My favourite Christmas reflection -- artwork and narrative. Canadian artist William Kurelek's A Northern Nativity: christmas dreams of a prairie boy is a stunning collection of images and incarnational imaginings. Kurelek (1927-1977) based this book on his own childhood dreams (in the Depression years) coupled with his adult life experience -- on the theme that Christ came to all people, everywhere. What would happen if He came now? He imagines that the nativity takes place in northern snows. He dreams that the Christ child is born to Eskimos, to Indians, to Blacks, that the Nativity takes place in a fisherman’s hut, a garage, a cowboy’s barn, that the holy family is given refuge in a city mission, a grain barn, and a country school. Try getting through one page without tears... that the God of the universe knows, recognizes, accepts and incarnates in all cultures, spaces and worldviews.
The Holy Family as [Eskimo]
Against a deep black sky, the northern lights play -- and the perpetual night of outer space is pricked with the sharp jabs of a million stars. Fluted snow fields stretch toward the horizon where hummocky crags of ice have been piled up by the crunch of the tide against the land. In a seal hunter's half-igloo shelter sit a woman and child. The child is fondling a roly-poly husky pup. Nearby, a fur-clad man is tending some sleigh dogs. Around his head, a strange light flickers. It also surrounds the faces of the mother and child.
A surge of excitement fills Willam as he recognizes the Holy Family -- the simple, saintly Joseph; the virgin Mary, gentlest of mothers; and the infant Jesus, the Son of God Himself.
William feels an urge to sing in celebration of the scene. But the words of the carol come out jumbled... "And Arctic nature sings, and Arctic nature sings..." He sees himself asleep at the edge of the dream, and he wants to wake himself up so that he will remember forever the picture and the joy it brought him.
[see last year's post, here]
Comments