Sixth Week of Lent

Looking at the art:

Have you ever been overwhelmed by the dizzying complexity of the Holy Week services, replete with dense symbolism, chant, puzzling rituals, and gestures as they all appeal to the senses? The same is true of this triptych, an installation consisting of three panels that depict ritualistic homage to the spiritual world in Haitian culture. Embedded in this crowded complex of homage to voodoo spirits are surprising similarities to the Holy Week liturgies that narrate salvation history in Judeo-Christian culture.

While it is difficult to identify these similarities on a computer screen, a “where’s Waldo” exercise in person before the installation in the museum does indeed help. See in the left panel the bare tortuous branches of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that extends from bottom to top and that occasioned the fall from grace of Adam and Eve. Atop that tree is found a face. Follow it down and across and find the cross with arms and hands depicted in the manner of a cubist artist, this face of a man whose crucifixion on that same tree redeemed that first fall from grace.

See at the top of the middle panel the two serpents that represent the father and mother (Damballa and Aida) of the voodoo religion. As serpents, they evoke the temptation to sin in the garden of Eden and as father and mother they suggest the transgression of the first parents. Flanking both serpent-parents are found the Star of David on the left and two crosses on the right, a syncretism of Judaism and Christianity.

Drummers are found throughout but the three haloed drummers in the right panel are most prominent. They along with the three panels and the three faces circled in the middle panel provide a Trinitarian aspect to the entire work. Those encircled faces billow up like the smoke of incense while the drummers provide incessant incantations in this visually challenging composite that elicits the spiritual life embedded in us all regardless of religious affiliation.

Reflection

When I look at this piece of art I am reminded of two images. The first image is one I have heard many times.  Creation, the world, our lives are like a large tapestry. We see it from the back where all the threads cross each other, are tied off, and in places it looks like total chaos. I want to turn it around and see it as it is really meant to be seen, just as God sees it from the front where the different threads come together to form a beautiful picture, the one that God is weaving. The second image I am reminded of is from Genesis, the creation story, “the earth was a formless void.” Out of that formless void God creates God’s perfect order, and the world along with all of us come into being. Humanity, in disobeying God, messes up that perfect creation. Evil and chaos enter the world. The cross restores, for the last time, the perfection of creation without removing the chaos. The chaos cannot compete with the order, the serendipity of God’s plan for all of us. The cross presents a choice, just as this piece of art does. We can look at the art and say “too much going on here, not worth my time.” Or we can, as Brother Leonard suggests, sit with it in a “where’s Waldo” exercise.” The cross presents us the same choice, do we live with the chaos of our lives, or do we look at our lives with eyes of faith, as Saint La Salle exhorts us “not to look upon anything but with the eyes of faith, not to do anything but in view of God, and to attribute all to God.” Easter asks us to take much on faith, but as Lasallians isn’t that part of our DNA? As we enter these finals days of Lent, this Holy Week, may we see with eyes of faith through the chaos and look at each other as God sees us.