A couple of years ago I had a first go at trying to express theology in tapestry. I'd been reading several books on Trinitarian theology and wondered if some of the mystery and meaning of God's Triune life of love can be expressed in colour, shape and symbol. The result was this panel, now framed and hanging in our hall.
Some of it is obvious in its references and inner nudges; however overall it plays with ideas without trying to resolve them through overloaded significance. It neither seeks to explain or depict, how could words or images or sounds do that. But it does allow the play of ideas, and an expression through art however limited the mind of the artist, of the desire of intellect and heart to understand and respond as adequately as created finitude can to the One who bewilders by beauty, graces with goodness and touches the heart of all creation with truth.
"God's cognitive availability through divine revelation allows us, Irenaeus believed, to predicate descriptions of God that are true as far as we can make them, while God's irreducible ineffability nonetheless renders even our best predications profoundly inadequate" George Hunsinger, 'Postliberal Theology' in Camridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, ed. Vanhoozer, p.47
The tapestry is called Perichoresis. It is true as far as I can make it...and profoundly inadequate. Like all theology.
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