Mary's Friday Newsletter 5/16/25

Behind the scenes of this week's Bible study + new art experiments

May 16, 2025

Hello there dear ones,

This is the time of year for my family when all our routine appointments come due—school sports physicals, dentist, and medication check-ins. This week I finally got a routine mammogram (next up—a colonoscopy!), and when the secretary handed me my form on check-in, it said, “age: 47.” Since when am I 47? I thought.

Since March, friends. Since March.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I got out my calculator and checked because I didn’t believe it.

So that’s how my week has gone! Actually, it’s been a good week of work for me. Writing Chapter 2 of the Jesus Speaks to Women study on the Samaritan Woman turned out to be a huge challenge for several reason. First, it’s a long passage (the longest conversation recorded with Jesus in the Gospels), and the conversation itself is deep and full of metaphor. Second, the way the story has been interpreted over the centuries of church tradition, and even now in most study Bibles and sermons, makes it hard to understand exactly what John the writer wanted us to learn about Jesus. Third, it takes a bit of digging to understand the nuances of Roman and Jewish cultures of that day.

I’m grateful for the books I was able to read that helped me understand the story better, especially Caryn Reeder’s book on the Samaritan Woman. After doing the research, I realized that so much of what I thought I knew about the story was either wrong or not completely accurate! In fact, I rewrote the poem because of this new information. These realizations can be both intimidating (do I know anything about the Bible??) and exciting (there is so much to learn!).

It was also fun to research the featured art for this week’s study. I try to look for a painting that capture how I imagine both Jesus (not necessarily his looks but his expression and feeling) and the woman in the story. In addition, I’m looking for paintings in the public domain for copyright purposes. I looked through a lot of paintings before I settled on the one by Danish painter Carl Bloch.

I loved this newer one from Cameroon:

JESUS MAFA. Jesus and the Samaritan Woman, from **Art in the Christian Tradition**, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48282 [retrieved May 16, 2025]. Original source: http://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr (contact page: https://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr/contact).

The Visual Commentary on Scripture is an interesting resource. You can search by the Scripture and see different paintings done based on that passage along with commentary about the art and how it tells the story. Here’s one by Lavinia Fontana:

Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614). *Christ and the woman of Samaria*

This week was also fun because I’ve been experimenting with some new processes for my art. For a long time, I’ve wanted a way to put my watercolors/mixed media paintings onto wooden panels and go frame-less. I find these wood panels with cute sayings at the thrift store all the time. I’ve been trying different methods of adding either cold press ground (to create a watercolor paper-like surface) or gluing on paper or layers of paper. Here are a few examples:

I’ve also been adding cold press ground in layers to create flowers. I’m still playing with the process, which can be frustrating, because it involves a lot of failure! Here are a few in the beginning stages of adding color: