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California pilgrImage: Station II

Posted by Miko on March 13th, 2007 at 6:57 pm · 3 Comments

Any journey, even that of an exodus (from religion), is personal. We can make similar stops, walk together for a time, and show each other signposts, but we cannot make the same journey. That said, I’m stealing John’s category.

John’s pilgrimage is explicitly OC. Mine is not yet limited to any area, although there is a spirituality in California that I’m attracted to (as my sister said today, the missions are very much a part of California, its history, and Californians). I’d still love to bike to each mission from SD to SF, but it’s currently just a pipe dream.

The numbering of my stations is arbitrary. I’ll count the Museum of (in)Tolerance as Station I. But even the stations themselves are arbitrary. I could count tai chi as a station, it has certainly been a spiritual experience. I’ve even posted already on things that could be considered stations. I’m not a pilgrim like John is, nor do I claim to be. But I’m definitely on a journey through this life and it does me well to acknowledge it.

I just heard this podcast (you can listen, subscribe, or read it). I don’t subscribe to Art Talk, but listen to KCRW live, so I hear it on occasion (I especially listen on Tuesday evenings because that’s when Says You! is on). This week, Edward Goldman discussed an installation called Walking the Way of the Cross.

For those unfamiliar with the ins and outs of Catholic (I can’t speak for Episcopalian tradition, sorry) tradition, the Way of the Cross is a big part of Lent. It’s generally held weekly (usually Fridays because that’s when Jesus died, but sometimes to fit into people’s schedules) at the church. Since most churches already have the stations displayed, usually along the walls, all it takes is a leader to speak the right words. The ones at my gradeschool church in Seattle had altar servers (including me, ’cause that was the only way I could make it through most religious services without being bored out of my skull) holding candles at each station to focus people’s attention to it, and the priest, or sometimes a standin, leading the meditation. Sometimes people walked with the servers, sometimes they stayed in their pews. I participated in one in Rome which was not only more interesting, but more active, we walked over half the city, it felt like. The leader says things like, “The First Station of the Cross: Jesus is Condemned to Death” and then everyone says a part of the rosary.

The purpose is a meditation on the suffering (and there’s lots of it!) of Jesus and to symbolically perform a pilgrimage. As such, I think it’s an appropriate first stop for me.

An Episcopal priest from NYC has created an art installation illustrating his interpretations of the Passion. This includes, as I understand it, emphasizing the suffering of people in the world today, including in war-torn areas and Ground Zero at the WTO in NYC. The exhibit is moving around the country and is currently at

the Church of Our Saviour
535 West Roses Road
San Gabriel, CA 91775

and is open MT 1100-1700, W-F 1100-2030, SS 1300-1700 and will run until Easter Sunday (April 7).

I’m thinking of going this Friday, I know it’s short notice, but I want to go on a Friday and, no time like the present! I’d like to go during twilight or just before sunset. So, if people are interested in joining me, I will be there this Friday at around 1900. If you are interested in joining me, please let me know in the comments, I’d love to have you along. If you’re interested, but can’t join me, please feel free to go on your own and leave comments here or on the post-post (if I do one).

More information here and here.

Tags: OC Pilgrimage

3 responses so far ↓

  • 1 John // Mar 13, 2007 at 9:07 pm

    Yay! You can fill in the OC Pilgrimage gap! (It wasn’t strictly OC. I fudged a little, and included LA stations as well.)

    My introduction to the the Stations of the Cross came when I realized that Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ was a moving (literally) representation of the Via Delorosa. It transformed my response to the movie and deepened my understanding of Catholic worship. I blogged about it a year or two ago.

    I’m interested in joining you, but I’m not sure if I can make it…I’ll be in touch!

    Also, I’m still interested in biking between local missions, though I’d love to get healthy enough to walk between them.

  • 2 Jonathan // Mar 14, 2007 at 11:46 am

    Yea! Good to see the pilgrimage continuing!

    Even though I’m an east coast guy, I do wonder over to the west coast now and then as a web designer. It seems for people like me, it’s the center of the world. I work remotely for a company in Palo Alto now.

    Anyway, I’ve already attended a mission out there! I went to the Carmel mission (if you’ve ever heard of it). Beautiful place – my wife and I took many pictures of it. Unfortunately, no one was around to talk about religious stuff with. :(

    So all I had was little signs and placards talking about the history of the place. As I left, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of sadness, like something good was intended for this place, but somehow failed. Did the Native Americans that were converted really find God there? It seemed more to me of a despairing people trading one unsuccessful religion for another in a time of intense disease and death. I guess I’ll never know for sure what to make of my feelings about the place, but that was my impression.

