Exhibitions

Who Is My Neighbor?

A Conversation with The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37)

In a time when good intentions are often met with suspicion or misinterpreted as insincere, the story of the Good Samaritan may feel too idealistic or too generous to be real. And yet, its enduring power lies in its radical invitation to imagine a world shaped by compassion. Told in response to a simple yet profound question – “Who is my neighbor?” – this parable features an act of remarkable kindness performed not by a familiar ally, but by a stranger from a misunderstood and marginalized group.

This year’s seminar invited participants to explore themes of identity and otherness, inclusion and exclusion, and the challenges of ethical conviction in a complex world. Through dialogue and creative expression, they examined what it means to respond to others with care, courage, and empathy

When Moses goes to investigate a burning bush in Exodus 3, he hardly expects to encounter the divine, let alone have a conversation with God.  He’s not sure that he is the right person or that he wants this responsibility to lead his community, but he accepts it. As the famous spiritual Go Down Moses hints, fate calls many of us to do the extraordinary. Who Am I to Answer the Call? Artists in the 2024-2025 Religion, Spirituality, and the Arts program will explore traditions around Exodus 3 and Go Down Moses and respond with their own works of creative debate.

Ecclesiastes, the Bible’s darkest and most cynical book, declares that “everything is vanity.” Perhaps “for everything there is a season,” but “what gain have workers from their toil?” “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong … but time and chance happen to them all.” Others hear a more joyous tone in the book’s advice to “eat, drink, and be merry,” even in the face of life’s randomness, messiness, and confusion. This seminar invites participants to respond to Ecclesiastes’s unsettling paradoxes and questions, which may feel all too contemporary in their blunt assessment of life’s unfairness and insecurities. Where do we encounter these quandaries? How do we deal with unknowns that seem beyond our control and derail our best-laid plans? Can we find inspiration and purpose in the face of increasing natural and social disasters, and if so, where and how?

The seminar will invite artists to be interpreters of Jacob’s dreams. From the ladder that reaches to the heavens to the lonely night of wrestling, these iconic biblical narratives challenge us to ask hard questions. What are our struggles, personal and communal, and which do we avoid? What would it mean to find a way to blessing? Reflecting on our climate crisis, what does it mean when Jacob says, “God is in this place, and I did not know it.” What do we fail to take notice of at our own peril? 

In the religious imagination, water quenches both physical and spiritual thirst. In the most unexpected places wells and rocks become the bearers of story. Focusing on the Exodus narrative of Moses’ striking the rock, which reveals an aquifer, we will consider the power of water as sustenance, healing, and renewal. The seminar will explore how seemingly inanimate entities such as water and rocks might also be alive and help us rethink our relationship to the earth.