Chronicles 8.28.20: Speak, Lord, Your Servant is Listening

This post is part of ARC’s Chronicles of Change and Hope series. This is a curated project for sharing stories, songs, prayers, poems, images, or insights that capture a moment of connection or new life. It is a place to share small acts of resistance or transformation you want others to know about. Rights remain with the contributors. To contribute to Chronicles, read more here.


Today’s contribution is a combination of an image and a reflection. The image comes to us from Margaret (Peggy) Adams Parker, who shares her work through our connection with the Society for the Arts in Religious and Theological Studies. The reflection is from Paul K.-K. Cho.

Peggy is an artist (a sculptor and printmaker) and Adjunct Instructor (in Religion and the Visual Arts) at Virginia Theological Seminary. Her commissioned sculptures include Mary as Prophet, for Virginia Theological Seminary, and Reconciliation, for Duke Divinity School. She is the author, with Katherine Sonderegger, of Praying the Stations of the Cross - Finding Hope in a Weary Land (Eerdmans, 2019) and, with Ellen F. Davis, of Who are you, my daughter? Reading Ruth through Image and Text (Westminster John Know, 2003) More about Peggy is available here.

Paul is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, D.C. He is the author of Myth, History, and Metaphor in the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge University Press, 2019), and his articles have been published in Biblical Interpretation, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, and Journal of Biblical Literature.


Speak, Lord, Your Servant is Listening

Etching with Aquatint, 10” x 7”

 
 

Reflecting on this image, Paul writes:

One Morning with the Boy Samuel in the Temple

Early one morning, an hour or two before the sun has risen, I find myself staring at an etching of the boy Samuel in the Temple. And a haunting feeling comes.

The Temple appears haunted by a presence. Whether that presence is in the darkened entrance in the background or the spotlight in the foreground, I cannot quite tell. Nor can I tell whether the presence is coming or going—coming to awaken the sleeping boy or leading him away.

The boy is sitting in the emptied space, which is aglow with a spectral presence. The voiceless call of the divine. He hesitates; he has been rudely awakened by the light that a moment ago had penetrated into his sleeping eyes. He retreats because he cannot yet quite see; but he is readying himself to step out into the light.

In light of the historical moment in which we now live—under the monumental failure of leadership (and did not Samuel appear on the scene after the failure of Israelite judges and amidst a crisis in the priesthood?), the ferocious and silent spread of disease, and the awakening of consciousnesses everywhere to the injustices in which we live—I feel, as perhaps many others feel, like this boy: having heard the call of the divine but not yet certain that it is the divine that has called, or how or to whom we must respond.

But the boy has heard; and the boy knows; and the boy will act. This gives me hope. This leaves me in fear and trembling.

For now the haunting presence shines into my study, and I am momentarily blinded.

New ARC Project Partner Announced

ARC is excited to announce a new project partnership with Deus Ex Musica!

Deus Ex Musica is an ecumenical project that promotes sacred music as a resource for learning and spiritual growth. ARC is proud to partner with the project, supporting their work to advocate for music as a way to explore the divine and helping people to connect to one another through listening and making music together. More about the project, including ways to donate, is here.

Last week ARC Co-Executive Director Tamisha Tyler interviewed Del as part of our Insights show highlighting the work of ARC members. If you’d like to learn more about Deus ex Musica and Del you can watch that interview here.

Deus Ex Musica also has three upcoming online events as part of project “In the Shadow of Your Wings,” a musical exploration of the Psalms. Events are interactive and free. All are invited to attend:

Parish of St. Martin-In-The-Fields, London. July 31, 2020, 4:30 BST
UniteBoston, Aug. 6, 2020, 7 pm EDT.
Forefront Festival, Aug. 7, 2020, 7:30 pm EDT.


ARC periodically partners with projects that are resonant with ARC’s mission to build up collaborative communities for those who cultivate embodied and just ways of knowing and being through creative and spiritual practices. If you would like to know more about partnering with ARC with a project you have, please let us know! We are eager to do what we can to support the folks who are building up community at the places where the arts and spirituality meet.

2020 ARCEL Fellows Announced

The 2020 ARCEL Fellowship Cohort has been Selected

The Emerging ARC Leaders (ARCEL) Fellowship is a program designed to accomplish four things:

  • Identify, annually, six rising young leaders whose sense of calling lives at the intersection of creative practice, spirituality, and work that builds up communities. These leaders will be drawn from gap-year young adults, undergraduates, graduate students, working artists, and early career clergy.

  • Provide these leaders with exposure to tools, models, and relationships that can help them to thrive in their individual contexts and communities where they may feel disconnected and relatively unsupported in terms of their work to braid together creative and spiritual practices.

  • Encourage these leaders as they wrestle with their sense of call, introducing them to each other and to networks of other leaders who are at the edge of innovation and discovery about the ways in which the arts and religion can be twinned to produce transformative opportunities for reflection and change.

  • Make Space for the fellows to reflect and discern how their own unique skills can best be used to promote the flourishing of all creation.

The 2020 Fellows are Larissa Romero, Mahalia Damm, Olivia Kamil Smarr, Peregrine Morkal-Williams , Stephani Pescitelli, and Y. Joy Harris-Smith. More about each of them can be found here.