I grew up in a progressive, social justice oriented church. My Sunday School classrooms had Corita Kent prints on the walls and her work has adorned everything from curriculum to my seminary text books, I just never really knew who she was. I’m lucky enough to serve as a docent at the Portland Art Museum and this week our docent education was all about the woman behind the amazing art that has been influencing me throughout my life.
Sister Corita talked about being someone who sees the sacredness in all the signs around her. She turned supermarket advertising, road signs, and billboards into meditations on the nature of God and our role as people. She demonstrated our longing for God using a Del Monte tomato add to talk about the fullness of the blessed mother. Not unlike the apostle Paul, she helped people meet God where they were and see God in the unfolding life around them.
In learning about Corita Kent I was given language about the way our faith community functions. This idea of seeing the sacred all around, in everyday life, is a huge part of what we do. We meet people where they are and live our lives as a way to demonstrate God in the midst of the everyday. When I talk about the way that do evangelism I sometimes struggle to explain it. My job is to listen to people’s lives unfold and to point out God in that unfolding. The same way Sister Corita used images and slogans to express the divine I reflect back the goodness and light of divine life. We are not a community that proclaims God by shouting at folks, we are a community that interprets God by coming alongside and revealing what is already there.
-Eilidh
| The Juiciest Tomato-http://harvardmagazine.com/2015/08/corita-kent-nun-with-a-pop-art-habit |
Recent Comments