We are a small Episcopal Church on the banks of the Rappahannock in Port Royal, Virginia. We acknowledge that we gather on the traditional land of the first people of Port Royal, the Nandtaughtacund, and we respect and honor with gratitude the land itself, the legacy of the ancestors, and the life of the Rappahannock Tribe. Our mission statement is to do God’s Will in all that we do.

Art

“For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet”, by Joy Harjo


Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that bottle of pop.
Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control.
Open the door, then close it behind you.
Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel the earth gathering essences of plants to clean.
Give it back with gratitude.
If you sing it will give your spirit lift to fly to the stars’ ears and back.
Acknowledge this earth who has cared for you since you were a dream planting itself precisely within your parents’ desire.
Let your moccasin feet take you to the encampment of the guardians who have known you before time, who will be there after time. They sit before the fire that has been there without time.
Let the earth stabilize your postcolonial insecure jitters.
Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people who accompany you.
Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought down upon them.
Don’t worry. The heart knows the way though there may be high-rises, interstates, checkpoints, armed soldiers, massacres, wars, and those who will despise you because they despise themselves.
The journey might take you a few hours, a day, a year, a few years, a hundred, a thousand or even more.
Watch your mind. Without training it might run away and leave your heart for the immense human feast set by the thieves of time.
Do not hold regrets.
When you find your way to the circle, to the fire kept burning by the keepers of your soul, you will be welcomed.
You must clean yourself with cedar, sage, or other healing plant.
Cut the ties you have to failure and shame.
Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders, your heart, all the way to your feet.
Let go the pain of your ancestors to make way for those who are heading in our direction.
Ask for forgiveness.
Call upon the help of those who love you. These helpers take many forms: animal, element, bird, angel, saint, stone, or ancestor.
Call your spirit back. It may be caught in corners and creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse.
You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.
Speak to it as you would to a beloved child.
Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be happy to be found after being lost for so long.
Your spirit will need to sleep awhile after it is bathed and given clean clothes.
Now you can have a party. Invite everyone you know who loves and supports you. Keep room for those who have no place else to go.
Make a giveaway, and remember, keep the speeches short.
Then, you must do this: help the next person find their way through the dark.

A Discovered Leonardo Painting, “Salvador Mundi”

The painting fits our Gospel reading this week. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” – John 6:51

The fact that its “Salvador Mundi” by Leonardo da Vinci makes it even the  more special. The discovering of a new Leonardo painting shook the art world in 2011. There were only some fourteen surviving Leonardo paintings in the world and the last one to be discovered was the “Benois Madonna” more than 100 years ago.  This one was thought to exist only in copies.

This painting is small, 2×1.5 feet with cracked wooden frame and had suffered from centuries of neglect and poor restorations.The panel had also been subjected — unsuccessfully — to a forced flattening, and then glued to another backing. The worst offenses were crude areas of overpainting, in an attempt to hide the botched panel repair. And then there was plain old dirt and grime.

It shows Christ facing facing forwards with two fingers of his right hand raised in blessing and a crystal globe in his left hand.  “Salvator Mundi” (Savior of the World) painted in 1500 is known to have been owned by English king, Charles I before moving around various private collections until 2005, when the current owner brought it to Robert Simon of Robert Simon Fine Art to study.

There were three immediate clues of the true painter:

1 One was a so-called “pentimento,” an alteration in the painting showing traces of previous work

2 The other was the painting of Christ’s curls. Leonardo’s St. John the Baptist at the Louvre had the same curls.

3 The fingers were especially significant because, as Oxford Leonardo expert Martin Kemp put it, “All the versions of the ‘Salvator Mundi’  have rather tubular fingers. What Leonardo had done, and the copyists and imitators didn’t pick up, was to get just how the knuckle sort of sits underneath the skin.”

It was compared to two preparatory drawings, housed in the Royal Library at Windsor, that Leonardo made for it. It was also compared to some 20 known copies and found to be superior to all of them.  The new owners desired to build a consensus for this conclusion that it was a Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo provided an original treatment of this subject. Look at  the orb or world resting in Christ’s left palm.  Normally this orb was painted as brass or gold, may have had vague landforms mapped on it, and was topped by a crucifix. We know that Leonardo was a Roman Catholic, as were all of his patrons. However, he creates what appears to be a sphere of rock crystal.   It reflects Leonardos studies what later became optics. Looking through it shows the natural distortion of looking through glass or crystal.  Fundamentally, Leonardo was always trying to connect the natural and spiritual worlds together. No one had created a world like this which was very realistic!