Genesis 11.1-9: Talk and Tools

You might even have been able to hear them singing as they were building:

The more we get together, together, together

The more we get together the happier we'll be

But not everyone was happier with everybody getting together to build a tower to heaven. So language was confused (Genesis 11:1-9). No one could understand each other any more and building slowed. Slowed. And ultimately stopped. The tower was left to the ravages of time as surely as Ozymandias' vast and trunkless legs. Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! Perhaps the tower builders didn't know the story of Adam and Eve, whose lives were changed when they sought to be like God. Perhaps they knew but believed that their story would be different. 

Perhaps that's just human nature - to want to leave works and legacies and reminders that you walked the earth. That you were here. Pieter Bruegel saw the tendency in 16th-century Antwerp (Belgium). He paired the commercial development and urban sprawl of Antwerp with the Biblical story of the tower of Babel. 

The artist was commissioned to create several documentary paintings of the construction of a canal in Antwerp, so he put his learnings about construction to work in this large composition (approximately 45" x 61"). On the tower you'll see workers pulling boards up by ropes, horses pulling sleds piled with bags of something, workshops for creating building materials and tools, stonecarvers picking away at rock, ladders leaning against walls and boards spanning chasms.

The tower is based at least in part on the Colosseum in Rome, which at the time Bruegel painted was an abandoned and weed-covered ruin. Bruegel was making the point that what the Romans considered a masterpiece of engineering and architecture was now nothing to brag about. Perhaps the same fate awaited Antwerp's great plans for building and expansion. 

Pieter Bruegel. Tower of Babel. 1563. Vienna: Kunsthistoriches Museum. 
Google Art Project allows a really close zoom onto the details of this painting. Click here.

At the lower left, Nimrod has come to check the progress of his tower. Some of the stone cutters have stopped their work, bowing down to the king. One of the cutters has abandoned his tools on top of the stone on which he was working. But he has left the handle of the hammer and several of the spikes facing toward us. All we have to do is walk into the picture, pick up our tools, and help build this remarkable tower. 

Should we? Should we have walked in and picked up those tools if we were in the Biblical story? Should we have done that if we lived in Bruegel's 16th-century Antwerp? What about now? Should we pick up those tools and go to work with people we may not understand? Human language is never unconfused. The miracle of Pentecost isn't one of speech. It's one of hearing: each one heard their own language (Acts 2:6). The Holy Spirit facilitated hearing. The problem of communication remains.

Bruegel created a second (larger!) version of this subject. Look at Art&Faith Matters on Facebook to see what differences you can see.

For additional thoughts on Pentecost, click here, here, here, or here.

Cultural aside: Is it just me...or does the Bruegel painting look more than a little like Minas Tirith in the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies? The source of that structure is supposedly Mont St. Michel, but it feels at least a little bit Bruegel to me. 

Acts 2.1-21: A Day for...Weddings?

Pentecost lectionary readings focus on the day of Pentecost with its locked doors, rushing wind, tongues of fire, preaching and conversion (Acts 2:1-21). So it's interesting that Pentecost has more than one association with weddings, which are not mentioned at all in the text. Pieter Brueghel's painting "The Whitsun Bride", below, calls attention to an old folk practice and an alternate name for Pentecost.

Pieter Brueghel the Younger. The Whitsun Bride. 17th century. Private collection.

The folk practice was the adornment of a village "bride" with particular flowers followed by a parade through the village with the children "begging" as on Halloween. The parade took place the week after Pentecost, which is also called Whitsunday. The ceremony highlighted the Whitsun flower, pinksterbloem (which also means "a girl foolishly attired"), which may be one of several flowers blooming around the time of Pentecost. The combination of weddings and flowers brings to Pentecost more a feeling of Spring, fertility, and new life that is often more associated with Easter than Pentecost.

English poet Phillip Larkin tied weddings to Whitsun in his poem "The Whitsun Weddings". The poem recounts a train journey to London that might be real, imagined or conflated from several actual journeys. The day is Whitsunday, a day which offered a tax advantage for weddings making it an especially popular day for weddings. Several newly-married couples board the train on which the poet (or the persona whose voice is speaking the poem) is traveling.

The day's name, Pentecost, refers to the fifty days that passed between Easter and the day of Pentecost. But Pentecost also was called Whitsunday, contracted from White Sunday, presumably emphasizing the white garments of catechumens who were baptized on Pentecost. However, in England, the root of "white" became confused with the root for "wit" and the association changed from the white of baptismal garments to the wisdom dispensed by the Holy Spirit.

Today we think of Pentecost as "the birthday of the church" rather than a day particularly associated with weddings. But every liturgical day has a history of observance that may take its meanings well outside what we find in the text. How does the association of Pentecost with weddings change the way you think about the day?

For additional thoughts on Pentecost, click here, here or here. For thoughts on Genesis 11:1-9, click here.
How might you picture the power and presence of Pentecost winds through photography? Click on the Art&Faith Matters Facebook link here.