The last dove’s flight into the world was brutally ended
An artist sees Michelangelo's Pietà in a new light
It was the angle of the light that brought me to utter ruin.
FROM CHAPTER 2 of the river BEAUTIFUL. Read CHAPTER 2: the last dove’s flight exclusively at theriverBEAUTIFUL.com
The light, golden and flashing off that sumptuous Carrara marble, the light that poured like liquid over Michelangelo Buonarroti's Pietà from behind Mary's left shoulder. It was only a moment, but the video briefly showed the sculpture in a way that utterly ruined me. Unlike every other image that I have ever seen of Pietà, this was lit far differently, and it was then that I saw it.
The face of Christ, sunken in death. His mother, her face wreathed with sorrow but oddly peaceful. And from behind Mary's left shoulder, the Light poured down.
And then, years later, I saw it. The other image. And when I did, this weird brain of mine recalled that single frame from that video, and then it struck me what it all resembled. Those three images became superemposed over each other in my mind, and then my weird brain took a SCREENSHOT.
[What, you didn't know you could do that? Me either. I've since tried to figure out how to recreate the experience, but so far, no luck. I've tried sticking a finger in one ear and slapping myself on the butt, but no luck. Maybe it’s the other way around?]
Okay, enough joking around. That "SCREENSHOT?" It destroyed me. Because I noticed two things about it almost immediately. And then those two things caught my heart and made me weep.
I'm afraid I have to destroy you with it, too.
It's the only thing I can do, really. If you want to come along, keep reading. Mind you, it’s a tough one.
There do be rough seas ahead.
(HEAD’S UP: If you’re not up to it at the moment, here’s some good videos on the inspiration behind the poem and the illustration. Maybe come back later? Or no. I totally understand. There’s some potentially triggering material ahead and I want you to know ahead of time.)
[Curious what AI thinks about it? No, me neither. But if you want to go down that rabbit hole, let me know and I’ll personally send you something… because I did and... well, let's just say that I'll get back to you on how I feel about it).
PSSST. If you stare at it long enough, it starts moving.
READY TO GO?
BRAVE SOULS YE. Start the SOUNDTRACK.
Soundtrack tips & tricks: Start and stop the first playlist whenever you’d like. Play the others as it seems appropriate. Really, we’re not control freaks.
ii. agnus DEI | the last dove’s flight
“Agnus Dei, qui tolis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. [Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.]”
“In all the world, in all time since there never has been found/ Such a holy exclamation point dabbed across unholy ground.”
THIS IS NOT THE NEWS.
Michelangelo Buonarroti was certainly not the first to capture the scene, and thousands have waxed eloquently on what it all means. With humility, I think there's something going on there that I haven’t seen anybody else talk about. But first, I need to tell you another story.
It was the late nineties. I was walking near the University district in Eugene, Oregon; my head hanging down, trying not to see the suffering all around me.
That proved difficult, because as I walked, I saw that Suffering was standing on every corner. Sitting on the park bench, eying me as I walked past. Crouched underneath a bush to get out of the rain. Suffering was grabbing cigs out of the sand in front of the various shops to feed the need. She was laughing excitedly, the humor never reaching eyes that had seen too much.
I kept walking down 13th Street back toward the college campus, trying not to see. I was immediately shaken out of my reverie by a hand that reached out and tugged my pant leg.
"Hey man," Suffering said. "Twenty bucks, bro."
"What?" I said stupidly.
"Anything you want." He eyed me hopefully for a moment, then grinned. His eyes looked dead. My eyes wanted to start right out of my head. That was just too much for this pudgy little sheltered Idaho kid, and I took off; jogging awkwardly to the sandwich shop I was headed to. Suffering's laughter followed me as I ran; ragged and phlegmy.
I stood in line silently except to blurt out my usual order; paid, then grabbed my warm sub and headed back to the relative safety of my apartment. Sitting in my silent living room, I stuffed down the sub and sat there, thinking.
Now that I was in a familiar, safe space, I didn't feel anything about the folks I had just seen. Not a thing.
