re: TulaneLSU's Christmas Pilgrimage XVII: Top 10 Sculptures NOMA Sculpture Garden

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The only overtly religious themed work in the entire gardens, it retells the beautiful story of Ruth and Naomi. Naomi, the Bethlehem widow, ends up in a foreign land without a husband and her two sons. She tells her two daughters-in-law to stay while she returns to her home, the same city in which Jesus was born. One obeys; the other, Ruth, shows such devotion and utters the famous, “Where you go, I will go; your people will be my people; your God will be my God.”

Baskin, the son of a Rabbi from Brooklyn, tells us in this sculpture how vulnerable we all are. Society’s only a few missed meals from anarchy. Individuals, every day, are just a few inches from death. Our world is just one mistake away from annihilation. As much wealth and power that we pretend to have, we are really just tattered creatures, vulnerable to the laws of nature. Nature maintains its beauty due to its perfect obedience to these laws, as Simone Weil writes, “The sea is not less beautiful in our eyes because we know that ships are sometimes wrecked in it. On the contrary, this adds to its beauty. If it altered the movement of its waves to spare a boat, it would be a creature gifted with discernment and choice and not this fluid, perfectly obedient to every external pressure. It is this perfect obedience that constitutes the sea’s beauty.”

What then is hopeful and beautiful about this statue? Brotherhood and sisterhood. Our frailty is made strong through the bonds of love and sacrifice. Is this not more evident than when we approach the manger?

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