wfn.org | Minnesota crucifix offers an Americ

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June 6, 1997
Episcopal News Service
Jim Solheim, Director
212-922-5385
ens@ecunet.org

97-1759
Minnesota crucifix offers an American Indian Christ

by Walt Gordon
     (ENS) There was a space above the altar of Messiah Episcopal
Church at Prairie Island in Minnesota that just looked as though it needed
a cross. At least that's what Pete Taylor had always thought. Taylor is a
lifelong member of the Prairie Island tribal community and senior warden
of the congregation.
     One bright sunny afternoon in 1995, Taylor asked the vicar, the
Rev. Kathleen Galvin, why the church had no sanctuary cross, and
expressed the Taylor family's desire to secure one in memory of all the
ancestors--both Taylor family ancestors and those of the whole tribal
community--buried around the church. 
     The next day Mark DePalma of St. Patrick's Guild, a liturgical
arts company in St. Paul, came to Prairie Island to discuss the project,
and suggested a particular Italian sculptor. Months of across-the-seas
discussions with the DeMetz Art Studio in Ortesi, Italy, began.
     How was the decision made that this Christ would be American
Indian? Twenty years ago it would have been a radical idea, but now it
was taken for granted by both vicar and parishioners alike.

Crucifix mixes imagery
     Some of the Indian features of the Christ are obvious: the face,
the braids, the fringed loincloth. Others will be more familiar to those
who know the Sun Dance, the sacred annual ceremony of renewal among
the Dakota/Lakota people.
     The rays on the cross surrounding the figure call to mind the sun.
The fact that Christ is standing in the midst of the cross--in the midst of
the tree--calls to mind the sacred cottonwood of the Sun Dance
ceremony, through which the prayers of the people and of the earth are
seen as rising to heaven, akin to the way the Daily Office sees prayers
ascending "like incense."
     The Indianness of the Christ is just one part of the scuplture's
power, however. Where one might normally expect a crucifix one is
struck by the power of its resurrection imagery. Words like "bursting
from the tomb" come to mind, as if the cross itself were the tomb from
which Christ arose. But if the cross is also the tomb, it is a new image of
the tomb for it is of wood, of the earth. It evokes the image of St. Paul
about "all creation groaning in agony" until it is redeemed by Christ.
Christ's descent is now seen not only as a descent into hell and death but
also into the depths of creation, which is also brought into new life.
     The eyes of this Christ are clear and unafraid, full of strength yet
without triumphalism of any kind. This Christ is not a sacred victim; this
Christ is a sacred victor, one who has met evil and death head on and
overcome them with truth and love. 
     The eyes look neither intimately at loved ones at the foot of the
cross, nor into the far distance. They are looking ahead into life, near
enough to be in touch with the earth and its communities and people, far
enough to call the church on to new places.

A mingling of traditions
     Many in the community have expressed their amazement at how
seamlessly the young Italian wood sculptor has brought such new images
into the tradition of European religious art. It seems at one and the same
moment radically new and yet entirely within a rich centuries-old
tradition--the way new revelations are best brought into life, as fresh as
this morning and yet with the feeling that they express something always
known.
     That a sculptor several thousand miles away, who communicated
with members of a small Native American congregation through a church
art company in St. Paul, using faxed historical images of American
Indian people as models, could create such a work is to many members
of the small community an example of the mysterious working of the
Spirit in our day.
     The sculpture has been embraced by members of the Messiah
congregation, both Indian and Anglo, and has begun to make its way into
the hearts and consciousness of other members of the larger Prairie
Island community, as people gradually come by to see it, to ponder its
significance for them and for the time. 
     The sculpture was installed above the altar on December 23,
1996, and dedicated by Bishop Fred Putnam on March 16 of this year.

--The Rev. Walt Gordon is communication officer for the Episcopal
Diocese of
Minnesota.