systems which exploit the powerless.

"This is what the LORD says: Do what is just and right.  Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed.  Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place. ... Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, his upper rooms by injustice ..." - Jeremiah 22:3, 13

When people throughout history have faced persecution and injustice, we as a species have turned to the arts, to express what can't be said, or won't be heard, in other venues.  The spirituals sung by slaves being robbed of their God-given humanity and dignity.  The protest songs of those fighting for equal rights.  The pleas of the psalmist, hiding out in caves from those who sought to harm him.

We turn to verse, to song, to poetry, to filmmaking ... ways to give voice to something which must be spoken if God's sense of justice is to be believed.

The movie Selma raises the voice of the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and John Legend's song for the movie, Glory, featuring poet and rapper Common, connects that history with the present day.  Yolanda Adams' version is even more powerfully expressed:

" ... to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that at the revelation of His glory you may also rejoice and be overjoyed." - 1 Peter 4:13

I look forward to a day when those who have been oppressed throughout time are lifted above me in the glory of God.  I haven't faced true injustice; those who have deserve the place of honor God promises.  In the meantime, I can do my best to lift their voices and causes above my own.

"... make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose ... with humility consider one another as more important than yourselves" - Philippians 2:2-3

If you are reading this blog as a person of faith, I challenge you to sit this week with your Bible and seek out God's views of injustice, oppression, and inequality.  They are deep and wide, and we as a faith community need to breathe them in until God's view is our view.  I'm not there yet, personally; I'm not speaking from a high place on the mountain of insight, but from the base of it, seeing the climb ahead.

If you're reading this from a different background - perhaps curious about faith, skeptical of "God's truth", or simply interested intellectually in the intersection of faith and arts, please know this: God is clear about the evils of injustice, and reserves the greatest honor and glory for those who society has wronged.  Christian faith is unequivocal on this.  Everything and everyone who shows you something different is not speaking for the God of the Bible, and those who spend their lives fighting for justice and equality, whether through a lens of faith or not, are.

"Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong.  Learn to do right; seek justice.  Defend the oppressed." - Isaiah 1:16-17

A Rudimentary Understanding of Sakura ...

Cherry blossoms are on my mind this week.  Understandably, as they're blooming beautifully right now in nearly every yard I see.  In addition, our COVID-times temporary homeschool geography unit is currently studying the Northeast region of the United States, including Washington D.C. and its stunning cherry blossom trees, and the kids and I created canvas paintings this week of cherry blossoms.  On top of all that, we've been filling in some landscaping gaps left by trees hit with disease last year, and a weeping cherry blossom tree is near the top of my latest google searches for what to purchase.

Needless to say, I have cherry blossoms on the brain.

The word for cherry blossoms in Japanese is "sakura", and they carry significance to Japanese history and culture in ways I surely won't understand in a day.  But as I've looked into the symbolism and importance of sakura, they've become even more beautiful to me, as I think most of God's creation does when we take time to sit with it, study it, and reflect on it.

"Day after day [the skies] pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.  They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them.  Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world." -Psalm 19:2-4

Sakura are known to be a sign of spring, a symbol of renewal, and a reminder to embrace the delicately fleeting yet beautiful nature of life.  They blossom yearly in Japan between April and May, around the same time as the start of the Japanese school year, when everything feels fresh, and young hearts and minds are full of new hope.  As in the U.S., the springtime awakening of buds and blossoms brings a sense of renewal; sakura indicate the end of winter and another beginning.

The symbolism of sakura goes beyond that, though.  Cherry blossoms are a springtime showstopper, to be sure.  Stunning beauties, they can take your breath away when in bloom.  Yet their bloom is spectacularly short lived.  A cherry blossom tree blooms for merely ten days, before those tiny petals gracefully float and swirl their way down to the ground on the breeze.  In Japan, this serves as a reminder of the fragile beauty of life; the ephemeral nature of a moment of joy.  Japanese appreciation of sakura is linked to the Buddhist concepts of mortality, calling on viewers of the blossoms to exist in the present moment, because it will be all too fleeting.

This thoughtful natural reminder of life, death, renewal, and hope, is so cherished in Japan as to be the national flower, and the inspiration for countless works of art by Japanese poets, painters, filmmakers, and musicians.

"Gazing at them / I've grown so very close / to these blossoms; / to part with them when they fall / seems bitter indeed!" - Saigyo (Japanese poet & Buddhist monk)

As I see the cherry blossoms in my town in the United States this year, I hope I take a breath longer to appreciate their delicate beauty.  To observe them a little more carefully, a little more intentionally.  To reflect for just a moment longer on what it is to love something so beautiful, for such a short time, and to see in that reflection a glimmer of perspective on my own life in this beautiful world.  To see, in a flower, a fresh start, a new hope, a renewal of spirit ... and at the same time an urgency to be present, to be mindful, because the beauty of spring - for whatever you wish to take spring to mean - will one day fade, and float away into the breeze.

"Cherry blossoms fall / when the time is right / I too will fall / when it is time to go" - Roy Isami Ebata, 1919-1990

Easter 2021

I typically share art in this space which is less overtly spiritual than what I'm choosing to share today, on this Easter Sunday.  My reasoning is always that overtly spiritual art often feels inauthentic to the lived experiences of those who don't consider themselves religious, and even many who do.  My goal here is connecting God's truth to universally relatable situations and feelings, and the polished picture of perfect trust and happiness sometimes presented by Christian artists is unrelatable to the vast majority of us who live the messy lives of reality.  There's a fantastic book on art and the Bible, by Francis Schaeffer, which, in part, explores this disparity and addresses some of the issues with "Christian art".

Occasionally, though, there are works that lean toward the overtly spiritual which still manage to resonate deeply, because they carry that critical piece of authenticity.  They don't shy away from human doubt or fear; they aren't worried, as Schaeffer puts it, that they might "fall off the end of the earth" by pursuing challenging questions about God or faith or life.

Easter should challenge us.  Easter is a celebration of the story of a man who was brutally killed by an angry mob, then resurrected from the dead, who now brings salvation and eternal life to the world if one only believes.  That should challenge us.  That should give us pause and cause us to question, wonder, and yes, probably doubt.  It should cause us to dig deeper, to ask questions, to seek answers.  Again, as Schaeffer says, an "infinite, personal God who is really there" can handle it.  And if not ... wouldn't we want to know?

Poet Joanah Madzime explores topics like these with vulnerability and artistry.  She digs into what many Christian artists steer clear of.  She tells God directly, and honestly, that she's done.  She's over it, and has a compelling list of reasons why.  In the midst of boldly confronting the audacity of faith, she creates a striking conversation:

What would your honest conversation with God be today?  You're allowed to have it, whether you consider yourself religious, spiritual, agnostic, or atheist.  None of us will fall off the end of the earth by speaking honestly, in all the messiness of life, with a God who may or may not be there, and may or may not respond.  We have freedom to be authentic.  It can take any form; some of us call it journaling, some call it venting, some call it praying.  But above all, let it be called honest, because faith, or art, or life, without honesty doesn't benefit anyone.