Exile and Altar: Poetry and Photography as Reimagination at a Community Health Center
Jesse McCurdy, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Lawndale Christian Health Center, and Bernardo Barrios,
Lawndale Christian Health Center
The current political and cultural moment poses significant challenges for individuals across the nation, especially in communities like North Lawndale and Little Village in the West Side of Chicago. These two areas hold complicated histories of redlining, economic disinvestment, and systemic racism interwoven with the richness of Latino and Black American culture. Lawndale Christian Health Center, a federally qualified health center, has served these two communities for over forty years and remained dedicated to their holistic flourishing. However, current realities for local residents like immigrant deportation and Medicaid cutbacks hinder these efforts to foster healing. Even more, these circumstances and systemic injustices complicate the overarching narrative told by and about these communities – propagating a story biased towards brokenness rather than beauty.
Exile and Altar: Poems for Lawndale is a creative project that employs poetry and photography to prophetically reimagine the communities of North Lawndale and Little Village. In this anthology, a poet and photographer – both employed at the health center – explore the Genesis story of Abraham through the lens of their experiences in West Chicago. The prose and imagery reflect themes of belonging and displacement through place-centric topics such as gun violence, immigration, and substance use disorders. In this way, the tale of Abraham is transposed onto the streets, testimonies, and faces of North Lawndale and Little Village.
This presentation will survey the theological impetus behind the Exile and Altar project: the belief that art is a lens to re-envision a community and, by derivation, its possibility for flourishing. We argue that prose and photography are mediums to prophetic imagination and revelation of God’s Kingdom in healthcare spaces and communities. This convictions echoes the theology of foundational figures like Hans Urs von Balthasar, along with creative contemporaries like Malcolm Guite who claims that creativity “lifts the veil” of our mundane vision in order to perceive loci of restoration. Additionally, in the presentation, we will share samples of the poetry and photography in Exile and Altar to provide a template for the creative reimagination process in the context of community-based healthcare.
Exile and Altar: Poems for Lawndale is a creative project that employs poetry and photography to prophetically reimagine the communities of North Lawndale and Little Village. In this anthology, a poet and photographer – both employed at the health center – explore the Genesis story of Abraham through the lens of their experiences in West Chicago. The prose and imagery reflect themes of belonging and displacement through place-centric topics such as gun violence, immigration, and substance use disorders. In this way, the tale of Abraham is transposed onto the streets, testimonies, and faces of North Lawndale and Little Village.
This presentation will survey the theological impetus behind the Exile and Altar project: the belief that art is a lens to re-envision a community and, by derivation, its possibility for flourishing. We argue that prose and photography are mediums to prophetic imagination and revelation of God’s Kingdom in healthcare spaces and communities. This convictions echoes the theology of foundational figures like Hans Urs von Balthasar, along with creative contemporaries like Malcolm Guite who claims that creativity “lifts the veil” of our mundane vision in order to perceive loci of restoration. Additionally, in the presentation, we will share samples of the poetry and photography in Exile and Altar to provide a template for the creative reimagination process in the context of community-based healthcare.