Order includes:

• high-res image file formatted for print

• high-res image file formatted for web/projection

• A PDF of the Artist's statements & 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:

Mother’s Day 2016 happened to fall on a Sunday. For the first time since I was a young girl, I traded my flowery pink dresses for a delicate black dress. One church member asked the uncomfortable question that hid behind many of the pitiful gazes and uncomfortable half smiles aimed in my direction that morning: “Why in the world are you wearing all black?” The question felt absurdly rhetorical. I had buried my own mother only the day before after a yearlong battle with cancer. I was one day into a season of active mourning, a response that seemed as strange to those around me as the question of my wardrobe seemed to me.

Our Christian faith provides space for the abstaining practice of fasting as a core Lenten practice. Current cultural context has grown to accept tears, at least for a time, as a socially accepted and natural first step toward the longer process of healing from grief. But what do we make of the practice of mourning? The Day of the Lord in Joel Chapter 2 is an intentional call to expressions of mourning that bring life to a holy halt. The rending of hearts and of garments of mourning, the calling for a holy fast and stillness, and the expectant joy of the relenting of the wrath of God are deeply tied to the process of fasting, weeping, and mourning named in verse 12.

Joy Comes In The Mourning is an interrogation of the collective “turning away” from practices of mourning. The mourner wears their grief as a golden garment for all to see. In a world where rendered black bodies captured on body cams frequent the media, while black mourning is disregarded as performative, Joy Comes In The Mourning embraces the dancing and disruptive public displays of black mourning that often serve as prophetic witness, calling us to face the reckoning of the Lord’s Day where peace and justice will reign. 

What if the practice of Lent invites us into a season of not only fasting, but also of weeping and mourning? What if our grief is longing to spill out from all we were within and into all that we are in the world? What if a deeper Lenten expression of mourning, amid loss of all kinds, is the pathway to the joy we’ve been seeking in our walk with God all along?

—Carmelle Beaugelin