We are artists, working to refine and repurpose materials of our everyday selves into something transcendent and sanctifying. View the study sheet here. Watch the recording here.
A storm made all the difference in the beginning of self-government in our nation’s history. On September 9, 1620 the Mayflower set sail from Plymouth, England bound for the Americas. On board were 102 passengers. Of those, 41 were Pilgrims, religious separatists seeking freedom from the Church of England. The Pilgrims had signed a contract with the Virginia Company, which financed the voyage in return for profits from the new settlement to be located on land owned by the company in northern Virginia.
But treacherous shoals and storms forced the Mayflower off course, and the ship landed in Massachusetts instead, near Cape Cod, outside of Virginia’s jurisdiction. Discord erupted among the colonists before they even disembarked. Several argued that since the Mayflower had landed outside of Virginia Company territory, they were no longer bound to the company’s charter and rules.
To quell the rebellion and avoid the fatal chaos it threatened, some members drafted a set of rules by which they would all live. In place of rules imposed upon them by their financial backers, the settlers wrote their own, to which they signed their names. This was the Mayflower Compact. Included in its provisions was the principle that the colonists would create one society and work together to further it. Thus began the great experiment in self-government known as the United States of America,
Our great experiment has not always lived up to its highest ideals. The Mayflower Compact itself was written just one year after slaves were first delivered to the shores of Jamestown, Virginia from Africa. Rules, rhetoric and process may be insufficient to establish a promised land where all are free to pursue their happiness. Plato warned of this. Individuals, he wrote, who have not mastered their own urges will continue to live in a state of enslavement. And the political structure they create will reflect that.
Freed from slavery in Egypt, the Israelites are journeying toward freedom. They engage in a momentous construction project: the building of the Mishkan, a structure designed to cause God to dwell among them. Hasidic tradition reads here more than an external project. Even more importantly, the Torah is describing a restructuring of the human interior life, transforming it from self-oriented to one committed to something greater than itself. It requires dedicating our coarse everyday elements to something sublime.
Ghanaian artist El Anatsui creates large-scale sculptures composed of thousands of folded and crumpled pieces of metal, bottle caps and other discarded materials. His work celebrates our capacity to take the coarse and transform it into something luminescent and beautiful. He is a great artist. And he reminds us that we all can be too.
Join us here at 7:00 p.m. (PST) Thursday February 3 as we explore the artist at work.
