ECVA - Tobias Haller, BSG - Stories from the Road

On The Pilgrims' Way

Medium: Colored Pencil on rough paper
9" x 9"

Artist Statement: Not all pilgrimages take the form of physical journeys. Sometimes one is immobile, isolated, literally deserted by others, alone in a desert of solitude, yet still and constantly inwardly praying, "I call upon you from the ends of the earth..." (Psalm 61:2) For many of the desert monks the call took the form of the Jesus Prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner." In this image, an elderly monk is surrounded by the words of this prayer, a halo not of his own righteousness or virtue, but a reminder of the One who has redeemed him, and who is with him and upholds him in all of his journeys and resting places, in a pilgrimage of the heart.

Bio: Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG retired from full-time ministry after 16 years as Vicar at St James Fordham (Bronx NY). While in New York he served diocesan leadership as a trustee and on the Standing Committee, as Deputy to General Convention for over a decade, and a on the Anglican Communion Indaba Reference Group. He lives in Baltimore and is an associate at Church of the Advent, Federal Hill. He is a life-professed member of the Brotherhood of Saint Gregory, and a Commander of the Order of St John. An iconographer, visual artist (who has served as an ECVA curator in the past), musician, and author, his publications include Reasonable and Holy (Seabury 2009), Shared Governance (Church Publishing 2012), The Episcopal Handbook Revised (Church Publishing 2015), Preparing for a Wedding in the Episcopal Church (Church Publishing 2017), What About Sex? — A Little Book of Guidance (Church Publishing 2017), and his most recent, Re-Membering God: Human Hope and Divine Desire (Church Publishing 2019) which includes chapters on art, music, and architecture as human articulations of this quest.