Just Singing

(Artwork from sculpture “Just Singing” by Allan Houser Haozous, 1977, Allan Houser Gallery, Sante Fe, New Mexico)

I am a big fan of a book called The Artists’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. In this workbook for nurturing one’s inner creativity, the author, Julia Cameron, recommends making a regular artist’s date with oneself. She says, “An artist date is a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist.”
Last week, visiting friends in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I made an artist’s date to see the gallery of the Apache painter and stone and bronze sculptor Allan Houser Haozous, described by some as the Native American Rodin. I resonated particularly with a piece titled “Just Singing”—a 24-inch high abstract representation in bronze of a tall, lean Apache man, his head leaning back, singing. I can imagine the sound chanting forth from the elongated open cavity of this sculpture, encompassing the singer’s belly and chest. From the deepest bodily recesses of his creativity, the singer has given himself over to chant and song. Abandoning himself to a religious impulse, the singer finds true harmony with his environment. His embodied chant harmonizes him into full-throated right relationship. Harmonizing with his world, the singer, in turn, can express his longing to bring forth justice.

Head back, chanting from the deepest recesses of his lament at injustice and his visceral longing for right relationship, the deep, rhythmic voice of Allan Houser Haozous’s Apache singer harmonizes with the deepest impulses of justice scripturally held up for us in today’s post-exilic reading from chapter 58 of the prophet Isaiah.

Isaiah 58:3b–12
Thus says the LORD:
If you remove from your midst oppression,
false accusation and malicious speech;
If you bestow your bread on the hungry
and satisfy the afflicted;
Then light shall rise for you in the darkness,
and the gloom shall become for you like midday;
Then the LORD will guide you always
and give you plenty even on the parched land.
He will renew your strength,
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring whose water never fails.
The ancient ruins shall be rebuilt for your sake,
and the foundations from ages past you shall raise up;
“Repairer of the breach,” they shall call you,
“Restorer of ruined homesteads.”
February 17, 2024
Saturday after Ash Wednesday
Gregory Heille, OP, Director, Doctor of Ministry in Preaching
Aquinas Institute of Theology, St. Louis, Missouri
Preaching today from Santa Maria de la Vid Norbertine Abbey in Albuquerque, New Mexico

Just Singing
ARTIST: ALLAN HOUSER HAOZOUS, 1977
ALLAN HOUSER GALLERY, SANTE FE, NEW MEXICO
I am a big fan of a book called The Artists’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. In this workbook for nurturing one’s inner creativity, the author, Julia Cameron, recommends making a regular artist’s date with oneself. She says, “An artist date is a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist.”
Last week, visiting friends in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I made an artist’s date to see the gallery of the Apache painter and stone and bronze sculptor Allan Houser Haozous, described by some as the Native American Rodin. I resonated particularly with a piece titled “Just Singing”—a 24-inch high abstract representation in bronze of a tall, lean Apache man, his head leaning back, singing. I can imagine the sound chanting forth from the elongated open cavity of this sculpture, encompassing the singer’s belly and chest. From the deepest bodily recesses of his creativity, the singer has given himself over to chant and song. Abandoning himself to a religious impulse, the singer finds true harmony with his environment. His embodied chant harmonizes him into full-throated right relationship. Harmonizing with his world, the singer, in turn, can express his longing to bring forth justice.

Head back, chanting from the deepest recesses of his lament at injustice and his visceral longing for right relationship, the deep, rhythmic voice of Allan Houser Haozous’s Apache singer harmonizes with the deepest impulses of justice scripturally held up for us in today’s post-exilic reading from chapter 58 of the prophet Isaiah.

Isaiah 58:3b–12
Thus says the LORD:
If you remove from your midst oppression,
false accusation and malicious speech;
If you bestow your bread on the hungry
and satisfy the afflicted;
Then light shall rise for you in the darkness,
and the gloom shall become for you like midday;
Then the LORD will guide you always
and give you plenty even on the parched land.
He will renew your strength,
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring whose water never fails.
The ancient ruins shall be rebuilt for your sake,
and the foundations from ages past you shall raise up;
“Repairer of the breach,” they shall call you,
“Restorer of ruined homesteads.”