Exodus 1:8
Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.
Matthew 16:19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
Matthew 15:25 But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.”
If the story of the Garden of Eden is such a common cultural reference point, what more can be said about it?
Plenty, at least judging by a new exhibit at the Museum of Biblical Art, which is affiliated with the American Bible Society.
The famed narrative of Eden in the Book of Genesis has been the subject of “New Yorker cartoon after New Yorker cartoon,” said guest curator Jennifer Scanlan, noting the enduring power of the Eden narrative.
Couples solely wearing fig leaves remain “instantly recognizable as Adam and Eve and fruit trees inhabited by snakes as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil with the serpent,” she writes in the exhibit catalog.
Check out the article on RNS, and the Back to Eden introduction on the Museum website.
Art for Proper 14A.
Originally posted August 6, 2014. Updated August 11, 2023
Genesis 37:3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he had made him a long robe with sleeves.
Additional art related to Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28 (the reading for Proper 14A, August 13, 2023): Down the Well But Not Out For the Count curated by Margaret M. Duffy on her blog Ad Imaginem Dei.
Matthew 14:29 He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus.
Received this today (8/4/14) in the Vision and Viewpoint e-newsletter from Benetvision. You can find more Ideas in Passing from Joan Chittister here. Joan will give you much to think about. What are the questions that have shaped, are shaping, your life?
The ability—the commitment—to question, to examine, every aspect of the human journey is the only form of fidelity worth the price of admission to this sojourn called life. Otherwise, no sector of the social anatomy to which we swear emotional allegiance can trust us to serve it well. It is the questions we ask that move us from stage to stage of our growing, that take us from level to level of our thoughts, however simple the questions may seem. I have just realized, in fact, how boring my own questions have been over the years: Do non-Catholics go to heaven? Is sin the center of life? Or to put it another way, What is a “good” life? Does what we give up in life make for more holiness than what we do? Is religious life incarnational or transcendent? Don’t we really need to be violent sometimes? What is a woman? Can a woman be Catholic? (No mention, you notice, of birth control, which also had a lot to do with radicalizing me, or divorce, which I have always believed in, even when it was a sin, and “the role of women in the home” which I knew was wrong by the time I was five.) And yet, without those questions there was no coming beyond the naive simplicity of all the early answers to them: Only Catholics go to heaven. Sins are the things against the law, and the purpose of life is to avoid them. Good things are bad for you. Or—the second version—really good people give up good things. Religious life requires separation from “the world.” The Crusades and Vietnam were noble ventures fought to make the world safe for Christianity. Woman is man’s helpmate. The reason women can’t minister to the people of God sacramentally is because God wants it that way.
We each have our own personal set of questions. For those of us who lived the greater part of the twentieth century—during the wars, before and after Vatican II, in the midst of the second wave of the woman’s movement—maybe the questions I find so mundane today were common ones. Maybe they were quite different from the ones asked by the people around me. But whatever the ilk of them, the process of writing them out is a humbling experience. It exposes the level of inquiry with which a life has been consumed. It also unmasks the questions behind the questions that agitate the very pilings of the world around me.
At the same time, it is a worthwhile excursion into the soul to look at the questions that have shaped our lives and ask what it was about them that intrigued us in the first place, that changed us as we dealt with them, that brought me, as a result of them, to be the person that I am today. After all, it is only in the light of our past that we understand the present with which we grapple as well the future toward which we strive.
–from Joan Chittister: Essential Writings, selected by Mary Lou Kownacki and Mary Hembrow Snyder (Orbis).
Matthew 14:16 Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”
Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes
1536
Drawing, black chalk and white on prepared paper, 217 x 335 mm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
Click image for more information.
Click fo artist bio.
On Sunday we listened to some parables of Jesus about the kingdom of heaven. Did you hear them? Here is an extension of a conversation we began on Sunday; listen again:
The kingdom of God is not something in the far future that is going suddenly to come down from heaven and settle on you and magically turn everything right. You yourselves are It. It’s in you and among you; you have to do It or It will never come.Beatrice Bruteau Source: The Holy Thursday Revolution
via inward/outward.
Parker Palmer (on Facebook) writes (7/25/14):
Exciting news for the legion of Carrie Newcomer fans out there! Carrie, my good friend and colleague, was recently profiled by Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, one of PBS’s finest programs.
STARTING TODAY and running thru the weekend, their piece on Carrie will appear at different times in different viewing areas. You can check out when and where to watch in your locale by going to http://tinyurl.com/lfkljwa.
Carrie is my favorite singer/songwriter not only because she’s a poet with a keen eye for the human condition, a superb musician with a golden voice, and a generous soul who donates her talents in support of all kinds of good causes. She’s also a steadfast believer in “the human possibility” who devotes most of her waking hours to creating art that awakens the better angels of our nature.
Here’s a music video of a song Carrie and I co-wrote, from her new album, “A Permeable Life.” I urge you to check out at http://tinyurl.com/k7pchpw.
If you don’t know Carrie’s music, take a iisten. Then you’ll know why Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly is a “must watch” this week!
P.S. Carrie’s Facebook page is at http://tinyurl.com/pht32jb, and her website is at http://tinyurl.com/7a6v47v.
Listen:
RCL Track 1
Genesis 29:25 When morning came, it was Leah! And Jacob said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? Did I not serve with you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me?”
(b. 1475, Caprese, d. 1564, Roma)
Rachel and Leah
1545
Marble
San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome
Click image for more information.
Click for artist bio.
RCL Track 2
1 Kings 3:5 At Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream by night
What do you “see” and what do you hear the Spirit saying?
RCL Track 1
Genesis 28:12 And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.
(b. 1591, Játiva, d. 1652, Napoli)
Jacob’s Dream
1639
Oil on canvas, 179 x 233 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid
Click image for more information.
Click for artist bio.
RCL Track 2
Matthew 13:24
Jesus put before the crowd another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field…
Outskirts of Arles in the Background
Oil on canvas
33.6 x 40.4 cm.
Arles: September, 1888
F 575a, JH 1596
Los Angeles: The Armand Hammer Museum of Art
Click image for more information.
Click for all Van Gogh Sowers from Proper 10
Hear what the Spirit is saying 