Sleepers ‘wake CII - Maranatha

March 30th, 2025

This chapter only consists of one piece. But there are many others that played a huge role in its conceptualization. Sleepers ‘wake chapter two includes some really important formation, but I’m not going to delve into that today. Hopefully on another day. You can ask me in person, if you like. Chapter eight, on the other hand, provides especially important context, and I’ve actually been considering this new chapter as a sort of sequel to chapter eight. The piece I made for that chapter and the piece I made for this one are, to me, like puzzle pieces that need each-other to make one another complete.

As a preface, I’d like to present a brief intro to this series, in case this is the first chapter you’re reading, or you need a refresher. If you don’t need a refresher, feel free to skip to the next part.

Here’s my brief intro : Welcome to my ongoing series; Sleepers ‘Wake. Here, I work through what God is trying to tell me, through scripture, about staying awake. I believe it means loving God above all things, and loving our neighbor as ourselves. So I make these works in my attempt to stay awake. I carry small-scale watercolor pads with me, just about everywhere I go. I work on them during times of listening, using primarily watercolor pencils. Sometimes, during my morning devotions, I memorize bible verses as I work on certain chapters of the series.

My Sleepers ‘wakes all follow the same visual equation. Look at these for a moment, as you read:

The bottom of the piece is always fairly simple. Then it goes up, at least once. There is a break. And then it starts over again at the top, and is more elaborate than on the bottom. So these are the four components that make a Sleepers ‘Wake; 1) Simple bottom 2) Bottom goes up 3) Break between top and bottom 4) Top is more elaborate than bottom.

Okay but why...?

Essentially, the bottom part symbolizes a person who is asleep (busy/ignorant/selfish/proud/etc). The break is where the person wakes up. The top symbolizes the person now awake (loving/listening/stopping to be with people/reaping + sowing the fruits of the spirit/etc). There are a lot of layers to these, and many ways to interpret, so go ahead and do that. I often also see the bottom as the world, and the top as eternity/the new creation. So there’s one additional interpretation from me.

Now, in several chapters, I have added symbolism so that there is another interpretation layering on top of the first. This chapter will be that way too. This piece, which I have nicknamed ‘Maranatha,’ looks much different than a typical Sleepers ‘wake. It does technically follow the format, but there is much more going on, which I will discuss here.

Now let’s officially begin with a summary statement that I wrote for an Advent event held at my church, Holy Cross. It was such a cool, unique event. Our church owns a small house which we use for many different purposes. We call it The Bridge House. One of its purposes is exhibiting artwork. The Advent event coincided with an exhibition in the Bridge House called We Have This Hope, curated by Megan Kenyon. It included artwork by artists from our church, inspired by pastors from our church, inspired by the idea of the incarnation thru the lens of 2 Corinthians 4-5 and John 1:1-14, pulling on threads of gospel, of weakness, of trial, of joy, of resurrection power, of resilience and tenacity experienced in bodies.

I was very intrigued by the call for art from the start. I created Sleepers ‘wake CI - Immanuel (‘wakers wake sleepers) for this exhibit. That piece, and the explanation to it can be found in Sleepers ‘wake chapter 8. As I said earlier, it is an important context to the growth of this piece, Sleepers ‘wake CII - Maranatha, which I also created for this exhibition.

I’m going to share the artist statement which I wrote and then read during the event. But first I’d like to share the writing by the pastor, which inspired the piece.

This Hope That We Have, condescending, constant, concrete, and named.

by Dr. Jeff Gibbs (used with permission, in gratitude)

The hope that we have is condescending.

The hope that we have doesn't emerge from within us. Yes, some people are hopeful from within, but many aren't. That has to do with how you were raised. That's not our Hope.

Our hope doesn't rise up from below, from common human experience. Common human experience, honestly viewed, tells the human story as "just one d**** thing after another."

Our hope is condescending, in the old-fashioned sense. It means, "coming down to be with" someone: "con-descending." Our hope comes down. It comes from God, the God of hope. The future is God's, planned by God and God alone will make it happen.

But the hope did shine forth down here, because God came down here, came to dwell with us. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us—light shining that the darkness did not overcome.

The hope that we have is constant.

There's a phrase one hears: "hope springs eternal." Close up to its original meaning is the thought that human beings can figure things out, and there's good reason for optimism. Always look at the sunny side of life—that sort of thing. And there's some common sense in that. If hope has to spring up again, however, that means it comes and goes. It wavers.

That sort of hope, wavering, sooner or later will collapse. It wouldn't have been strong enough for Paul of Tarsus, who (by his own words) had been afflicted in every way, perplexed, persecuted, struck down, and was constantly being given over to death. Hope springs eternal? We don't have that sort of hope.

