https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2021/10/xomatok-lima-staircases/
I was looking for something joyful and I found this image. I showed it to some young men and one said, “It’s like acid!” Another said “It’s LGBTQ!” I showed it to some mature religious women and they said “it is Joy!” Another younger woman, in a hospital bed, unable to walk and feeling really low reacted with a smile. “It’s joy, it’s music, it’s dance!” she exclaimed, “You’ve really given me a lift”. This is one of 13 stairways in Lima’s hilly district of Alisos de Amauta, which the Peruvian artist Xomatok transformed in 2021. I think it is significant that he did not work alone. These were community projects. The brightly coloured pattern is not based on the rainbow or on a “psychedelic” experience. It comes from the geometric motifs of handwoven Andean blankets. I don’t know if the Baptist’s Advent cry was in the artist’s mind, but he certainly evoked it in mine. “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” We sometimes hear the Baptist’s cry as a call to repentance only, to a sober reckoning with personal sinfulness, to the hard struggle of change. But the Baptist’s cry is more. It’s scope is broader and deeper. It is an invitation to joy. And surely this is what lies behind the repeated question in today’s Gospel, “Then what shall we do”. The hill to be mounted is there within each of us. But even now God can build his stairway within us. He calls us to climb upward with joy. The bright lights of the coming season of Christmas might be a relief from the darkness of winter, but those with eyes to see and ears to hear can see differently. Some of us are so busy just now. There is so much to be done. Others just want to get through it. Christmas can be experienced as overload and, like a wave on the sea, it can sweep us along like driftwood. Joy might be at best joys, moments, like fragments of broken glass on time’s string. But God’s joy runs deeper. It transforms a world grown old, it energises and it empowers. Tt enkindles and rejuvenates. It leads to Him. This is the message of Gaudate Sunday. Oh Lord, teach us and lead us to rejoice in you!
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