GOOD FRIDAY...EASTER
Confession: In all honesty, after a wild two weeks, I hardly remembered it was Holy Week until yesterday.
Now, if you know me, you know I have a deep appreciation for the liturgical calendar and wouldn't be surprised to hear that I had big plans for the reading, fasting, meditation, and prayer that would take place this week, and especially this weekend leading up to Sunday's celebration. Don't hear me wrongly on this...I don't feel one bit cheated or regretful about loosing hold of the calendar lately. First of all, because I don't think it was in any way avoidable, and second of all, because if anything I feel more immersed in the reality of Lent's passion & lament, the painful breaking of the Body, and the dead end we'd be at in this world without the real, earthy hope made possible only through the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
That said, I don't have a lot of steam left today. Or many words. But I can't let the day or the weekend go by without focusing to whatever extent I can on the events that we come together to remember this Good Friday through Easter and what those events mean and make possible for us. While there's not much energy and not many of my own words to share, there is an abundance of art–music, paintings, guided meditations, poems–that I'm turning to and that I wanted to point you toward in case they might enrich your weekend as they are enriching mine. Below are images, summaries, and links to these projects. I hope they are of some value to you and those you might also share them with. I am thankful for the artists that have made them.
This is not the end of the story. This is not the end of us. All the gratitude and glory to the One who makes that true...
Page CXVI releases the third and final installment of their Calendar Project, “Good Friday to Easter”... An EP of songs & hymns specifically for Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter.
Read more and listen at http://www.relevantmagazine.com/the-drop/good-friday-easter#6UZWogFfCtJi2TGh.99. And/or download on iTunes.
"Garden is a liturgy designed around the movements of lament, doubt, and joy that happen as we move through Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. Easter culminates in an ultimate expression of love, and Garden also includes a Centering Prayer exercise focused on God's love."
(The Liturgists are a collective of folks including Gungor, Rob Bell, Amena Brown, Nichole Nordeman and others working together to make thoughtful liturgical work. You'll find songs, guided meditations, centering prayers, teachings, chord charts, images, a tour schedule and more on their website.
Listen, read more, and download at theliturgists.com.)
Cruciformity: Stations on Skin was a unique art show of Scott Erickson's at Ecclesia Church from 2012. There is one design per station of the cross in traditional tattoo-style art. Many community members even got tattoos of the designs. Click the image above for the rest of the designs, photographs, and more of the story behind the project!
This is probably my favorite collection of images for the Stations of the Cross I've ever seen. Artist Scott Erickson made this series of paintings at Ecclesia Church in Houston, TX in 2011. I highly recommend reading his artist statement regarding the work then engaging each of the 15 paintings as a sort of visual meditation today. Powerful, layered stuff.
The above poster is a second iteration of the Stations of the Cross by Scott Erickson, this time as a graphic design project. Click here for a free PDF download of the station illustrations and scriptures that accompany them.