Sunday, November 26, 2017

Spiritual Hostages

Spiritual Hostages -painted drawings, Atlanta, Georgia 1980.
A fantasy based on an alternative and projected prophecy of the evolution of the Catholic Church in 2025 A.D.  


Photo from exhibit - Earthworks Studio & Gallery



 Pope St. Allo sits by a globe. Slowly he spins it...but can he mend it? The pressure on his large white shoulders weighs him down like Atlas at his job. He rests not night, nor day.

Through exercise, celibacy, and analytical studies of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Father Pete controlled his libido. At night he sometimes dreamed of St. Anthony's plight and strove to keep “it” down with all his might...


The burden of sin has been softened for the Sisters of the French Dominion. They wear oversized shoulder pads! “Ou-la-la" sings Sister Fifi, “Delicious eye-shades are now seen on Sisters at Sacré-Coeur !”  “Exactement!” exclaims Sister Louise, adjusting her chapeau...

 Mother Vera abandoned at the Altar thrice, collapsed inwardly, an emotional wreck. Now recovered she sings the blues on Radio Vatican before the News!

Sister Felicia, in Egypt's darkest corner, revived the Coptic Code of her “Sisters of the Holy Mummy's Secrets”, which gave her subconscious every reinforcement to strive for permanence through rejuvenating face lifts; the details of which she kept under wraps.

In the winter of soul, dwelt a spiritual hostage...

Cardinal Valentin, clever master of his Art, always perceptive, wrote a musical version of the Mass so abstract that angels on the head of a pin could not even take it all in...

 Sister Saint-Maria's twist of inspiration came from her developed sense of synthesis. She could explain the “Fall” of Western Civilization with a brooch or couch deep Christian-Existential problems in a hairstyle.  What her “egg motif” habit said to all who beheld it, was a “Glamour of Glory”, a “Spiritual Shell”.

 Sister Fahallo, too excited about the Fashion Show, lost sight of the Whole and scrimped on details… alas, it showed in her false Halo!

Sister Bea sacrificed her all for Art. She tried everything from Henry Miller's gall to Edna St. Vincent-Millay's pall. Finally she locked the door... and inside her room with a piece of marble and her bare hands she carved her masterpiece;
  “The Mother Of Us All”.
Nuns with guns once stalked dark corridors of fear. Now they know the black and white of it! Nuns sans guns stand guard at Cartier’s… it’s more romantic for them this way!

 Sister Anne as acting head of the public relations consortium for the convent, through organizational discipline, counts the hours and keeps the minutes. Shut within the spider web of her womb is the small endless-loop tape of her desire... eternally replaying her swan song.