I thought more about that. I thought more about that for some time. Why didn't I feel anything anymore, other than mild annoyance? What was happening to my heart that I could sit in my safe, warm, apartment and not care about the Suffering all around me?
My alarm went off for my next class, but I ignored it and sat there. What the hell was wrong with me? I couldn't cry. I needed to cry, to dislodge this wedge of indifference that was stuck in my throat, choking me.
I couldn't cry. I suddenly remembered a song by Keith Green about that. "My eyes are dry," I sang quietly. "My faith is old. My heart is hard; my prayers are cold. And I know how I ought to be: alive to You and dead to me."
I still couldn't cry. My eyes certainly were dry. My heart was in there somewhere, but I couldn't find it. It had become numb without my notice.
"Jesus," I whispered. "Break my heart for what breaks yours."
That was it. No magic words. Not a very good prayer. Not even an "in Jesus name" or an "amen." Just an acknowledgement that my heart had become hard, and I didn’t like being that way.
It was like Somebody lifted the sluice gate that had walled up a river of tears. I couldn't breathe for the weight of all of it. I prayed for every person I had encountered that day. I vowed to pray for Suffering every time I ran into her. I promised myself I would pray for every single person I encountered.
That evening, we had a praise gathering in the Rug Room; what we called the common room on the ground floor of the dorms.
I couldn't sing much. But I could cry.
I have never been the same.
Easter 1999 arrived sometime afterward. I’ll admit my mind is sketchy on details. I don't remember anything much else about it except that my tears seemed almost constantly to hover just behind my shoulder, ready to settle on me at just about anything. But the Poem eventually came knocking at my door, late at night:
On the heels of that poem, when I had just written it down, came the aforementioned HOLY SPIRIT SCREENSHOT. (Or, if you prefer, the HSS.)
I saw Michelangelo's Pietà from that crazy angle; the light traveling like water over Mary's shoulders, sorrowfully kissing the beautiful face that Michelangelo imagined as the face of Christ: its calm perfection unmarred by pain. I saw the youthful face of Mary; portrayed as Michelangelo's ideal of the female face perfected.
I saw Mary's lap, which Michelangelo had stretched into enormity to hold the body of Jesus; made small by the sculptor's hand in comparison to Mary. And I saw the way Michelangelo draped Jesus' and Mary's bodies in cloth, and with the light pouring down, I saw the other shapes.
(You might see them if you squint a little at my illustration.)
A saw a teardrop. A giant tear, falling to earth toward the lower left of the illustration. And I knew that Mary's tears were held within that giant teardrop, and her tears represented the rest of ours: all of us poor mortals who will all one day stare death full in the face.
And then I saw that Jesus' tears were in that giant teardrop as well. And knew that the Father's tears were the giant tears that fell. That His sorrow was so much greater than our own.
That’s when I saw the other image.
What’s the other image, you ask? An anatomically-correct human heart, beating? No, I saw that one too. But it isn’t important right now.
I saw this, and it destroyed me.
PHOTO by THERESE FRARE, 1990. “David Kirby on his deathbed, Ohio.” LIFE Magazine. This deeply moving photograph captures AIDS activist David Kirby on his deathbed, surrounded by his family at the Pater Noster House hospice in Ohio. The image became one of the most iconic representations of the human toll of the AIDS crisis after it was later featured in a controversial Benetton advertisement. The original photograph is part of the LIFE Magazine archives and has been preserved in various public and academic collections addressing photojournalism and LGBTQ+ history.
THE RESEMBLANCE TO THE PIETA just slayed me. And that combined image has burned into my mind.
It’s made me think some more. A lot more.
I thought that just maybe, at the apex of her unfathomable grief, Mary felt the touch of the Father. That He brought her peace beyond all understanding. That somehow, the arms that held the Universe were also holding her. That His heart held hers, as well as that of their Son.
And just maybe, in that moment of unexpected peace, Mary knew that God's grief was so much greater than her own. Just maybe she caught a glimpse of the tears of God co-mingled with the tears of all of the Universe; each of her own tears captured and kept with perfect diligence for all eternity. That the perfect Love of God, having cast out Mary's fears, welcomed her and made her family.
