The following is my honest reaction to a very provocative piece of art. It was on display this past summer at the San Juan Islands Museum of Art in Washington state. The piece itself, I have never seen with my own eyes, but I have talked at length with the artist who created it. As far as I know, he also has never physically touched the piece but created the concept and design.

His mere description of the piece was enough to make me ruminate on it for almost a year now. I’ve had complicated reactions to it: emotions ranging from anger, guilt, sadness, excitement, and hope. I’ve laughed about it and laughed at it, both within myself and with the artist who created it. He will likely read what I’ve written here, hopefully with grace for the things I missed, the parts I misinterpreted, and my own vomitous projections onto his art.

The piece is simple and absurd. A church pew, painted bright pink, suspended from the rafters of the museum with chains. One can sit on it, swing gently back and forth on it, or just look at it. There is nothing particularly out of the ordinary with this pew, save for a small placard on the front, upon which are engraved the words:

“Whoever sits here shall be forgiven of racism.”

***

And so, I begin a task for which I am unqualified, untrained, and intellectually unfit – critical interpretation of art.

First off, why is the pew pink? What influences does the artist acknowledge with this color?

Could pink be a reference to the 1958 masterpiece The Cat in The Hat Comes Back, where a cat caught eating cake in a tub discovers a pink stain which will not go away? The Cat and his little cat helpers brush the stain and wipe the stain, smash it, shoot it, disperse it and shovel it away, but no matter what that pink stain seems to permeate every surface it touches.

Could that pink cake stain be like our racism, so deep and engrained, the more we try to wipe it, the more it stays the same?

Could this Pink Pew be the “VOOM” (the magic solution) that Seuss describes in his book?

“He has something called VOOM

VOOM is so hard to get,

You never saw anything

Like it, I bet.

Then the VOOM…

It went VOOM!

And, oh boy! What a VOOM!

Now, don’t ask me what Voom is.

I never will know.

But, boy! Let me tell you

It DOES clean up snow!”

In an instant the Cat in the Hat eviscerates the pink cake stain from the face of the earth. Not a trace remains, and the children return to what they were doing before. Is this children’s story why he colored the pew pink? Is he hinting this pew may be a weapon of mass destruction in the war on racism? A giant microwave that will zap every last racist bone in our bodies?

Like all good art, it leaves you wondering…

Maybe his intention is more playful than that. Perhaps only something as whimsical and unserious a color as pink provides the proper context for deep forgiveness. Pink is the color of a newborn’s flesh, helpless and vulnerable, submitting and needy.

Photo by **Polina Kovaleva** from **Pexels**

SITTING DOWN

If you want forgiveness, you must sit on the pew. So, what does it mean to sit down?

Let’s look at the piece in context. The Pink Pew was commissioned as an art piece during the most outwardly tense racial period I can recall.

Looking back at the summer of 2020, I now see that many of our words and deeds were motivated not by love, but by our own anxieties. We saw the pain of others and above all else, it made us uncomfortable. Like that deep pink cake stain, it had gotten into our clothes, and hair, and flooring, and bedsheets. It was on everything and in everything, and we wanted so badly to wipe it off of ourselves.

During that time, I read books, wrote things down, joined the general conversations going on both in person and online. But my biggest takeaway from Black Lives Matter was something I did not expect.

I have learned that it’s perfectly acceptable for me to be uncomfortable. And rather than reach to assuage my own anxiety, it’s better to just sit with people in their present pain. This inward shift started for me at work (a counseling office) and moved out into all areas of my life.

As you can imagine clients come to our office with problems we have no answers to. In fact, they are often not asking us to fix their issues but just want the opportunity to be heard. Regardless, we try to fix them, because fixing makes us feel better. There is a subconscious back and forth between client and counselor, the more we try the worse it gets.