  • 3 Miko // Mar 17, 2007 at 6:49 pm

    I enjoyed this from the sense of art, but I felt very little in the way of religiousness from it. The stations themselves were so far removed from what I was used to that without the booklet of explanations by the artist, I wouldn’t have know either what the symbols meant or what they were supposed to be. For example, Jesus Falls a Second Time is usually an image (or sculpture) of a man with a cross, on one knee (having just fallen). Sometimes there’s a crowd. This sculpture was described as “shrouded figures in half-opened umbrellas, lighting elements, a ceramic tile floor, and a painted giraffe” Jesus Falls a Second Time. The explanation included discussion of the artist’s time spent in Sarajevo and of the fact that the giraffe is one of the artist’s favorite animals and one of the last in the Sarajevo zoo to have been killed for food. The point was that “one of the other factors in our age that causes us to stumble and fall is ethnic pride”. Which was a good point, I just would never have gotten there from a giraffe without a road map.

    Also, I’m used to stations being very linear: up one side of the church & back down the other. Sometimes down one side & up the other. This was displayed mostly outdoors, due to the size of the stations as well as the times it was open, I’m sure. It was also not linear at all. There was a map at the back of the booklet, but I didn’t find that out until just now. So I had to do a lot of wandering around, vaguely confused. Maybe if I was a parishioner, I’d know my way around better. About halfway through, I wondered if this was intentional: to make it seem more like a pilgrimage (as the original stations were meant to symbolize a trip to Jerusalem).

    There was a group of kids (somewhere between grade- and high-school) who had gotten there just before me. At about the third station, one of them said, “oh! is this supposed to be like the trip Jesus took?” which made me laugh out loud in spite of myself. It turned out that they were hanging out in the graveyard and saw the first station (a bunch of TVs filled with snow) and had gone to school there, so they checked it out. I asked them if they believed in any of and almost all of them said no (in an indignant way) only one, sort of sheepishly, said yes.

    “Good for you,” I wanted to say to him, “for keeping your faith amidst people who haven’t.”
    “And good for you,” I wanted to tell the rest of them, “for not following ‘tradition’ for it’s own sake and finding your own path.”

    I didn’t, though, and eventually, they melted back into the darkness.

    There was also an elderly couple making their way around. They helped me find a few of the stations. The last three were in the church, and immediately upon entering, I smelled flowers. There weren’t any, so while I did briefly think of the significance (the scent frequently precedes a vision or apparition), I just assumed that there had been flowers there recently. As I was leaving, I heard the elderly woman saying to her husband, “Really? It’s a very strong scent.” I assured her that I smelled it, too. She looked very earnest as she quietly told me, “But we haven’t had any flowers in the church‚Äîit’s Lent!”

    The most moving part of the experience was at the 9th station (Jesus Falls a Third Time). It is described as “cocktail glasses, nails, Koran pages, furniture piece, mannequin, show sign”. In the description, the artist discusses the fact that the WTO terrorists went to a strip-club and a bar the day before. He said that his interpretation of that (as opposed to the media’s of therefore-they-can’t-be-good-Muslims) was it was “a test of faith [...] if they could [...] go into [...] the belly of the beast‚Äîa topless bar‚Äîthen they could do anything in the name of their God.” This station, then, is a visual discussion of these pitfalls, for Muslims and Christians alike. What really struck me, though was this:

    The pages in the drawer are from the Koran. The use of the Koran in this Station presented a great challenge to me. I had purchased the Koran at the 96th Street Mosque in New Your City. I brought it back to my studio with the intention of cutting out pages and shellacking them. But I was immobilized because to Muslims the Koran itself is sacred. I did not want to disrespect a tradition. We do not believe that the Bible is sacred; we believe what is in the Bible is sacred. It took me more than a week to realize that what I needed to do was simply to pray over the Koran. I prayed that it would be acceptable to God, that it was being used for good purposes, for creative purposes, for religious purposes, and for bringing about understanding. After I prayed I felt a sense of calm and I could cut the pages and shellac them.

    My first thought was the irony of praying to a Christian god to ask if it was okay to desecrate a Muslim sacred item. My second was that his assumption as he did it must have been that it was the same god, just a different line in. More than anything else that evening, I came away thinking that if just one person reads that and is moved to the same thought process, the exhibition will have been worth it.

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