Pictures: “The Giant Snake - Max Ernst 1935”
“Bethlehem - Banksy 2005”
Passage: Genesis 2-3
Today’s first session went well but left me anxious for future lessons. It suddenly struck me just how optional these “classes” are and that if the kids do not like VTS I cannot well force it on them. I must trust that the relationships formed are strong enough to sustain a few weeks of disinterest.
We began with “The Giant Snake.” We spent time looking at the piece and this in of itself proved challenging. Donny barely looked up from his phone, Obi seemed to look quickly then lose interest, Fernando looked long, and Charlie was engaged. None of the girls came today.
When I asked “what’s going on in this picture?” only Charlie was willing to answer. He summarized the main elements of the piece, a man wrestling a snake and a woman reacting, but did so quickly. Almost too quickly for me to summarize his observations. I did and asked him to justify some of his ideas. He did but struggled to express his ideas. For example, he said “the lady is going ‘boy oh boy’” attributing specific words to her emotion but I was not able to easily explore what emotion “boy oh boy” was meant to convey.” Charlie is the oldest in the group and has often served as my lone participator in class discussions. He would have gladly kept going but I asked others “what else can we find.” Obi put forth “the man is wearing slacks.” I summarized this but saw no way to easily expand on this thought. Charlie suggested that the woman may represent the virgin Mary. I asked what made him say that. He referenced her halo and the fact that artists “didn’t know what skin tone was back then.” I summarized “You’re wondering if it might represent Mary because of associations you have from other artwork depicting her as a white woman.” Donny participated throughout but was not especially engaged. He noted that they were standing on something - that is, they were on a surface. He was not interested in commenting on the nature of this surface. The group also noted the figures in the distant background. Charlie stood up and looked close to see that they were two figures, a big person holding a little person. Others were less inclined to get close. It made me wonder how I can draw people in. Today we were sitting a ways away from the TV. Fernando was unwilling to speak today. I got the feeling that he was uncomfortable with Donny, who stood up and in his face asked if he knew sign language or spoke Spanish. After that I felt pretty sure that Fernando would have nothing to say so long as Donny was around but I kept making eye contact to be sure.
Our second try went smoother in many ways. Donny again barely looked, Obi began commenting immediately and I had to remind him just to look. This time Donny kicked off the conversation but he did so as one who had not looked at the picture at all. Or so it seemed. I shall seek out the clearest, largest photos I can find going forth. He saw the buckets as paint buckets but then lost the group by saying that the scene was a proposal. He would go on to mention this idea two more times and I would be able to draw out that he had taken the object in the kneeling figure’s hand to be a flower. Interestingly enough, no one mentioned the fact that the figures appear to be two children, though the proposal idea was rejected by everyone who was close enough to easily see the painting. When Charlie addressed the scene he took the fence and the wall to be part of the painting - that is, as if the whole scene was painted to include a photo-realistic wall with graffiti on it. About halfway through I would reveal the true nature of the piece to see how it affected their interpretation. It didn’t seem to very much. Picking this piece out I thought the meaning was obvious, I saw it as two boys playing in the dust, cut off from the beach by the wall through which we could see into an island paradise. The group, however, took the object in the figures hand for a paintbrush with the buckets full of paint. Donny introduced the idea of paint, Charlie flushed out the idea that they were painting a better world, painting an escape. Obi was reminded of the island in Survivor which, Charlie pointed out, does not mean it’s a paradise. He was reminded of Lord of the Flies (which he read last year). It was Donny who suggested that the kids might be taking apart the wall. He noted the cracks around the window. By this point, however, everyone was not quite focused.
Indeed, the lack of focus seems to be my biggest challenge here. Especially with Donny who bounces around from thing to thing and may struggle with ADHD. I think in the future I really ought to stick to one image and one passage. Today we looked at two images and two passages and it seemed more than our group’s focus allowed for.
At the end of our art discussion, Donny asked “Can I ask a question? What’s the purpose for this?” It was a good question and I was unsure of how much of my goals to reveal. If I say “I think open ended conversation will help you read scripture better” I fear it will alter his approach. I ended up saying, “you’ll see.”
Shifting to the Bible discussion I was frustrated to find that the translation I had hoped to have available in book form was not. I had the kids follow along on their phones while I played an audio Bible. We listened to a chapter and a half. Charlie was ready to jump in with observations right away. He had recently studied Genesis 3 in a youth group at another church. He commented on the fact that Eve’s quote of God’s command does not match the command the LORD actually gives. I asked him to explain fully, which he did. I then asked: what more can we find? Obi mentioned the fact that they begin naked and happy but end up ashamed. I asked what happened to change this? Donny said (spinning around in an office chair) it was because they ate the apple. “What apple?” asked Charlie. He wanted to point out that it never says it’s an apple. I eventually made him say it plainly. I asked them to identify what the fruit was actually called. Charlie knew, of course, but I tried to encourage Obi to find the answer. “Why do you guys think that people telling the story in the past called the fruit an apple?” Charlie supposed it was because people knew what an apple was, it made it contextually relevant. I then asked why “knowledge of good and evil” caused shame. Donny answered that it was because God told them not to eat. An additional tangent occurred when Obi mentioned the shame and nakedness. Somewhere it was stated that God said “the day you eat from it you will die.” and yet they didn’t. “God lied,” exclaimed Donny. “No,” said Charlie, “He showed mercy.” We did not, however, explore this as much as I would have liked.
On paper, this sounds like a pretty good discussion with a lot of good insight. I like to think maybe Fernando was able to soak it all in with me. Donny on the other hand was only engaged when he had something to say and seemed to be very distracted at all other times. We reached a point where all seemed done and abruptly shifted into our game time. I did explain this basic schedule - 15 minutes with art, 20 minutes with scripture, and ~30 with a game. “Yet,” I clarified, “the game depends on getting through the art and the Bible. The art I need to incorporate for my class, the Bible we need to do because it’s what this is all about. But I have a lot of fun with games and want there to be time for them. We just need to make sure we do the other stuff well.”