Over the holidays last year, we enjoyed a family kaffeeklatsch at my house. My youngest daughter, a teacher, gathered the nieces and nephews to play a made-up game, a hybrid of “I Spy” and scavenger hunt.
Anyone visiting my home notices immediately upon entering that my entry and library are awash with icons and other art symbolic of the Transcendent function of the psyche. American psychiatrist and psychotherapist John Beebe explains that “The Transcendent function is realized synchronistically when there is a shift away from a desire to know and control towards a desire to relate and understand.” 1
The desire to relate to another and understand is, according to many religious teachers, philosophers, and psychological theorists to be the epitome of self-transcendence.
Making use of this backdrop, after a few practice rounds, the children were instructed to “find baby Jesus.” My then seven-year-old grandgirl approached and, taking me by the hand, asked me to help her find Baby Jesus. Standing there, holding her little hand in mine, I gazed down into her cocoa-colored eyes, shining with ambition. As she earnestly regarded me through a sea of unruly dark curls, I realized I had a problem in my house: white Jesus, and white people.
I’ve acquired quite a collection of antique and modern icons, with a few depictions of Jesus here and there, but while standing in the midst of my large family–where the people of color outnumber the white ones–I realized that I had fallen short as a Nana. Not only does my religious art underscore the global influence and religious depictions of white supremacy, it’s untrue. 2 Most are aware that Jesus simply couldn’t have been white.3
Even as my granddaughter and I meandered through the house in search of Baby Jesus, I was explaining that we know that Jesus must have been brown-skinned, and wouldn’t have resembled the image we were about to see. “This one isn’t right,” said I, “because Baby Jesus would actually have looked a lot like you.” She beamed.
All this time my son and daughter-in-law and other adult children looked on and laughed, cheering this truth-telling and instruction, because That’s What Mum Does. I’m always trying to teach something, and want to side with truth—even if that truth is a bitter one requiring mea culpas, and makes me or my expensive Baby Jesus sculpture something of a joke.
The following week, I resolved to correct the racial and cultural imbalance among my icons. Amid many examples of cheap art peddled to the public as “ethnic religious art,” I finally stumbled into the Etsy shop of Santa Fe artist Christina Miller, 3 who writes the most amazing icons, including all variety of races and traditions that include Christianity, but go beyond that faith, too. 4
Since that day when fun and games at Nana’s transmogrified into lessons in truth, humility and atonement, there are more historically accurate depictions of Jesus in my home, even if the Christian church has yet to change theirs. Worldwide, we continue to expect people of all races to revere a savior who never was white, which in my mind is the perpetuation of a system that can have only one aim—the preservation of the godless doctrine of white superiority.
White folks can and ought to do better than we’ve done and are still doing. None of us can change an entire culture or worldview on our own, but we can change ourselves, our households, and work to influence our faith and other communities.
endnotes
- Beebe, J. Response to: Another Degree of Complexity by Anya Agnel. In Proceedings of the XII Int. Congress for Analytical Psychology Chicago 1992. Einsiedeln: Daimon Verlag, Vol. 199, p. 118, 1993. ↩︎
- Definition of white supremacy: A socio-political economic system of domination based on racial categories that benefit those defined and perceived as white. This system rests on the historical and current accumulation of structural power that privileges, centralizes, and elevates white people as a group. In Diangelo, Robin. No, I Won’t Stop Saying White Supremacy. Yes Magazine. 30 June 2017. ↩︎
- See Christina Miller Art at Etsy. ↩︎
- In the Orthodox Christian tradition, icons are said to be written, not painted. The Orthodox consider making icons more a form of prayer than art, believing the iconographer’s hand is guided by God. While Miller espouses no religion through her art, it speaks spirit in volumes. I chose to use the word “write” because of the profound influence her work has had on so many. ↩︎
recommended reading
Blum, Edward J. and Paul Harvey. The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America. University of North Carolina Press, 2014.
Kiehl, Emilija. The Transcendent Function. IAAP, N.D.
The Third Eve: Mercy Triumphs Over Judgment
Images Copyright © Christina Miller 2001. Used by permission of the artist.
Visit Christina Miller at Etsy
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