SLEEPERS ‘WAKE CHAPTER TWELVE

SONG OF SONGS

June 2026

 

My beloved speaks and says to me:

“Arise, my love, my beautiful one,

    and come away,

for behold, the winter is past;

    the rain is over and gone.”

Song of Solomon 2:10-11

Sleepers ‘wake CXXV - Song of Songs

May ‘26, Acrylic on canvas, 22” x 28”

June 17th, 2026

I am very excited and grateful to have been commissioned to create a piece for the Festival of Scripture & The Arts happening at Concordia University Chicago this weekend. I’m also really looking forward to hearing the premiere of Jonathan Stahlke’s “Song of All Songs.” And I’m filled with inspiration and curiosity about how Song of Songs has woven into my current art process. I took an interesting mental journey while working through sketches of the visual message. Song of Songs is such a complex and mysterious book. And a lovely invitation to seek and love God more deeply, which is what I’m always looking for. Here, I will share with you some of the meaning of the art, alongside several thoughts and ideas I’ve had about Song of Songs.

This is the one-hundred-and-twenty-fifth piece in my series, Sleepers ‘wake. This is Chapter 12 of the series. That being said, there is a great deal of meaning and symbolism behind the piece, which I’m not going to address today. But if you are curious, you can read previous chapters on my website. 

For today, I would like to begin by addressing this section, which is intended to look like a tapestry. In case you are unfamiliar with tapestry lingo, the strands that go lengthwise are called the warp and the strands that go crosswise are  called the weft. If you look closely, you may observe that there are almost two different tapestries. Or perhaps that there were but they have become one tapestry. That would be an excellent observation. 

There is in fact one tapestry, which is made of varying blue warps and wefts, which represent people within the church body. Each strand follows the pattern; over, under, over, under. That is how tapestries work. The gold is actually a net, not a tapestry. You wouldn’t know that, except that I’m telling you. 

I’ve learned, through this process, that basically the only difference between a net and a tapestry, is that when a net’s warp and weft cross over, they are tied together. In one of my process sketches, I included those dots. But I chose to leave them out of this one, because I imagined it would potentially look too busy. 

The blue tapestry is us; the church; the bride of Christ. The golden net is Christ; the bridegroom, carrying us and whatever weight we are or are not able to carry. Weight like grief or weariness. 

As I said before, the blue tapestry has strands overlap each other alternating back and forth. I love to envision each cross over as one neighbor meeting another. And when they meet, they are open with eachother, and their openess receives or shares weight. In one meeting, Mary is carrying the grief of Frank, then in the next meeting, Mary’s weariness is being carried by Amanda, etc. When a tapestry (or a church body) works well, the members of it take turns carrying and being carried by one another. And the more strands there are, the stronger the tapestry is. 

The golden warp and wefts, of the net, are all underneath the tapestry. This symbolizes how Christ can catch and carry it all. It’s a beautiful visual of his humility and constant example of servant hood.

Now, when I look at this portion here, I see my church. I see it as almost a visual summary of all the people in my church brought together. When I look at each blue ‘V’ growing into one warp and one weft, I see a specific person in my church. The people I see change, depending on who is on my mind that day. Usually it’s the people we’re praying for the most and the people I know who are going through the most suffering. But it can also be the person I talked to last, or the one who made me laugh recently. Or the one(s) experiencing abundant joy.

This image shows a larger view of the tapestry. It also gives a sneak peak of the top. When I look at this portion of the piece; most of the tapestry all together, I see the Sacrament of the Altar, that is a foretaste of the marriage feast of the lamb. A sneak peak. I see my church body coming physically to church on Sunday morning. Confessing our sins, receiving absolution. Leaving our pews, traveling across the entire sanctuary to pass the peace to everyone we possibly can in five minutes, before the organ starts to play, alerting us that it’s time to scamper back to our seats.

Here, you’ll see the Marriage Feast of the Lamb. Looking at the strange, almost transparent, swirls may cause us to visualize a delicious feast. That was a happy accident. There’s actually a massive explanation for those, which I’m very excited to share about a little later in this reflection. For now, I’ll just leave this as a little foretaste to that.

That’s basically it for the meaning behind the visuals.

Now I’m going to go ahead and work on processing what any of this has to do with that mysterious book, Song of Songs.

Here we go.

EXCITEMENT FOR THE FEAST 

When I think about the two people in Song of Songs, preparing for their wedding, I’m reminded that Christ is legitimately excited to marry us, the church. He is currently literally preparing a feast. Then I remember that there is a woman in the story, who is equally excited. So is there some way I can at least try to reflect Christ’s excitement for the wedding, like the bride in Song of Songs, even though the whole idea is so mysterious to me? Could I even somehow prepare something to bring to the feast? To try and answer these questions, I’m going to start by looking closely at the actual people I can physically be with. It’s sometimes hard for me to get excited to have eternal union with a person I’ve never seen. But I know a lot of people who I can’t wait to spend eternity with.

