Stations of the Cross: Unweaving

This year we have been working on a weaving project as a community. As I was weaving I made a mistake and felt embarrassed that my attention had betrayed me. While I was unweaving the yarn to correct the mistake, my embarrassment was amplified and evoked images from the scriptures. I began to picture the time when the people around Jesus, whom he had spent a life gathering, loving and weaving friendship with, started abandoning and denying him after Judas’ betrayal. I perceived the stations of the cross as an intense unweaving process. But the unweaving itself wasn’t only a passive death, it was also an active revealing of what is, perhaps, greater. 

A few days later I spontaneously started working on Arabic calligraphic sketching inspired by the stations of the cross. I had to take time to re-read the scriptures and absorb the layers of the tragic development of the story while I worked. I did not expect that the calligraphy would end up translated into a three-dimensional installation. 

At the last stage of the project I abandoned it. Last Thursday as I was wrestling with some internal struggles and the heaviness we all feel in this time of pandemic, Samantha asked me about the project which brought it back to my mind. We had the idea to make a video to share with the community for Holy Week. Here we offer it to you as a reflective and contemplative virtual liturgy.

Anass Quinten

Anass Quinten is a calligrapher, visual artist and musician. He was one of our Artists-in-Residence in 2019 and gifted saint benedict’s table with the calligraphic icon, “The River,” that he created during his residency.