Can we live with eyes wide open to how broken things can be, and how even doing the right thing can make your life a living hell? Paul thought so. The Apostle John did, too. And even if we waver, our hope remains constant. The enfleshed Word came to dwell among us, but most of his own people wanted nothing to do with him. And their darkness tried to snuff out His light. But the light is still shining. We have a hope that is constant.

The hope that we have is concrete.

We don't have a hope that tries to escape, to fly away, to float up to heaven. You could say that our hope is heavy, real, substantial, for we are real, embodied people living in this physical creation. The hope is not just a promise for our minds or our spirits. lt is a hope for our bodies, for our whole selves, for the Father's world all around us. We live in light of the hope, in the real world, with our real bodies. Sickness or suffering, hardship or hatred can all find a home within the enfleshed, embodied, heavy, hopeful life that we have together—with one another, because it is not my hope, but our hope.

Our hope has a name.

The Word became flesh. His light is still shining. It was snuffed out for a time, but the light broke out from the empty tomb, and we have been drawn into the light. Our hope is Jesus. Our suffering, then, and especially suffering because we are His, is somehow a sharing in the suffering that he endured. We carry in our bodies the death of Jesus. And our hope that has condescended, is constant and concrete, is a sharing already now in the life of Jesus, in the name of Jesus. We bear the name: Christ-ians.

On a day known only to God, we will see our hope fulfilled. We will see Jesus. He will condescend, with a love that is constant and eternal. Hope will become real, firm, concrete, more real than we knew was possible. And we will speak the name, Jesus—to the glory of God the Father, as our hope changes into sight.

April Parviz’ Artist Statement for Holy Cross Advent Art Event : December 18th, 2024

(written on December 7th, 2024)

Sleepers ‘wake CII - Maranatha

It will be very hard for me to summarize this one. I will write a much longer statement on this, hopefully soon. But for now, we’ll just skim the surface together.

Back in February, I couldn’t handle my relationship with hope anymore. I was grieving my two miscarriages from the previous year and I wanted another baby so badly. I often would believe I was pregnant again, but then wasn’t. Every time I found out I wasn’t pregnant, I was heartbroken all over again. It was unbearable. So I set hope down. I didn’t know how to carry it without forcing it to wear a mask that had “April’s plan” written on it.

In my art practice, when I’m processing something extra difficult and new, I like to create a symbol that is unique to my personal “art language.” For this piece I’ve created a symbol for hope. I need to start trying to pick it up again, so I can get to know it and live my life as a child of the light. But it is very heavy. That’s why I related deeply to Dr. Gibbs’ reflection. He says hope is “heavy, real, and substantial.” I would say almost like a burden. This computes very much with thought processes I’ve been having over the last year as my grief has been too heavy to carry, at times, so others have taken on some of the burden. I wonder if by carrying the burden of hope, I’ll be more able to carry the burdens and sufferings of my brothers and sisters in Christ...

The gold spheres, with what look like small plus signs in their centers, are my new little symbols of hope. They are fashioned to look like eucalyptus buttons. If you are unaware of what that is, I am sad for you and also jealous of your beginner’s mind which will one day see and smell a eucalyptus button for the first time. I keep a jar of them and smell them from time to time. The smell transports me back into my 4-year-old self, playing in the dirt and pine needles of beautiful Paradise California.

The entire town of Paradise burned completely to the ground back in 2018, in the 6th deadliest wildfire in U.S. history. It breaks my heart every time I think about it. And the despairing side of me screams that it is a sign of the end of times. But do you know what? When set on fire, pinecones and eucalyptus trees release seeds.

…and seeds renew life.

In my piece, along the tops of each eucalyptus button, there are four small seeds. They come out of the four “scars” (if you will) on each button. Stemming from one seed is always a colorful swirl, two seeds produce simple pencil lines that weave into nearby colorful swirls. And one seed produces a gold swirl that carries the colorful swirl stemming from the same eucalyptus button. Each colorful swirl represents a person who is suffering. The pencil lines represent their sufferings that are blown, ever so lightly by the spirit, into the care of another colorful swirl, who will carry it for us for a while. And the gold represents Christ, holding the person up... carrying them.

As Jeff said, “on a day known only to God, we will see our hope fulfilled. We will see Jesus. He will condescend, with a love that is constant and eternal. Hope will become real, firm, concrete, more real than we knew was possible. And we will speak the name, Jesus—to the glory of God the Father, as our hope changes into sight.”

I think if I can begin to grasp that, I will also begin to grasp how Christ’s burden is light (Matthew 11:28-30), and hope won’t be hard for me to carry anymore.

Maranatha - come soon Lord Jesus.

