Suffering is by no means a privilege, a sign of nobility, a reminder of God.
Suffering is a fierce, bestial thing, commonplace, uncalled for…
if it comes in fits and starts, that is only so as to leave the sufferer more
defenseless during the moments that follow, those long moments
when one relives the last bout of torture and waits for the next.

--Cesare Pavese (1908-1950), Italian poet, novelist, translator

No, you are wrong, Cesare, you are dead wrong;
Suffering is a privilege, a sign of grace, a reminder of God.
Suffering is a fierce, purifying thing, commonplace, welcomed with holy terror…
if it comes in fits and starts, that is only so as to leave the sufferer more
receptive to the love of God, to the awful mystery of severe purgation,
when one relives the last dose of grace and waits for the next.

--David Taylor (b. 1972), Italian, pastor, playwright, theologian

The Task
Beginning in December 2001 I searched for the fourteen best Believer Artists in Texas to interpret the fourteen "Stations of the Cross." I desired a diversity of denominations. I found them: Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Eastern Orthodox, Pentecostal, Lutheran, Evangelical Free. There were others, yes, but these fourteen would do. Their task was simple (simple?): to interpret one station each. "What is a station?" somebody asked. The "Stations of the Cross" grew out of an ancient liturgy and describe fourteen stops along the way to Golgotha. These stops follow Jesus from the moment he is condemned to death until his entombment. Traditionally, the faithful prayed the liturgy alongside visual depictions of the Stations, where the pray-er could literally stop and contemplate each event of Christ's Passion.I gave the artists the freedom to choose whatever lens they wished through which to interpret the journey of Christ-socio-economic, political, pious, theological, and so on. My chief concern was for the artist to internalize the station-understand its depth, its polyphonic resonance-and then to externalize that understanding in concrete form.

The pendulum oscillates between these two terms:
Suffering-that opens a window on the real and
is the main condition of the artistic experience-
and Boredom.

--Samuel Beckett

Saturday, Feb 22, 2003, 8:53 PM
Timothy High, harried, nervous, writes a note to Kathy Brimberry less than a week from the deadline: "I am sending out urgent news and requesting fervent prayer on behalf of Aaron Jaques, the younger son of Austin Christian artists Doug and Linda Jaques. On the way home from work tonight, Aaron was driving a company pickup truck and was broadsided by another car. He is now in Brackenridge Hospital emergency room, as I write this message, undergoing treatment and testing for a severe skull fracture. I am going up there tonight to try to express friendship and faithfulness."Alarmed, I seek to comfort Doug as best I can. I tell him I am madly flicking petitions into the sky: daredevil prayers. Several days later, Aaron returns home from the hospital. His situation does not improve, however: fluids leak out of the ear that has turned deaf (he is a musician); he is emotionally disoriented. I perceive in Doug a feeling of helplessness, and the feeling starts to become mutual. He tells me he can't stop crying even as he continues working on his piece for Station XII. Art and life have become indistinguishable for him. His identification with Christ's death is unexpected, psychosomatic, devouring. On Wednesday, February 26, I renew my offer to pray: desperate prayers, furious prayers, any kind.Doug responds the day before the deadline, at 4:57 AM: "Experiencing breakthrough in stations painting. Must extend, expand, magnify time!"

There is no true love save in suffering,
and in this world we have to choose either love,
which is suffering, or happiness…
Man is the more man-
that is, the more divine-
the greater his capacity for suffering, or rather, for anguish.

--Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936), Spanish philosophical writer

Breaking (Good) News: Jesus on Death Row
The idea behind the stations is that what Jesus experiences on his journey to the cross transcends the events of first-century Palestine and provides us with a model of redemptive suffering. And the model-the model of Christ-is not simply an interesting fact of history, or a nice theory to consider-out there, perhaps some other day, for somebody else-it is an invitation, to you and to me. It is an invitation to be present to our own experience of pain and to taste-to taste as if we were tasting a habañero, five-alarm pepper or a Dolce Vita mango sherbet-the possibility of hope: that though the darkness and despair are great, yet there is light and meaning and that love will have the final word. In a culture that rewards productivity at the expense of reflection, where noise becomes a sedative to numb the hurt inside, the stations furnish us with an opportunity to pause; to expel all forms of distraction; to listen and to remember. The aim of such an opportunity is not simply therapeutic but empathetic. We grieve not only our own sorrow but the sorrow of others as well. Indeed, to know compassion is to understand and love the fellow pilgrim on the common way of human travail.The extent, therefore, to which both artist and viewer enter into conversation with the experience of Jesus of Nazareth makes possible a redemption of our own personal and social suffering, torment, and sadness. And that, yes, is the beginning of some good news.

God whispers to us in our pleasures,
speaks to us in our conscience,
but shouts in our pains;
it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

--C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

David Taylor, Artistic Director
HopeArts
6701 Arroyo Seco
Austin, TX 78757
taylor@hopeoffice.org
http://www.hopearts.org