Tikkun Magazine, May/June 2009
The New Saints
By Phillip Barcio
(Webmaster's Note: The full photo essay in the printed magazine is stunning. Please consider purchasing a copy of this month's magazine to enjoy the entire photo essay.)
Can sainthood be redefined in progressive terms? For the past decade, an artist named Mark Dukes has been demonstrating that it can.
Dukes recently completed a ten-year commission to create a giant, neo-Byzantine, iconographic mural titled The Dancing Saints, which covers the entire modernist rotunda of St. Gregory of Nyssa Church, home to a progressive Episcopalian community in the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco.
The art world is strewn with the relics of entire careers that did not span ten years.
For comparison's sake, it took Michelangelo four years and seven months to complete his work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
The Dancing Saints commemorates ninety men and women from history, as well as several children and animals, whose stories elucidate by their example the congregation of St. Gregory's contemporary, spiritually progressive definition of saintliness. The saints are depicted hand-in-hand, smiling and dancing in a circle with Jesus of Nazareth.
This roll call of new saints may bring a smile to your face. Included are Black Elk, Cesar Chavez, John Coltrane, Charles Darwin, Fyodor Dostoevski, Albert Einstein, Ella Fitzgerald, Anne Frank, Martha Graham, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Queen Liliuokalani, Thurgood Marshall, Lady Godiva, Mary Magdalene, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rumi, Shakespeare, Sojourner Truth, Morihei Ueshiba (the founder of aikido), Mohandas Gandhi, Simone Weil, and Malcolm X.
In the words of St. Gregory's founding member, Donald Schell:
In addition to our primary goal of showing an image of God's many and diverse ways of working in people's lives, our aim was to achieve a reasonable representation of men and women and a few children from different historical periods, life roles, and kinds of work. Whenever we heard or felt, "of course, we have to include ..." we paused and gave that person an extra skeptical scrutiny, trying to push our list beyond a self-evident "hall of fame" and further, beyond mainstream church consensus, stretching our thinking and enlarging our gratitude for grace overflowing in so many startling and different lives.
In this age marked by fear-mongering, divisive cultural warfare against Islam, and attacks on homosexuality and multiculturalism, St. Gregory's boldly puts forward a new, inclusive, contemporary vision of sanctity.
Beneath this powerful image is the church's altar, around which St. Gregory's member Sara Miles hosts the congregation's weekly community food pantry.
"On Fridays, our sanctuary is a vision of God's ridiculous, over-the-top abundance," Miles says. "Outside the pantry our people are gathering: A bunch of second-graders chasing each other up and down the sidewalk, screeching happily. A cluster of Moldavian refugees. A very sick prostitute and her faithful, exhausted friend, sitting together on the steps, sharing a cigarette. Some gossipy Salvadoran moms. A few tattooed ex-cons. An old woman with her Bible. We set up a table outside with pitchers of cool water and glasses, and talk with everyone. People start to go in to get groceries: some give us stacks of plastic bags, or offer to take a turn helping at the table. A few have brought food—a couple slices of birthday cake, a box of powdered milk, some extra cans of corn—to share. It takes so little to see God in this world. You just have to open the door."
As Dukes applied the finishing touches on this ten-year work of art and faith, he shared with me his personal contemplation about the power of the mural's message.
"There is a universal consensus of r eligious ideals," Dukes says. "Maybe not religious practice, but religious ideals. Like humility. Like peace. Like hope. That's what [the mural] is about. It's about love. God is love."
The Dancing Saint whose life, in Dukes's opinion, most poignantly embodies the message of the work is Malcolm X.
"The justification for having him here is very powerful," Dukes says. "Here is someone who was a gangster. A racist. So he went from that, and he grew. And I think that's holy, to be on that spiritual quest. No one starts out perfect, and very many people don't end up perfect either. It's the quest. He had a revelation of seeing all men as being brothers. No more, ‘if you're black you're my brother, and if you're white you're a devil.'"
He adds: "We have a God of second chances and third chances. God forgives us, and God is our example. It's not about judging some certain person at a certain point in their life. It's about seeing the whole of their life. That's what the people of St. Gregory's were trying to do."
To exemplify that point, the congregation took a risk by including one person in the mural who is still among the living: South African cultural revolutionary and Nobel Peace Price winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
"Because he's still alive," Dukes says, "the story is not finished for him. So he's the only saint who isn't depicted with a halo yet. In all likelihood he is going to maintain his sanctity and at some point, when he's gone, I am going to return and put a halo over Desmond Tutu's head."
Until then, Dukes intends to focus on his next project, an illustrated, iconic fable exploring Dukes's fictional Gospel of Saint Sambo.
"I've reached the point where I believe I want to express something about my experience of being black and thinking about meaning and spirituality in America," Dukes says. "The Gospel of Saint Sambo talks about the anonymous sanctity of many black people throughout our American history who have endured in hope. Our spirituality hasn't only been about dignity, but also at times simply survival. America is in a place where we could use the wisdom of the African American perspective. We are in a place where we have to start making some hard decisions. Life isn't just about materialism. It isn't just about ego. We need to find another way. That's the challenge. To rein in our power in the service of good. I think that's something a lot of people in this country have been craving."
There are many facets of The Dancing Saints, as well as of Dukes's new work, that reflect the core message of progressive spirituality. By transcending existing notions of dogma and history, his pieces remind us that spirituality isn't just one part of our lives, it is interlocked with every aspect of our personalities, our power, and our potential.
The dancing saints call on each of us to be saintlike in our own way, to express ourselves honestly, to become participants in the movement toward love and unity, and to create our own definitions of what is possible in our emerging culture of peace.
Phillip Barcio is a writer living in San Francisco's Mission District. In his spare time he photographs and categorizes litter for the Real San Francisco blog:
(realsanfrancisco.blogspot.com).
Source Citation
Barcio, Phillip. 2009. The New Saints. Tikkun 24(3): 17.