THE JOY OF FRIENDSHIP

In this first section, I will address the joy of friendship. I will also be using the almost transparent swirls I mentioned a moment ago, as an illustration of that joy.

Now, I want you to take a moment and imagine that friend. The one that you can fully deeply be open with. It could be a childhood friend. A spouse. A sibling. One of your adult children. A grandparent. A fellow church member. 

With this person, the two of you can be so fully, genuinely open that, at times, it may seem like you are actually just one person. I’ve had the blessing of having several friends like this in my life. Today I’m going to talk a little about two of them.

Jessika

When I was twenty-three, one of my best friends suddenly died. It was a great shock to us all. She had been so full of life and joy, but in an instant, she was snuffed out. I was completely stunned. Up until that point, I hadn’t been anticipating heaven with much excitement. I had been a child for most of my life, and was still very much a child, and the grown-ups had always described heaven as a boring peaceful place where we would get to just sing forever. As a child, who was obsessed with running and being active, that sounded like boring adult prison to me. I still wanted to go, but mostly because it wasn’t hell. Ha ha. I certainly wasn’t excited about it. 

But when Jessika died, my perspective immediately, dramatically shifted. The two of us had a friendship filled with inside jokes, laughter, sneaky expressions across the room, which would communicate something only the two of us knew. We sang together a great deal, harmonizing often. Memories were regularly made and thrown into our shared brain box of more and more memories. We would take the box out and look at the memories together from time to time. Our faith and passion for Christ was mutual and we would habitually talk about Him with love and thankfulness. At times, we felt so close, it was like we were one person. When she died, it was like that friendship was suddenly extinguished. Like someone had rudely licked their fingers and pinched the wick that held the flame of our friendship. It was gone. And with it, a piece of myself as well. Gone.

Except that it wasn’t. And I knew that it wasn’t.

When we were together, if you had observed us, you would have been able to practically see the joy of our friendship, almost like wisps of lovely smelling steam rising from a hot cup of tea. Or a beautiful swirl of smoke casually ascending from a fragrant and comforting candle. 

Imagination

Now I want to take a brief moment to talk about imagination. I’m an artist, so I love to use my imagination. And I value it a great deal. I think imagination is not just for children. It is a very important tool in getting excited to marry our future husband, Christ. 

I imagine that when the flame of our friendship was extinguished, God caught the lovely smoke that had been rising from it. He caught it like my five-year-old would catch a firefly. He has it in a box somewhere and is feeding it and nourishing it. And I can hear echoes of it sometimes. I can’t remember all of the memories or inside jokes, but I can hear her laugh. And I can hear her sing.

Like Cinderella’s glass slipper. God has left the echoes of her laughter and her song for me to cherish, while I wait to be reunited with her, and get excited for the marriage feast of the lamb. 

Annie

Now I will tell you about another friend. In January of this year I lost another one, from the same group of extremely tight-knit friends. It was also a shock, but it was brutal in different ways. Jessika had had a surgery, which went well, but a few nights later, she didn’t wake up. 

Annie...

There’s a lot to write about. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever been through. I won’t write it all. She was born with a heart condition. We never thought about it. She was one of the liveliest people we knew. Then on Christmas Eve morning she texted us all that she was being helicoptered to the Mayo Clinic. She proceeded to have ongoing open-heart surgery for the next three weeks. And one day, she fell asleep and didn’t wake up. 

Experiences like this are really teaching me to treasure the value of laughter and song.

I can hear her laughing. I can actually feel her laughing, because when I sat right next to her, she would grab my shoulder very hard as she rocked forward with the force of her laughter, her hand covering her mouth. And I can hear her singing. We were camp counselors, so we sang songs about Christ together, a lot. We sang loudly and we sang joyfully. And I can still hear her singing. 

Several nights ago, I woke up in the middle of the night, and it was almost like she was there, laughing, in pure joy. 

Christ now has the swirling smoke from our friendship in a box somewhere and is feeding it and nourishing it. And He has left the echoes of her laugh and her song for me to cherish, while I wait to be reunited with her, and get excited for the marriage feast of the lamb. 

The Fragrance of Friendship

I’ve started calling this connection and joy that two people can experience, the fragrance of friendship. I love labels. They help me navigate life and my thoughts as I move through it. When I created this Sleepers ‘wake I didn’t immediately know that it was going to have these strange, almost transparent, swirls. They kind of happened as the painting progressed.