This scenario causes anxiety in the therapist and frustration within the client. While our helping efforts on the surface seem noble, we are in fact motivated by our own feelings of helplessness in the face of an unsolvable problem. As we try to cope with reality, all sorts of negative emotions can begin to manifest – anger, denial, bargaining, frustration, and despair.

There are parallel reactions in whites as they confront the realities and legacy of racism in America. These responses have familiar and triggering names: white privilege, white flight, white guilt, white fragility, white denial, white bareness. Our denial, bargaining, anger, and despair. To sit on the Pew, is to stew in our own discomfort, rather than push it away through words or action.

Sitting is admitting. In that sense, this art piece invites us to interact with history. The Pew transforms into a seat at the front of Rosa’s bus or a slaveowner’s easy chair. For to rephrase the words on the placard:

“This bench is a place for racists to sit.”

STANDING UP

“Whoever sits here shall be forgiven of racism.”

This statement raises many questions. Who is bestowing this forgiveness and by what authority do they forgive? Is it the artist, a group of people, God? Is it the Pew itself? For what does it count to be forgiven by a bench made of wood?

Forgiveness is inward and hidden, whereas we often prefer clear outward markers of acceptability. Security resides in the simple narratives we tell about ourselves and our tribe. We rest easy in our battle lines drawn, connecting our own struggles with those of our preferred heroes. Even those identities of “victim”, “repentant racist”, or “hopelessly lost cause” can prop up our battered ego. But clinging to these identities also costs us the freedom to live life to the fullest.

We want to resolve this ongoing tension within ourselves. It feels cathartic to “Stand up” for our values, to shake our fist in the air against the powers of oppression. Or to endlessly offer apologies of no substance. While these may not release those imprisoned by their shame or hate, making gestures is at least convenient and concrete.

The human mind, having evolved and survived over countless millennia prefers answers over questions, clarity over mystery, closure over continuous process. We desperately want to clarify some things about this Pink Pew, either (a) or (b):

(a) You can’t just sit down on a pew and have all your guilt and complicity washed away in an instant. Or rather, (b) you can sit down and when you get up a baptism of sorts will have occurred. Your sins will be as far as the east is from the west, the pink cake stain VOOMed into oblivion, never to haunt you again.

Disappointingly, the Pink Pew is not either/or. And standing up from your seat on it offers no easy answers, just the hope of redemption. The piece seems to hint that somehow, against all logic and worldly evidence God makes all things new. The Pew provides no definitive relief from our historical anxieties, no wallet sized certificate verifying we’ve “done the work and are off the hook”. Rather it is an invitation to have faith in grace.

***

Probably not realizing it, those visitors to the museum had stepped into a church, for the Pink Pew beautifully expresses the offensively radical nature of the Christian gospel. The immediate and full canceling of moral debts has been a stumbling block to many throughout the ages and continues to this day. Like the Pink Pew, there is something ludicrous about the gospel, if only we will take our heads out of the religious sand for long enough to admit it. It seems irresponsible and unrealistic. It’s excessively merciful – letting evil people off easy.

From a spiritual perspective, sitting down on the Pink Pew is crucifixion. It is the slow, suffocating death of the ego, and the piercing of our social validation. To sit down is to publicly execute the need for others to think highly of us, to be the heroes in our own stories, or to be on the right side of history.

But if sitting down is crucifixion, then standing up from the Pew is the miracle of resurrection. It is the hidden mystery of salvation – “Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” [1]

We are offered hope in the midst of tragic circumstances that our lives are not a lost cause. That when we forfeit our power, God’s power can do in an instant what we cannot achieve in many lifetimes.

Much like The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, one will see what they want to see in the Pew exhibit. Is it a timeless and deep commentary on humankind’s fundamental flaws or a silly children’s tale that rhymes? The Pink Pew’s invitation to sit down and its offer of forgiveness will for some seem like an offer to good to be true. They will regard it as a pearl of great price. But countless others will laugh at the ridiculousness of it and curse its trite grace.

REFERENCES

[1] Bible, book of Second Corinthians chapter 4