The day after writing this, a pregnancy test displayed a circle with a plus sign on it. I wasn’t thinking about that when I created this piece. Only God can craft things like this. He is so wonderful. I am now 21 weeks pregnant as I type. I can’t say that I’ve learned much more about how to carry hope yet, only because my specific hope was fulfilled so quickly after I decided to pick it up again. But I do know it’s something I will need to work to understand more in the future. Lately it’s been hard to focus on my art, and all these ideas I’m usually processing within it, because I was almost literally asleep for three months during the first trimester. And now I’m so distracted by the need to prepare for a new life in the house.

I don’t know how I will fare the next time I am in a sad waiting period where it is difficult for me to trust God’s goodness. I’m laying this all down here as a mental bookmark for next time. I am pretty confident that I will struggle to carry hope again one day in my future, and when that happens, the work I did here on this piece will be a good starting point for me. It’s like a checkpoint. I’m not looking forward to that chapter, but I am looking forward to the goodness of God that will be so visible to me after it’s over, as it always is.

I will leave future April a clue to pick up when she returns to the investigation. After writing the artist statement for the advent event, when I learned that I was pregnant, I was deeply submerged in processing hope for several days. It was suddenly a new hope I was carrying. The hope that this baby would survive all the way to term. There were brief flashes of fear, but for the most part, I believe I was immediately submerged in the peace that surpasses understanding. And there was very much a hope involved. As I was processing my recent dissonance with hope and this new mysteriously peaceful hope, there was another word that kept appearing in my mind alongside the word hope. It was almost like a transparent screen that had this new word on top of the other. So every time I thought the word ‘hope’ I would also think the word ‘trust,’ even though I didn’t really know why. It wasn’t on purpose. It just was happening. It was like they were almost synonyms somehow, which makes a lot of sense in the way that Dr. Gibbs was talking about hope. Hope doesn’t mean you just get what you want, or understand what’s going on. There’s a really strong trust in God that needs to be involved; the trust that He’s always working toward your good, no matter how bad it looks right now. And I’m starting to wonder if when we carry hope while things look bad, that is us telling God that we trust Him. And at that same time, we’re telling ourselves that we trust Him, which I think is a really important piece to this mysterious puzzle.

The advent event took place eleven days after I wrote the statement, and ten days after I learned that I was pregnant again. Even though I was rejoicing in the news of my pregnancy, there was a somber grief tone to the exhibition and the event, which felt very appropriate to Advent and a very tragic event which occurred in our church community around that time. Several weeks prior to the event, I wrote a musical piece called Maranatha, which means “come soon Lord Jesus.” This is a phrase that we say often throughout the season of Advent, as we are looking forward to celebrating the birth of Jesus. But we also use the phrase as we look forward to Christ’s second coming, when He will make all things new again.

For the years leading up to that event, as I found myself and my community experiencing tragedies, all I could think was, “Maranatha, come soon Lord Jesus.”

Even though, in my statement, I said I had set hope down, if I’m honest, I had only set one specific hope down, the hope that I would have another child. But I hadn’t completely set hope down. Every time a tragedy occurred in our community, I said to a loved one, “God didn’t create the world for these things to happen. It is wrong that your loved one is dead. I hope Jesus comes back soon.” And as sad as it all still makes me, even typing this is causing me to cry, it was hope. Every time I said that, it was hope. And I still have that hope. I have the hope that we will see my two babies, Roman, Ida, Liam, Linda, Phil and the babies of all of my friends, who also lost theirs in the womb.

I wrote this musical piece specifically as a gift for my second baby that I lost in the womb. I had spent a lot of specific time contemplating about and grieving the first baby I’d lost. And I wrote a short story dedicated to it. But I never felt like I had fully sat with the second baby. I had accidentally grouped my grief for that one into my grief for the first one and my grief that I might not have another. So I made this piece as a gift for my second child, lost in the womb. We sang it at the opening and closing of the event. I wore a necklace given to me by my mother-in-law with what would have been the birthstone of that baby. Singing it was so comforting, especially in a round with so many of the people in my church, who I love. And so many of us needed to sing it. In all honesty, we probably all need to be singing it often. It is hard to grieve fully and well, but crying out to Jesus to return soon is one healthy way to do it. It’s one of the ways to carry this heavy heavy hope.

Here is a recording I made of the piece a little while later. It feels very appropriate now during this season of Lent. It’s a fairly raw recording with no editing and a comfortable lack of attention to excellence, which I’ve been practicing over the last several years. I think its rawness speaks to the truth and vulnerability of honest grief.

There’s one more important thing you need to know about this piece.

It’s a visual prayer invitation.

In May of 2024, a friend in my church lost her son in the womb, the day he was due. She birthed him and they held his funeral in our church two weeks later.

During her eulogy, she said that she was at peace. It was almost impossible for her to explain how, except that she knew we all had been praying for her. So she had “the peace that surpasses understanding.” Her reflection in that moment has impacted me so much. My prayer life has become much more robust, and I take prayers much more seriously than I used to.