And then maybe, just maybe, the Holy Spirit let Mary glimpse the meaning of all of that crushing grief; that what Jesus had done with His death and resurrection would set the feet of many along the River road that led to the Throne of God. Maybe the Father gave her a glimpse of us: thousands of years later, weeping at an image of her grief. And that we were now part of Mary's family because we were made a part of God's family. That we would be able to approach that Throne because of what her Son would do.
And Mary sat within the enormous lap of the Father, even as she held the Son. Loved perfectly, the sculptor made her perfect... or at least, perfection as he imagined her. Surely the real Mary and Jesus looked much different.
I imagine a haggard woman in possibly her late forties/early fifties, wrapped in worn clothes stained with both the Son's blood and her unfathomable sorrow. She weeps over his body where it lies on the rocks of Golgotha. Naked and almost unrecognizable as human; His skin in ribbons, her heart has felt every blow. But somehow, Someone holds her. Somehow, Someone’s grief is greater. And He holds her, and us, and all this bitter, bitter world.
Incidentally, when I set out to create the accompanying illustration titled AGNUS DEI, I tried drawing that other image first, but I was never happy with it. What remains tries to honor Michelangelo's genius and maybe capture bits and pieces of that crazy SCREENSHOT that my weird brain did.
It's not perfect.
It's never been. But then again, neither am I. Nor was Michelangelo. Nor Mary.
Tonight on this Good Friday, as we sit in
the enormous lap of God the Father
and look at the face of the Son,
we see Perfection Himself.
And in our Darkness, we know the Light is coming.
EPILOGUE
Our hearts are utterly shattered these days for a friend of ours who recently lost her son. He seems to have gotten on a bus, run away from home, and taken his own life using poison.
We don't have words.
I certainly don't. I have tried to write this section so many times but I can only say this.
The group our dear friend and her family now have joined accepts only those who know what it is like to lose a child. I, who have no children, have no frame of reference to know what she and her husband and her dear children are going through. I haven’t been through it.
But I can pray.
I have Tears now. I am ready.
JASON CHRISTOPHER HACKWITH, EASTER 2025
-
This is the second time I have written this story. The first time I wrote it, the Lord took it away from me. I spent hours on it, and then the work was just... gone. I felt the weight of it and mourned its loss. But I did not know then what I know now: it was a good thing to write, but it wasn't the right time.
You see, the day before Easter a year ago, the Lord gifted me with a beautiful version of this article that was far better than this one. Just flowed effortlessly, very little editing necessary.
I remember being very happy with it. I had it completely finished and was just tweaking a few last things when it happened. The web software I was using to write the blog post suddenly died; and it was all gone. Pfffft.
I did my due diligence and worked hard with the software provider to try to find some kind of backup, but it was gone. I had broken one of my first rules and not copied it and saved it elsewhere.
As a rule, I usually create within environments with very strict and reliable data security. Everything gets backed up in several locations: locally and in the cloud via DropBox. Some very precious data is backed up via Dreamhost. For some reason I hadn't done that this time. I was pretty devastated.
[Are you sure you want the details? Okay, I warned ya. Truth is, the loss was brutal. This was something I had desperately wanted to get right, and had spent hours on. It was easy to blame the web software and the company behind it, but eventually I blamed myself. I spiraled into a deep depression that took me out of the fight for a long while. Took some hard work to climb up and out of that one but we did it. Eventually.]
Fast forward to March of 2025. I was sitting in a friend's living room getting caught up after a long time, and our conversation settled on one of my favorite verses. It's truly remarkable:
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Colossians 3:1-4 (ESV)
And then it happened just today. This thing fell on me out of nowhere—weeks afterward—as I consider Christ's death this Good Friday. I had an opportunity to write, and turned out to be Eukairos. (That's a very useful Greek word, by the way. Now THAT’s a rabbit hole worth going down.)Yes, this is not that amazing bit of writing I did a year ago which only God got to read. This is something a little different. Not better, but right.
Guess God had it all backed it up to the cloud with the rest of me, "hidden with Christ in God."
Jason Christopher Hackwith
April 18th, 2025
