This new icon was made in partnership with Red Letter Christians, Rev. Munther Issac, Shane Claiborne.
From Red Letter Christians: " We partnered with artist Kelly Latimore of Kelly Latimore Icons to create this new icon, "Christ in the Rubble," which illustrates the prophetic message that if Jesus was born today, he would be born "under the rubble." Kelly wants his art to be a ‘holy pondering’ - a process that potentially brings about a new way of seeing. Our hope is that this icon, "Christ in the Rubble" will create more dialogue among Christians in the United States during this holy season about the ways our beliefs and actions - or lack thereof - contribute to the violence we're currently witnessing in Gaza. How can we shape a culture of Christianity where love truly has no boundaries? How do we create a world where our poor, homeless, refugee, Palestinian Savior - born to a teenage mother and later condemned to death - would be cherished had he been born today. 🚨🚨 Right now, when you give $100 or more on the Red Letter Christians website, you’ll receive a professional print of “Christ in the Rubble” SIGNED by Kelly Latimore. These special prints will be limited to the first 750 gifts made. ‼️All the donations Red Letter Christians collects from the sale of these prints will be donated to trusted Red Letter Christians partners working for peace on the ground in Gaza‼️ all people, churches, organizations, etc are warmly welcomed and encouraged to share the digital version of this icon on social media and on their websites, particularly during the Christmas season. Let’s get some money to Gaza!!
Donate Here:
https://www.redletterchristians.org/gaza/]]>
18 x 24 in. Acrylic, Flashe, and Silver Leaf on Panel, 2023.
Inspired by this poem by Sr. Ilia Delio shared by our dear friend Br. Jeff Macnab OFM 3 days before he passed on Christmas Day 2022.
"What do the stars say?
The light that meets our eyes after millions of years summons us to look beyond.
The dark that hovers over us is filled with light.
That underneath the appearance of the stable heavens is the bubbling energy of the universe.
We are forming, forming, forming and nothing can stop us.
There is a palpable power of attraction, pulling us toward we-no-not-where.
Love alone is the guide of the universe and the whole universe is in the human heart.
Tend to the heart and the power of love will name itself as God."
The Original Image was captured when the colors were just right in the light. I love how the reflective paint shifts and changes depending on your perspective.
Christ was born in a makeshift shelter in a stable, and in todays reading in the Gospels, the holy family is forced to flee their homeland for fear of persecution. This is the classic modern-day definition of a refugee. The Holy Family is still among us here and now, in the faces of the refugee, the immigrant, the poor and the oppressed.Many people are living in makeshift communities throughout the country, often called “Tent Cities” With this recent cold spell, and through these winter months, unhoused individuals are often in need of more clothing, blankets, food and better shelter.In the following weeks with our print sales of this icon we hope to raise funds and purchase supplies for local organizations here in St. Louis swerving the unhoused like Tent Mission STL, St. Patrick’s Center, and Winter Outreach, and others. Look for your own local organizations in need of volunteers, supplies and funding to help the unhoused in your community.
“If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of him.”
Original Icon and Signed Prints available in our store.
]]>
Inspired by the work of Käthe Kollwitz and third icon in a series of images with the same name, "Our Lady of the Journey" was inspired by a trip to the St. Ines mission while visiting our dear friend Jeff and the Novices of the Franciscan Novitiate community in California. Tucked behind a corner is a tiny statue called " La Pereguina" or "The Pilgrim". The date it was created and artist are unknown, however the community called it 'Our Lady of the journey' It got me thinking about all of the women in the world on a journey. The millions of Refugees fleeing Ukraine because of a senseless war, young women walking miles upon miles for drinking water, Mother's trying to find shelter and a better life for their families. Just as Mary did 2,000 years ago. The gospel imagery of the Mother Hen isn’t used enough. These women are signs of protection, strength, hope and love, and the beauty of Motherhood.
“Invisible God, by the power of your love you make present the bodies of the invisible, the poor farm worker, the foreigner, the widow, the orphan, the refugee, poor, the dead. Show us such a presence, as through them you promise to give us your presence. Make us visible; make us real. Make us capable of feeling so we may think make us capable of tears so we may laugh. Make us your visible people, your light, your joy. Amen”
~Stanley Hauerwas, “Prayers Plainly Spoken”
Prints and Original Icon Available in our store.
These Icons were both commissioned by Father Bill Carroll. I would like to share his important reflection on the icons for Holy Week:
"These two icons were conceived as a matched set, and I keep them side by side in the room where I sleep and pray, so that they are the first thing I see every morning and the last thing I see every night. I am convinced that they are among the most luminous of Kelly Latimore’s icons, even as they aim to subvert the deadly dualism of light and darkness in the Christian tradition.
The icons provide a meditation on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the work of the liberator God of Exodus. They serve to remind us that God has taken the side of oppressed people everywhere and that God is still struggling for human freedom. They are intended as companions on an ongoing journey of prayer, repentance, and discipleship.
They were commissioned not long after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others. But the immediate impulse came from the death of James Cone in 2018. Cone has been a constant theological companion of mine since seminary, and I am interested in reading him in conversation with womanist theologians (especially Delores Williams, Jacqueline Grant, Kelly Brown Douglas, and M. Shawn Copeland)—some of them his students, colleagues, and friends, many of them quite critical of some aspects of his work. It was Cone who first taught me that “Jesus IS Black, because he WAS [an oppressed] Jew.”
These icons are meant to bring to mind Cone’s seminal work The Cross and the Lynching Tree. It is important for me to do so without making a spectacle of historical Black suffering. (Compare the controversy around Dana Schutz’s painting “Open Casket.”) And so, I asked Kelly to make his point of departure two older images (an El Greco painting of the crucifixion and an Orthodox icon of the resurrection), but to make the composition and other details his own and to portray Jesus and his disciples with African-American features. And so, taking their inspiration from the historic witness of the Black Church to Jesus Christ’s own solidarity with Black people, the icons make clear the Blackness of Jesus and the deep connection of his life and praxis (which come into sharpest focus in the story of his suffering, death, and resurrection) to the Black freedom struggle, as well as to other historic movements for freedom, justice, and human dignity.
For me, serving as a priest in a country with a history of slavery, lynching, and other forms of white supremacist violence, it is of crucial importance to make the deep connection (as Cone does) between lynching and the crucifixion of Jesus. Both are public acts of torture and murder, intended to terrify and subject other human beings and keep them in their so-called “place.” It is equally important to have images to pray with to encourage the ongoing process of conversion needed to make us more effective allies and participants in today’s struggles.
And yet, this is by no means the end of the story—for Jesus or for humanity. It is equally important to represent Jesus rising in power and restoring the bonds of life-giving fellowship, in a community defined by love and set free from all forms of domination and violence. In the icon, we can see Jesus encounter Mary Magdalene and other disciples ALIVE on the other side of suffering and death.
There are signs of his passion (note the whiteness of his wounds) and the violent world of Empire (past and present). At the same time, the gates of hell and bondage are shattered by the power of his life. And his community and relationships are reestablished on the other side of suffering, death, and the grave. The risen Jesus invites us to share his victory and his ongoing mission in the world—and therefore invites us into genuine forms of solidarity and liberatory praxis that are Good News for the oppressed, first and foremost, but then also for the whole world. Because in the words of Dr. King, “No one is free, until we are all free.” Or as Kelly Brown Douglas has expanded on this notion with particular emphasis on a womanist commitment to total liberation:
James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1975), p. 123. James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011). Kelly Brown Douglas, The Black Christ, Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2019), p. 122.
]]>