holy thirsty/thursday

welcome to throwback thursday ! back in time, both in centuries, and back to march 24th a few weeks ago during holy week.

today we will talk about what happened a couple of thursdays ago & a few centuries ago in preparation for seeing each other here on the blog tomorrow for a friday art visit (which i do with my students every week). in tomorrow's post, we will talk about a piece of modern art created a mere 50 years or so ago. both of our "conversation pieces" are in florence, the first one permanently, the latter as part of a temporary visiting exhibit being publicized all over the city at the moment.

this is a two-part back-to-back post where you get a little 'aperitivo', a little appetizer, of the artist for a day approach to looking at art.

why this thursday-ancient/ friday-modern back to back slow art conversation?

when we look at the rituals around us, and the images painted on the walls of the museums and churches here, we have to look a little deeper than the mere (however lovely) aesthetics because while they can speak directly to the soul, they were originally designed to do so in order to deliver yet other gifts, too. that's the art of listening to art, whether it's medieval/renaissance or modern/contemporary.

uncovering its many layers & making the connection to the here & now, and making it personal & relevant, is what i try to do both as an art history professor with my students and with artist for a day experiences. to do so, we have to adopt both a "beginner's mind" (free from too many pre-conceived ideas) as well as pretend like we are talking directly to/with the people who made the work, and image that we are in the place of the people the work was originally made for.

...so please, grab your nibbles & we shall begin!

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thirsty thursday

giovedi' santo, or holy thursday, is the day in the week leading up to easter when the catholic traditions of celebrating the last week of jesus' life marks each day with a special ritual. the real point is to teach by example in 3-d re-living of the moments the way that jesus' behaviors teach us how exactly to be human.

the below image comes from a series of frescoes that are 'snapshots' taken before the invention of the camera or any mechanical means of reproducing images. it's the ony way we had of imagining, showing something. this was the first facebook wall. a big painting directly onto the wet plaster where we come every sunday, and during the week, to find silence, rest, and a listening ear.

think about it. you & i were illiterate (most average people were), and in church (which we all would have gone to as florentine citizens), we would have often heard the bible read to us in latin-- not our common italian vernacular-- and it would have sounded very mystical and amazing, but not comprehensible.

so, too, direct reading from our number one source of knowledge about the entire world, universe, and who we are in it, and how to be human, all come from this book-- the bible-- which we never touch. it is a precious, rare thing read by kings, priests, and the very wealthy, and reproduced painstakenly over months by monks and nuns one letter at a time by hand on animal skins. very expensive, all in ancient languages no longer spoken, and we can't read anyway.

so where is OUR bible?

it's on the walls of our churches. in the stained glass windows. they are our writ-large picture books, big enough for you and i to step into, life-sized and immediate, bringing hope, inspiration, and mostly, an instruction manual for how to live, and how to understand this being-human experience we are having.

let's look at this image, then, a detail from the last few days of the story of jesus' life, and first ask ourselves to go into a curiosity mode, and free-associate...

what ideas/emotions/experiences do you associate with feet?

how do you feel about your feet? other people's?

what would it mean for a dearest friend or family member to wash your feet for you?

how would you feel about them then?

on holy thursday once a year before easter sunday, here in florence, in every little church sprinkled up and down every street in the center. each priest brings out a bowl of water and twelve ordinary people sit in the stead of where originally the 12 closest followers of jesus, the disciples, did, and does exactly what is shown in the fresco painting above.

those thirsty for a definition of what it means to be called king of the universe, god, and also a man that turns all the wordly definitions of the same ideas on their heads, needn't look any further than their little local parish's live-theatre re-enactment of this scene, taken straight out of the bible and made real & 3-D for each of us on this day.

it is this act of our own priests on our own feet on holy thursday that imitates one of the final gestures from the bible story of jesus on the same day of the last week of his life, as he bends down, lowers himself literally, to wash the part of the body most consider the dirtiest and least dignified-- the feet-- but which in reality are our link to the earth, the holy ground we walk on, and the strong foundation of our whole bodies and the nerve-filled centers of aliveness of our growing up days running barefoot on the grass and on the beach. he has been teaching that the lowest are the highest, and the highest the lowest. so in this act of humility, this king-of-the-universe/god being a humble, lower-than-everyone servant, this is honoring the sacredness of the other, their nature as being made in the image of god-in-a-human-experience.

in this gesture, the story says, he tells his disciples he is showing them how to love each other: by serving. in fact, he takes this same evening to deliver exactly that new law, his last instruction for how to be human: love one another. that's his big, new commandment. his last "amendment", if you will, to the old, now-replaced by him, mosaic law from the old testament revenge-retaliation of "eye for an eye"...one he has spent his entire life replacing with forgiveness, acts of kindness, healing, love.

dirty feet thirsty for a nurturing, tender, honoring drink of gentle, upside-down-turning ideas of the world, and on the receiving end of such a gesture, perhaps making one feel that even the parts that we consider low, beneath us, and not good enough are made holy through this washing in love, cradling our foundation in the hand, and nurtured by this simple gesture. it seems to me to be about reminding us of a deeper truth of who we, and our neighbor, are. because, looking at these pictures on the wall of our neighborhood church back in the 13 or 1400s, we would remember how our bible stories teach that we are children of god, and the old testament says we-- our bodies-- are temples, and we are made in god's own image. so perhaps these humble foundations of our body, our rootedness on the ground, and our balance are, also a wonder, beloved, clean, and full of beauty. and maybe the ground we are walking on today barefoot, this moment itself, is holy ground.

are there other bible stories you can think of that mention feet?

i think about how, in the old testament, god appears in a burning bush and instructs moses to take off his shoes before approaching it because he is on holy ground. it makes me think about how touching the earth with our feet, and our bare feet themselves, bring us closer to holiness, and reflect our own being undisguised and returning to an innocent, naked state. our newborn-precious-baby's feet.

(the image above is a detail of jesus washing the disciple's feet taken from a late medieval fresco found in the santa maria novella farmacy side chapel in florence)