Advent Devotional by Michelle Harmon Cook

Isaiah 11:1-9

The whole earth will be brimming with knowing God-Alive, a living knowledge of God ocean deep, ocean wide. (Isaiah 11:9)

There are almost ten thousand photos on my cell phone. Ninety percent are archival documents, and they silently speak volumes on how we are called to be a more accurate reflection of a loving Divinity. Over five years ago I set out on a journey to answer questions about the foundations of my community as they related to ALL of its members, in particular the most disenfranchised. These questions are buried in almost 200 years of the ugliest kind of human history imaginable. In truth, the study of these documents centering on our African American community has changed the trajectory of my path. At times, they have also put me squarely at odds with my view of the people and places I call home.

Searching for a way through to a more deeply-rooted foundation of peace, I find it no great irony that this particular scripture was my assignment. It happens to be the one W.C. Link Jr. spoke over me at my baptism, and it is an ordination that I have long since stopped trying to escape. I find this is how God often works; planting seeds that, despite our intellect and expertise, can be harvested best through the inquisitive nature of a child.

The image of Edward Hicks’ Peaceable Kingdom is forever associated in my mind with this Isaiah scripture. I was astonished to learn that Hicks, a Quaker minister, painted multiple iterations of his iconic work. I was also completely spellbound to know that the first version was painted around the same time that the city of Liberty, still in its infancy, became the county seat. Not unlike the schism that developed in the Liberty of that time period, a similar one was playing out for Hicks in his Pennsylvania Quaker community. Both communities were divided and held hostage by old doctrines with little room for freedom of thought. They showed little tolerance for those questioning established power, control, and patriarchy. Hicks revisited his painting again and again, creating 62 versions of the same study. My favorite is in the collection held by the Worchester Museum. It was created during a tumultuous time in Hicks’ life when tenets of faith were deeply questioned, and peace in the church seemed illusive. I suspect the connective threads I find in smeared ink and crumbling parchment are the same ones that brought Hicks back to the canvas so many times. How do we give voice to the shared experience while honoring individual journey? We listen and let the parchment speak. We allow the oil paints to create transformative alchemy; a living knowledge of the Creator’s love.

There is a reason I am drawn to understanding a history that was never taught. I believe the questioning, the wrestling matches, and the deep digging in search of voices least like our own, lead us to a place where we are able to value those individual voices in equal measure to our own experience. The journey is not always peaceable. It can be grotesque and brutal, but I am learning to trust that the work will provide a critical viewpoint not just necessary for personal evolution but one inextricably tied to peace and reconciliation. When we omit stories from our collective narrative we have little hope of knowing the peace of a living God. Lived experience IS the rich detail in the painting and the substance between the lines on a page.

I know the work is mine to do as it is all of ours to do individually and as a community. Even in the struggle to give voice to your own questions, may you continue to seek the Divine who waits to meet you with fresh parchment and canvas, and a love so expansive it honors every story.

Michelle Harmon Cook