{"id":149663,"date":"2022-11-03T16:09:09","date_gmt":"2022-11-03T20:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=149663"},"modified":"2022-11-09T10:23:12","modified_gmt":"2022-11-09T15:23:12","slug":"visio-divina-and-finding-what-shimmers-at-the-bates-college-museum-of-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2022\/11\/03\/visio-divina-and-finding-what-shimmers-at-the-bates-college-museum-of-art\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Visio Divina’ and finding what ‘shimmers’ at the Bates College Museum of Art"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Thirty minutes spent staring at the same unmoving thing might seem more like a snooze-fest than a feast for the eyes, especially for a college student. But that\u2019s exactly what students spent time doing recently at the Bates College Museum of Art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The occasion was a class session of the First-Year Seminar \u201cArts and Spirituality.\u201d Taught by the college\u2019s multifaith chaplain, the Rev. Brittany Longsdorf, the course guides students in both the creation and consumption of art, helping them see the connection between art and reflection through a range of spiritual practices and traditions from around the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their trip to the museum was to practice visio divina<\/em>, or \u201csacred looking,\u201d a meditative practice closely related to lectio divina<\/em>, \u201csacred reading,\u201d which dates back thousands of years to different religious traditions, particularly Western Christianity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Multifaith
Students in the First-Year Seminar \u201cArts and Spirituality\u201d practice visio divina<\/em>, or \u201csacred looking,\u201d at the Bates Museum of Art. The student at left is gazing at Gone<\/em>, a digital print by Isabella Kirkland<\/a> that depicts the 63 animal species that have become extinct since the colonization of the Americas. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The objective is to look at something \u2014 a picture, work of art, a sculpture, anything \u2014 with the expectation of seeing sacredness in it. It reflects the belief that the divine can be found in everything, and is a way of looking at something intentionally, and \u201cgiving it that kind of presence and attention,\u201d said Longsdorf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Longsdorf developed the course a few years ago after seeing many young adults finding sacred experiences outside institutional religion. \u201c[They] might not be attending worship in traditional ways, but are going to concerts and art museums and are journaling and painting and dancing,\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019re saying that those places are where they feel wonder and awe and feel their true size \u2014 feel connected to something bigger.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The students showed mixed feelings as they anticipated the assignment, says Longsdorf. A few were into it. \u201cThey were like, \u2018Cool! A half-hour with a painting. This is gonna be awesome.\u2019 But some were like, \u2018We’re doing what <\/em>now?!\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea of spending a half-hour looking at the same thing feels strange today, with the constantly in-motion way of life. \u201cI think we’re so used to just taking it all in, and then not questioning it and moving on,\u201d said Longsdorf. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the museum on a September afternoon, Longsdorf gave the students two minutes to walk through the exhibit and pick something that catches their eye, that \u201cshimmers,\u201d as she told them. That would be the piece they would practice visio divina<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Caroline McCarthy \u201926 of Hamden, Conn., chose to focus on a Vietnamese mask<\/a>, covered with red, blue, silver, and gold paper and strings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Multifaith
Caroline McCarthy ’26 of Hamden, Conn., gazes at a Vietnamese mask, part of the museum’s permanent collection. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Like the others, McCarthy was skeptical whether she could focus her attention on the artwork for a length of time. But after a spell, “I almost didn’t want to look away,\u201d she laughed. “It definitely changed my perspective a little bit, and alters the way I’m going to look at art going forward. I think I’m going to find a few things and sit with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The artwork they viewed is from the recent exhibition Pedagogy<\/em><\/a>, which features myriad themes, from astronomy, to war, to the environment, all chosen for their potential to be integrated into Bates courses across academic disciplines. It was an apt exhibition to practice visio divina<\/em>, said Longsdorf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Longdorf asked her students to first focus on a single part of it, then the piece as a whole, and finally reflect on questions or meaning the piece evokes for them. She encouraged students to discern what it meant to them, what questions it made them ask, or what the art is \u201ctelling\u201d them about what is sacred in the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou see what it’s inviting you to do, or to think, or to feel in the moment and pay attention to that,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Multifaith
Longsdorf holds a Tibetan singing bowl that she used to signal the beginning and conclusion of the students’ practice of visio divina<\/em> \u2014 and the gift of \u201cexploration, awe, and wonder.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When Longsdorf first taught the course two years ago, a student told her that he\u2019d never looked at a painting in a museum before. \u201cI think some of us take for granted that we have access to those kinds of things,\u201d says Longsdorf. For that student\u2019s first viewing to last 30 minutes \u201cwas a really interesting and beautiful start of a relationship to art.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students create art in the course, too, as a \u201cspiritual practice,\u201d Longsdorf explains. In one lesson, they created clay sculptures with the classroom lights down way down low \u2014 so it was just them and their art. \u201cThey made these beautiful creations,\u201d she recalls. Before the lights were turned up, she told them to take a deep breath of gratitude \u2014 and then to smoosh their creations flat before anyone saw them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat made them so mad,\u201d laughs Longsdorf, but there are spiritual lessons to be learned about \u201cprocess over product. No one in the room needs to know what this symbol or image was that stirred your heart except for you, and why do you feel the need to perfect it and share it? Would you have made something different if you knew you weren’t going to share it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our consumer society has taught us to think of art as a perfect, public product, she explains, \u201cin a capital \u2018A\u2019 artist perfectionist way. But what does it look like to make art that is actually a spiritual practice, about us knowing ourselves and knowing the divine more closely through the creative process?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Multifaith
At the beginning of their visit to the Museum of Art, the class was greeted by Peter Philbin ’22, assistant museum curator, who introduced the exhibit, Pedagogy<\/em>. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students in a First-Year Seminar class took a trip to the Bates College Museum of Art to practice using “sacred looking,” and find what “shimmers”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1422,"featured_media":149717,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":149667,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":"summary_large_image"},"categories":[4,11010],"tags":[11227,10873],"class_list":["post-149663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-arts","tag-brittany-longsdorf","tag-first-year-seminar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1422"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149663"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149776,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149663\/revisions\/149776"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}