This morning I woke up thinking about my desire to go to the Hagia Sophia which is the oldest church in the world. It was built by Constantine and is now a museum. I imagined it filled with religious art and I remembered the time that I missed church to see some beautiful caves one Sunday in Korea with some massive rock formations that resembled underground cathedrals filled with pipe organs, and some other formations that reminded me of the human circulatory system and led me toward some wonderful thoughts about our creator and how all of his glorious works flow together so cohesively that we barely even notice it. It's like if he didn't exist outside of time, we would say things like "this was sculpted during his water and stone period" or some other pretentious art history geek-type phrase.

So, I've thought about skipping church to visit an art museum. If I were at home in Columbus, I probably wouldn't miss the opportunity to worship with all of the friends that I haven't seen in such a long time, but there's a piece at the Columbus Museum of art that I want to take another look at, It's a giant mosaic of Christ on the cross and it is made out of broken dishes. You don't touch works of art, but you really wouldn't want to touch this one, you might cut yourself.

Once, when my old boyfriend Kevin J. smashed a big mirror to bits in our home during one of our many fights, or breakups (I don't remember which), I took that mirror and made a rough mosaic out of it and a bunch of other bits of things like an earring from my wedding attire that like me had lost it's mate, and some red candle wax. I don't know what happened to that piece. I didn't value my creation and I left it behind when I moved my upholstery work out of some studio space that I had rented. Maybe it's still there. I called it "Broken when recieved" and it will never hang in a museum, but it was a really good expression of what I was feeling then. I was living a life that I hated. It was going nowhere and all that I could see was my brokenness. I couldn't see a solution, but because somewhere inside myself, I knew that a solution was possible, so I took the broken pieces and made some art out of it.

The Crucifix made from broken cups and bowls was amazing, I think. I don't know if the artist meant to convey his own brokenness on that cross, but when I think of it now, it's all that I can think about. I wish that I'd taken that broken mirror and turned it into a kind of crucifix. Jesus became sin on that cross, so those broken bits with the sharp edges would represent my sins and the mess that was my life.

Maybe some Christians would be offended by such a piece. I wouldn't have worried about whether Jesus was ummm...anatomically correct, it would have been hard to do that with broken mirror bits, and I probably wouldn't use shiny mirrors in such a creation. Old cloudy mirrors collected from junk shops would make the expression clearer, and if I managed to cut myself while creating the thing, I'd let myself bleed on it a bit. He became sin.

I'm sorta meditating on that thought. Jesus who never sinned in his life, became sin. Sin is messy. When you friend is struggling with a big sin issue or addiction, sometimes you have to back away a bit and get some distance on the scene so that you won't face too much tempation yourself. Even the closest followers ran away from Jesus when he was hanging on that cross.

So, I can't wait to see the Hagia Sophia and when I get back to the states, I want to see some of the less traditional representations of Christ on the cross. Piss Jesus comes to mind. He died for a world that would do nothing but mock him and had it not been for an act of charity from a believer, would have been happy to throw his body in a dump and let the animals eat what they could and pee on the rest. Works as offensive of that reflect the reality of the situation.

And then there was the Chocolate Jesus that was anatomically correct. I had to turn off the morning broadcast when our local Christian radio hosts held a conversation and took calls discussing how offensive it was. Ummmm...if you are going to beat someone half to death and then nail him to a couple of boards where you will leave him to die of exposure, stripping him of all his dignity, are you going to make sure that his underwear stays put? I think not. My sweet lord died for me and he did it with no dignity whatsoever. I couldn't love him more if he were made of chocolate. Maybe the artist loved him too. The DJ's weren't talking about the truth, they were just tickling people's ears...but I digress.

The tomb wasn't necessary. Jesus would have risen from the dead despite any decomposition or abuses of his corpse, if an artist depicts the abuse of Christ on the cross in a non-traditional way, it's no different than Mel Gibson making a bad film. (Some critics likened it to a BDSM film and a lot of Christians really loved all of the blood and gore, perhaps because Mel wore a loincloth, I don't know, I passed on that bit of hypocrisy,) Jesus was the Messiah and because he conquered death, we can have victory in our own lives through our relationship with him. That's the important thing, so if the work of art isn't "pretty" and creates a lot of controversy, but puts Christ message in the news, I'm a happy princess.