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| "Anthony of Padua" by Kehinde Wiley, 2013 A.D. at Seattle Art Museum (SAM) |
Our longing for an identity is bound up with finding a story. + James K.A. Smith, On the Road with Saint Augustine
For this special City Notes (CN) focused on our search for identity, in honor of All Saints Day on November 1, I wanted to highlight a creative reflection on a modern piece of artwork that captures the paradox of both swagger and sainthood combined. The adapted excerpts below come from James K.A. Smith's unique award-winning book, On the Road with St. Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts, a favorite spiritual read of mine for 2022 alongside Red Skies, When Faith Fails, The God in the Garden, Living Under Water, Being with God, Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools, and Run with the Horses.
On the Road with St. Augustine is part memoir, part roadtrip, part biography, part philosophical reflection, and yet, something even more. But for today, it's an invitation to you to imagine your identity as a saint in God's story.
Story: What Do I Want When I Want an Identity?
The artist, Kehinde Wiley, called the painting Anthony of Padua. This young man (seen above) was given a new name, a new identity carried in his very pose. And not just any identity: Wiley invoked a saint, Anthony of Padua. As a young man, the Portuguese Fernando Martins had left his home to become a novice at an Augustinian abbey just outside Lisbon. But when he heard the story of Franciscans who had been martyred in Morocco, Fernando, who would become Anthony of Padua, was granted permission to leave the abbey and join the Franciscans.
Anthony was known for his immersion in the Scriptures and his power as a preacher and orator – which is why in later iconography he would be pictured with a book, sometimes with the Christ child resting upon it (as in El Greco's portrayal). In popular piety, St. Anthony is the patron saint of lost things ("Tony, Tony, look around. Something's lost and must be found!"), a charism that seems to trace back to an episode in which Anthony lost his psalter, a book of psalms, full of his notes, and in the days before printing presses, when every book had to be copied by hand, it was worth a lot of money. Anthony had no idea where it had gone, so he prayed that God would bring it back to him. As he prayed, a young man across town was struck with remorse. He had been one of Anthony's students, but his faith had wavered, and he'd decided to run away from the monastery and sell Anthony's book for money to live. But in answer to Anthony's prayer, God touched the young man's heart. He came back to the monastery to return the book. But more important, the young man decided to stay (see the beautiful book, Stories of the Saints: Bold and Inspiring Tales of Adventure, Grace, and Courage by Carey Wallace and illustrated by Nick Thornburrow to read this part of the story).
What's happening, then, when Wiley titles his work Anthony of Padua? As critics have pointed out, the painting is a contemporary example of the "swagger portrait" – a style of portraiture that signals social status and communicates power and bravado. Wiley is bringing together two worlds of swagger, the European and the African American, the portrait and fashion, Rembrandt meets Kanye.
But Wiley is also giving this man a story and hence an identity, which has echoes – of one who served the poor, who was studiously devoted to the Word, who was looking for the lost. An identity comes with its own sort of swagger, the confidence of knowing who one is, and whose one is. Anthony the exemplar gives orientation for aspiration ... Everyone is looking for rest, which is just another way of saying we're looking for an identity, a story that gives us the kind of gifted swagger of being known, named, and offered a map home ... "This road is provided by one who is Himself both God and man. As God, He is the goal; as man, He is the way" (North African St. Augustine, City of God).
Before Anthony of Padua (in history and painted above), for North African Augustine, being enfolded in God's story in Scripture was not an imposition but a liberation.
When you've realized that you don't even know yourself, that you're an enigma to yourself, and when you keep looking inward only to find an unplumbable depth of mystery and secrets and parts of yourself that are loathsome (i.e. sans swagger and sainthood), then Scripture isn't received as a list of commands: instead it breaks into your life as a light from outside that shows you the infinite God who loves you at the bottom of the abyss. Scripture irrupted in Augustine's life as revelation, the story about himself told by another, and as illumination, shining a light that helped him finally understand his hungers and faults and hopes.
For the rest of his life, Augustine, like a hip-hop bricoleur, "samples" Scripture in everything he says. The Scriptures are the heart of Augustine's lexicon because the cosmic story of redemption is his governing story.
Christianity is not an intellectual system, a collection of dogmas, or moralism. Christianity is instead an encounter, a love story. + Pope Benedict XVI
+ "Story: How to Be a Character: What Do I Want When I Want an Identity" excerpt from James K.A. Smith's On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts, pgs. 175-176
Here are links to other recent City Notes (CN) books:
A Time To Heal (Shalom); Red Skies; Story of God in a Sanitation Truck; The Artistry of What's Next; Days of Song on Spot of Scorched Earth; Seeds of Hope in the Rain & the Dark; The Church is the Most Corrupt Institution on Earth; The Seamless Life; A Good Calling; Inisheer Island; Wrestling with God in Doubt; Taste Grace in World of Seculosity; I've Seen What Hope Can Do; Ubuntu and the Family of God; Baptism as the Way of Life; Childlike Wonder; Listening to God's Voice; The Cross and Peacemaking Presence; Being with God; Pray As You Can; Knowing and Naming True Friends
With presence, peace, and many blessings,
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