Monday, August 18, 2008


Radiant Cross
Last week at Prayer Meetin', I handed out a copy of a piece of Mexican folk art that was in Christian Century last month. The drawing was based on the radiant cross. I am thankful that in seminary I had a professor who liked to show us lots of pictures. We learned that in a lot of Christian art work depicting the cross that it can be a source of light in the painting. That is, people in the painting are not illuminated by the sun or a lamp. The "light" in the painting would come from the cross or Jesus' body.

In other traditions, the radiant cross is used for a symbol in first communion celebrations. You can even buy a lot of party supplies for your after-church shindigs.
Here's what I gave my folks.
Suggestion: open this in another window.

At first glance it does look a little ordinary. If you focus on the cross in the center, though, those concentric circles and the dots have something of a pulse to it. This flat, black and white drawing becomes what I like to call optical theology.

Give it a try. You might want to enlarge and print out this picture for yourself (jury's still out on what staring at a computer screen too long will do to you). See what I mean? This drawing has a lot of movement.

OK, now pray with that. Lend you imagination to the movement a little. The artist probably did not have only one right answer in mind. My general explanation is this: the cross is often seen as a rather flat symbol, you know, death, resurrection, yadda, yadda. In this picture, though, there are a lot of things that are bouncing around with the cross at the center. Remember what was given to give us life--no yadda about it!

Someting else happened to me while I stared at this picture. I got a little too close to it, a theological statement in itself. I ended up unable to focus both eyes to make one target and saw two pictures. I was then staring at two crosses. I had to remember something else important that came right to me. One cross was Jesus' and the other my own.

2 comments:

DMaC said...

All you're missing is an angelic voice saying, "better? or worse"?

Chip Reeves said...

OK, 1... or 2...
2... or 3...