Advent in Art 13: Living Arrows by Lauren Kumerich
The Message
Luke 1:
26-28 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to the Galilean village of Nazareth to a virgin engaged to be married to a man descended from David. His name was Joseph, and the virgin’s name, Mary. Upon entering, Gabriel greeted her:
Good morning!
You’re beautiful with God’s beauty,
Beautiful inside and out!
God be with you.
29-33 She was thoroughly shaken, wondering what was behind a greeting like that. But the angel assured her, “Mary, you have nothing to fear. God has a surprise for you: You will become pregnant and give birth to a son and call his name Jesus.
He will be great,
be called ‘Son of the Highest.’
The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David;
He will rule Jacob’s house forever—
no end, ever, to his kingdom.”
John 1:
1-2 The Word was first,
the Word present to God,
God present to the Word.
The Word was God,
in readiness for God from day one.
3-5 Everything was created through him;
nothing—not one thing!—
came into being without him.
What came into existence was Life,
and the Life was Light to live by.
The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness;
the darkness couldn’t put it out.
9-13 The Life-Light was the real thing:
Every person entering Life
he brings into Light.
He was in the world,
the world was there through him,
and yet the world didn’t even notice.
He came to his own people,
but they didn’t want him.
But whoever did want him,
who believed he was who he claimed
and would do what he said,
He made to be their true selves
their child-of-God selves.
These are the God-begotten,
not blood-begotten,
not flesh-begotten,
not sex-begotten.
14 The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighbourhood.
Many mothers waiting, during the 9 long months of pregnancy, have plenty of opportunity to romantically imagine a wonderful future for their children.
I wonder if Mary had the same anxieties and insecurities as me? Or worse?
“Behold, small child. Your baby is a history maker. No pressure though. God thinks you are all good. Just wait on that for the next 9 months. And beyond.”
I was a relatively young mother at the age of 25. Not as young as Mary though, who is popularly believed to have been around 15 years when she had Jesus. Imagine that.
The video I am about to play is one that I had to make for a media studies University project. Basically I just needed to show that I knew how to use the editing software Final Cut Pro. I had never used the software before so had to teach myself through many, many YouTube tutorials. This information about the video is important because at the time of its creation (well over a year ago) my main focus was meeting the assignment’s criteria of showcasing the editing process and was not really about the story or content. In fact, I spent so much time editing this assignment that once it was completed and my marks returned to me I threw the DVD into the drawer and completely forgot about it until only very recently.
After months of putting it out of my mind, I returned to it with a friend and I watched it again with fresh eyes.
It is a montage of family videos that involve my sons and their very active lives. It includes a lot of my sons’ point of view angles as we own a GoPro camera that can be attached to just about anything (like kids’ heads) and can go underwater and be thrown into the air and basically thrashed.
The choice of my editing cuts, angles and the soundtrack however, reflect my point of view. And that is one of a general sense of unease and insecurity but also paradoxically excitement and anticipation.
There is a theme of nature and of water, of both the ocean and of fresh rivers. Water is a symbol of a positive life-giving force but is also a symbol of insecurity as it is difficult to contain and can overwhelm you to the point of drowning.
Overall, I think this video depicts an active form of waiting and anticipation.
Motherhood is like a river of endless events that you ride at times and let wash over you at others.
What a horrifying and awesome adventure Mary must have had. Let us think on how Mary may have felt while she waited for her adventure to begin…