Jesus Baptized.

i. Water ( Oil on Canvas. Faces Series: Jesus in the Waters, 2002. Collection of Mr. Bernard Kilroy. U.K.)

Water figures in many of Jyoti’s paintings, as too in biblical imagery: the waters that were ‘the face of the deep’ before creation; the waters of the flood, over which the rainbow shone, sign of God’s covenant of peace with all creation; the waters of the Red Sea parting to liberate the fleeing slaves, the ‘children of Israel’; the ‘water of life’ with which Jesus identified himself, both with the alienated woman at the well and during debate in the temple; the waters of baptism - that of Jesus and of those who accept his way.

The face of Jesus here depicts him at that turning point, his baptism in the Jordan, with the descent of the Spirit when he was declared Son of God in a special way. Jesus has become part with the waters. His character is innately like that of water. For (to quote Jyoti): water seeks out the lowest place. Or, as Francis says in his Hymn to Creation, the waters are humble - they offer life to others and for others - and in themselves are clear, like light.

Like the Spirit hovering over the waters at creation, in the new creation that Jesus points to the dove-like Spirit infuses his mind and being, leading Jesus to begin his ministry of healing, sharing his vision of a new world, accepting into his new community those falsely alienated and demeaned by others. We recall that it was a dove which brought back the olive branch, symbol of peace, when sent out to by Noah to search the flood-waters for a secure place of refuge.

Jesus the fire on earth.

ii. Fire (Oil on Canvas. Faces Series: Jesus the Fiery Prophet, 2002. Collection of the artist.)

Fire too is a frequently found image in Jyoti’s painting. For, the works and words of Jesus are not only about healing and compassion; he is also the fiercely critical prophet of unjust ways that wound the poor, the vulnerable and those pushed aside from their God-intended place in the human community, their rightful share of earth’s life.

Jyoti quotes Jesus words: ‘I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish that it were already kindled’. He is the burning bush, who speaks to Moses from the fire, declaring that he has seen the suffering of his people, and is about to act to set them free. Jesus is consumed with anger because he sees and feels all the evil of the world, and how creation needs to be transformed...In some tribal stories too there is going to be a great fire, a fire that will clear away the thorns and choking weeds of the forest, leading to re-generation of earth’s life.

Jesus the Stone that was rejected.

iii. Rock (Oil on Canvas. Faces Series: Jesus, the Rejected Stone, 2002 Collection of the artist.)

Rock-imagery is, again, central to biblical stories. There is the rock struck by Moses in the desert, from which water gushed out and quenched the thirst of God’s people. This struck rock recalls the words of Psalmist (quoted by Peter) speaking of a living rock, rejected by the builders, but now a corner-stone of such great worth. The prophet Isaiah is quoted too: this rock can for some people become a rock of offence or stumbling. More often, though, the Lord is the ‘rock of our salvation’, ‘our defence’, ‘our fortress’.

Again, Jyoti relates the ‘rejected’, ‘broken’ rock to the Dalit Jesus. Dal can mean broken, crushed, and this image shows the broken, fractured figure of Jesus rather as we see his form in the Holy Shroud, where we are reminded that Jesus was not only pierced, but struck in the face and crowned with thorns.

Crucifixion in the Grove. Oil and acrylic on cloth pasted on board. Refectory of the Holy Cross Fathers, Katpadi, Near Udipi, Mangalore.)

As an indication of just how important trees are for Jyoti, eleven of the fifteen pictures of this series give prominence to trees - even when the theme is the Song of Redemption. In fact, as the climax of this ‘song’, Jyoti depicts the Cross as a tree, with Jesus as inseparably part of a gnarled, though golden-bronze coloured tree.

Earlier Christian devotion often spoke of the cross as a tree. Charles Wesley (whose 300th birth-anniversary is celebrated in 2007) echoes long-held devotion to the cross as tree:
Endless scenes of wonder rise
From that mysterious tree...
Faith cries out: ‘Tis he, ‘tis he,
My God, that suffers there!
Or: Would Jesus have the sinner die?
Why hangs he then on yonder tree?
...Thou loving, all-atoning Lamb,
Thee - by thy painful agony,
Thy sweat of blood, thy grief and shame,
Thy cross and passion on the tree...

This fascination with tree-imagery goes deeper than the mere fact of the wooden beams of the cross having come from a tree. The tree - as earth-rooted, as sky-reaching, as refuge, as leaf-bearer, as life-enhancer, as giver of fruit, medicine, resin, as the most prominent signifier of the seasons - the tree is potently archetypal for the human race. In ancient cultural life the tree was the centre, the ‘axis’ of the world.

