"Illuminated Manuscript: A book written by hand, decorated with paintings and ornaments of different kinds. The word `illuminated' comes from a usage of the Latin word 'illuminare' in connection with oratory or prose style, where it means `adorn'." (Source: WebMuseum, Paris, www.ibiblio.org/wm/rh/glo/illuminated.html)
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The process of creating an illumination is a spiritual pilgrimage to the source: through prayer and meditation, through reconnection to scripture, and through journeying into history, in both the history of a tradition and its personal meaning.
In contemplating creating an illumination (painting) for the Protestant Christianity module, my reflections took me back to 1976. On an island six miles out to sea, off the coast of Maine, I lived with a fisherman and tended a flock of sheep.
I’d always had spiritual yearnings, but did not have a context for religious study, having grown up in the secular world of intellectual Judaism. Finally, living six miles out to sea, six miles down a dirt road, on an island with a year-round population of 50, in a little community totaling 5 residents, on New Year’s Eve I opened the Bible on page one and began my journey.
First I read through the entire Old Testament—everything, including Leviticus, Numbers, Prophets and Psalms. My thirsty soul soaked it up; I had found deep wellsprings. I was guided in my study of the Bible by an Old and New Testament scholar who was on Sabbatical. Yes, I actually walked six miles into town in the snow every Wednesday to study with him—and six miles to get back home afterwards, musing on all that I had encountered.
By early summer, I was ready to begin the New Testament. I was also in need of a new home.
One day, the local minister saw me walking and gave me a lift into town. When he asked where I was going, I told him I was looking for a new place to live. “Well,” he said, “I am looking for a housekeeper for the summer, someone to tend my eight-year old daughter, help cook for my family. Would you be interested in the position?”
I moved right in. That first Sunday, I went to Church with his family on Isle Haut. The little church was situated on the highest point of the island. Its pristine white, New England architecture welcomed me—despite the fact that I felt like a stranger in a strange land, never having been to a church service before. I fell in love with the hymns that the minister’s mother played on the old pedal organ...
“I come to the Garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses ... and he walks with me, and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own, and the joy we share, as we tarry there, none other has ever known.” ("In the Garden," words and music by C. Austin Miles, 1912)
Week after week I attended this church, where the light would pour into through the window and into my soul. During the week, we met for Bible study. This is where I met Jesus, in a community of diverse Protestants, summer visitors, and fisherman. I felt Jesus calling me, gentling my skittish spiritual nature with a calming hand.
The closer I got to Jesus, the more my analytical Jewish intellectual nature rebelled. “But you are Jewish; how can you believe this?” Then I would answer my own question: “But Jesus was Jewish, and so were most of his followers. He loved and accepted everybody.”
So, as I began search for an image to represent Protestant Christianity, my place of discovery of Christianity and Jesus—the little church at Isle Haut—became the centerpiece of my illumination.
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The mother of a fisherman whom I was seeing at that time was one of the first women professors at MIT. She, like me, was from strong Jewish intellectual stock. We began our journey with Jesus at the same time. In addition, we shared a connection in the arts (she is a quilt-maker and fiber artist.)
This past summer, 32 years later, I went back to visit her where she now lives: on a Virginia mountaintop. Amidst the surrounding orchards and vineyards, I reconnected to the memories of our early encounters with Jesus and Christianity.
At the guest house, a church/barn, where I stayed, my friend’s quilt of the Stations of the Cross hung on the wall. It had been stitched in green, purple and gold, the colors of the liturgical year.
Quilt-making has been a spiritual path for so many women in the Protestant denominations in America’s heartland. My friend Anna offered me this teaching:
“The process of making these is the process of quilting. However, they are called ‘comforters’, because as the women stitched the pieces of cloth together, they prayed for comfort in the hard times. They prayed that the person receiving this gift of their hands would feel the love and the prayers stitched into the cloth, on cold winter nights when they might feel frightened or alone. As Jesus says, ‘And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may be with you for ever.' " (John 14:16)
I was touched by this story of quilt-making as a spiritual practice, and as a means of bringing comfort. Imagine all of the church-women sewing quilts, making coffee, baking pies, serving the community, bringing comfort to so many. For many, congregational life is a place to experience the living gospel. This is why I decided to weave the comforter’s patterns into the painting as a backdrop.
My first communion was in the little church in Isle Haut. Although it was Wonder Bread and Welch’s Grape Juice, still the miracle happened. I received Jesus and felt an inflowing of his presence. I wanted the bread and wine to be symbolized in the illumination as well.
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During that long-ago winter of 1976, I went to visit my friend in Virginia. We attended the midnight Christmas Eve service at the Big Stone Gap Methodist Church. The Church was paneled in early trailer plastic wood. The minister sat in the front of the Church, wearing a light blue cowboy bell-bottom leisure suit.
I found myself saying, to myself “What is a nice Jewish girl from the suburbs doing in a place like this?” In the deepest of Southern drawls, he was almost yelling, “Brothers, if you want to come to Je-e-e-sus, come to the altar to be saved!” I closed my eyes in the onslaught, but in that moment, Jesus spoke to me:
“Come to me all you who are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)
I began crying. The burdens that I had carried all my life felt too heavy to carry alone, and Jesus was calling to me. The minister shouted, “If you want to come to Jesus, if you want to take Jesus as your Lord and Savior, come to the altar to be saved!” I knew in that moment, I had never wanted anything as much as I wanted Jesus in my heart. So I found myself kneeling at the altar in the Big Stone Gap Methodist Church, accepting Jesus. I was baptized on Isle Haut in the chilly waters of the Maine coast.
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As I painted the illumination, I remembered this dream:
One night, I dreamed I encountered Jesus. He came to me for help. The world was chasing him, and he said, “Hide me!” I began to pat him on the back, saying, “Where should I hide you?” As I patted him with love and compassion, he became smaller and smaller, until he became a baby, so tiny that I could place him between two halves of a walnut shell. I said, “ I will tuck you into the darkness of my heart. No one will think to look for you there.”
Pulling aside my ribs, I placed him inside the darkness of my heart. But little baby Jesus started to giggle. The more he laughed, the more it tickled the insides of my ribs. As he continued to giggle, and as I continued to be tickled, he began to glow and fill my heart with a golden light that poured out through the edges of my skin. I found myself saying to Jesus, “How could I ever have thought to contain you? You can transform the deepest darkness with your love, joy, and forgiveness.”
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In the years since these experiences, I have encountered many individuals wounded by churches and congregations. It has been heartbreaking to see so much injury done in his name.
Working on this illumination brought me back into connection with the qualities that to me are the essence of Jesus. The Jesus I know is a Jesus of love, inclusivity, forgiveness, and the joy of community.
May grace, comfort, fellowship, congregation, community, love, forgiveness, communion, and joy be with you always.
