Image of the Week: We Are God's Children
© Durga Yael Bernhard
This seems like a good image for troubled times. Here in upstate New York, my rabbi and his good friend, a priest from a local church, have just finished teaching a course titled "A Priest and A Rabbi Study the Gospels Together" – about the life of the historical Jesus as a Jew, rooted in Jewish tradition, and how that shaped Christianity. Fifty people, Christians and Jews, attended, and an exchange of events at the synagogue and church has grown out of this wonderful collaboration. If you think about this from a historical perspective (which the class did), this is a small miracle. The world needs more people like this!
In a time of increasing migration and growing intolerance, I'm happy to be a multicultural artist. That means I depict ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity in a positive or neutral way in my art – usually for children's books, but in this case for the Christian publisher for whom I've been blessed to illustrate since the late 90s.
Shared fellowship in a world of God-given blessings is the underlying message of this passage from the Book of John. A human mandala came to mind, like the view through a kaleidoscope. My pie of happy humanity was a perfect subject for multi-colored skin tones and rainbow colors. The people are structured like a mandala, with symmetry all around, but their colors are random, like the sprinkling of leaves across a pond.
There's room for everyone inside this circle. People of every color, literally, are welcome. Does the light that surrounds the circle radiate from the people, or does it shine upon them?
Surely both, as with all children.
Keep shining and have a good week –
D Yael Bernhard