Sacramental Experience

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Art as Liturgical Prophecy

Does the resurrected Jesus look the same in Los Angeles and Boston? Ecclesial art and ritual objects used in the context of congregational life engaged in transformational renewal; must hep make the connection between liturgy and life.

PART II

Sacramental Experience is about people, not objects. Water is made holy in the sprinkling of the congregation. Bread and wone are made holy in the feeding and being fed. Spaces are made holy by the prayerful human activity that characterizes their use. If our life as church is a life of service to all God’s children, then the spaes in which we worship and the ways in which we gather must reflect that holy life of service.

From Clay Morris’s Art as Liturgical Prophecy, in Visio Divina: A Reader in Faith and the Visual Arts, edited by Mel Ahlborn and Ken Arnold (Leeds, Ma: Leader Resources, 2009)

The Rev. Dr. Clay Morris is Program Officer: Liturgical and Spiritual Resources, Evangelism & Congregational Life Center, The Episcopal Church, and author of Holy Hospitality: Worship and the Baptismal Covenant.

On View: The Mother, By Alysanne McGaffey. In the words of the artist, “The “Mother” was created long before I heard the term, Ubuntu; however this watercolor is part of my Circle Series. I was meditating on the human comedy, our common condition. It addresses our interrelatedness to all, and all beings. I used the Tree of Life, with its root grounding embraced by the Circle, my symbol for Jesus Christ, who holds us all in God’s Love.

Ubuntu, as I am coming to understand it recalls for me the admonition in the Book of Common Prayer, the Holy Eucharist, Rite One, the familiar prayer.

“Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith;

Thou shalt love the lord our God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets. ” From the ECVA Exhibition, “Art as Public Narrative: ECVA Imaging Ubuntu”. July 2009. Diane Walker, Curator.

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