...I Will With God’s Help

ECVA Announces 2010 Exhibition Series

Baptism is about death to old identities and solidarities, and rebirth into a land of hope and promise and abundant life for all. It is a washing away of old markers and a putting on of the odor of righteousness, a marker that is not limited to one small place, but is meant to waft through the world like the wind of the spirit. Baptism is meant to bless the world through the marked, as each one serves the hungry, sick, and frightened. This water is meant to roll on like a river of blessing, bringing peace to the warring and healing to the nations.

 – The Most Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop

The sacrament of Baptism is central to our understanding of ourselves both as Christians and as Episcopalians. The words of our Baptismal Covenant serve as a reminder, both that we are marked forever as Christ’s own, and that as Christ’s own we are constantly and continually being recreated into ever more peace-bearing and compassionate beings.

Though we hold the ideals of our Baptismal Covenant to be an important part of our identity as Episcopalians, in the historic words of the Book of Common Prayer, “we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep—left undone those things which we ought to have done, and done those things which we ought not to have done.” It is the strength of our baptism that enables us to move past that failure into a land of hope and promise—to return again and again to minister to a hungry, sick, and war-torn world. And it is our Baptismal Covenant that not only reminds us of our charge, but also invites us to commit to that charge again, while assuring us that we are not alone. No one says “you should do these things” or “we should do these things.” Instead, each of us says, “I Will, With God’s Help.”

During 2010, ECVA will present a series of five exhibitions based on the Baptismal Covenant. The Baptismal Covenant series begins with “I Will, With God’s Help: Recognition and Return,” which will be curated by The Rev. Catherine Quehl-Engel, Chaplain of Cornell College in Iowa. The Recognition & Return exhibition will launch on Ash Wednesday, February 17, 2010 and will run for the duration of Lent; the call for that exhibition is shown below this announcement.

The remaining exhibitions in the Baptismal Covenant Series are:

• In Fellowship and Communion

• Seeking Christ in All Persons

• With Dignity, Justice, and Peace

• By Word and Example

I Will, with God's Help: Recognition and Return
Part I, ECVA Baptismal Covenant Series

Flawed and fallible though we may be, filled with limits and liabilities, we are also luminous. Shining like tapers given at baptism, we bear within ourselves the splendor and spark of Spiritus. In baptism we are claimed without exception, as anointed Spirit bearers. We are beloved habitations for that Holy Spirit and Comforter who abides within us, awaiting the transfiguration of our awareness and our humble recognition and consent to let the Sacred possess, pray, and act in and through us.

Often, however, we fail to recognize our Precious One-ing with that Divine Presence. We live instead from the ego-mind of our surface-level self with its identities, solidarities, and attempts at self-sufficiency. Rather than living from our deeper Self—from God as the Ground of Being—we grasp at externals in hope of salvation. We hunger after possessions, power, and prestige but these desires, once possessed, neither satisfy nor save us, and clinging to them creates much of our pain. These are the temptations named and faced by Christ in the wilderness, and He accompanies us now in our own wilderness wanderings, showing us the way of Return.

We dare to begin this journey of Return, by putting on Christ’s story as our own—again, just as we did in baptism. We hand ourselves over as Christ handed himself over. Like seed falling into pitch-black Iowa dirt, we dare to relinquish, as Christ relinquished, trusting new life will rise from this dying down. We imitate Christ’s surrender to God, and the hardened casing of our surface-self cracks open so that the eternally abiding Divine Indwelling can break through to recognition. In the words of  Epictetus: You have in yourself a part of Him….You bear God about with you, poor wretch, and know it not. This journey is an adjustment in consciousness. We must be transformed by the renewal of our minds as St. Paul would say. We must put on the mind of Christ, recognizing the Precious One-ing with the Divine Presence and returning to that sense of oneness with the One he called Father. We must offer ourselves as a living Sanctus.

So, dear artist, how do you visually express this journey from a sense of separation to a remembrance of our oneness with God; through recognition to return? How do you render this shedding of false self which, in turn, discloses the deeper Divine Self dwelling within? We are seeking, not images of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, but rather artistic expressions of his followers’ Purgative, Illuminative, and Unitive journey. As an artist, you may want to mine the unfolding of your own life and faith journey, or you may choose to explore a collective journey such as that of the Body of Christ we call Church.

In peace and with deep bow,
The Rev. Catherine Quehl-Engel+

• Deadline for Submissions: January 15, 2010