At the very end of September, a beloved member of our church died. Three days before that, a new baby in our church was born. Two weeks after that a 35-year-old cherished member of our congregation had thyroid cancer surgery. Also in October another member of our congregation was having surgery and then scary complications from the surgery. It was a very full month of loved ones needing care and support. In times like these, I can sometimes put too much expectation on myself to carry everyone. So I tried to do that. But at the same time, I believe I may have had walking pneumonia for the entire month. I’ll never know what it was, but I know it started on October 3rd and didn’t leave until I mercifully received some amoxicillin from an endodontist on October 29th. I was drained the entire month, with almost no energy every single day. But I was so worried about all of my friends. The people with a new baby needed meals and support. The loved ones of our dear Linda needed meals and support. The friends undergoing surgery needed meals and support. Or at least I believed they all did.

In November, as I painted Immanuel and Maranatha for this Advent show, a truth smacked me in the face. None of these people needed my support. They had Christ’s support the whole time. And Christ works through all of us. When Christ saw that I was indisposed for the month of October, I know He found others to support my friends. And even when others weren’t supporting them, He was supporting them. And He was supporting me, through Himself and others.

So I made this Maranatha piece as a reminder to myself in times like this. A reminder that we are a tapestry, as I wrote in chapter 8. And we all warp and weft together to carry the weight of one another’s burdens, as a whole tapestry, not just as one person.

In chapter 8, I write about how the angles on the bottom all represent a different sleeper and the points reaching down to touch them represent an awaker, waking up a sleeper. That happens here in Maranatha too. But the awaker is the Hope symbol, which also symbolizes Christ, with his four scars from the cross. His scars each produce a seed. One seed is a person, two seeds are their grief or sufferings, and one seed is Christ within them. All four of these things combine to wake up a sleeper.

So here’s the prayer invitation:

Put your finger on the first eucalyptus button. To begin, we’re going to just focus on the swirls coming out of that button. Now imagine a person in your community who is suffering. We’ll use the name “Anne” for the sake of the exercise. Move your finger to the seed that produces a colorful swirl. Trace that colorful swirl as you say, ‘thank you God for [Anne].” Now put your finger on one of the seeds that produces a pencil line. Trace that line as you pray about whatever that person is grieving or suffering through, example “please help [Anne as she has her surgery on Monday].” Then trace the other gray line as you pray, “please give [Anne] Your peace that surpasses understanding.” Then trace the gold line and say, “please help me to trust that you are carrying [Anne].” Then follow the rest of the buttons as you continue to pray for each person in your community who is grieving or suffering. I invite you to start a blank journal of these prayers. It makes for a very lovely addition to a bedtime routine.

When I knew people were praying for me, during my deep miscarriage grief years, I received so much comfort. I imagine if a community is praying this prayer invitation on a regular basis, it could give people a great deal of comfort. The thing about praying is that you have to check back in on people to see if your prayers are still needed and applicable. When people would check in on me, I knew they were praying. Imagine, during your most difficult chapters, the comfort of having even just 3 people checking in on you throughout the month to see how you’re doing. There’s another healthy way to grieve. With others.

Well… that’s all for now. I feel like this is a strange place to leave this reflection. It feels a little disjointed and incomplete. But I think that’s because it is. As I said, I was deep in the process of hope when my life changed drastically.

I was just telling my husband that this happens with my art sometimes though. I’ll start a new concept and I won’t fully understand it yet. So over time, I’ll work through it with my Sleepers ‘wakes as I feel called back to it from time to time. I’m sure I’ll be working through this hope, “Maranatha” concept more in the future. But as I said, for now, I’m going to bookmark it. I hope that it gives you hope though, or at least some homework in its direction. It’s such a mysterious and complicated thing. Is it the thing with feathers? Who knows. No one really knows. I’ll probably never fully understand it. But I’m excited to work toward it more in the future, until “the end.” And then one day, “[I] will speak the name, Jesus—to the glory of God the Father, as [my] hope changes into sight.” And it will be the beginning again.

An important footnote for my friends grieving miscarriage and/or suffering the mysterious and extremely complicated griefs of infertility:

I am very aware that it can be painful to “stumble” on a pregnancy announcement. Please know that I think and pray for people grieving miscarriages and infertility on a regular basis. I see you. It is not wrong to feel grief when others are feeling joy. It’s a very twisted part of the broken reality we live in. Jesus is coming back and He will fix it all. But for now, I grieve with you. This is not what He meant for creation to be. While we wait for the new one, I pray that you have the peace that surpasses understanding. Maranatha.

SLEEPERS ‘WAKE CHAPTER NINE

Sleepers ‘wake CII - Maranatha

March 30th, 2025

This Hope That We Have, condescending, constant, concrete, and named.

Sleepers ‘wake CII - Maranatha