Jesus dies on the Tree

Tree ( Oil on Canvas, in a series ‘When God played the song of redemption’. 1984. Collection of the Missions Prokura sj. Nuerenberg. )

In this cross-tree, then, age-old and deep-rooted human intuitions, archetypal memories, mingle with the very particular passion of Jesus - mythic truths and his-story come together. Both streams flow deep in the consciousness and faith of Jesus-followers.

The central place for the tree in the experience of ‘tribal’ people hardly needs stressing. Of the ‘world’ religions, it is Buddhist spirituality that gives the tree most prominence. For it was under the Peepul tree that Siddhartha sat in meditation, seeking the secret of things with absolute resolve. It was there he eventually achieved inner ‘awakening’, ‘illumination’, so becoming the ‘Buddha’. (A picture in Jyoti’s Our Father series shows Jesus sitting, Buddha-style, under a tree that shines like the sun, lifting up his hands to that golden light).

The cross-tree of which Jesus is so inextricably part here seems twisted, gnarled, lacking any life or attractive shape. The figure of Jesus is deformed - rather as the Prophet wrote of God’s servant who would ‘never falter or be crushed until he sets justice on earth’ (Isaiah 42:4) : ‘...like a plant whose roots are in parched ground, he had no beauty, no majesty to catch our eyes, no grace to attract us to him’ (53:2). The figure on this cross-tree is not only wounded, but de-formed. Yet, those who saw the secret of life in this death drew on the earlier prophetic word: ‘By his wounds we have been healed’ (53:5).

Yet his arms still seem almost to embrace the women, in blue and gold, who bow in bewildered but loving devotion. The outstretched arms also seem to hold in place the terracotta-coloured circular shape behind the cross. Thus the cross-tree gives meaning and life to the whole earth. The crucified one, lifted up, draws the whole earth unto himself.

The cross-tree, then, is planted firmly in earth’s life. There is a hard unflinching realism to the Jesus-story.

Jesus the Healer.

Jesus the folk healer. Oil on Canvas. Part of a dyptich of the Dalit Jesus. Collection of the Missions Prokura sj. Nuerenberg.

The search for cosmic integration in India was most forcefully expressed in the vision of the whole universe as forming the body of God. Many ancient texts refer to it, but it was the 11th century theologian Ramanuja (born 1017CE) who made this theme central to his (Vedantic) belief-system. God is the inner Self of all, and all else forms the ‘inseparably related’ body of God. Theologically, culturally, spiritually, this vision of things has wonderfully inclusive implications. It is a recurring theme explicit in many of the writings of Eric Lott, and is certainly implicit in much of the art of Jyoti Sahi.

Compelling as may be this vision of wholeness, the realities of both human and earth’s brokenness press hard on us. The longed-for state of cosmic shanta still seems little more than a distant dream. In India, it is the brokenness of the Dalit (and in different ways ‘Tribal’) people that most painfully strikes the heart of those who have seen both this vision of wholeness and the pain of God in the face of fellow-humans. Having seen the ‘face of God’ in the tortured yet glory-tinged face of Jesus, we have also seen that face in the oppression and pain of the ‘Broken People’. Their brokenness is part of the brokenness of Christ’s body. Jesus is a Dalit as much as he is Cosmic Lord.

Lest we become lost in dreams of ultimate togetherness, then, ‘God-in-Christ’ also becomes embodied in the particular face of those broken by life. Followers of Christ can never forget the world’s pain, and the very particular, very problematic ways in which that pain is manifest.

In Christian faith, therefore, the Cross is integral to understanding cosmos, the broken Body of Christ is integral to our vision of the healing of the whole body - personal, social, cosmic. The faithful - praying and living out their vision - look for signs of hope. Potent ‘signs’ leading up to that great Cross-sign, are the healing acts of Jesus - though no one should exclude ways of healing and hope opened up in other faith-traditions too. In sometimes very different ways we have been given a vision of the great community of creation, the family of creation, bound together into the all-inclusive body of God. This remains a compelling vision, whatever the seemingly insuperable obstacles to such togetherness.

As a potent sign of that longed-for cosmic harmony, acts of healing are central to the Gospel story. As Healer, Jesus sometimes seems akin to the Shaman healing-figure in traditional cultures. There is a struggle with ‘evil powers’, there are times when he sighs, groans, weeps, when he feels power being drawn out of him. Jesus becomes a wounded healer, one ‘by whose wounds we are healed’, as prophecy puts it.

