Who teaches us more than the animals of the earth and makes us wiser than the birds of the air?’ Job 35:11
After a summer pause, the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection is back on-line with a series devoted to biblical "bird-watching," showcasing images of birds depicted as actors and emblems in sacred narratives from the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. A prime example is the dove bringing an olive branch to Noah in the Book of Genesis to signal the end of the Great Flood and the Spirit of God descending on Jesus in the form of a dove in the Gospel accounts of his Baptism. My first image of "the birds of the air" is a 1993 poster for Habitat for Humanity from Howard Finster, the Southern Revivalist Baptist Minister turned visionary artist, who equates his feathered flock seeking places to nest with the plight of the homeless. (John Kohan)