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Rising Together: A Community Phoenix; The Weight of the Crown
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The Newsletter of Artist, Composer, Thinker Steven Homestead  |  June 3, 2022
Rising Together: A Community Phoenix
Downtown Santa Ana, 2nd Street Promenade
Saturday, June 4th, 6pm-9pm
Tomorrow night, you're invited to the Downtown Santa Ana Art Walk. I have the opportunity to bring an interactive project titled Rising Together to the community. Everyone is invited to write hopes or dreams they want to see resurrected or reborn onto colorful paper feathers. These feathers will then be attached to create the two large wings of a symbolic community Phoenix.
Rising Together also references symbols and art important to the city: the parrots of Santa Ana (made famous in one interpretation by artist Marina Aguilera) and sculptures by Jorge Marín that the city presented throughout Downtown in 2017-2018.
This all points to the city's cultural and civic emergence post-pandemic, which artists get to help bring about. The interactive art event also marks the two-year anniversary of my Digital Super Bloom serving as the theme for the virtual Art Walk!
If you're in the SoCal area, I hope to see you at the Art Walk. Come add your feather to the wings, rising together.
 
Click Here for a Google Map Pin of the Location
As this weekend marks both Pentecost and the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, I'm sharing an update to an essay I wrote five years ago, when a similar convergence occurred.
The Weight of the Crown
St. Edward's Crown weighs 4.9 pounds. It is the centerpiece of coronations for the British monarchy. It was last in full use on June 2, 1953 for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II (who ascended to the throne on February 6, 1952).
 
The award-winning series The Crown depicts many years and events from Queen Elizabeth II's reign, including her coronation. In watching the series, one realizes that bearing the crown has far more weight than simply wearing the object itself. There is a weighty mix of power, responsibility, and privilege, connected with a lack of many freedoms most of us take for granted.
As part of the British coronation ceremony, a monarch is anointed with holy oil, a tradition rooted in shared Jewish and Christian scriptures. Among other things, anointing represents the favor and blessing of God and was used for prophets, priests, and kings. This connection of coronation and anointing was powerfully set to music by Handel in 1727 to biblically inspired words that have been in use for British coronations now for over 1,000 years, since 973!

So as this weekend marks the celebration of 70 years of the Queen's reign, this Sunday also happens to be Pentecost, which in Christian tradition is a centuries-old celebration of the Holy Spirit descending on the disciples of Jesus, anointing them not with oil, but with power. It is also a celebration of the start of the Church. With this anointing too, there is a weighty mix.
The people who comprise the Church live on the other side of things: on the other side of Eden and on the other side of Christ's ministry, death, and resurrection. So although the authority and royalty that God intended for men and women in Eden was forfeited, through Christ and the Holy Spirit, we have been called and empowered to reclaim these.

The Church is called to work out Jesus' reign of love and reconciliation. We are to walk as humble royalty. He bears the full crown as the head of the Church, yet as the body, we still bear aspects of its weight. If you wear a heavy crown on your head, your feet still feel it as you walk.

So there are some things to consider with this. While we remember the truth that his yoke is easy and his burden is light, we must also not neglect the weight of the crowns we are called to bear as his Church. Although we do not walk around under the weight of a 4.9 pound crown, we are called to the weight of ministry that sees royalty being fully realized in service, and where true power is not about politics but of a subversive love.
Image credits for this essay: Images 1 and 2, stills from The Crown opening sequence, © Netflix (see link for production credits); Image 3, "Saint Edward's Crown" from FirebraceCC BY-SA 4.
Copyright © 2022 Steven Homestead-Artist, Composer, Thinker, All rights reserved.


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