December 15, 2010
By Pat McCaughan

St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Mishawaka in the Diocese of Northern Indiana gave new meaning to the incarnation this Advent when members created "Stations of the Nativity" as a collective meditative exercise for the season.

The series of fourteen 18x24-inch images begins with the explosive cosmic spark of creation depicted in John's gospel (John 1:1-18) and concludes with the visit of the magi, represented by an imposing image of Herod against a backdrop of the skulls of the innocents slaughtered during his search to find and kill the infant Jesus.

The stations connected a strong parish tradition of meditating with the Stations of the Cross and an effort to incorporate members' voices, including graduate art students from the nearby University of Notre Dame in South Bend, said senior warden Jon Adamson.

"We tapped new members and younger members on the shoulder, and people who haven't necessarily had ways to contribute to the parish in the past. We are finding ways to have them enter into the life of the community," Adamson said during a telephone interview from the diocesan offices in South Bend where he is secretary to Bishop Ed Little II.

The resultant charcoal sketches, photos, collages, acrylic and oil paintings depicting the familiar Scripture stories invited "a fresh meeting with Jesus" during Advent, said Adamson, 35, who coordinated the project along with artist and parishioner Jonathan Grant.

"To have the sanctuary change so much with these vibrant works … made it a very rich Advent," Adamson said.

If the images pushed the envelope, so did the meditations, written by other members to accompany the images. "I really enjoyed the epilogue, especially the phrase ‘before the incarnate word ever spoke a mortal word he was calling people to himself.' That floored me," he said.

The Rev. Susan Haynes, St. Paul's rector, said the project released "creative energy" among not just the congregation, but also the diocesan and wider community.

"So very often we as small parishes are a little preoccupied with our ability to survive" but the project created a buzz, Haynes said during a Dec. 14 telephone interview from her church office.

"It's poured new life into our congregation," which has an average Sunday attendance of about 80, about 40 percent of whom are younger than 40, she said. "We're already thinking of other projects to integrate art and spirituality."

During Advent, a Stations of the Nativity meditation replaced the usual weekly Wednesday night Eucharist.

"We do a weekly walk-through, where others would be more familiar walking through Stations of the Cross during Lent. We read the meditations, say additional prayers and sing an occasional Advent carol," Haynes said. "Others take the booklet [of the meditations] home and use it for their personal devotions." The booklet of mediations calls the stations project a "celebration of the incarnation."

Haynes personal favorite is the second station, where the angel Gabriel visits Zechariah because her 15-year-old daughter Sarah is the artist. "I love how she chose to portray Zechariah being muted. She seems to have captured a lot of the mood," Haynes said. "It was interesting to watch how invested she got in this process as it went along, it's very exciting."

The incarnation images will come down on Dec. 19 for the traditional greening of the church, but the congregation is already considering an upcoming summer art project to incorporate young people using Jesus' agricultural parables, she said.

For artist Joanne Thompson, using an acrylic medium to depict three of the images – the Magnificat (fifth station), the journey to Bethlehem (ninth) and the Nativity (tenth) – became a very personal meditative practice.

Although a career artist, she was a newcomer to religious art. She also compensated for personal obstacles like a broken arm and two surgeries to remove cataracts, she said in a telephone interview from her Mishakawa home.

Starting with black-and-white sketches, Thompson moved to experiment with paints to create colors "a good bit more vibrant than usual" and to add depth.

She "began to think of the whole nativity in a different way. I found myself praying for insight … to create something that would honor the subject matter and that maybe would reach someone," said Thompson, 63, and a St. Paul's member since 2001.

And ultimately, she believes, Mary helped her overcome the obstacles.

"I found myself praying while painting, trying to put myself in her mind, what she was thinking, and the difficulty of her plight knowing that she realized from the very beginning her child wouldn't be her child (but) … would be a leader for the world. So in the Nativity I painted her hand raised slightly, as if to shield him."

A slide show of the stations' images is available online at http://www.flickr.com/photos/stpaulsmishawaka/sets/72157625413011183/show/, and the images together with the meditations are viewable at http://www.stpaulsmishawaka.org/html/stations/stations.html.

Episcopal News Service
The Rev. Pat McCaughan is a national correspondent for the Episcopal News Service. She is based in Los Angeles.