Alphabets and Resurrection

 

Speak Out Against Nuclear War, a speech by Corita Kent from June 25, 1982.

“And we carry out that pledge by belonging to the whole world

As responsible, participating adults —

Committing ourselves to the making of this community,

To the making of this new peace,

Using all our energy, time, money and creativity. 

Peace will not be made for us by others —

It will not be given to us by others. 

We must make it ourselves, and it is very hard work and very dirty work. 

If we make it well, we are artists. If we don’t, it means the end. 

What else matters then — except to be artists?”

When I was a kid, I remember flipping through my mom’s cross stitch alphabet book. It included hundreds of alphabets, all with different designs and colors — chunky letters, curled letters, fat letters, bubbly letters, stick letters, animals and plants and vegetables in the shapes of letters. I loved looking at these alphabets and tried drawing them on paper. I would make birthday cards and Mother’s Day cards with these alphabets, drawing my friends’ names in funky letters that I thought matched their personalities.

Corita Kent, the “pop art nun” who made silkscreen prints about justice, God, and love in the 1960s and beyond, has a print called ‘words of prayer.’ On a bright fuschia pink background, there’s an intricate yellow alphabet next to a quote from a Hasidic story: “He repeated the letters of the alphabet over and over beseeching the Almighty to arrange them into the appropriate words of the prayers.”

There’s something comforting to me about this print and its story, about someone not having the words to pray and just saying the alphabet over and over, trusting that the prayer will be created from the letters themselves. 

This reverence for letters and alphabets is a rich part of the Jewish mystic tradition. Ben Shahn, an artist and contemporary of Kent, loved letters and is known for his distinct block-lettered alphabet. He even wrote a book called Love and Joy About Letters. One of Shahn’s serigraphs is called ‘Alphabet of Creation,’ and it has all 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet thick and gnarled and overlapping with one another. Its name is based off a tale from the Zohar, The Book of Splendor, a text of Jewish mysticism. 

The legend says that 26 generations before the creation of the world, the alphabet descended from the throne of God, glistening. Each of the 22 Hebrew letters, “engraved with a pen of flaming fire,” came before the Lord and asked that the world be created through it.

Each letter has its turn before God, and we learn the good and bad sides of each letter. The story reminds us that the same letters we use to bless are the same letters we use to curse.

I think about this, too, with art. How much art and writing is used for propaganda and harm, even if it is “beautiful,” even if it is well-crafted and designed and celebrated? What about when it advances violence and harm?

If we make [peace] well, we are artists. If we don’t, it means the end. I have to check myself — what is the motivation of my writing and creating? Why do I dedicate my time and energy and passion to this? Does it make any sort of ripple? Is it a kind and loving thing to do in the world?

A few weeks ago, I stayed with Trappist nuns in Iowa. I asked a few of them, “How do you see yourselves in relation with the rest of the world, as contemplative and cloistered nuns?” One responded that there’s a saying that when a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil, the effects are felt in Europe. She said she has to believe that their prayers for the world, living in constant prayer, do make a difference, that because we are so interconnected as human beings the prayers do something we can’t see and will never see. Another sister answered with a Dorothy Day quote about Jesus being just as present in a person living without shelter, as a person in a warzone, as in the Eucharist. What is authentic to her, what she is called to, is to love and give her life to that Jesus in the Eucharist, and through this she loves Christ everywhere.

This was a grounding reminder of trusting that God places different desires, personalities, and ways of being in the world, and through the very person we are, we are called to bring peace to the world in our own ways. Corita Kent once said that she admires people who protest and march but was too scared to do so herself, so she did what was authentic to her and made all kinds of art spreading messages about true justice and resisting violence. She preferred the word “maker” to “artist.” Peace-maker, for her, I think, would connotate a literal creation with one’s hands. The hard and dirty work. Not just in my head or inwardly in my heart, but something that comes out into the world, however it’s most authentic for me to live out, knowing I have to have a role in this creating. I have a role in these words and letters to be used for resurrection. 

It’s Holy Week now. I’m accompanying a beloved friend as he prepares for baptism this Easter. I’m experiencing Holy Week with a freshness, like splashing my face with cold, startling, refreshing water. It feels particularly precious and alive. And I’m aware of lingering sadness for the world, when resurrection feels empty sometimes.

And when we are tired and have no words, through our beloved letters, we still trust that God will create prayer in us for the world. In A Metaphorical God, Gail Ramshaw writes our human adoration is “all so many words… an alphabet shouted out into the abyss, preceded by a prayer that the angels will shape it into a canticle of praise.”
For these words to be shaped into praise — only God can do that through me. So with our own authentic alphabet, may we always be peacemakers: Using all our energy, time, money and creativity.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cassidy Klein is a writer and journalist based in Chicago, Illinois. She grew up in Denver, Colorado, and attended Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California, to study journalism and philosophy. She previously worked at L’Arche Chicago and Sojourners magazine. Cassidy lives in an intentional community called The Fireplace and is editorial assistant at U.S. Catholic magazine. Find more of her work at cassidyrklein.weebly.com.