Order includes:

• high-res image file formatted for print

• high-res image file formatted for web/projection

• A PDF of the artist's statement & scripture reference for the visual

• A visio divina Bible Study Guide for you to use this image in a group study session that incorporates the ancient Benedictine spiritual practice of "divine seeing."

Credit Info:

When printing and sharing online, please always include the following credits:
Artist's name | A Sanctified Art LLC | sanctifiedart.org

FROM THE ARTIST:

At the end of this Ecclesiastes text, we read that the threefold cord is not easily broken. I had a piece of twine, which when I pulled it apart, broke into four sections. I sistered two into one, making three. I filmed myself pulling apart and re- weaving the twine. Then I drew this quilt square design from the still images in my video.

I dislike the final energy in the central motif of this artwork. It feels discordant. Perhaps that’s the point. When I read this scripture, it seems to focus on strength—but in the rope itself, I find weakness. It was so easy to unravel the cord and create weakness. Its strength lies in the weave, in the interwoven fibers coming together. Without that interweaving, the fibers are weak.

As I continue to watch our communities come together and splinter apart, it is always through the aspirational and the altruistic that the re-weaving begins. This discordant quilt square calls us to sit in the tension of the in-between, to weave our lives together rather than pulling them apart. And yet, I hate it, the asymmetry of it all. I want the art, the community, and the collective life to be simple, symmetrical, and full of order. But in Ecclesiastes, our practical God emphasizes that two are better than one and three are stronger than two. A three-ply cord isn’t easily broken. This offers a very trinitarian way forward in the messy, interwoven, beautiful, and powerful collective.

—Hannah Garrity