Now I see them coming off of the end of each warp or weft. They are the moment that life is extinguished and the fragrance of their friendship is caught by God. He now has it in His bank; His vault of heaven. 

I love that it actually looks like fragrance rising from a delicious feast. At my church, we regularly celebrate something we call Feast Services. They are Divine Services overflowing with music and visual art and sometimes poetry, and of course the Sacrament of the Altar and an abundance of grace. Afterwards we often enjoy a literal feast together. We describe these services as a feast for the senses. 

Perhaps the feast God is preparing for us is like this. And the joys that Jessika and I, and Annie and I, created together can now be delicious morsels I can offer to the feast, as I am preparing for it, as broken and sinful as I am. I can still love people and grow joy together with them, as an offering to that feast. And as tragic as death is, isn’t joy and friendship just that much more exuberant? Let us produce and multiply friendship, while we’re here, as much as it hurts to lose it. What a feast we’ll have one day! Can you imagine all those people laughing at once? Or singing for that matter?

THE SINGING VOICE OF THE CHURCH

Speaking of singing, I’d like to tell a little story. But first I want to ask another important question brought up by Song of Songs; how can I get excited for intimacy with one person, when there are so many other people getting invited into the same marriage?

In this second section, I will address the singing voice of the church. I will also be tapping back into my piece’s tapestry imagery, along with the transparent swirls again.

Before I begin my little story, I want to ask you to think of your own beautiful church congregations. Think of all of those people you love. Imagine, especially, the experience of singing all together.

In 2024, I attended the Institute on Liturgy, Preaching and Church Music in Seward, Nebraska. This conference had about 500 people in attendance and many of them were professional church musicians. Needless to say, the worship services were incredible. 

The first night at the institute, I attended Compline. It was breathtaking. There had to be at least 300 people already there. I could almost feel my feet rising off the floor, from the beauty. There were a great many excellent singers, who were not afraid to sing out. Not to mention the striking Marxhausen mosaics surrounding the sanctuary. It was like a feast.

We sounded like one single great voice, rich with diversity and timbres. It was like we were a great tapestry. As our voices wove together, I could almost see the sound rising up to God like a beautiful fragrance.

We sang, “let my prayer rise before you as incense; the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.”

The week prior to the institute, I had been at Concordia University Chicago for Doctor Richard Fischer’s 50th anniversary directing the Wind Symphony. I gladly traveled there, with my flute, and saxophone-playing-husband, to join in the reunion wind symphony. As we played Alleluia Laudamus Te, by Alfred Reed, I was filled with inspiration and love for God. Partly from Doc’s words of admiration and praise as he glorified his maker. But partly just from the music. It was hard for me not to vividly imagine the entire host of heaven teaming with the same praise exhaling through our instruments.

I was so inspired, I started to wonder if perhaps when God speaks, it sounds like music. Like billions and billions of people making music all at once in complete musical cohesion, rich with varying vocal and instrumental ranges and textures. The thundering of that sound would be phenomenal. The only closest experience I could imagine was the feeling of standing next to a great waterfall. But it would be so much greater than that. I could see how such greatness would produce fear, and we probably aren’t able to handle that sound in our tiny broken human bodies. But one day we’ll get to hear it.

For now, perhaps God has given us a foretaste of the feast of His voice, by allowing us to make music together and hear large groups singing and playing music. This reflection has caused me to have an even deeper love for my church, especially when we sing together. 

At the institute, I began to wonder more about this idea. I felt like we, this one voice made up of 500, were perhaps making the sound of Christ’s voice. Whispering maybe, but at least a hint of it nonetheless. But we were also each making the sound of our own individual voices. And at the same time, we were also making the sound of one unified voice, made up of many people - the church. We were making the church’s voice.

So perhaps we were making three voices at once. Our own, the church’s, and Christ’s. 

Doesn’t that sound like many people becoming one person and then that one person becoming one with one other person? As far as I know, that isn’t something that can be found in scripture. So take it with a massive grain of salt, please. But one thing I do know, is that when we, baptized sinners, wake up in the morning and cast off the old Adam and put on the New One; the Bridegroom, then we get to walk around like Little Christs that day. And if we join to sing together, we are the voice of Christ.

Either way, this is my best way to begin grasping at this mystery so far. 

And when I think of all the singing we’re going to do together forever, I am excited to marry the bridegroom. (I guess all those grown-ups were right about heaven.) And I can join in the preparation of the feast by growing friendships, and making music. Whether it’s old or new, whether I’m alone or with others. Whether I’m singing with a congregation...  …or sitting in an audience, listening to the premier of Jonathan Stahlke’s Song of All Songs.

The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come

Song of Solomon 2:12