Thus, the healing acts prefigure both the passion and the resurrection life of Jesus. In the act of healing, as well as the dis-stress Jesus experiences, there is the higher level of experience, an ec-stasis in the Spirit, into which he moves. This is the ‘shamanic’ mode through which divine healing takes place. Each healing act then becomes a ‘sign’ of the new life of God’s kingdom to come. God’s promised rule of peace and wholeness, is already breaking in.

The feeling of need for a channelling of divine power in the face of sickness and disease is still very strong in India. The burial-place of Muslim and Hindu saints, ‘God-men’ like Sai Baba, tribal shaman-figures, Christian pilgrimage-centres: all are seen as potential channels of healing. There are strong contextual co pulsions, as well as theological reasons, why the healing acts of Jesus are of such great importance in Jyoti’s perception and portrayal of the Gospel-story. They are, too, of a piece with that cosmic harmony anticipated in the image of everything bound up in the great body of God.
Images
a. Dalit brokenness
b. Drum/Drummer
c. Healer (Shaman)
d. Bird (Hamsa)

Jesus the Dalit

Oil on Canvas, part of a dyptich of the Dalit Jesus. Collection of the Missions Prokura sj Nuerenberg.

Theme III The Body: Broken & Whole

The Body - such a complex organism - carries extraordinary significance in all human cultural life. It is at the centre, too, of Hindu as well as Christian reflective tradition. For Christians, that the body is divinely created and is ‘the temple of God’s Spirit’, that Jesus was a fully incarnate person (the embodiment of the eternal Word in his case), that he declared ‘this is my body’ concerning sacramental bread, and that it is the body which in some way is to be resurrected - all these beliefs give the body central importance for Christian faith.

Yet, the body has also been seen as the arena of the soul’s battle with our lower nature, usually called the ‘flesh’, so that at times the body itself, especially sexual experience, has been despised and denigrated. Indeed, this earlier Christian aversion to the pleasures of the body, and the unhealthy repression related to it, has sometimes been blamed for many of the ills suffered within the western psyche. Hindu attitudes (Buddhist, especially Tibetan Buddhist attitudes too), it is claimed, are very different and much more healthy.

Yet, Hindu feelings too about the body have often been far from unambiguously positive. There has been strict ascetic practice as well as exuberant celebration of the body, including its sexuality. In the ‘Great God’ Siva we find both rigorous discipline of the body and roisterous delight in its powers. He is the Silent Muni, sitting alone with all senses withdrawn. But he is also the Lord of Dance, fabled for his creative potency and sexual vigour.

The life-stages noted earlier also include similar mixed Hindu attitudes to the body. We saw both the affirmation of the body’s life in family life - procreation, nurturing children, working to support the family. But there was also - in life’s culminating phase - withdrawal from and ‘renunciation’ of all such relationships. In the more technical terms of the ‘four goals of life’ there is both active dharma (’right ordering’) and there is, finally, the serene freedom of moksha, when the soul is set free from all the cramping limitations life in this karma-bound body.

All religious experience includes polarities and paradox of some kind. Often these are called coincidentia oppositorum, the coming together of opposites. In Hindu aesthetic tradition the body’s feelings have been listed in terms of opposing pairs of nine rasas or moods. First we have four pairs of opposites: There is that which is experienced as joyfully attractive (sringara) - drawing us to the beauty of the world; and there is its opposite, that which is disgustingly repellant (bibhatsa), causing us to turn away from the world. There is compassion (karuna), involving us in concern for the world and its need; and there is fierce anger (krodha), caused by that which is wrong in the world. There is heroic courage (vira); and there is its opposite, fearful terror (bhayanka). Then there is the experience of great sorrow (dukkha, or shoka), often linked with the recognition of the ephemeral nature of the world’s life; and there is playful laughter (hasya), experiencing the world as lila, play.
Another pair, that could also be seen as opposites, is sometimes added: wonder (adbhuta) and motherly affection (vatsalya).

It is when the tensions of all these opposites are finally resolved that we have the serene equilibrium of eternal peace (shanta). Such untouchable tranquillity is the ultimate goal of the varied postures and practices of yoga (in its classical form at least). ‘Yoga’ means ‘yoked’ - all sensory experience being controlled, integrated, or ‘yoked’ to, at peace with, the inner self. In fact all prayers, ending as they usually do with ‘peace, peace, peace’, aim finally at this state of integration, whether personal or cosmic.