Notes: | PLEASE USE THIS BRIEF CREDIT INFORMATION FOR FREE, NON-COMMERCIAL CONGREGATIONAL PRINTING: Cara B. Hochhalter, The Nativity. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=58798 FOR OTHER USES: Full credit information can be found below in the Copyright Source field.
COMMENTARY BY THE ARTIST: The Nativity Luke 2:4-20 "It is a humble story of Jesus’ birth. He was not born out of wealth and riches. This story teaches all of us, and particularly children who act out the nativity every Christmas, that wealth does not matter. Jesus, who held God in his very being, came into the world as a person on the margins, a refugee whose family could find no home of their own and were later sent into exile. But that did not matter either. In this image, Jesus is surrounded by love; from Mary and Joseph, from animals---and soon shepherds would come. It is a story about how an infinite love can rise up from any place and move us all forward with a yearning for peace among all creation." The Rev. Cara B. Hochhalter is a United Church of Christ (UCC) minister. She received her Masters of Divinity from United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities in Minnesota, where she studied the intersections of art, theology and justice. She served the Charlemont Federated Church in Massachusetts for ten years and now lives in Hyde Park, New York. “Over the last thirty years, through my work as a Christian Educator, a seminary student and UCC minister, I have created images that interpret the powerful stories around the life of Jesus. These stories hold universal truths not limited to Christianity but relevant for all our lives and times. I find that art provides a very special means to break into these texts.” The images in her book, A Challenging Peace in the Life and Stories of Jesus were created through the simple print-making process of carving out a block, applying ink and pulling a print. Cara says, “The interaction of light and dark is important in each image as we cannot have one without the other. The dark defines the light, and vice versa. I find this to be theological as we look to the whole—the light and the dark, the joy and the despair, the peace and the conflict—all under an umbrella of Divine Love that yearns for wholeness.”
Using her book, Cara also offers three online discussion groups: Jesus and Justice, Parables and Peace-making, and The Paradox of Humility in the Stories of Jesus.
To contact Cara B. Hochhalter for information about her art, to purchase signed prints of the images, or her book, A Challenging Peace in the Life and Stories of Jesus, please email: hochhalter.cara@gmail.com |
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