Just completed the latest tapestry - this time of the triumphant Lamb. It's based on the image of the Lamb on the covers of the recently reprinted volumes of John Howard Yoder. I tried some creative adaptation and intentional uses of colour to enrich and deepen the symbolism. The cross, the eucharistic cup, the bleeding wound and the banner of the Lamb are each christological referents. The ground on which the lamb stands is a God loved world, won by love not conquered by power, the blood of the lamb making peace, and the life of the world renewed by mercy.
The stitch work is a mixture of half cross stitch and goebelin. It's an interesting exercise in contemplative rumination on a Scripture symbol, to work a tapestry that is a combination of received symbol and creative playing with colour, and to dwell with such enriched ideas over a time.
This one is for a friend, for whom the slain lamb is the defining symbol of his spirituality. The primary themes of such spiritual commitment are justice, peace, reconciliation, the confrontation of power with gentleness, the imperative of speaking truth to power, the theological and ethical no to violence and coercion that lies at the heart of the cross, the Lamb as a summons to a different and dissident kind of discipleship.
Comments