O Lord, who may abide in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy hill? (Psalm 15:1 NRSV)
Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? (Psalm 24:3 NRSV)
What qualities must a person have, to come close to God? Psalms 15 and 24 open with searching questions of worshippers seeking admittance—literally or metaphorically—to God’s Temple, evoked by images of a tent and of a hill (15:1; 24:3). The latter calls to mind the ‘hill of the Lord’ whose ascent Jewish tradition most celebrated: Mount Zion.
A different place of worship, Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral, is today home to a richly suggestive work of contemporary art. Read in the light of these psalms, its very inhabitation of this sanctuary obliquely poses a modern echo of those ancient questions. Who may dwell on your holy hill? (15:1)
Tracey Emin’s For You, in joyously lurid pink neon, is at first sight an incongruous presence in Giles Gilbert Scott’s massive ecclesiastical building. It enshrines a sentence, in the artist’s own handwriting, glowing with a constant, chemical light below the large stained-glass window at the west end, near to where people enter. With a confessional honesty at odds with neon’s commoner associations—with advertising, city pleasures, and commodified sex—it reads: ‘I Felt You And I Knew You Loved me’. First installed as part of Liverpool’s year as European City of Culture in 2008, it has become a popular and abiding presence on this ‘holy hill’.
The words are intimate. The verbs—‘feeling’, ‘knowing’, ‘loving’—are as insistently relational as the capitalized ‘I-You-I-You-me’ of their confession. Such a confession might be one made in prayer, but it looks a lot more like one from a love letter or the bedroom. And it is of course for her unmade bed—‘My Bed’ (1998)—and for her embroidered tent listing ‘Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995’ (1995) that Emin is best known. She has spoken openly of her experiences of underage sex, sexual violence, abortion, alcohol abuse, depression, and thoughts of suicide (e.g. Emin 2005; Cork 2015). The enshrining in this temple of the love of this woman—messy and ambiguous, sensual and devoted—makes space for real experience: for desire (eros), and universal love (agape) to dwell in the ‘tent’, ‘holy’ or otherwise.
References
Cork, Richard. 2015. Face to Face: Interviews with Artists (London: Tate Publishing)
Emin, Tracey. 2005. Strangeland (London: Hodder and Stoughton)
Tracey Emin
For You, 2008, Neon light, Liverpool Anglican Cathedral; Commissioned by the Dean and Chapter of Liverpool Cathedral, © 2021 Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS, London / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Photo: David Colbran / Alamy Stock Photo
Abiding in the Tent
What qualities must a person have, to come close to God? Psalms 15 and 24 open with searching questions of worshippers seeking admittance—literally or metaphorically—to God’s Temple, evoked by images of a tent and of a hill (15:1; 24:3). The latter calls to mind the ‘hill of the Lord’ whose ascent Jewish tradition most celebrated: Mount Zion.
A different place of worship, Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral, is today home to a richly suggestive work of contemporary art. Read in the light of these psalms, its very inhabitation of this sanctuary obliquely poses a modern echo of those ancient questions. Who may dwell on your holy hill? (15:1)
Tracey Emin’s For You, in joyously lurid pink neon, is at first sight an incongruous presence in Giles Gilbert Scott’s massive ecclesiastical building. It enshrines a sentence, in the artist’s own handwriting, glowing with a constant, chemical light below the large stained-glass window at the west end, near to where people enter. With a confessional honesty at odds with neon’s commoner associations—with advertising, city pleasures, and commodified sex—it reads: ‘I Felt You And I Knew You Loved me’. First installed as part of Liverpool’s year as European City of Culture in 2008, it has become a popular and abiding presence on this ‘holy hill’.
The words are intimate. The verbs—‘feeling’, ‘knowing’, ‘loving’—are as insistently relational as the capitalized ‘I-You-I-You-me’ of their confession. Such a confession might be one made in prayer, but it looks a lot more like one from a love letter or the bedroom. And it is of course for her unmade bed—‘My Bed’ (1998)—and for her embroidered tent listing ‘Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995’ (1995) that Emin is best known. She has spoken openly of her experiences of underage sex, sexual violence, abortion, alcohol abuse, depression, and thoughts of suicide (e.g. Emin 2005; Cork 2015). The enshrining in this temple of the love of this woman—messy and ambiguous, sensual and devoted—makes space for real experience: for desire (eros), and universal love (agape) to dwell in the ‘tent’, ‘holy’ or otherwise.
References
Cork, Richard. 2015. Face to Face: Interviews with Artists (London: Tate Publishing)
Emin, Tracey. 2005. Strangeland (London: Hodder and Stoughton)
Psalms 15 and 24
Revised Standard Version
Psalm 15
A Psalm of David.
15O Lord, who shall sojourn in thy tent?
Who shall dwell on thy holy hill?
2He who walks blamelessly, and does what is right,
and speaks truth from his heart;
3who does not slander with his tongue,
and does no evil to his friend,
nor takes up a reproach against his neighbor;
4in whose eyes a reprobate is despised,
but who honors those who fear the Lord;
who swears to his own hurt and does not change;
5who does not put out his money at interest,
and does not take a bribe against the innocent.
He who does these things shall never be moved.
Psalm 24
A Psalm of David.
24The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof,
the world and those who dwell therein;
2for he has founded it upon the seas,
and established it upon the rivers.
3Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?
And who shall stand in his holy place?
4He who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not lift up his soul to what is false,
and does not swear deceitfully.
5He will receive blessing from the Lord,
and vindication from the God of his salvation.
6Such is the generation of those who seek him,
who seek the face of the God of Jacob. Selah
7Lift up your heads, O gates!
and be lifted up, O ancient doors!
that the King of glory may come in.
8Who is the King of glory?
The Lord, strong and mighty,
the Lord, mighty in battle!
9Lift up your heads, O gates!
and be lifted up, O ancient doors!
that the King of glory may come in.
10Who is this King of glory?
The Lord of hosts,
he is the King of glory! Selah
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